April 4, 2025 • 59 mins
This week, we discuss the life and death of Richard III - the last English king to die in battle.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to an hour of Our Time, the podcast where
we pick a topic, research it and come back to
tell you what we've learned. Today, we're talking about Richard
the Third, the last King of England to die in battle,
the result of which ended the Middle Ages in England.
We're going to talk about the legendary Richard the Third
from Shakespeare and try to separate the myth from the
(00:23):
real Richard the Third. We're also going to talk about
the recent rediscovery of Richard the Third's body.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I'm Joe and I'm Dave. So how's it going good?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
We are. We're in the beginning of spring soccer season
now from my oh son. So we're going to the
going to the pitch. That's fun.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Spend a lot of time out in like a like
an open field.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, basically, yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Like a kind of field where I don't know, in
the fifth fourteen eighties, you might get bludgeoned to death.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah. I actually fell down into some mud and I
was worried that someone was going to stab me or
a horse would fall on me.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
And then we wouldn't find your body for five hundred
plus years.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Right, It was super cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Well, so yeah, we're talking about Richard the Third. I
know we said last week we should do an episode
about Richard the Third. Well here you go.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yeah, I think we have to apologize a little bit
to Richard the Third. I think I have to be honest.
I think that I I think I said something about
him being a real piece of shit. And the thing is,
like any any medieval king, or I could I could
(01:59):
have just head king, Well, yeah, is a piece of
shit in some ways, and he did like murder some people,
but or or did well, I mean he definitely, like
you know, was like trying to hold onto power and
all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
But well, that's the other thing, Joe. I think that,
like his perception of him being a piece of shit
obviously comes a little bit from Shakespeare.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
But I was going to say, I think I am
the victim of the Bard and how basically most people's
perception of Richard the Third, if you have one at all,
well comes from the Shakespeare play.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
And I think Shakespeare was a victim of that. History
is written by the winners, right, So if you're the loser,
you're you're like Kinglee. Bloodline ends there. Then everybody after
you is talking about, you know, talking about you in
a negative way. We'll talk about this in a bit,
because the epitaph that supposedly was on Richard's original grave
(02:59):
is very respectful, oddly enough. Yeah, but I think that
history tends to you know, it tends to It's written
by the winners, so it tends to lean that way.
It skews towards those who were victorious, whether they were
the good guys or the bad guys.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Objectively, in Shakespeare in his time, he was writing his plays,
He wrote his play his history plays at the end
of the reign of Elizabeth the First and so he
was writing, you know, in during the reign of like
(03:39):
you said, the heir to essentially the winner of this struggle.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Right, he would have written this play, let's see, sometime
between fifteen ninety two and fifteen ninety four, so you know,
over one hundred years after Richard's death. So if you
put that modern perspective, it'd be like if you wrote
a play now about oh God, I don't know, like
the It's like if you wrote a play now about
(04:06):
World War One.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
I was to say, like if you did a podcast
about the assassination of France Fergnant.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Exactly, or I was gonna say, like that if you
wrote a play about JP Morgan the Robert Barons, this
is like, this is the distance of time that we're
talking about.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
So the way that we do history, like history, which
history is now an academic subject, that is, you know,
uses some of the same methods of scholarship as science.
So you know, they didn't do history in the same
(04:43):
way bank in Shakespeare's time. Also, he was like going
for entertainment. So anyway, but yeah, we're talking about Richard
the Third and so you know, like I mentioned, I
think most of what I knew about Richard the Third
was from Shakespeare. I also, like I took a a
year in history class, like in high school, and then
I'm like kind of generally interested in history. But to
(05:05):
be honest, like a lot of these British kings kind
of run together. And he only ruled for two years.
So while he's like actually like a really important historical figure,
it's not like he was around as the King of
England for a long time.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
No, he's notable for you know a number of reasons,
but the biggest one being that he's the last English
king to die in battle.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Yeah, I which is.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Going to be significant here too. Like you know the
rest of the story.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
But yeah, they decided after this that he probably that
you probably should not endanger yourself in this way if
you're the ruler, because you can have your subjects do this. Also,
this is all of this is happening in the fourteen hundreds,
(05:54):
so when he died, it was, uh, he was born
in fourteen fifty two and he died in fourteen eighty five,
so we're talking about the Renaissance had not really reached
(06:14):
England at this point. Yeah, but we're on the cusp though. Yeah,
but this is before the advent of like standing professional armies,
so you know, later on the idea of having you know,
(06:40):
your monarch or your prime minister or what have you,
your your leader actually go into battle what would be
you know, unheard of. So so yeah, he's notable for that.
And then I think, Dave, you're probably gonna talk about
this son I mentioned, but he's also notable it recently
because we think we found his body and so this
(07:03):
is what we have talked.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
You know, without a beyond a reasonable doubt that we
found his body. And I can explain why we know that.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah, we we we talked about this a little bit
in our last episode. I weirdly we were talking about allergies. Uh,
but we you know, we we take our little like
twists and turns. But he was found in a car park. Yes,
he was in Leicester.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Coincidentally only meters from an r that was spray painted
to mark a reserve parking spot.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Ah, isn't that weird? Leicester? Is how you that is pronounced?
All right? So let's let's start at the beginning, as
I like to do. Well, actually, I've got a little
bit of timeline, but what I wanted to do is,
actually we're gonna tarantine know this, and we're gonna start
at the end, okay, of his life. And I am
(07:55):
going to read very briefly, Uh, the most famous section
when the most famous line from the play Richard the
Third by Shakespeare. So Richard the Third is one of
his He wrote two sets of his history plays, and
this is part of Richard the Third is part of
(08:17):
the second second set of history plays. After his three
part play of Henry, I'm sorry what is it? The
play before this is the Sorry. The play after this
(08:39):
would be Henry the Fourth. Sorry, okay, Henry the Fourth.
So he he got three plays the thriller. I got
the third Okay, so there are no stage directions in Shakespeare.
I actually like, if you get a play or if
you're reading shakespeare in it's got stage directions. Those are
(09:01):
added leader for you know, in like because people have
been performing these plays like basically since his time. Okay,
so this is at the end of act five. Also,
Shakespeare did not divide his plays into acts. That is
something that later people did, and they are typically divided
(09:25):
into five acts, somewhat arbitrarily at times. But this so
this would be the basically just about the end of
the play. Okay. The the character catesby rescue my Lord Nofolk,
rescue rescue King, and acts more wonders than a man,
(09:50):
daring an opposite to every danger. His horse is slain,
and all on foot he fights, seeking for Richmond in
the throat of death, rescue Phair or else the day
is lost. Enter Richard. The third and the most famous line,
one of the most famous lines in Shakespeare. A horse,
(10:11):
a horse, my kingdom for a horse. Catesby withdraw, my lord,
I'll help you to a horse, King Richard the third slave,
I have set my life upon a cast. A cast
is a roll of a dice, and I will stand
the hazard of the die. I think there be six
(10:31):
Richmonds in the field. Five ice have slain today instead
of him a horse, a horse my kingdom for a
horse does the last line Richard the third in the
play for after this he is slain, just as in
real life, and then the play ends shortly after this.
(10:57):
So if you are wondering where the line a horse,
a horse my kingdom or a horse comes from, it
is from the play Richard the Third, and it depicts
essentially his death scene, which does reflect real history, because
he did ride in on a horse in a cavalry charge,
fall off his horse, and then was cut down.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah. I had read that his horse had kind of
gotten like stuck in the mud, yep, and he's like
fallen off of it, was trying to free his horse
and then got we'll talk about all the wounds on
the bottom.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Now, far from him being this like horrible hunchback, which
is like what he has depicted in in Shakespeare, he was,
you know, a relatively able bodied person, like he was
riding a horse into battle.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
So yeah, he was a jousting champion, although he did
have school.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
He was a Chad. You might say, I.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Have a Chad. He did have schoolios. Although when they
were able to examine his bones, you know, not long ago,
they determined that, uh, you know, some people are born
with that curvature of the spine. They determined that he
most likely developed it an adolescence.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
If you've seen Richard the Third though, he's like Quasimodo.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yeah. Yeah, but if you do look at his remains,
I mean he's he looks it looks like a question mark.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
I mean these well yeah, no one yeah, had no
one had like good posture jeans.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Well, I mean what I'm saying is that he definitely
had you know, full on scoliosis. I mean it was
it was a thing.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah. I would say, if you are interested in learning
more about Richard the Third, a very good resource for
this would be actually the Richer the Third Society. Mm hmm. Yeah,
they can learn that because he there's actually like it's
an extra. It was a actually the started off as
(13:08):
a society called the Fellowship of the White Boar in
nineteen twenty four, and then nineteen fifty nine the Fellowship
of the White Boar was renamed the Richer the Third Society. Yeah,
and then it was actually like the Richer the Third
Society was like fairly instrumental in I think funding some
(13:32):
of this work to identify the body of Richard the Third.
So let's deal a little timeline here if you don't mind, Dave,
and feel free to interject. Now we're going to go
through like the dates are going to like you know,
there'll be years apart from the major events, but then
we're going to get to the two years of his
reign and there will be you know, more and more points.
(13:56):
So he was born on October second, fourteen fifteen. I
often think when we were doing these historical figures that
like if you weren't if you were a peasant, like
your birthday wouldn't even be recorded. Like the fact that
we know when he was born is like because he
was a king or a noble. Yeah, I don't know,
(14:21):
just something interesting. So his parents were Richard who was
the Duke of York, so his family was part of
the faction the Yorkists, which will become relevant. And his
mother Cecily Neville, the Duchess of York. So fourteen fifty five,
(14:41):
so it's three years old. Was the first Battle of
Saint Albans. So this was the first battle of what
would become the War of the Roses, which was a
roughly thirty two year conflict between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians,
an extremely bloody conflict that for the throne of England.
(15:08):
Now what's interesting is in Shakespeare's time, Elizabeth I did
not leave an air, and so there was a concern,
although it did not happen, there was a concern that
there might be some conflict like this in Shakespeare's time,
(15:29):
which I'm not a Shakespeare's color, but that seems relevant.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah, it does.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Fourteen fifty nine in October, so the Yorkists defeat the
Yorkists are defeated at a battle called Ludford Bridge. So
the Duke of York. So what's interesting here is that
literally from birth, he's born into war, and so you
(15:56):
could forgive him for being like kind of dick. So
at this point Richard was seven. He was actually taken
into Lancastrian custody with his siblings and his mother because
the Duke of York, his father, and his two older
brothers fled into exile. They went to Ireland. I believe
(16:18):
in the next year fourteen sixty the Battle of Northampton.
Richard's brother Edward won the battle, and then the Duke
of So the Duke of York, unsuccessfully proclaimed his right
to the throne. And later that year Richard's father and
(16:45):
his brother Edmund were killed at the Battle of Wakefield.
They were like executed.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Oh shit, okay.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Yes, so so now the next year, Richard's brother Edward,
who is now the Duke of York because his father died,
won a battle at Mortimer's Cross. But then then the
(17:17):
they lost a battle shortly thereafter, and Richard was sent
to the Low Countries, which we will call the Netherlands
to keep him safe. But then like just about a
month later he was actually like brought back because big
(17:39):
bro Edward defeated and they're now fighting against the leader
of the Lancastrians is Henry the sixth. There's a lot
of Henry's, a lot of Edwards, a lot of Richards.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Yeah, that confusing, but.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
No, no way, that is confusing. So anyway, the Yorkists
under Edward defeat his armory at Taunton, and then Edward
was then crowned at King Edward the Fourth and that
made Richard like a duke Okay, all right, so now
(18:17):
he's getting trained in So now now he's getting trained
in like courtly affairs and hunting and horseback riding and
warfare and diplomacy and all this stuff, like the training
that you would need to become a king or at
least a duke or somebody important. Fourteen sixty four, Edward
(18:40):
the Fourth secretly married Elizabeth Woodville, who was actually a
widow of a Lancastrian. Fourteen sixty five, Richard moved to
the household of the Earl of Warwick, who like a
(19:00):
family friend, and this would become important, okay. And then
at that time Richard attended a feast, and we know
this from a seating chart. Oh so it's like different,
like cool like historical documents that you can get this
because you always wonder, like how do we know this?
There's actually they have like a seating chart from this
feast at the duke or I'm sorry, the Earl of
(19:23):
Warwick's house. And at this guy Warwick's house, he's got
his daughters, Isabelle and Anne, and there's all these kind
of like love stories that have been concocted since then
that maybe at this point Richard and Anne fell in love.
(19:46):
They were teenagers and they had like, you know, all
the you know, raging hormones.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
But it doesn't sound like you liked this story very much.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Show. Well, I mean they sat next to each other,
but like, we literally do not know anything about this
at this point, right, Okay, okay, skip ahead a few years. Well,
it's I'm trying to leave some of his family. Yeah,
I'm fair because we're keeping it to Richard. That three.
(20:17):
This is not an episode about the War of the Roses,
although that would be interesting.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah, this is the problem with talking about English monarchy
history is that like where do you start? Yeah, and
how do you cover everything? So, yeah, we're trying to
tell a somewhat isolated story, but fundamentally the story is
not isolated.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah, it's it's fine. So fourteen sixty nine, the Duke
of Clarence, whose name George, married Warwick. The family friends
eldest daughter Isabelle. Okay, but then this guy, the Duke
of Clarence and Warwick, then they started rebelling against Edward
(21:00):
the Fourth, who is Richard's brother, so they they betrayed family.
But of course Richard became stayed loyal to his brother.
He was also declared that that year Constable of England
for a life, which I have to be honest, I
don't know what that means.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
It sounds like a good title.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Yeah, well, he was already the Duke of Gloucester at
that point, not Gloucester, Gloucester, Okay, my sources tell me
fourteen seventy. It was around this time that he probably
adopted the White bar as his emblem. Hence the White
War Society. These guys Warwick and the Duke of Clarence,
(21:48):
they're they're going to they're doing another rebellion. They left
to go to France and they're trying to get support
from France. And of course France love fucking meddling in
British affairs. Oh yeah, yeah, I memorial, so it's ten
sixty six, they love it. I should also mention that
(22:12):
French is still the like language of the court end
of the law at this point in England. Oh really,
mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Do you want do you want to explain your ten
sixty six comment there? It might help.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah, I'm sorry. So in ten sixty six, the Duke
of Normandy, which is in France, came to England and
Battle of Hastings beat the Britons and took over England.
This is when you get it's actually have like French
claim to the English throne, and this caused a lot
(22:46):
of the strife that led to the One hundred Years War,
which we mentioned in our episode Joan of Arc. You
don't want to get too much into this history, but
that is also where English the language comes from, because
you have the Germanic language. I said the Britons, I
meant the Anglo Saxon. There are a lot of tribes
in England. You get the language of the Anglo Saxons
(23:06):
mixing with French to become eventually what we call English.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Interesting, so early English does not does not sound like
anything like the English that we speak today. But from
then on France or French was the language of the
course until the fourteen late fourteen hundreds were talking about
now okay, anyway, so there rebellions. Yep, they're trying to
(23:36):
get support from France. If you've heard like ten sixty six,
that is a very important day in British history. Yeah, okay.
So Warwick invades England and the King Edward fled to
the Low Countries and Richard joined him fourteen seventy one,
(23:57):
they returned from exile, and then you get the Battle
of Barnet, which was a victory for the Yorkists, and Warwick,
the you know family trader was killed. Okay, so now
(24:19):
Richard is now leading armies. He was wh he's like
serving in the army. He was important at the Battle
of Tewksbury, and then Henry the sixth died in the
(24:42):
Tower of London that year. Okay, fourteen seventy three, Richard
married and Neville, who was if you recall, the daughter
of this guy Warwick, but she had married the one
(25:09):
of the Edwards, one of the Lancaster Edwards. Because there's
Edwards on both sides. It's very it's very annoying. That
next year he had fourteen seventy six his only legitimate son,
Edward of Middleham. Another Edward, I know, fourteen seventy seven, George,
(25:37):
the Duke of Clarence. So this, this guy who was
leading the rebellion with Warwick, was captured and then later
he was executed in the Tower of London fourteen eighty two.
Richard so was skipping, had several years there. Richard led
an English army into Scotland and so gained some kind
(25:59):
of notoriety there. And now we're going to get into
the I don't know the meat of it because now
now it's getting into fourteen eighty three, which is when
he's gonna begin to take the throne here, surely, So
I'll try to, like, you know, I don't know. We're
good on times, so I don't have to like skip
(26:19):
through this, but okay, Edward the fourth, Oh, I'm sorry. Also,
by this time he had adopted his motto loyalty binds
me ooh, which was also which was actually in French.
That's the English translation, because again they're they're speaking French.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yeah, he needs to he's having too much fiber, I
think is the problem.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Well, you know, if you had no if he had fiber,
then he would he wouldn't be bound up, right.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
He needs more fiber.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
He needs more fiber. He needs he's eating all those
rich king meals. Well.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Actually he had a seafood heavy diet, which is going
to be important when we talk about carbon dating his bones.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
We'll get to that, okay, Yeah, seafood heavy diet. Yeah.
I think this is like one of those things when like,
you know, the kings were eating like all their rich
food and they were getting like all these diseases like
gout stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Oh fuck yeah yeah, well yes.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Okay, sorry, yes, So Edward the Fourth his death was
announced and he was succeeded by his son, also Edward,
who would be the fifth.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Look, I'm glad that they're not like naming their kids
like Colton Ship like that, but like Brindley, this is
like it's like, yeah, this is like George Foreman.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
There's a lot of these George. So that was So
Edward the Fourth dies, Edward the fifth becomes king. He
is age twelve, which is important. Okay, Okay, So Richard
(28:08):
the third he's not Richard the third day, He's just Richard,
so they sorry Richard. Then in fourth of May is
declared the Protector of England. So he's like it's like
(28:31):
one of these things where like he's kind of actually
in charge because the king is twelve, like one of
these things. The thing is like, this usually does not
end well for the king, the one that's the king,
or actually, i'm sorry, it usually does not end well
for the protector because when the king like it gets
to come, he wants to get rid of his person
(28:52):
who's been pulling the strings right, because it's like, like,
you can't tell me what to do. You're not my
real dad, the old king, this kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Okay, all right, I know exactly what you mean.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
So he goes to so he's going he goes to London.
Now he goes to London with his his his young
oh Jesus nephew. During a council meeting at the Tower
of London, Richard accuses some members of plotting some members
of the council of plotting against him, like the Lord Hastings,
(29:24):
and has him executed. Lord Hastings was a member of
the Court of Edward the Fifths or the fourth, so
his predecessor, and we talked about this in our Alergies episode.
That's why we ended about ended up talking about Richard
the Third because he was allergic to strawberries and he
(29:44):
put out a bunch of strawberries down the table and
then like eight someone started like breaking down too hives
and was like, you guys tried to pullyse met you fuckers,
and then he had this guy executed, which is like
kind of a dick move.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Yeah, thank you for the reminder, because I couldn't remember
why we talked about him.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
That's why we talked to That's how we got on
the subject of We just got on so many fun
ramble holes when we When you start learning about a topic,
you just learned about so many other things.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
That's true, like how a seafood rich diet will affect
carbon dating.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Yeah, it's clicking all of them YouTube or Wikipedia links.
Oh hell ya, actually did. I did not look at
Wikipedia for this one very much long.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
This one was actually I found that from a video
that was amazing. It showed in three D renderings how
the area where his body was buried changed over the years.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Oh that's really cool.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
It was really cool. I'll just send it to you.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Yeah, okay. So in the twenty second of June, there
was a public declaration stating that Edward the fifth and
his siblings were illegitimate because their their parents' marriage was
actually invalid. Oh technic, so they yes, technicalities. So they
(31:02):
announced that Edward the fourth was actually already married when
his marriage to Edward the Fifth's mother took place, So
Edward the fifth, twelve year old can't actually be the king.
So then an assembly at the House of Lords in
(31:26):
the House of Commons offered Richard the crown, which of
course he was like, oh, I mean, I guess I'll
do it. That happened. So it happened on June twenty sixth,
So his reign is officially starts that day. For a
(31:49):
sorry when you think about like how long he was king,
all right, So so him and a little a few
days later on July sixth, King Richard as he was
crowned and his queen Anne were crowned at Westminster Abbey,
and Richard was the first king to say his coronation
(32:11):
oath in English. And he would also institute some reforms
that we'll talk about. He was actually like a relatively
progressive lawmaker for this time period, and one of the
things he did was changed the like court proceedings to
vernacular language, which was English. This was during a time
(32:35):
instead of instead of Latin, instead of French French. Okay, yeah,
but this was a time when like a lot of
stuff was still being done in Latin in other countries,
and there was a mood a push to move to
vernacular language in other countries around around this general period
of time as well. Yeah, all right, so Richard, okay, sorry,
(33:00):
So around that time, the around the summer, the sons
of Edward the Fourth, known as the Princes of the Tower, disappeared. Yeah,
and there's no no one is sure like what happened
to them. But a lot of people think that Richard
the third had them killed.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
So yeah, why do they think that.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Sorry, so the Princes in the Tower, Well, I think
it's just because they disappeared and it was it would
just be like convenient for them to he has killed
because they were the sons of his predecessor.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Right, so he's got motive.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Yes, Yes, they were apparently resided in the Tower of London,
So I know we think about the Tower of London
as like this like place of the tortured people, but
it was always that's not always what went down there. Yeah,
they weren't in prisoned there. They were they were living there,
(34:06):
but then they just disappeared. So it's it's not clear.
And I don't want to get into a ton of
detail about it because I don't want to like boggle
this down.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Sure, but he he is often implicatd to implicated in
killing them, but there's no conclusive evidence of like what
happened to them or that he had them killed.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Well, maybe we'll find their bodies like underneath an eye
hop in twenty years.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Uh maybe, although I mean I think there is like
some relatively new evidence, So I think this is actually,
like I would say, it's an active area of historical research.
What happened to these kids? Okay? Were they weren't like children?
Oh anyway?
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Okay, wait they were children?
Speaker 1 (34:55):
They were not? I don't think. Oh, okay, okay, So
so and now the and later on that at the end,
it turns the end of that year, the Duke of
Buckingham rebelled and but the rebellion failed and Buckingham was
captured and executed, but a number of the rebels escaped
(35:20):
and joined the So the War of the Roses is
still like happening at this point, because it's like a
thirty two year conflict. So right now, the Yorkists under
Richard are in charge, they have the throne, but the
Lancastrians under the rule of Or under the leadership of
Henry Tudor have been hiding out in Brittany, which is
(35:46):
the region of France that is like closest to England.
Fourteen eighty four, in January and February Richard held what
would be his only Parliament, and this is when he
did some interesting things. Like he made it so that
(36:07):
you could have a public defendant if you didn't couldn't
afford one, which is like something that we kind of
you know, take for granted as part of American law. Yeah, he,
like I said, he made English the you know, the
language that was used for official acts and stuff like that,
(36:32):
granted essentially like a bail system, and just generally like
some things that more benefited the common people, so to speak.
So laws are written in English, like I said, some
of the like things that later like because British law
(36:54):
sort of formed originally kind of the basis for some
of them are American laws. Some of that stuff kind
of start here. Okay. He also founded the College of Arms.
This is important in British history.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
The former Queen Elizabeth Woodville reached an agreement with Richard
so that her daughters could like come out of hiding essentially.
But then unfortunately their son, Edward, another Edward died, so
(37:39):
Richard and Anne's son died, their only legitimate his only
legitimate heir.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Gotcha.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Then in fourteen eighty five, shit sucked for Richard, and
it didn't. It does not get better. So his son
died in March of fourteen eighty five, his wife, Queen
Anne died, and I know that, like he's supposed to
be like this awful dickhead, but apparently he really loved
(38:06):
her and was in deep mourning like basically from the
time that she died. And the only thing that caused
his mourning to stop was when he got killed in
the dirt.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Well, that'll do it.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Yeah, So he did open marriage negotiations with the the
heir to the House of Lancaster, who was living in Portugal, Okay,
to try to unite the houses. Then in August Henry
Tudor landed at Milford Haven and Richard learned of the
(38:45):
evasion and some of his supporters. So Richard left Nottingham
and arrived at Leicester on August nineteenth. On August twenty first,
Richard the Third wrote out of Leicester for to hit
his last battle, and then on August twenty second, Richard
(39:09):
the Third was killed at the Battle of Bosworth. They
killed him, stripped his body, supposedly stabbed his corpse in
the ass and well as they laid it over a
horse and then wrote it to Leicester to be displayed,
but then he was buried three days later by monks
(39:35):
and Leicester.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Yeah, there's a there's a legend that prior to the battle,
Richard consulted a seer so sort of like a fortune teller,
uh huh, in Leicester, and this seer foretold, quote, where
your spur should strike on the ride into battle, your
head shall be broken on the return. The legend is
(40:01):
that on his ride into the battle, his spur struck
the bridge stone of Bowbridge. And the legend has it
that his corpse, when it was carried from the battle
on a horse, that his head struck the same stone
and was broken open. M m m.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
It should be mentioned that there were actually three sort
of armies at the Battle of bosworth Field. There was
the Yorkist army under Richard the third there was the
Lancastrian army under Henry Tudor. But then there was also
a third army of Baron Stanley, who was the Earl
(40:47):
of Derby. So so basically Baron Stanley like kind of
weighted to see what was going to happen. In fact,
Richard actually like threatened uh to kill one of Stanley's
(41:11):
sons ship. But then I supposedly he if he didn't
like come to his aid. But then he sends back
a letter that says I have more sons, which is.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
It's like the Rodney Dangerfield joke. Yeah, do you know
do you know the one about the he gets kidnapped
as a child. Oh yeah, in his in his in
the kidnapper sends his parents, uh one of his ears,
and his parents wrote back, send more proof.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
This is all. Uh, you know, I get no respect,
you get.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
It, Rodney Rodney Adgefield man, what a guy. When I
was well going back to school to get do some
like professional development last year for work, it's walking around campus.
I was, uh, you were getting over about I was
(42:07):
thinking I was getting no respect. I was thinking about
the movie Back to School, like all the time.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Great movie, but at some point, Sam Kenniston is my favorite.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
At no point during my during my studies did I
jump off of a diving board. So that was the
That was basically the life of Henry the Third. I'm
sorry Richard the Third.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
Yeah, yeah, let's talk a little bit about what happened
after that.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
M hm.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
So, as you mentioned, you know, he was killed, his
body was stripped carried by a horse and it was
buried at a what's the word they use for this,
it's a I think the word I'm looking for is Friary.
M He was buried a Gray Friars Church. Friary, to
(42:58):
my understanding, is sowhere between a church and a monastery. Okay, yeah, yeah,
Gray Friars Church in Leicester. How do you say this?
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Leicester?
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Leicester?
Speaker 1 (43:12):
I know.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
She annoys me, you know, annoys me, like like food
people that like have like food instagrams and Instagram accounts,
stuff like that, calling it wash your sister sauce. Like
I think maybe that was funny when one person did it,
but now it's like every guydamned person is like, go
put a little wash your sister sauce. Like just stop there.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
There was a there's a guy trying to talk about
Schweppes and he kept calling it show a PEPs.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
Okay, that's funny.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
That is fucking funny. Anyways, So he's buried at this church,
this Friary.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
But you know, forty years after his death, when King
Henry the Eighth separates It's England from Catholicism, many churches
in the country shut down, and a lot of them
are demolished, and this green Grayfriar Church is no exception.
(44:18):
The Mayor of Leicester eventually buys the land and he
builds a mansion on it. Now we're at you know,
the I think around sixteen twelve, sixteen eleven or maybe yeah,
sixteen twelve, somewhere around there. But he knows where Richard's
body is buried, so he sets up an obelisk there.
(44:45):
I'm getting ahead of myself, because I did want to
mention one thing. There is a there. There was an
historian who I believe his last name was Speed, and
he documented supposedly because after Richard was buried, ten years later,
(45:06):
Henry the seventh, you know, who defeated him. His army
defeated him in battle.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Oh yes, I should have said Henry Tudor then was crowned.
They essentially like crowned him on the battlefield because that
Lord Stanley who I mentioned, took the crown off of
Richard's head, gave it to Henry Tudor, and essentially he
became Henry the Seventh on that battlefield.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
So sorry, yeah, but but ten years after Henry the Seventh,
you know, had a a marker made to Mark Richard
the third sort of as a sign of respect. And
supposedly there was an epitaph on it. And according to
this this historian, who was, you know, somewhat of a
contemporary of these people, he translated the epitaph from Latin,
(45:57):
and here's the translation. I here, whom the earth encloses
under various colored marble, was justly called Richard the third.
I was protector of my country, an uncle ruling on
behalf of his nephew. I held the British kingdoms by
broken faith. Then for just sixty days less two and
(46:19):
two summers, I held my skepticies, fighting bravely in war,
deserted by the English. I succumbed to you, King Henry
the seventh, But you yourself piously at your expense, thus honor
my bones, and you cause a former king to be
revered with the honor of a king. When in twice
(46:40):
five years less four three hundred and five year periods
of our salvation have passed. In eleven days before the
Calins of September, I surrendered to the Red Rose the
power it desired. Whoever you are, pray for my offenses,
that my punishment may be lessened by prayers. This I
(47:05):
don't know if this is a book or an academic
paper that I'm reading this in. I think it's a
passage from a book. The author goes on to talk
about the significance of this text, and he they point
out two things. One that like this whole ending about
you know, pray for my offenses, my punishment. It sounds
like their villain. I you know that they're making a
(47:26):
villain out of Richard the Third. But in reality, at
the time, because of Catholicism, there was this heavy belief
in purgatory, so this would have been a fairly common
thing to have at the end of somebody's epitaph. Secondly,
you mentioned the two kids that he supposedly had killed,
not mentioned.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Here, Yeah, the princes in the tower. So I just
to clarify. So that is because there's so many goddamn Edwards.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
Yeah yeah, but the sons.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Yeah, these are the sons of the sons of Edward
the fourth, including the deposed king Edward the fifth. Yeah.
So you know little kid that we talked about. So
they weren't that children. I said, they weren't children, but
like they were, I don't.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
Know teens adolescents. Yeah, but it you know, this author
points out that it's notable that that is omitted. I
don't know if they're suggesting I guess they're suggesting that
that is some evidence that it's not true, or at
least they didn't that Henry the seventh and think it
was true. But I think I don't know. It might
be reading a lot into it. In any case, Henry
(48:35):
the seventh did try to honor Richard the third with this.
But once the church closes and it is demolished again,
the property is purchased by the king of the mayor
of Leicester and he builds a mansion on it. But
he does set up an obelisk to, you know, to
(48:58):
mark where where Henry was or is I suppose you
could say at the time. But this is when the
whole thing gets kind of screwed up. I mentioned John
Speed He at this point he visits the town to
try to visit the grave, and he claims that he
(49:20):
couldn't find this obelisk. But we now know at looking
by looking at a map that he was using, that
the map actually marked the site of the church incorrectly.
There was grave Friar Church and there was Blackfriar Church.
Well on the map they were switched. So he actually
went to the site of the former Blackfriar Church, didn't
see an obelisk, assumed that it never existed, and then
(49:42):
made up this story about Richard the Third's body being
thrown off the bow Bridge into the river, which is
where that legend comes from. In fact, for hundreds of
years there was a marker on the bridge saying that
it was the resting spot of Richard the Third. Eventually
a body, you know, years and years and years and
years later, was found and they thought it was his.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
It was.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
To kind of make a long story short. Over time,
more buildings are built over this site. Streets are built
right through the gardens. It's around the mayor's mansion. And
you fast forward to modern day and that whole site
is you know, office buildings and a car park. And
(50:34):
you mentioned the Richard the Third Society. Yes, well, they
get involved and eventually are able to raise enough money
to excavate part of this car park. They don't have
enough money to excavate all of it, so they decide
(50:54):
to dig. This is in twenty twelve. They decide to
dig three trenches They know that at the time churches
will be built east to west, so they dig these
three north to south trenches, hoping that one of them
would hit part of the church. So basic duty, as
little digging as possible to try to find the church.
(51:14):
But on that I think the first day they find
a body. And this body is notable for a number
of reasons. One, it has a heavily curved spine, again
possibly indicative of Richard. The Third, it also has injuries
(51:35):
that would be consistent with battle wounds at the time
it has It has eleven wounds, a lot of them
on the right side. For example, it has a large
chunk of the base of the right side of the skull,
and near the where the spinal cord meets the skull
just missing chopped off. There is a puncture wound. On
(52:00):
the right side of the face. There is a like
slash wound near the chin, like on the on the
lower jaw. There is a slash wound on one of
the ribs, which kind of is indicative of the fact
that like if he had armor, the armor must have
fallen off, because you couldn't have a wound like that
(52:22):
with that era's armor on your ribs. There was also
some reports after the battle that he was bludgeoned so
hard that his helmet got crushed into his skull. A
lot of them wounds would suggest that his helmet had
fallen off. And then lastly there, yes, his.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
Helmet fell off, and it does I do think that
they took his armor off.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
Yeah. That's the thing. We don't know which of these
wounds are post mortem. We know that there was some
humiliation done to the body. There's one wound that is
a punctual wound and like a slash wound on the hip.
But the thing about it is that it's it's deep.
It's a it's a puncture from the back that goes
so deep that it scrapes into the front of the
(53:09):
hip bone. So they think that when he was being
you know, stripped naked and then carried on a horse,
that they were stabbing his ass.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
Yeah, that's what I mentioned earlier. Yeah, they're pretty sure
that they they did that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:23):
Yeah, yeah. So again, we don't know which of these
was the killing blow there. We certainly know that some
of them would have been fatal blows. But you know,
there was one person I read that pointed out that like,
you know, he could have been stabbed in the heart
and you might not see that on the skeleton. So
we don't know which one of these was actually the
(53:43):
fatal blow. We don't know necessarily which one was done
after death. You can tell that if you have a
fresh corpse, because the way the blood coagulates when somebody's
still alive. But in this case, you know that evidence
is long gone.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
Right right, it's hard to tell.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
How did they figure out that it's Richard the third Well,
there's something called mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down on
the mother's side, always mother's, always female side.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
And the reason this is dave is because you start
as an egg cell from your mother, obviously, and then
the only thing that comes from the sperm is the
genetic information. That doesn't have any It doesn't transfer any
of it's mitochondria or anything.
Speaker 2 (54:33):
Yeah, it doesn't have them. So what they need to
do is find a consistent female line leading all the
way from Richard to somebody alive now, and they're able
to do that by using his sister and of York,
they find I believe it's seventeen generations all the way
down to a woman who died in two thousand and
(54:58):
eight named Joy, but her son, Michael Ibsen, was born
in nineteen fifty seven. He is still alive. They're also
able to trace a female blood line branching off about
in the middle of those generations. So they have two
people that person's name is Wendy, two people who are
direct descendants of Richard the Third's mother, and by comparing
(55:19):
the mitochondria DNA in those people and the remains of
Richard the Third, they were able to determine that it
is indeed him.
Speaker 1 (55:26):
Very cool.
Speaker 2 (55:27):
The other thing is they carbon dated the bones, right,
they wanted to see is this body from the right
time period. They found that actually this person would have
been a little too old, like their body was from
a little bit before Richard's time. But in that studying
they discovered that this person, because they were of nobility,
had a protein rich seafood based diet and apparently that
(55:50):
can affect carbon dating. So when they compensated for that,
it matched up perfectly with the time period for Richard
the Third.
Speaker 1 (55:57):
Yeah, so we actually like incorporate what we eat into
our bones, which is pretty cool. Are actually teeth or
a really good way to look at this too, but
your bones, because you're constantly rebuilding your bones as you live.
So what you're eating, you literally are what you eat. Yeah,
(56:17):
so you can do isotope analysis with that. I did
say that sperm don't have mitochondria. What I meant to
say is that they do not contribute it to these zygo,
your sperm do have mitochondria.
Speaker 2 (56:30):
Right right, again, This was on twenty twelve. In March
of twenty fifteen, he was reburied. The remains were moved
from the University of Leicester to Leicester Cathedral and that
(56:50):
is where he lays today.
Speaker 1 (56:53):
Not in a car, not in a parking lot anymore.
Speaker 2 (56:56):
Not in a parking lot. I think that that's like
the most interesting thing about him. Yeah, I don't know
what I mean. It's nothing that he did, but it's
just it's an interesting end to his story.
Speaker 1 (57:11):
Well, he was very important in the he's important in
Scottish independence, which I very briefly glossed over because I
think like that's a that's an entire episode. But he
also essentially that his defeat kind of begin. It's kind
(57:35):
of at the Battle of Bob's Worth. A lot of
people denote that as the end of the Middle Ages
in England. Yeah, when the when the Tutors take power.
The last thing that I will say is, if you
want to learn more about Richard the Third, check out
that Richard the Third Society. I ast do think you
(57:56):
should read Richard the Third the play, because I actually
think it is what it's one of my favorite ones
because in the play he's just such an evil bastard.
Mm hmm. It's all about him scheming to take the throne.
He murders his brothers, his nephews, he murders a shit
ton of people. But then right before the Battle of Bosworth,
(58:18):
a bunch of ghosts of the people that he's killed
come to visit him, and he like kind of realizes
that he fucked up, but it's too late because then
he dies and then you know, Henry becomes king. Right,
So that's Richard. That's that's the close notes the verger
of the Third. But yeah, go off and learn more.
Speaker 2 (58:37):
Absolutely, I think that was pretty thorough for how quickly
we went through that. So yep, cool.
Speaker 1 (58:44):
All right, well we'll see you folks next time.
Speaker 2 (58:46):
All right, sounds good. Thank you for listening to an
hour of our time.
Speaker 1 (58:52):
If you like what you heard. Explore our catalog of
over two hundred episodes, and rate and review us on
your platform of choice.
Speaker 2 (59:00):
And if you'd like to support what we do, visit
patreon dot com. Slash an Hour of Our Time podcast
Welcome to an hour of Our Time, the podcast where
we pick a topic, research it and come back to
tell you what we've learned. Today, we're talking about Richard
the Third, the last King of England to die in battle,
the result of which ended the Middle Ages in England.
We're going to talk about the legendary Richard the Third
from Shakespeare and try to separate the myth from the
(00:23):
real Richard the Third. We're also going to talk about
the recent rediscovery of Richard the Third's body.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I'm Joe and I'm Dave. So how's it going good?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
We are. We're in the beginning of spring soccer season
now from my oh son. So we're going to the
going to the pitch. That's fun.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Spend a lot of time out in like a like
an open field.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, basically, yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Like a kind of field where I don't know, in
the fifth fourteen eighties, you might get bludgeoned to death.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah. I actually fell down into some mud and I
was worried that someone was going to stab me or
a horse would fall on me.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
And then we wouldn't find your body for five hundred
plus years.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Right, It was super cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Well, so yeah, we're talking about Richard the Third. I
know we said last week we should do an episode
about Richard the Third. Well here you go.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yeah, I think we have to apologize a little bit
to Richard the Third. I think I have to be honest.
I think that I I think I said something about
him being a real piece of shit. And the thing is,
like any any medieval king, or I could I could
(01:59):
have just head king, Well, yeah, is a piece of
shit in some ways, and he did like murder some people,
but or or did well, I mean he definitely, like
you know, was like trying to hold onto power and
all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
But well, that's the other thing, Joe. I think that,
like his perception of him being a piece of shit
obviously comes a little bit from Shakespeare.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
But I was going to say, I think I am
the victim of the Bard and how basically most people's
perception of Richard the Third, if you have one at all,
well comes from the Shakespeare play.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
And I think Shakespeare was a victim of that. History
is written by the winners, right, So if you're the loser,
you're you're like Kinglee. Bloodline ends there. Then everybody after
you is talking about, you know, talking about you in
a negative way. We'll talk about this in a bit,
because the epitaph that supposedly was on Richard's original grave
(02:59):
is very respectful, oddly enough. Yeah, but I think that
history tends to you know, it tends to It's written
by the winners, so it tends to lean that way.
It skews towards those who were victorious, whether they were
the good guys or the bad guys.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Objectively, in Shakespeare in his time, he was writing his plays,
He wrote his play his history plays at the end
of the reign of Elizabeth the First and so he
was writing, you know, in during the reign of like
(03:39):
you said, the heir to essentially the winner of this struggle.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Right, he would have written this play, let's see, sometime
between fifteen ninety two and fifteen ninety four, so you know,
over one hundred years after Richard's death. So if you
put that modern perspective, it'd be like if you wrote
a play now about oh God, I don't know, like
the It's like if you wrote a play now about
(04:06):
World War One.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
I was to say, like if you did a podcast
about the assassination of France Fergnant.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Exactly, or I was gonna say, like that if you
wrote a play about JP Morgan the Robert Barons, this
is like, this is the distance of time that we're
talking about.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
So the way that we do history, like history, which
history is now an academic subject, that is, you know,
uses some of the same methods of scholarship as science.
So you know, they didn't do history in the same
(04:43):
way bank in Shakespeare's time. Also, he was like going
for entertainment. So anyway, but yeah, we're talking about Richard
the Third and so you know, like I mentioned, I
think most of what I knew about Richard the Third
was from Shakespeare. I also, like I took a a
year in history class, like in high school, and then
I'm like kind of generally interested in history. But to
(05:05):
be honest, like a lot of these British kings kind
of run together. And he only ruled for two years.
So while he's like actually like a really important historical figure,
it's not like he was around as the King of
England for a long time.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
No, he's notable for you know a number of reasons,
but the biggest one being that he's the last English
king to die in battle.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Yeah, I which is.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Going to be significant here too. Like you know the
rest of the story.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
But yeah, they decided after this that he probably that
you probably should not endanger yourself in this way if
you're the ruler, because you can have your subjects do this. Also,
this is all of this is happening in the fourteen hundreds,
(05:54):
so when he died, it was, uh, he was born
in fourteen fifty two and he died in fourteen eighty five,
so we're talking about the Renaissance had not really reached
(06:14):
England at this point. Yeah, but we're on the cusp though. Yeah,
but this is before the advent of like standing professional armies,
so you know, later on the idea of having you know,
(06:40):
your monarch or your prime minister or what have you,
your your leader actually go into battle what would be
you know, unheard of. So so yeah, he's notable for that.
And then I think, Dave, you're probably gonna talk about
this son I mentioned, but he's also notable it recently
because we think we found his body and so this
(07:03):
is what we have talked.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
You know, without a beyond a reasonable doubt that we
found his body. And I can explain why we know that.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah, we we we talked about this a little bit
in our last episode. I weirdly we were talking about allergies. Uh,
but we you know, we we take our little like
twists and turns. But he was found in a car park. Yes,
he was in Leicester.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Coincidentally only meters from an r that was spray painted
to mark a reserve parking spot.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Ah, isn't that weird? Leicester? Is how you that is pronounced?
All right? So let's let's start at the beginning, as
I like to do. Well, actually, I've got a little
bit of timeline, but what I wanted to do is,
actually we're gonna tarantine know this, and we're gonna start
at the end, okay, of his life. And I am
(07:55):
going to read very briefly, Uh, the most famous section
when the most famous line from the play Richard the
Third by Shakespeare. So Richard the Third is one of
his He wrote two sets of his history plays, and
this is part of Richard the Third is part of
(08:17):
the second second set of history plays. After his three
part play of Henry, I'm sorry what is it? The
play before this is the Sorry. The play after this
(08:39):
would be Henry the Fourth. Sorry, okay, Henry the Fourth.
So he he got three plays the thriller. I got
the third Okay, so there are no stage directions in Shakespeare.
I actually like, if you get a play or if
you're reading shakespeare in it's got stage directions. Those are
(09:01):
added leader for you know, in like because people have
been performing these plays like basically since his time. Okay,
so this is at the end of act five. Also,
Shakespeare did not divide his plays into acts. That is
something that later people did, and they are typically divided
(09:25):
into five acts, somewhat arbitrarily at times. But this so
this would be the basically just about the end of
the play. Okay. The the character catesby rescue my Lord Nofolk,
rescue rescue King, and acts more wonders than a man,
(09:50):
daring an opposite to every danger. His horse is slain,
and all on foot he fights, seeking for Richmond in
the throat of death, rescue Phair or else the day
is lost. Enter Richard. The third and the most famous line,
one of the most famous lines in Shakespeare. A horse,
(10:11):
a horse, my kingdom for a horse. Catesby withdraw, my lord,
I'll help you to a horse, King Richard the third slave,
I have set my life upon a cast. A cast
is a roll of a dice, and I will stand
the hazard of the die. I think there be six
(10:31):
Richmonds in the field. Five ice have slain today instead
of him a horse, a horse my kingdom for a
horse does the last line Richard the third in the
play for after this he is slain, just as in
real life, and then the play ends shortly after this.
(10:57):
So if you are wondering where the line a horse,
a horse my kingdom or a horse comes from, it
is from the play Richard the Third, and it depicts
essentially his death scene, which does reflect real history, because
he did ride in on a horse in a cavalry charge,
fall off his horse, and then was cut down.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah. I had read that his horse had kind of
gotten like stuck in the mud, yep, and he's like
fallen off of it, was trying to free his horse
and then got we'll talk about all the wounds on
the bottom.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Now, far from him being this like horrible hunchback, which
is like what he has depicted in in Shakespeare, he was,
you know, a relatively able bodied person, like he was
riding a horse into battle.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
So yeah, he was a jousting champion, although he did
have school.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
He was a Chad. You might say, I.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Have a Chad. He did have schoolios. Although when they
were able to examine his bones, you know, not long ago,
they determined that, uh, you know, some people are born
with that curvature of the spine. They determined that he
most likely developed it an adolescence.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
If you've seen Richard the Third though, he's like Quasimodo.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yeah. Yeah, but if you do look at his remains,
I mean he's he looks it looks like a question mark.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
I mean these well yeah, no one yeah, had no
one had like good posture jeans.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Well, I mean what I'm saying is that he definitely
had you know, full on scoliosis. I mean it was
it was a thing.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah. I would say, if you are interested in learning
more about Richard the Third, a very good resource for
this would be actually the Richer the Third Society. Mm hmm. Yeah,
they can learn that because he there's actually like it's
an extra. It was a actually the started off as
(13:08):
a society called the Fellowship of the White Boar in
nineteen twenty four, and then nineteen fifty nine the Fellowship
of the White Boar was renamed the Richer the Third Society. Yeah,
and then it was actually like the Richer the Third
Society was like fairly instrumental in I think funding some
(13:32):
of this work to identify the body of Richard the Third.
So let's deal a little timeline here if you don't mind, Dave,
and feel free to interject. Now we're going to go
through like the dates are going to like you know,
there'll be years apart from the major events, but then
we're going to get to the two years of his
reign and there will be you know, more and more points.
(13:56):
So he was born on October second, fourteen fifteen. I
often think when we were doing these historical figures that
like if you weren't if you were a peasant, like
your birthday wouldn't even be recorded. Like the fact that
we know when he was born is like because he
was a king or a noble. Yeah, I don't know,
(14:21):
just something interesting. So his parents were Richard who was
the Duke of York, so his family was part of
the faction the Yorkists, which will become relevant. And his
mother Cecily Neville, the Duchess of York. So fourteen fifty five,
(14:41):
so it's three years old. Was the first Battle of
Saint Albans. So this was the first battle of what
would become the War of the Roses, which was a
roughly thirty two year conflict between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians,
an extremely bloody conflict that for the throne of England.
(15:08):
Now what's interesting is in Shakespeare's time, Elizabeth I did
not leave an air, and so there was a concern,
although it did not happen, there was a concern that
there might be some conflict like this in Shakespeare's time,
(15:29):
which I'm not a Shakespeare's color, but that seems relevant.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah, it does.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Fourteen fifty nine in October, so the Yorkists defeat the
Yorkists are defeated at a battle called Ludford Bridge. So
the Duke of York. So what's interesting here is that
literally from birth, he's born into war, and so you
(15:56):
could forgive him for being like kind of dick. So
at this point Richard was seven. He was actually taken
into Lancastrian custody with his siblings and his mother because
the Duke of York, his father, and his two older
brothers fled into exile. They went to Ireland. I believe
(16:18):
in the next year fourteen sixty the Battle of Northampton.
Richard's brother Edward won the battle, and then the Duke
of So the Duke of York, unsuccessfully proclaimed his right
to the throne. And later that year Richard's father and
(16:45):
his brother Edmund were killed at the Battle of Wakefield.
They were like executed.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Oh shit, okay.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Yes, so so now the next year, Richard's brother Edward,
who is now the Duke of York because his father died,
won a battle at Mortimer's Cross. But then then the
(17:17):
they lost a battle shortly thereafter, and Richard was sent
to the Low Countries, which we will call the Netherlands
to keep him safe. But then like just about a
month later he was actually like brought back because big
(17:39):
bro Edward defeated and they're now fighting against the leader
of the Lancastrians is Henry the sixth. There's a lot
of Henry's, a lot of Edwards, a lot of Richards.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Yeah, that confusing, but.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
No, no way, that is confusing. So anyway, the Yorkists
under Edward defeat his armory at Taunton, and then Edward
was then crowned at King Edward the Fourth and that
made Richard like a duke Okay, all right, so now
(18:17):
he's getting trained in So now now he's getting trained
in like courtly affairs and hunting and horseback riding and
warfare and diplomacy and all this stuff, like the training
that you would need to become a king or at
least a duke or somebody important. Fourteen sixty four, Edward
(18:40):
the Fourth secretly married Elizabeth Woodville, who was actually a
widow of a Lancastrian. Fourteen sixty five, Richard moved to
the household of the Earl of Warwick, who like a
(19:00):
family friend, and this would become important, okay. And then
at that time Richard attended a feast, and we know
this from a seating chart. Oh so it's like different,
like cool like historical documents that you can get this
because you always wonder, like how do we know this?
There's actually they have like a seating chart from this
feast at the duke or I'm sorry, the Earl of
(19:23):
Warwick's house. And at this guy Warwick's house, he's got
his daughters, Isabelle and Anne, and there's all these kind
of like love stories that have been concocted since then
that maybe at this point Richard and Anne fell in love.
(19:46):
They were teenagers and they had like, you know, all
the you know, raging hormones.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
But it doesn't sound like you liked this story very much.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Show. Well, I mean they sat next to each other,
but like, we literally do not know anything about this
at this point, right, Okay, okay, skip ahead a few years. Well,
it's I'm trying to leave some of his family. Yeah,
I'm fair because we're keeping it to Richard. That three.
(20:17):
This is not an episode about the War of the Roses,
although that would be interesting.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah, this is the problem with talking about English monarchy
history is that like where do you start? Yeah, and
how do you cover everything? So, yeah, we're trying to
tell a somewhat isolated story, but fundamentally the story is
not isolated.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah, it's it's fine. So fourteen sixty nine, the Duke
of Clarence, whose name George, married Warwick. The family friends
eldest daughter Isabelle. Okay, but then this guy, the Duke
of Clarence and Warwick, then they started rebelling against Edward
(21:00):
the Fourth, who is Richard's brother, so they they betrayed family.
But of course Richard became stayed loyal to his brother.
He was also declared that that year Constable of England
for a life, which I have to be honest, I
don't know what that means.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
It sounds like a good title.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Yeah, well, he was already the Duke of Gloucester at
that point, not Gloucester, Gloucester, Okay, my sources tell me
fourteen seventy. It was around this time that he probably
adopted the White bar as his emblem. Hence the White
War Society. These guys Warwick and the Duke of Clarence,
(21:48):
they're they're going to they're doing another rebellion. They left
to go to France and they're trying to get support
from France. And of course France love fucking meddling in
British affairs. Oh yeah, yeah, I memorial, so it's ten
sixty six, they love it. I should also mention that
(22:12):
French is still the like language of the court end
of the law at this point in England. Oh really,
mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Do you want do you want to explain your ten
sixty six comment there? It might help.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah, I'm sorry. So in ten sixty six, the Duke
of Normandy, which is in France, came to England and
Battle of Hastings beat the Britons and took over England.
This is when you get it's actually have like French
claim to the English throne, and this caused a lot
(22:46):
of the strife that led to the One hundred Years War,
which we mentioned in our episode Joan of Arc. You
don't want to get too much into this history, but
that is also where English the language comes from, because
you have the Germanic language. I said the Britons, I
meant the Anglo Saxon. There are a lot of tribes
in England. You get the language of the Anglo Saxons
(23:06):
mixing with French to become eventually what we call English.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Interesting, so early English does not does not sound like
anything like the English that we speak today. But from
then on France or French was the language of the
course until the fourteen late fourteen hundreds were talking about
now okay, anyway, so there rebellions. Yep, they're trying to
(23:36):
get support from France. If you've heard like ten sixty six,
that is a very important day in British history. Yeah, okay.
So Warwick invades England and the King Edward fled to
the Low Countries and Richard joined him fourteen seventy one,
(23:57):
they returned from exile, and then you get the Battle
of Barnet, which was a victory for the Yorkists, and Warwick,
the you know family trader was killed. Okay, so now
(24:19):
Richard is now leading armies. He was wh he's like
serving in the army. He was important at the Battle
of Tewksbury, and then Henry the sixth died in the
(24:42):
Tower of London that year. Okay, fourteen seventy three, Richard
married and Neville, who was if you recall, the daughter
of this guy Warwick, but she had married the one
(25:09):
of the Edwards, one of the Lancaster Edwards. Because there's
Edwards on both sides. It's very it's very annoying. That
next year he had fourteen seventy six his only legitimate son,
Edward of Middleham. Another Edward, I know, fourteen seventy seven, George,
(25:37):
the Duke of Clarence. So this, this guy who was
leading the rebellion with Warwick, was captured and then later
he was executed in the Tower of London fourteen eighty two.
Richard so was skipping, had several years there. Richard led
an English army into Scotland and so gained some kind
(25:59):
of notoriety there. And now we're going to get into
the I don't know the meat of it because now
now it's getting into fourteen eighty three, which is when
he's gonna begin to take the throne here, surely, So
I'll try to, like, you know, I don't know. We're
good on times, so I don't have to like skip
(26:19):
through this, but okay, Edward the fourth, Oh, I'm sorry. Also,
by this time he had adopted his motto loyalty binds
me ooh, which was also which was actually in French.
That's the English translation, because again they're they're speaking French.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yeah, he needs to he's having too much fiber, I
think is the problem.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Well, you know, if you had no if he had fiber,
then he would he wouldn't be bound up, right.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
He needs more fiber.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
He needs more fiber. He needs he's eating all those
rich king meals. Well.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Actually he had a seafood heavy diet, which is going
to be important when we talk about carbon dating his bones.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
We'll get to that, okay, Yeah, seafood heavy diet. Yeah.
I think this is like one of those things when like,
you know, the kings were eating like all their rich
food and they were getting like all these diseases like
gout stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Oh fuck yeah yeah, well yes.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Okay, sorry, yes, So Edward the Fourth his death was
announced and he was succeeded by his son, also Edward,
who would be the fifth.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Look, I'm glad that they're not like naming their kids
like Colton Ship like that, but like Brindley, this is
like it's like, yeah, this is like George Foreman.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
There's a lot of these George. So that was So
Edward the Fourth dies, Edward the fifth becomes king. He
is age twelve, which is important. Okay, Okay, So Richard
(28:08):
the third he's not Richard the third day, He's just Richard,
so they sorry Richard. Then in fourth of May is
declared the Protector of England. So he's like it's like
(28:31):
one of these things where like he's kind of actually
in charge because the king is twelve, like one of
these things. The thing is like, this usually does not
end well for the king, the one that's the king,
or actually, i'm sorry, it usually does not end well
for the protector because when the king like it gets
to come, he wants to get rid of his person
(28:52):
who's been pulling the strings right, because it's like, like,
you can't tell me what to do. You're not my
real dad, the old king, this kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Okay, all right, I know exactly what you mean.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
So he goes to so he's going he goes to London.
Now he goes to London with his his his young
oh Jesus nephew. During a council meeting at the Tower
of London, Richard accuses some members of plotting some members
of the council of plotting against him, like the Lord Hastings,
(29:24):
and has him executed. Lord Hastings was a member of
the Court of Edward the Fifths or the fourth, so
his predecessor, and we talked about this in our Alergies episode.
That's why we ended about ended up talking about Richard
the Third because he was allergic to strawberries and he
(29:44):
put out a bunch of strawberries down the table and
then like eight someone started like breaking down too hives
and was like, you guys tried to pullyse met you fuckers,
and then he had this guy executed, which is like
kind of a dick move.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Yeah, thank you for the reminder, because I couldn't remember
why we talked about him.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
That's why we talked to That's how we got on
the subject of We just got on so many fun
ramble holes when we When you start learning about a topic,
you just learned about so many other things.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
That's true, like how a seafood rich diet will affect
carbon dating.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Yeah, it's clicking all of them YouTube or Wikipedia links.
Oh hell ya, actually did. I did not look at
Wikipedia for this one very much long.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
This one was actually I found that from a video
that was amazing. It showed in three D renderings how
the area where his body was buried changed over the years.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Oh that's really cool.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
It was really cool. I'll just send it to you.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Yeah, okay. So in the twenty second of June, there
was a public declaration stating that Edward the fifth and
his siblings were illegitimate because their their parents' marriage was
actually invalid. Oh technic, so they yes, technicalities. So they
(31:02):
announced that Edward the fourth was actually already married when
his marriage to Edward the Fifth's mother took place, So
Edward the fifth, twelve year old can't actually be the king.
So then an assembly at the House of Lords in
(31:26):
the House of Commons offered Richard the crown, which of
course he was like, oh, I mean, I guess I'll
do it. That happened. So it happened on June twenty sixth,
So his reign is officially starts that day. For a
(31:49):
sorry when you think about like how long he was king,
all right, So so him and a little a few
days later on July sixth, King Richard as he was
crowned and his queen Anne were crowned at Westminster Abbey,
and Richard was the first king to say his coronation
(32:11):
oath in English. And he would also institute some reforms
that we'll talk about. He was actually like a relatively
progressive lawmaker for this time period, and one of the
things he did was changed the like court proceedings to
vernacular language, which was English. This was during a time
(32:35):
instead of instead of Latin, instead of French French. Okay, yeah,
but this was a time when like a lot of
stuff was still being done in Latin in other countries,
and there was a mood a push to move to
vernacular language in other countries around around this general period
of time as well. Yeah, all right, so Richard, okay, sorry,
(33:00):
So around that time, the around the summer, the sons
of Edward the Fourth, known as the Princes of the Tower, disappeared. Yeah,
and there's no no one is sure like what happened
to them. But a lot of people think that Richard
the third had them killed.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
So yeah, why do they think that.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Sorry, so the Princes in the Tower, Well, I think
it's just because they disappeared and it was it would
just be like convenient for them to he has killed
because they were the sons of his predecessor.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Right, so he's got motive.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Yes, Yes, they were apparently resided in the Tower of London,
So I know we think about the Tower of London
as like this like place of the tortured people, but
it was always that's not always what went down there. Yeah,
they weren't in prisoned there. They were they were living there,
(34:06):
but then they just disappeared. So it's it's not clear.
And I don't want to get into a ton of
detail about it because I don't want to like boggle
this down.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Sure, but he he is often implicatd to implicated in
killing them, but there's no conclusive evidence of like what
happened to them or that he had them killed.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Well, maybe we'll find their bodies like underneath an eye
hop in twenty years.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Uh maybe, although I mean I think there is like
some relatively new evidence, So I think this is actually,
like I would say, it's an active area of historical research.
What happened to these kids? Okay? Were they weren't like children?
Oh anyway?
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Okay, wait they were children?
Speaker 1 (34:55):
They were not? I don't think. Oh, okay, okay, So
so and now the and later on that at the end,
it turns the end of that year, the Duke of
Buckingham rebelled and but the rebellion failed and Buckingham was
captured and executed, but a number of the rebels escaped
(35:20):
and joined the So the War of the Roses is
still like happening at this point, because it's like a
thirty two year conflict. So right now, the Yorkists under
Richard are in charge, they have the throne, but the
Lancastrians under the rule of Or under the leadership of
Henry Tudor have been hiding out in Brittany, which is
(35:46):
the region of France that is like closest to England.
Fourteen eighty four, in January and February Richard held what
would be his only Parliament, and this is when he
did some interesting things. Like he made it so that
(36:07):
you could have a public defendant if you didn't couldn't
afford one, which is like something that we kind of
you know, take for granted as part of American law. Yeah, he,
like I said, he made English the you know, the
language that was used for official acts and stuff like that,
(36:32):
granted essentially like a bail system, and just generally like
some things that more benefited the common people, so to speak.
So laws are written in English, like I said, some
of the like things that later like because British law
(36:54):
sort of formed originally kind of the basis for some
of them are American laws. Some of that stuff kind
of start here. Okay. He also founded the College of Arms.
This is important in British history.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
The former Queen Elizabeth Woodville reached an agreement with Richard
so that her daughters could like come out of hiding essentially.
But then unfortunately their son, Edward, another Edward died, so
(37:39):
Richard and Anne's son died, their only legitimate his only
legitimate heir.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Gotcha.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Then in fourteen eighty five, shit sucked for Richard, and
it didn't. It does not get better. So his son
died in March of fourteen eighty five, his wife, Queen
Anne died, and I know that, like he's supposed to
be like this awful dickhead, but apparently he really loved
(38:06):
her and was in deep mourning like basically from the
time that she died. And the only thing that caused
his mourning to stop was when he got killed in
the dirt.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Well, that'll do it.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Yeah, So he did open marriage negotiations with the the
heir to the House of Lancaster, who was living in Portugal, Okay,
to try to unite the houses. Then in August Henry
Tudor landed at Milford Haven and Richard learned of the
(38:45):
evasion and some of his supporters. So Richard left Nottingham
and arrived at Leicester on August nineteenth. On August twenty first,
Richard the Third wrote out of Leicester for to hit
his last battle, and then on August twenty second, Richard
(39:09):
the Third was killed at the Battle of Bosworth. They
killed him, stripped his body, supposedly stabbed his corpse in
the ass and well as they laid it over a
horse and then wrote it to Leicester to be displayed,
but then he was buried three days later by monks
(39:35):
and Leicester.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Yeah, there's a there's a legend that prior to the battle,
Richard consulted a seer so sort of like a fortune teller,
uh huh, in Leicester, and this seer foretold, quote, where
your spur should strike on the ride into battle, your
head shall be broken on the return. The legend is
(40:01):
that on his ride into the battle, his spur struck
the bridge stone of Bowbridge. And the legend has it
that his corpse, when it was carried from the battle
on a horse, that his head struck the same stone
and was broken open. M m m.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
It should be mentioned that there were actually three sort
of armies at the Battle of bosworth Field. There was
the Yorkist army under Richard the third there was the
Lancastrian army under Henry Tudor. But then there was also
a third army of Baron Stanley, who was the Earl
(40:47):
of Derby. So so basically Baron Stanley like kind of
weighted to see what was going to happen. In fact,
Richard actually like threatened uh to kill one of Stanley's
(41:11):
sons ship. But then I supposedly he if he didn't
like come to his aid. But then he sends back
a letter that says I have more sons, which is.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
It's like the Rodney Dangerfield joke. Yeah, do you know
do you know the one about the he gets kidnapped
as a child. Oh yeah, in his in his in
the kidnapper sends his parents, uh one of his ears,
and his parents wrote back, send more proof.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
This is all. Uh, you know, I get no respect,
you get.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
It, Rodney Rodney Adgefield man, what a guy. When I
was well going back to school to get do some
like professional development last year for work, it's walking around campus.
I was, uh, you were getting over about I was
(42:07):
thinking I was getting no respect. I was thinking about
the movie Back to School, like all the time.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Great movie, but at some point, Sam Kenniston is my favorite.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
At no point during my during my studies did I
jump off of a diving board. So that was the
That was basically the life of Henry the Third. I'm
sorry Richard the Third.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
Yeah, yeah, let's talk a little bit about what happened
after that.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
M hm.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
So, as you mentioned, you know, he was killed, his
body was stripped carried by a horse and it was
buried at a what's the word they use for this,
it's a I think the word I'm looking for is Friary.
M He was buried a Gray Friars Church. Friary, to
(42:58):
my understanding, is sowhere between a church and a monastery. Okay, yeah, yeah,
Gray Friars Church in Leicester. How do you say this?
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Leicester?
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Leicester?
Speaker 1 (43:12):
I know.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
She annoys me, you know, annoys me, like like food
people that like have like food instagrams and Instagram accounts,
stuff like that, calling it wash your sister sauce. Like
I think maybe that was funny when one person did it,
but now it's like every guydamned person is like, go
put a little wash your sister sauce. Like just stop there.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
There was a there's a guy trying to talk about
Schweppes and he kept calling it show a PEPs.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
Okay, that's funny.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
That is fucking funny. Anyways, So he's buried at this church,
this Friary.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
But you know, forty years after his death, when King
Henry the Eighth separates It's England from Catholicism, many churches
in the country shut down, and a lot of them
are demolished, and this green Grayfriar Church is no exception.
(44:18):
The Mayor of Leicester eventually buys the land and he
builds a mansion on it. Now we're at you know,
the I think around sixteen twelve, sixteen eleven or maybe yeah,
sixteen twelve, somewhere around there. But he knows where Richard's
body is buried, so he sets up an obelisk there.
(44:45):
I'm getting ahead of myself, because I did want to
mention one thing. There is a there. There was an
historian who I believe his last name was Speed, and
he documented supposedly because after Richard was buried, ten years later,
(45:06):
Henry the seventh, you know, who defeated him. His army
defeated him in battle.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Oh yes, I should have said Henry Tudor then was crowned.
They essentially like crowned him on the battlefield because that
Lord Stanley who I mentioned, took the crown off of
Richard's head, gave it to Henry Tudor, and essentially he
became Henry the Seventh on that battlefield.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
So sorry, yeah, but but ten years after Henry the Seventh,
you know, had a a marker made to Mark Richard
the third sort of as a sign of respect. And
supposedly there was an epitaph on it. And according to
this this historian, who was, you know, somewhat of a
contemporary of these people, he translated the epitaph from Latin,
(45:57):
and here's the translation. I here, whom the earth encloses
under various colored marble, was justly called Richard the third.
I was protector of my country, an uncle ruling on
behalf of his nephew. I held the British kingdoms by
broken faith. Then for just sixty days less two and
(46:19):
two summers, I held my skepticies, fighting bravely in war,
deserted by the English. I succumbed to you, King Henry
the seventh, But you yourself piously at your expense, thus honor
my bones, and you cause a former king to be
revered with the honor of a king. When in twice
(46:40):
five years less four three hundred and five year periods
of our salvation have passed. In eleven days before the
Calins of September, I surrendered to the Red Rose the
power it desired. Whoever you are, pray for my offenses,
that my punishment may be lessened by prayers. This I
(47:05):
don't know if this is a book or an academic
paper that I'm reading this in. I think it's a
passage from a book. The author goes on to talk
about the significance of this text, and he they point
out two things. One that like this whole ending about
you know, pray for my offenses, my punishment. It sounds
like their villain. I you know that they're making a
(47:26):
villain out of Richard the Third. But in reality, at
the time, because of Catholicism, there was this heavy belief
in purgatory, so this would have been a fairly common
thing to have at the end of somebody's epitaph. Secondly,
you mentioned the two kids that he supposedly had killed,
not mentioned.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Here, Yeah, the princes in the tower. So I just
to clarify. So that is because there's so many goddamn Edwards.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
Yeah yeah, but the sons.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Yeah, these are the sons of the sons of Edward
the fourth, including the deposed king Edward the fifth. Yeah.
So you know little kid that we talked about. So
they weren't that children. I said, they weren't children, but
like they were, I don't.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
Know teens adolescents. Yeah, but it you know, this author
points out that it's notable that that is omitted. I
don't know if they're suggesting I guess they're suggesting that
that is some evidence that it's not true, or at
least they didn't that Henry the seventh and think it
was true. But I think I don't know. It might
be reading a lot into it. In any case, Henry
(48:35):
the seventh did try to honor Richard the third with this.
But once the church closes and it is demolished again,
the property is purchased by the king of the mayor
of Leicester and he builds a mansion on it. But
he does set up an obelisk to, you know, to
(48:58):
mark where where Henry was or is I suppose you
could say at the time. But this is when the
whole thing gets kind of screwed up. I mentioned John
Speed He at this point he visits the town to
try to visit the grave, and he claims that he
(49:20):
couldn't find this obelisk. But we now know at looking
by looking at a map that he was using, that
the map actually marked the site of the church incorrectly.
There was grave Friar Church and there was Blackfriar Church.
Well on the map they were switched. So he actually
went to the site of the former Blackfriar Church, didn't
see an obelisk, assumed that it never existed, and then
(49:42):
made up this story about Richard the Third's body being
thrown off the bow Bridge into the river, which is
where that legend comes from. In fact, for hundreds of
years there was a marker on the bridge saying that
it was the resting spot of Richard the Third. Eventually
a body, you know, years and years and years and
years later, was found and they thought it was his.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
It was.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
To kind of make a long story short. Over time,
more buildings are built over this site. Streets are built
right through the gardens. It's around the mayor's mansion. And
you fast forward to modern day and that whole site
is you know, office buildings and a car park. And
(50:34):
you mentioned the Richard the Third Society. Yes, well, they
get involved and eventually are able to raise enough money
to excavate part of this car park. They don't have
enough money to excavate all of it, so they decide
(50:54):
to dig. This is in twenty twelve. They decide to
dig three trenches They know that at the time churches
will be built east to west, so they dig these
three north to south trenches, hoping that one of them
would hit part of the church. So basic duty, as
little digging as possible to try to find the church.
(51:14):
But on that I think the first day they find
a body. And this body is notable for a number
of reasons. One, it has a heavily curved spine, again
possibly indicative of Richard. The Third, it also has injuries
(51:35):
that would be consistent with battle wounds at the time
it has It has eleven wounds, a lot of them
on the right side. For example, it has a large
chunk of the base of the right side of the skull,
and near the where the spinal cord meets the skull
just missing chopped off. There is a puncture wound. On
(52:00):
the right side of the face. There is a like
slash wound near the chin, like on the on the
lower jaw. There is a slash wound on one of
the ribs, which kind of is indicative of the fact
that like if he had armor, the armor must have
fallen off, because you couldn't have a wound like that
(52:22):
with that era's armor on your ribs. There was also
some reports after the battle that he was bludgeoned so
hard that his helmet got crushed into his skull. A
lot of them wounds would suggest that his helmet had
fallen off. And then lastly there, yes, his.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
Helmet fell off, and it does I do think that
they took his armor off.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
Yeah. That's the thing. We don't know which of these
wounds are post mortem. We know that there was some
humiliation done to the body. There's one wound that is
a punctual wound and like a slash wound on the hip.
But the thing about it is that it's it's deep.
It's a it's a puncture from the back that goes
so deep that it scrapes into the front of the
(53:09):
hip bone. So they think that when he was being
you know, stripped naked and then carried on a horse,
that they were stabbing his ass.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
Yeah, that's what I mentioned earlier. Yeah, they're pretty sure
that they they did that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:23):
Yeah, yeah. So again, we don't know which of these
was the killing blow there. We certainly know that some
of them would have been fatal blows. But you know,
there was one person I read that pointed out that like,
you know, he could have been stabbed in the heart
and you might not see that on the skeleton. So
we don't know which one of these was actually the
(53:43):
fatal blow. We don't know necessarily which one was done
after death. You can tell that if you have a
fresh corpse, because the way the blood coagulates when somebody's
still alive. But in this case, you know that evidence
is long gone.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
Right right, it's hard to tell.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
How did they figure out that it's Richard the third Well,
there's something called mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down on
the mother's side, always mother's, always female side.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
And the reason this is dave is because you start
as an egg cell from your mother, obviously, and then
the only thing that comes from the sperm is the
genetic information. That doesn't have any It doesn't transfer any
of it's mitochondria or anything.
Speaker 2 (54:33):
Yeah, it doesn't have them. So what they need to
do is find a consistent female line leading all the
way from Richard to somebody alive now, and they're able
to do that by using his sister and of York,
they find I believe it's seventeen generations all the way
down to a woman who died in two thousand and
(54:58):
eight named Joy, but her son, Michael Ibsen, was born
in nineteen fifty seven. He is still alive. They're also
able to trace a female blood line branching off about
in the middle of those generations. So they have two
people that person's name is Wendy, two people who are
direct descendants of Richard the Third's mother, and by comparing
(55:19):
the mitochondria DNA in those people and the remains of
Richard the Third, they were able to determine that it
is indeed him.
Speaker 1 (55:26):
Very cool.
Speaker 2 (55:27):
The other thing is they carbon dated the bones, right,
they wanted to see is this body from the right
time period. They found that actually this person would have
been a little too old, like their body was from
a little bit before Richard's time. But in that studying
they discovered that this person, because they were of nobility,
had a protein rich seafood based diet and apparently that
(55:50):
can affect carbon dating. So when they compensated for that,
it matched up perfectly with the time period for Richard
the Third.
Speaker 1 (55:57):
Yeah, so we actually like incorporate what we eat into
our bones, which is pretty cool. Are actually teeth or
a really good way to look at this too, but
your bones, because you're constantly rebuilding your bones as you live.
So what you're eating, you literally are what you eat. Yeah,
(56:17):
so you can do isotope analysis with that. I did
say that sperm don't have mitochondria. What I meant to
say is that they do not contribute it to these zygo,
your sperm do have mitochondria.
Speaker 2 (56:30):
Right right, again, This was on twenty twelve. In March
of twenty fifteen, he was reburied. The remains were moved
from the University of Leicester to Leicester Cathedral and that
(56:50):
is where he lays today.
Speaker 1 (56:53):
Not in a car, not in a parking lot anymore.
Speaker 2 (56:56):
Not in a parking lot. I think that that's like
the most interesting thing about him. Yeah, I don't know
what I mean. It's nothing that he did, but it's
just it's an interesting end to his story.
Speaker 1 (57:11):
Well, he was very important in the he's important in
Scottish independence, which I very briefly glossed over because I
think like that's a that's an entire episode. But he
also essentially that his defeat kind of begin. It's kind
(57:35):
of at the Battle of Bob's Worth. A lot of
people denote that as the end of the Middle Ages
in England. Yeah, when the when the Tutors take power.
The last thing that I will say is, if you
want to learn more about Richard the Third, check out
that Richard the Third Society. I ast do think you
(57:56):
should read Richard the Third the play, because I actually
think it is what it's one of my favorite ones
because in the play he's just such an evil bastard.
Mm hmm. It's all about him scheming to take the throne.
He murders his brothers, his nephews, he murders a shit
ton of people. But then right before the Battle of Bosworth,
(58:18):
a bunch of ghosts of the people that he's killed
come to visit him, and he like kind of realizes
that he fucked up, but it's too late because then
he dies and then you know, Henry becomes king. Right,
So that's Richard. That's that's the close notes the verger
of the Third. But yeah, go off and learn more.
Speaker 2 (58:37):
Absolutely, I think that was pretty thorough for how quickly
we went through that. So yep, cool.
Speaker 1 (58:44):
All right, well we'll see you folks next time.
Speaker 2 (58:46):
All right, sounds good. Thank you for listening to an
hour of our time.
Speaker 1 (58:52):
If you like what you heard. Explore our catalog of
over two hundred episodes, and rate and review us on
your platform of choice.
Speaker 2 (59:00):
And if you'd like to support what we do, visit
patreon dot com. Slash an Hour of Our Time podcast
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