The Richard III Foundation is pleased to announce its 2016 annual symposium “King Richard III: Politics, Power and People”.
Saturday, October 29 2016
Our conference will be held at the Dixie Grammar School in Market Bosworth. Registration begins at 8:30 am with the conference starting promptly at 9 am and ending at 5:00 pm.
Our speakers and topics are:
Nathen Amin – Rhys ap Thomas: Friend and Foe
Anne Crawford – ‘Loyalty Binds Me: John Howard and the Battle of Bosworth’
Matthew Lewis – Richard III in Parliament: In his time were many good acts ade
Mike Ingram – The Battle of Northampton: A Battle Rediscovered
James Mulraine – ‘For by his Face straight shall you know his Heart: Revealing a panel portrait of King Richard III and exploring the popularity of Richard’s image in Tudor and Jacobean houses.’
Professor James Ross – ‘A man of so great nobilytie and knowledge in the warres’? John de Vere, thirteenth earl of Oxford and the Battle of Bosworth
John Sadler – King Richard III and Henry Percy – Magnates of the North
For a copy of our registration form, please contact us
The Richard III Foundation, Inc. is pleased to announce its 2015 annual conference “England during the Reign of the Yorkist Kings”. Students of (high) Medieval Yorkshire will find much of interest in the programme, which includes some old friends from the Medieval Section lecture programme.
Saturday, October 17
Our conference will be held at the Dixie Grammar School in Market Bosworth. Registration begins at 8:30 with the conference starting promptly at 9 am and ending at 5:00 pm.
Our speakers and topics are:
Professor Peter Hancock—William, Lord Hastings and the Turbulent Summer of 1483
Group Captain Clive Montellier RAF—Sending King Edward to Military Staff College
Dominic Smee—Richard III: Sharing the experience of a King
Susan Troxell—”Wherefore the White Boar? Yorkist Symbolism
The Conference Package, which includes conference and membership in the Foundation for one year, costs £50.
To reserve your seat, please mail your registration form along with your check payable to “The Richard III Foundation, Inc.” and submit to Ms. Dorothy Davies, Half Moon House, 32 Church Lane, Ryde. Isle of Wight PO33 2NB. For further questions, please email the Foundation at Richard3Foundation@aol.com. Website: www.richard111.com.
Banner for Richard III Man and Myth exhibition at York
With the Making Monuments on Rapa Nui: the Statues of Easter Island exhibition open I had the unaccustomed luxury of spending a free weekend in York and was delighted to see that there is a new exhibition about Richard III at the Yorkshire Museum. It seems almost gratuitous to say that the Richard III: Man and Myth capitalises on the incredible discovery of Richard’s remains in a car park at Leicester and the recent reburial which was covered on prime time TV. Readers of this blog who have been members of the Medieval Section over the last couple of years will be familiar with the story because Bob Woosnam-Savage from Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds spoke to us a year ago last Christmas and presented what were then very recent findings from the detailed examination of the last Plantagenet king’s skeleton. The Richard III Man and Myth exhibition occupies several of the rooms facing onto the Chapter House section of the Museum where the Medieval objects are displayed so it is worth pointing out that this is a relatively small exhibition, but it is a welcome extension to the earlier exhibition about Richard that was featured on this blog.
Richard III Man and Myth exhibition at the Yorkshire Museum
The exhibition is divided into several sections looking at ‘the Man’ and ‘the Myth’. It uses several well-known and beautiful exhibits from the Yorkshire Museum’s collection including the gold and sapphire reliquary pendant known as the Middleham Jewel, a silver gilt boar badge from Stillingfleet and the hoard of coins from Ryther in North Yorkshire.
Late Medieval hoard of silver coins
As the introduction makes clear, the challenge is to try and untangle what we know for certain about Richard the man from the myth that has grown up around him, not least because of the way he is presented in Shakespeare’s play as a man ‘whose thoughts were evil and actions diabolical’. Was he a tyrant and a murderer or a fair and benevolent ruler, much maligned by history? The exhibition leaves it up to the visitor to decide.
Richard’s life was shaped by the Wars of the Roses, the civil wars between the Houses of Lancaster and York between 1455 and 1485. Richard was born at Fotheringhay Castle on 2nd October 1452. His father Richard Duke of York was killed at Sandal in 1460 and his elder brother Edward was killed soon after. This was a time of great danger for the family. Following the Yorkist victory at Towton in 1461, Richard was made Duke of Gloucester by his brother Edward. Richard was eight years old. This part of the Wars of the Roses is shown by one of the skeletons recovered from a burial pit close to the battlefield of Towton.The study of the skeletons shows that the men were mistreated by their captors before they were killed.
Micklegate Bar in York where Richard of York’s head was displayed
Richard entered the household of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick at Middleham castle in North Yorkshire to be brought up as a nobleman. There he met his future wife Anne, the Earl’s daughter, and Middleham became their home when they married in 1472. Richard was steadfastly loyal to his brother Edward and shared his exile when Warwick conspired to replace Edward with the second brother George in 1470 and to bring Henry VI back to power. Richard led one of the battle lines at the battle of Tewkesbury in May 1471. The Lancastrian threat was all but eliminated.
When he was appointed Lord President of the Council of the North in 1472 Richard became the most powerful man in northern England. The council met in a number of places including York. One of the most fascinating exhibits in the exhibition are minutes of York Council meetings known as minute books. They provide valuable information about the relationship with Richard. The volume between 1480 and 1486 shows the city council sent gifts of food and wine to Middleham and provided hospitality. Richard for his part intervened on behalf of the city in disputes and legal cases. As the exhibition points out: ‘it seems unlikely that the relationship was altruistic, or motivated entirely by affection or loyalty to the city’. That the relationship was more one of realpolitik was made clear when Edward and Richard, having returned to the North of England via Ravenser at Spurn Point in East Yorkshire to recover the throne in 1470, were hardly welcomed with open arms by the city. Edward had to ‘blag’ his way in. This should put any claim that Richard deserved to be reburied at York rather than Leicester because of his special relationship with the city into context. As is stated in the exhibition Richard had much to gain from securing the support of the leading men in the city at the centre of his powerbase. The city too derived real benefit in having the support of so powerful a nobleman as Richard, even more so after he became king.
Following the unexpected death of Edward IV, Richard became Protector of the Realm and moved quickly to secure his nephew the son of Edward IV. Richard’s behaviour at this time is hard to fathom. Was he plotting all along to usurp the throne or was he simply responding to actions taken by his in-laws the Woodvilles to secure the person of Prince Edward? Whoever had the prince in their control was in an extremely powerful position. A coronation was planned but then doubt was cast on the princes’ legitimacy when it was claimed that Edward IV had been married previously before he married Elizabeth Woodville.
White boar livery badge for Richard III (replica)
Richard was crowned king in London on 6th July 1483 and made a royal progress around the kingdom, arriving in York with his entourage on 29th August. Of course, it was at this time that the Princes in the Tower disappeared in mysterious circumstances and the interpretation of this is decisive in any evaluation of Richard’s reign. During the three week stay, on 8th September, Richard and Anne’s son Edward of Middleham was invested as Prince of Wales. Eight hundred badges showing Richard’s heraldic insignia were issued and a further 13,000 were sent to York for distribution during his stay. One of these badges can be seen in the exhibition.
Medieval pottery in the Richard III Man or Myth exhibition.
Although no record of the feast eaten at Richard’s arrival in York has survived the exhibition not unreasonably draws upon accounts of Richard’s coronation celebrations as an example. This an opportunity to show an impressive selection from the Yorkshire Museum’s impressive collection of Medieval pottery against a painted backdrop.
On 23rd August following news of the battle of Bosworth, the council wrote to the Earl of Northumberland saying ‘King Richard late mercifully reigning upon us was through great treason of the duc of Norfolk that turned ayainst hyme with many other lordes and nobiles of this north parties, was piteously slain and murdered to the great hevynesse of this city.’ This looks like a genuine expression of grief for the king in circumstances in which such declarations might seem ill-advised but the context of the relationship between Richard as powerful nobleman and the city council makes it clear one shouldn’t read to much into the letter.
In one respect this differs from the earlier exhibition in showing an image, not the 3D facial reconstruction of Richard based on the remains recovered from the car park in Leicester. This may be as close as we can come to seeing Richard’s likeness. As the exhibition points out, coins are of no help in providing a portrait of the king because they were standardised, whilst the painted portraits of Richard that have survived post date his death, and in some cases appear to have been tampered with in order to show his deformity. As Bob Woosnam-Savage said in a Christmas lecture to the section Richard’s scoliosis need not have been visible to people in the street and may only have been known to his tailor.
Richard III: Man and Myth runs from 27th March to 2nd October
Facial reconstruction of Richard III recently on display at the Yorkshire Museum
The life of Richard III (1452-1485) is a mixture of history and story-telling. One example of the latter is William Shakespeare’s play of 1592 but Richard has been interpreted by many writers. Lawrence Olivier’s portrayal of Richard III has been especially influential in the popular imagination but how accurate are these interpretations? Since the public announcement on 4th February 2013 of the identification of human remains in a Leicester car park as those of Richard III, what does it mean historically? What does this discovery tell us about the last Plantagenet King, the last king of England to die in battle?
Finding Richard’s remains was the final piece in an intriguing jigsaw. Another piece of this puzzle, the discovery of the location of the site of the battle of Bosworth by Glenn Foard, some distance away from where the battlefield interpretation centre stands today at Ambion Hill, slotted into place in 2010. Discovering Richard’s remains was an unbelievable stroke of luck and featured a number of remarkable coincidences. In fact University of Leicester mathematicians worked out the chances of finding Richard were just 0.84%! However, he was found, and, because the skull was preserved, a facial reconstruction could be made. Our speaker commented that he thought the facial reconstruction bears a striking likeness to Quentin Tarantino!
Was Richard a villain? Did he kill the princes in the Tower? Since the discovery, archaeologists, anatomists and historians have been reassessing Richard’s physical life and going back to the documentary sources. This may reveal further information but it won’t tell us what happened to the princes in the Tower. What we do know is that in 1483 Richard was made Lord Protector after his brother Edward IV died. Edward’s eldest son, Prince Edward, was being escorted back to London when Richard intercepted the party and took the prince back to the Tower. The prince’s younger brother joined him there. Arrangements were made for the coronation of the prince as King Edward V but his claim was suddenly declared to be invalid and it was announced that the children were illegitimate. What happened to the princes after August 1483 isn’t known but Bob said that Richard had to be held responsible because they disappeared on his watch.
There were two major rebellions against Richard’s rule. In August 1485 Henry Tudor landed with a small force at Pembroke and marched through Wales, receiving contingents from the Talbots and the Thomases. Richard moved his army toward Tudor from Nottingham to Leicester. On 22nd August Richard with perhaps 8-10,000 men fought Henry Tudor with 5000 men on land where there was a waterlogged meadow. Bob siad that over the last 200 years various historians had fumbled around trying to find the site. One thing all the historians were agreed on is that there was a marsh. Glenn Foard of the Battlefield Trust located evidence of the battlefield near Fenn Lane in 2010, two miles south of the traditional location at Ambion Hill. The investigators recovered artefact assemblages dating from the mid to late 15th century, comparable with material from Towton (1461), including roundshot (the largest concentration of shot yet found on a late Medieval battlefield) apparently confirming Jean Molinet’s account that Richard’s artillery fired upon Henry Tudor’s army. A boar livery badge was found at Fenn Hole next to Fenn Lane, and also part of a gilt sword hilt dating from the late 15th century, which must have been carried by someone of high status.
Richard III livery badge displayed at the Yorkshire Museum
After the battle Richard’s body was taken to Leicester and displayed publicly before its hasty burial in the church of the Greyfriars. Henry Tudor had an effigy set up above the burial in 1495. With the demolition of Greyfriars at the Dissolution in 1538 the location of the body was lost. However, in 2010, in the first trench of the excavation in the car park on the site of Greyfriars, Richard’s remains were discovered. Bob said that Philippa Langley, the President of the Richard III Society, has taken a lot of criticism for her part in a documentary about the discovery but it was thanks to her determination and the support of the Richard III Society that the excavation took place. Bob said that sometimes a bit of obsessiveness is needed to find things. In what he described as a neat piece of Fortean synchronicity Bob said that Richard’s body was found three feet beneath the tarmac under the part of the car park marked with the letter ‘R’! It was a truly amazing discovery and Bob has no doubt that it really is Richard III.
The trauma on the skeleton indicate that this was someone who was killed in battle. The injuries include eight cranial and two post-cranial trauma. The ten wounds represent an incidence of injury higher than that of Towton, and, it must be remembered, we are not seeing flesh wounds, which have not left any evidence. This picture is consistent with historical accounts that say Richard fell in the field, covered in wounds, hacked and hewn at the hands of his enemies. The skeleton shows he suffered from scoliosis or curvature of the spine. This is likely to have started at puberty and this grew worse with age. Richard may have stood 5’6” tall. According to Tudor propaganda Richard was a hunchback but the evidence of the skeleton is real evidence. The condition may not have been as pronounced as Sir Thomas More would have it but Richard’s close family, his armourer and tailor would have known the truth. It did not impede Richard, however. He was admiral of the fleet and took part in three battles. Sampling of the earth inside the grave revealed a different aspect of Richard’s health. He suffered from roundworms but apparently not from fluke, pork or beef tapeworm. His meat must have been well-cooked. At a time when human fecal waste was used as fertiliser, Richard could have acquired the roundworm from eating vegetables that had not been properly washed. Alternatively poor hygiene was the cause because people didn’t know to wash their hands after using the garderobe, if indeed they had access to one.
The Classicist Mary Beard has questioned the excitement about the discovery of Richard, claiming that the excavation of a peasant would tell us more about life in the past but the opportunity to study a king and to examine the wounds he suffered at the time of death is an amazing opportunity. The discovery that he also suffered from worms, creates a picture of Richard in life that we do not get from Medieval chronicles.
The study of the skeleton shows that Richard’s body was hacked about, although the feet are missing because of the later building of a toilet close to the site of the burial. This doesn’t affect the interpretation of Richard’s remains because his thigh bones survived, from which his height could be calculated. Richard was cut down by a bill or halberd. Skeletons from the battlefields of Visby (1361) and Towton (1461) provide comparable material. Bob illustrated a wide range of wounds known by Medieval doctors with a trauma identification chart. We know that Richard was wounded at the battle of Barnet (1471) from a letter written by a Hanseatic League merchant but the team didn’t find any healed injuries from that earlier encounter. All the injuries visible on the skeleton are consistent with ante-mortem trauma. It is known that people could recover from very severe injuries. For example, one of the casualties of Towton suffered a severe wound to the side of the jaw but the man recovered.
The narrative of the battle suggests Richard’s attack was a last-minute decision. Richard charged Henry Tudor and killed his standard bearer, Sir William Brandon, but was stalled by the marshy ground. His horse became stuck in the soft ground. Richard must have come within a few feet of Henry who can have been no more than 10 feet away from his standard. It was at this point that Stanley’s forces intervened and Richard was killed.
Richard’s skeleton tells us a lot about the last few minutes of his life. A cut to Richard’s jaw may suggest that his helmet chin strap was cut in order to remove his helmet. A penetrating wound to the right maxilla may have been inflicted from behind by the same attacker but it would not have been fatal. A scoop-like slice from the top and rear of skull would have bled profusely but would not have killed Richard. The same weapon – a long sword bill or halberd – was used to knock a hole in Richard’s head in the right occipital bone of his skull. Molinet mentions such a weapon in his account. He says a Welshman struck Richard dead with a halberd. It is interesting that a bedstead of 1505 shows the battle scene with a foot soldier carrying a halberd. This wound would not have caused instantaneous death. Casualties from the battle of Dornack in Switzerland (1499) show severe trauma. A casualty of Towton suffered a blow across the back of the head and another face was bisected. These trauma reveal that medieval warfare was vicious and nasty, not chivalrous. It has been claimed in some newspapers that Richard was poll-axed but it is not clear where this story originated. Richard certainly suffered a penetrating wound to the head and this would have brought him down immediately. The sequence seems to have been that he suffered a halberd wound to the head, at which point Richard was still alive, but then he received a penetrating wound to the left occipital and this is in fact what killed him. This is what one of the accounts, The Most Pleasant Song of Lady Bessy, says. An indentation in the surface of the skull may indicate that Richard’s opponents tried to push a rondel dagger into his head. A rondel dagger was used to kill Watt Tyler. An image in the Bibliothèque Nationale shows someone using the mushroom cap pommel of such a dagger to apply pressure to deliver a thrusting blow to the back of Tyler’s head. Towton 21 has a similar injury. The trauma enable us to see Richard’s death in great detail. The fact that there are no definite wounds on the arms, hands or fingers as at Towton where the dead suffered defensive injuries trying to ward off blows, suggest that at this stage Richard must have had the protection of armour.
Two other wounds must have been made after Richard’s armour was removed. These are the so-called humiliation injuries, which were inflicted after Richard’s body had been stripped naked, when he was subjected to indignities. The Crowland Abbey Chronicle of 1486 says that Richard’s body had insults heaped upon it. Richard’s body was lying over the back of a horse at this point, his hands and feet tied. Mutilation of the dead is shocking to us today but it must be remembered that this is a common occurrence in warfare. At the battle of the Little Big Horn (1876) General Custer’s body was mistreated. Bowdlerised versions of the battle circulated until the 1960s. One of the troopers who found the body stated that the Custer’s ears were pierced so he could hear more clearly in the afterlife and that his stomach was cut open to reveal his spirit. Richard, too, had all manner of things done to him. There is a thin line on the bone of the pelvis showing that a knife went all the way through. Perhaps this wound was inflicted using a ballock dagger. This seems to be an act of deliberate humiliation. The body was then taken the 16 miles back to Leicester where it was exposed for public viewing for several days before being bundled unceremoniously into a grave, the hands still bound. Some people have tried to explain away the injury to the hip saying that Richard must have fallen from his horse and landed on a pointed shield but the most likely explanation is mutilation of the king’s dead body by the victors. The skeleton of Towton 32 suggests that the man’s ears were cut off. Richard’s face survived intact either because he was lying face down or because Henry Tudor wanted to ensure that the face remained identifiable. He wanted Richard’s body to be recognizable. Exposure of the body to public view was not uncommon so that the reality of the king’s death would be widely known and accepted. Contemporary knowledge that Richard’s head had suffered damage may lie behind the story that Richard’s head struck the bridge as it was returned to Leicester.
Bob said that this was the first attempt to tell a coherent story about what happened to Richard and doubtless more will be discovered as the study progresses. Work will be done on plaque on Richard’s teeth and this will tell us what Richard ate and drank. Had the body been dug up at an earlier date before modern forensic techniques were invented this sort of work would not have been possible.
In the discussion after the talk a question was raised about Michael Jones’ claim that Richard’s charge failed to reach Henry Tudor because he was surrounded by a contingent of European mercenaries equipped with long spears or pikes. However, Bob discounted this interpretation because Richard spent time on the continent and would have been aware of this development in warfare. He did not think the charge was the last gamble of a desperate man. In 1484 Richard had placed orders for 168 suits of Italian armour for his household, suggesting that his household numbered 2-300 men. The deployment and charge of such a large number of mounted men was not last minute but planned and deliberate and is unlikely to have been frustrated by soldiers armed in this way.
Readers can find out a bit more about Richard’s part in the funerary procession to commemorate his father, Richard of York, who was killed at the Battle of Sandal in an earlier lecture to the Medieval Section.
References:
Michael K. Jones (2002) Bosworth 1485: Psychology of a Battle Gloucestershire: Tempus Publishing
The most pleasant song of Lady Bessy : the eldest daughter of King Edward the Fourth, and how she married King Henry the Seventh of the House of Lancaster” (1829)
With the imminent release of the third series of HBO’s award-winning series Game of Thrones eagerly awaited by Christine and myself, I started to think about the representation of the Middle Ages in popular culture which seems to range from primitivism to high romanticism of The White Queen. The latter was slated by the critics for depicting such anachronistic features as zips on the back of the dresses of some of the leading female characters and hand-rails used by frailer visitors to the presumably National Trust properties where some of the scenes were filmed.
It seems rather ironic to say the least that some of the most convincing depictions of life in the high Medieval period are to be found not in historical series like The White Queen but in the fictional land of Westeros, the setting for much but not all of the plot in Game of Thrones.
The author J.R.R.Martin’s Game of Thrones series of novels (still unfinished) frequently draw upon archaeology and ancient and Medieval history. Though set in the fictional kingdom of Westeros, this is recognisably a ‘high Medieval’ world comparable to England (the map of Westeros looks like an inverted map of the British Isles) during the Wars of the Roses, complete with a hierarchical society of king, lords, knights (who show off their prowess in jousts), seneschals, castellans, men-at-arms, archers with longbows, crossbowmen and commoners. There are even trebuchets for siege warfare, each with its own name, reflecting the grim humour of Medieval besiegers.
But it is not only the setting and the social hierarchy that evokes the Middle Ages. Major parts of the plot recall pivotal episodes in English Medieval history. I refer of course to the dilemma faced by one of the most important characters, at least in the first series of Game of Thrones, Lord Eddard Stark played by Sean Bean. Eddard or Ned is the ‘Hand of the King’, the second most important man in the kingdom or rather group of kingdoms, for there are seven of them. Ned is honest, honourable, decent, hard-working and deeply moral. He comes from ‘the North’, a land of snows, moors, woodlands and outspoken characters. He is Lord of Winterfell, the capital of the North but he is a fish-out-of-water in in the capital at King’s Landing in ‘the South’ with its hot climate, slippery characters, devious plots and moral turpitude.
In the first series of Game of Thrones good king Robert (played by Mark Addy) was fatally wounded by a boar. During the hunt Robert had been deliberately plied with drink in order to incapacitate him by one of his Lannister in-laws. He lingers long enough to ask his friend Ned to become Protector of the Realm and oversee the succession of Robert’s son. What Ned knows but the dying king doesn’t is that the latter’s children by Queen Cersei (played by Lena Headey) are illegitimate. They are the offspring of Cersei’s incestuous relationship with her twin brother Jamie, and they include the odious heir to the throne Joffrey. Though Joffrey is bethrothed to Ned’s daughter Sansa, there is already bad blood between the Lannisters and the Starks. Acting as a scribe to record Robert’s last wishes Ned changes the wording of the document to read that the kingdom should pass not to Joffrey but to the king’s ‘genuine heir’. Ned had done the decent thing and warned Cersei to leave the capital with her children before he told the king of Cersei’s betrayal but that was before the boar hunt. As a decent man he does not want the blood of the children on his hands. This is typical of Ned. He does the right thing morally but subsequent events show this may have been naive of him. As Queen Cersei says “When you play the game of Thrones you win or you die”.
After King Robert’s death Ned is urged by some of the leading members of the High Council to move against the Lannisters and the heir Joffrey. If he arrests Joffrey, his mother Cersei and his siblings Ned can seize power and arrange for the succession to pass to a genuine heir, for King Robert had numerous illegitimate children, including a son. If he allows the succession to pass to Joffrey Ned’s position, indeed his life, will be in grave danger because the Lannisters want Joffrey to rule as king in their interests without a protector of the realm and they dislike Ned intensely because he threatens them and their hold on power. Lannisters and Starks are like chalk and cheese: Ned always does the right thing and cares nothing for the trappings of power. He serves the realm not himself. The Lannisters are morally corrupt, fixated with their own hold on power and treacherous.
Ned must act to arrest Joffery and members of his immediate family. He knows that whoever controls Joffrey holds power. Isn’t this the position of Richard III in 1483 following the death of Edward IV? Edward’s widow, Elizabeth Woodville, had a number of children, including the two male heirs – the Princes Edward and Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York – from her marriage to the king and from an earlier marriage. With the death of Edward his brother Richard became Lord Protector. If Richard secured the Princes he would indeed be Protector, if he did not, his in-laws, the Woodvilles, would influence the king and run the kingdom as they wished.
What I’m suggesting is that the dramatic climax of the first series of Game of Thrones is a fictional reworking of the events preceding Richard’s usurpation of 1483 with Ned as Richard, Robert as Edward IV, Cersei as Elizabeth Woodville, Joffrey and his brother Tomen as the Princes Edward and Richard of York. It shows why Richard had to act the way he did because not having control of the princes would have made him very vulnerable in the longer term to his in-laws who would use their influence to marginalise him. In fact in Richard’s eyes they had already given him reason to doubt their motives when the Woodvilles sent a large body of armed men to escort Prince Edward back to London from Wales. Richard acted decisively and arrested Earl Rivers who was accompanying Prince Edward at Stony Stratford. Richard himself led the escort to London. Later he questioned the legitimacy of the princes and had them placed in The Tower where they disappeared in mysterious circumstances. In Game of Thrones Ned Stark leaves his bid to seize Joffrey too late and pays the ultimate price. He is betrayed, thrown in prison and finally beheaded (though he’d agreed to plead guilty in return for saving not his own life but the lives of his daughters who he has been told are both held prisoner by the Lannisters).
It also seems to me that there are some very interesting dualities at work. Richard has close connections with the North. He has a reputation for good honest competent management and leadership and firm support for his retainers even at some cost to himself. Ned Stark too is from the North and is supported by devoted retainers. Richard and Ned share similar qualities or have had similar qualities ascribed to them. J.R.R.Martin emphasizes the dualities in Game of Thrones to make these defining qualities clearer:
North: South
Cold: Hot
Honest: Corrupt
Moral: unscrupulous
Service: self-serving
Temperate: self-indulgent
Richard in Shakespeare’s Richard III is utterly selfish, unscrupulous and self-serving whereas J.R.R.Martin’s Game of Thrones with Ned Stark as Richard III places him at the good, honest and decent end of the spectrum: the Richard III of revisionist historians who challenge the creation of Tudor propaganda. Does Martin in Game of Thrones show the terrible consequences for Ned Stark/Richard III of not acting utterly unscrupulously?
Coin of Richard III (kindly sent by Medieval Section member David Harpin)
I am very grateful to Medieval Section member David Harpin who has kindly sent a photo of a silver coin of Richard III. Earlier this week the Daily Telegraph ran a story by Sarah Knapton about the DNA sequencing of the last Plantagenet king’s remains. The development of genetic research and the sequencing of the entire genomes of individuals who lived in the past is revealing new information. Richard III will be one of a relatively small number of people from the past who have been studied in this way. The researchers led by Dr Turi King (University of Leicester) hope to be able to report what colour Richard’s eyes and hair were and whether he would have been susceptible to diseases such as diabetes and Alzheimer’s. The research may reveal evidence of infectious bacteria. It is already known that Richard suffered from roundworm.
In the issue (Wednesday 12th February) Harry Mount, author of How England made the English, was looking forward to finding out the results of the research, which he hoped would shed light on the DNA segments passed down the royal bloodline. He reiterated just how shaky was Henry VII’s claim to the throne in terms of his share of ‘royal’ blood. This line of research will no doubt develop over time but already there are other Medieval characters this could be applied to, such as Alfred, whose remains have been identified. So, as previously mentioned, the next few years are full of exciting potential for Medieval history and archaeology.
Members will remember I’m sure Bob Woosnam Savage’s lecture about the recent research on Richard’s remains. Bob being a consummate professional would not reveal what he knew but intimated to us that further exciting work was taking place. So you could say that you (almost) heard about it at the Yorkshire Archaeological Society Medieval Section lecture first!
This, the first lecture in the new-look programme for the Medieval Section for 2013, by Pam Judkins of Wakefield Council Arts Museums and Heritage, gave an account of the remarkable commemorative retracing of the route of the funerary procession from Pontefract to Fotheringhay for Richard Duke of York of July 1476, which was organised by Wakefield Historical Society in July 2010.
Bar where Richard of York’s head was displayed
Pam described the historical context for Richard’s death, which occurred near Sandal Castle, in December 1460 during the Wars of the Roses. The Duke’s frustration with the lacklustre rule of Henry VI had led him to press his own slightly stronger claim to the English throne, which directly threatened the right to succession of the son of Henry and his queen, Margaret of Anjou. In the fight at Sandal the Duke appears to have fallen into an ambush and his head, decorated with a paper crown, and that of his son Edmund, Duke of Rutland, were displayed above Micklegate Bar in York. The battle was one of the smaller engagements of the Wars of the Roses. It looked as though the Yorkist cause was dead but another son, Edward, having won a battle of his own in Wales, returned and on Palm Sunday 1461, with the help of his father’s old ally Warwick, defeated the Lancastrians at Towton. This may well be the largest and bloodiest battle ever to have taken place on English soil. Edward became Edward IV.
Once secure on the English throne, Edward made plans to give his father a decent funeral which involved taking the body in a formal procession from Pontefract in West Yorkshire to the favoured residence of the family at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire. It is not clear why it took quite so long -16 years – to bring this about but the unsettled politics of the time and the reglazing of Fotheringhay Chuch may have had something to do with it. The route would take in many towns along the great north road that had been pillaged by Lancastrians after the Battle of Sandal. At each of a number of overnight stops the body lay on a funeral bier in a church. Four hundred poor men were paid to follow the procession. Anyone who turned up to join the procession received a penny and pregnant women received 2d. Richly clothed wooden effigies of the Duke and his son Edmund lay on the coffins. The event was carefully planned and choreographed lest there be any repetition of the unedifying scenes at the funeral of Charles VI of France when clergy and members of his household had squabbled over the funeral pall and clothing.
Having exhumed the bodies of the Duke and his son Edmund at Pontefract, the procession set out from Pontefract on 22nd July, staying in Doncaster on 22nd-23rd July, Blyth on 23rd-24th July, Tuxford on 24th-25th July, Newark on 25th-26th July, Grantham on 26th-27th July, Stamford on 27th-29th July (an extra day was allowed because this was a Sunday), and finally reaching Fotheringhay on 30th July 1476.
Wakefield Historical Society hoped to commemorate the procession but unfortunately an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund failed, and the organizers threw themselves on the mercy of churches and local societies along the route. In hindsight this was not an entirely disastrous outcome because it did result in local people being involved on a more voluntary and ad hoc basis. Wakefield Historical Society decided not to re-enact the procession but to follow the route on the dates when the procession had taken place, staying at the same locations overnight where the body of Richard had rested. They were helped in this by the fact that the Richard III Society had published contemporary accounts of the procession [see Anne F.Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs with P.W.Hammond (1996) ‘The Reburial of Richard Duke of York 21-30 July 1476’ The Ricardian, the Journal of the Richard III Society, vol. X, no.127, December 1994]. Some stretches of the route had long since disappeared because of later development and changes to the modern road lay-out but the participants did walk the route where they could. Our speaker described this as quite an emotional experience and said that being there was important. Due to changes in the road lay-out some places that had been thriving historically were now quiet backwaters. The present day tranquil bridge at Wentbridge, for instance, had been widened three times, reflecting the importance of the river crossing when this was the main north-south road for travellers and a route for herds of animals being taken to London for slaughter. The participants also visited other Medieval places of interest along the route that would have been there in the late 15th century.
At Doncaster the Duke’s body lay overnight in Greyfriars’ Franciscan Friary. What the connection was with the Franciscans was, is not known but Edward’s sister, Margaret of York was also a patron of the order. Much of the Medieval Doncaster has been lost through development so the participants visited the site of an important Medieval shrine to the Virgin Mary, recently revived by the Roman Catholic Church. A Vespers service was held at this and each of the subsequent overnight stops. It is probably no accident that a number of towns along the route had been granted charters by Edward IV in the years before the funeral procession. Perhaps this was in recognition of, and to make amends for, the widespread looting of places along the route by Lancastrians after their victory at Sandal.
The next section of the route to Blyth has been destroyed by extensive mining but the participants called at Conisborough Castle where Richard was born and Roche Abbey, which was close enough to send a party of monks to join the funeral procession. The body rested at Tickhill were there was a Benedictine Priory, a daughter-house of Rouen. There the participants saw a Doom painting which had survived the Reformation. Blyth appears to have been more important historically but now that the route of the A1 has shifted, it is quiet backwater.
Gainsborough Old Hall
On 24th July the party travelled to Tuxford. The participants walked a quiet stretch of what is very likely to have been the main north-south road with a local guide and society. They diverted to Gainsborough Old Hall which was owned by the Yorkist de Burgh family and which was said to have been destroyed by Lancastrians. However, tree-ring dates taken from timbers suggests many of the trees were felled in the 1460s so perhaps the devastation was overstated. The Medieval kitchen is particularly well-preserved there. The party also visited Laxton where strip farming is still practised and where court leet meetings are still held to manage disputes. At Tuxford the party squeezed into the small church for Vespers. Again the presence of large inn betrayed the fact that the town had been far busier in the past.
From Tuxford they travelled to Newark. The body of the Duke lay at St Mary Magdalene in Newark. The money for the church came from wool. Newark retains its open marketplace and a number of buildings around it give a real sense of what it was like in the Middle Ages. The procession may have doubled the size of the population the night that the funerary procession spent there.
From Newark the party went to Grantham, another town that benefited from a charter from Edward IV. Again the body stayed overnight at the Greyfriars even though there was an impressive church there. The facade of a 15th century hotel still survives at Newark.
From Newark the party travelled to Stamford. They saw Elis Manor with its wall paintings dating from about 1500 depicting woodland scenes. Tickencote and Losecote, nearby, was the site of another battle during the Wars of the Roses. The body lay for two nights at Greyfriars in Stamford as the following day was a Sunday. The George Inn at Stamford is an early courtyard inn.
The next day, Monday, the party travelled to Fotheringhay, stopping at Longthorpe Tower near Peterborough to see some 14th century wall-paintings. Apethorpe Hall was built about 1500 and is so close to Fotheringhay it may have been linked to the House of York.
On 29th July the body arrived at Fotheringhay. Little remains of the castle save for a mound and ditch. A procession led by Edward IV came to meet the funerary procession. The body was guarded overnight by men who had served with the Duke. The funeral took place on Tuesday 29th July. Requiem masses were sung by and a sermon preached by the Bishop of Lincoln. A black war horse was ridden into the church. There were 400 lights on the hearse. In 2010 the Deputy Lord Lieutenant, the Duke of Gloucester, came for the final event. A plaque was presented to the church as at each of the previous overnight stops. In 1476 some 1500 people were served food and drink in tents but perhaps 5000 may have attended. £311 17s 1d was spent on 8000 gallons of beer, 48 beef, 210 sheep, and large quantities of fish and poultry. Cooks were brought up from London to provide the catering.
Our speaker finished her talk by saying that she felt the Wakefield Historical Society had made a real contribution to making members of the general public more aware of their history, especially in stopping off points along the route of the procession, as well as linking historical events at the local and national level.
Lecture summary by Bryan Sitch, Hon Secretary, Medieval Section. For any errors the writer is responsible.
Facial reconstruction of Richard III on display at the Yorkshire Museum
Members of the Medieval Section may be interested to know that there is a small display about Richard III at the Yorkshire Museum. I stumbled across it at the weekend whilst showing some international curators some of the York’s cultural heritage on Saturday. It is more of an ‘installation’ in the Yorkshire Museum’s existing Medieval gallery and it is fairly modest: the facial reconstruction of Richard III made by Caroline Wilkinson of the University of Dundee for the recent documentary, supported by four text panels and a number of exhibits from the Yorkshire Museum’s stunning collection of treasure items from the period, star exhibits such as the Middleham jewel, the Middleham ring and a boar badge worn by those of Richard’s household and affiliation.
Livery badge in the shape of a boar
The exhibition is open until 13th October and then moves on to Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, the British Museum and Gloucester Museum and Art Gallery. After touring, the facial reconstruction will return to Leicester for permanent display in the new King Richard III visitor centre.The tour was organised by Leicester Arts and Museums Service and the model has been kindly loaned for display by the Richard III Society.The tour is supported by the University of Leicester, the University of Dundee and Darlow Smithson Productions.
The sign outside the Yorkshire Museum generated expectations in me that were not actually met. This is clearly quite a modest affair though it does create a new focus for beautiful objects in the museum’s collection. With the discovery of the king’s remains in a Leicester car park, has the time come for a major block-buster re-evalutation of the last Plantagenet king’s brief but controversial reign? Should the section hold a dayschool on Richard III incorporating lectures on the recent excavation, a reappraisal of the battle of Bosworth, the Medieval landscape at Middleham and contributions by authoritative historians? As we are shortly going to meet at Fulford battlefield perhaps we should run a dayschool on battlefield archaeology?
At last Saturday’s AGM as there were no nominations for the vacant posts on the committee it was suggested that it might be appropriate to disband the Medieval Section”. Only one serving officer, the Treasurer, was willing to continue – me (!).
After 44 years of promoting Medieval archaeology in Yorkshire this is a particularly sad, but far from hopeless, state of affairs. I said in my Treasurer’s report that we have a stable membership of about 130 with 16 institutional members. Nor are we short of funds, though some of it will be needed to publish the section journal Medieval Yorkshire. The Prehistoric and the Roman sections are both thriving, so why not the Medieval section? I can think of no richer region for Medieval archaeology than Yorkshire with all its abbeys and castles, not to mention fantastic museum collections and people actively researching many different aspects of the period.
A number of people at the AGM felt that something should be done to save the section and Janet Senior, Roy Andrews and I have formed an embryonic committee with the intention of recruiting new members and officers.
We need another three ordinary committee members and a Chairman. Jo Heron has kindly agreed to serve as Treasurer, allowing me to take over from Mike Edwards as Hon.Secretary. Stephen Moorhouse will continue as Hon.Editor. We have also had offers to serve on committee from staff at the International Medieval Institute.
Other volunteers would be most welcome. With quarterly meetings on a Thursday evening at Claremont it is not onerous and you do get to find out what’s happening across the county and make your voice heard in how the section is run.
We are not out of the woods yet but just over a week after the AGM I think we are within sight of forming a fully-functioning committee. Our remit will be to turn round the section and make it sustainable. We’d like more members to attend meetings at Claremont and in time to become members of committee and continue the work of running the section.
We also need to re-engage the members. With that end in mind Janet, Roy and I have put together a provisional programme of lectures for autumn this year and spring 2014. Starting in September there will be lectures on a range of different topics 2-3.30pm every second Saturday of the month at Claremont and it would be great to see members attending. I will post details once the Committee has approved the programme, all being well after May 9th. We hope to confirm a talk on the recent identification of Richard III‘s remains at Leicester in December.
I would very much appreciate it if members reading this Blog would respond with your thoughts and suggestions. What sorts of activities would you like to see: talks, day schools, excursions, visits to museums, social activities (like the famous Xmas high tea)? If you can suggest speakers for our programme for coming years or places to visit do please let us know. Even better, why not join us on committee?
We run the section in order to promote interest in Medieval Yorkshire and we genuinely want to offer events and activities that members will take part in and enjoy. Please help us to ensure that the Medieval section continues.
Bryan Sitch
Hon.Secretary
Medieval Section
Yorkshire Archaeological Society
Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society 