Richard III (1452-1485): Discovery of Remains and Reburial


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LauraS3514 said:

Virtually all of the pre-conquest kings with the exception of Edward the Confessor are either missing or included in a jumble of bones in the tomb chests at Winchester. The tombs of William I (The Conqueror), Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard I and James II were destroyed in the French Revolution and the bones dispersed with only a thigh bone of William I surviving (only the effigies of Henry II, Eleanor and Richard survive). Henry I (Reading) and Stephen (Faversham) were lost at the Dissolution. Many of the Kings of Scots are also missing after the Reformation. Additionally, parts of the skeletons of Richard II and his wife Anne were stolen over time because of a hole in their tomb at Westminster Abbey...

The Interlibrary Loan Program is wonderful: a few months ago I checked out "The Royal Tombs of Great Britain: an Illustrated History" by Aidan Dodson (Duckworth, 2004. ISBN# 0715633104). It's a very interesting book that tells of how, when and where the monarchs of England, Scotland the UK were buried, beginning with Anglo-Saxon times. I just wish I could afford to buy a copy...
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I thought that was what Birthdays and Christmas were for. ;). It does sound like a fascinating book and a useful one for those of us interested in Royal History. :)
 
Tiggersk8 said:
I thought that was what Birthdays and Christmas were for. ;). It does sound like a fascinating book and a useful one for those of us interested in Royal History. :)
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Amazon has one copy at $165.00. That's a lot of birthdays at my house :lol:
 
LauraS3514 said:
Amazon has one copy at $165.00. That's a lot of birthdays at my house :lol:
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I have that book,I bought in 2007/2008 but it was no where as expensive as that outrageous price :eek:
 
Philippa Langley has so much vested in this entire situation and I wouldn't be surprised if she is upset over the wrangling over Richard's remains. I have a feeling that she is not at all happy that they are residing at the university, although it's probably the safest and most secure location now.
 
Outrageous, why do we need to know wether the man suffered from lactose intolerance or not. Frankly, I find it an appalling abuse of the remains of an anointed King of England, remains that are being treated with a distinct lack of respect ( up until recently they were kept in a cardboard box under the tea making facilities at the U of Leics!!).
While they are at it, why not hack into Queen Victoria's tomb and extract some of her bones for testing....... :ohmy:
 
I actually posted most of this as a comment on another site, but I want to add it here as well:

There goes another a rib - or is it a couple more molars? They used several molars and a rib in the first DNA round, which I will accept with regret as it was the only way to confirm Richard’s identity. Why didn’t they do the full sequencing then? Was it because they really didn’t think it was Richard? Maybe, but then they hit the jackpot and now it almost seems as though the University wants to test and test and test in perpetuity: the design brief for the proposed tomb in L Cathedral had a clause stating that any design must allow for access for “re-examination” of the remains as new technology permits. Disgraceful. :angry:

I also think it’s almost disingenuous of ULAS to keep saying that this is “standard archaeological practice” in Richard’s case, when in fact it’s only standard in the case of UNKNOWN INDIVIDUALS. As soon as the confirmation of identity was made, the “standard practice” changed to that of a known individual, and that of the last King of England to die in battle, protecting his Kingdom from foreign invasion at that. (Henry Tyddr had spent most of his life in France, a lot of of his ancestry was French, and the vast majority of his army were French mercenaries paid for by France - a little detail he later preferred to forget. In fact, Richard had almost as much Welsh blood as Henry did, and Royal Welsh blood at that!)

It’s past time for Richard Plantagenet The Human Being, a practicing and devout Christian and sometime King of England, to receive a dignified, proper, and PERMANENT Christian burial. Anything less is unacceptable. Period.

:yorkrose:
 
I agree entirely with the above comments; I am very uneasy about all this 'prying' into the mortal remains of those who should be resting in peace.
 
Like the pictorial family tree, but they classify Richard III as Richard VII. Doh! And I hope the Queen also expresses her shock at this overly done research of her ancestor's remains. Maybe a suggestion from her that he be interred in a dignified way and left in peace would put an end to this.
 
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I guess we'll never have absolute certainty. The article explains that it could be any of several cousins who died during the War of the Roses. I guess it would be impossible to know how many of his relatives would have been in battles in the Leicester area.

I will be very disappointed if I can't visit the remains of Richard III when I get a chance to go back to Great Britain.
 
US Royal Watcher said:
I guess we'll never have absolute certainty. The article explains that it could be any of several cousins who died during the War of the Roses. I guess it would be impossible to know how many of his relatives would have been in battles in the Leicester area.

I will be very disappointed if I can't visit the remains of Richard III when I get a chance to go back to Great Britain.
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A Ricardian has done the research and the math: see Sunnes & Roses

The short answer is that only three men with the right mtDNA were at or near Bosworth/Leicester at the right time: John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln (Richard's nephew, died at the Battle of Stoke in 1487 - he was apparently Richard's acknowledged heir in 1485 ); Ralph de Greystoke, a grandson of Joan Beaufort, who also died in 1487 in his late 70s/early 80s; and Richard III.

I'll borrow from a post I made on another board: Professor Hicks apparently belongs to the old-school Richard-was-every-bit-as-bad-as – Shakespeare-said-he-was-and-even-and-worse group and may be trying desperately to cling to the idea that Richard-the Evil-Hunchback was so hated that he was thrown into the River Soar. He has refused to give up his beliefs that Richard was a multiple-murdering near-pedophile who committed incest when he married 16-year-old Anne Neville (ignoring the fact that Anne was already a widow and the couple did receive a dispensation to marry as cousins but didn't need one for having his brother married to her sister) and that he later wanted to marry his niece even though Portuguese records have proven that Richard was planning to marry their Princess Joanna and Elizabeth of York was to marry Joanna's cousin who became Manoel I. Richard didn't have a withered arm or a "hunchback" (his scoliosis would only show as the uneven shoulders mentioned during his life and if he was a "hunchback" than so are Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Princess Eugenie of York, Elizabeth Taylor, Alexander the Great and yours truly) and he stayed more or less safely in his grave in the choir of Greyfriar's Church until 2012. Some people just won't let go…


Location of burial, date, cause of death, and the physical characteristics of the skeleton alone (age, build, wounds, diet, and of course the facial reconstruction) would be enough for a 95%+ identification. The DNA match, both mitochondrial and y-chromosome (rumored at this point if not yet announced) makes identification just about as close to 100% as scientists will ever commit to. It's Richard.
 
There could be any number of unacknowledged people with that Mtd DNA though - as many illegitimate children also had further illegitimate descendants, particularly female whom they didn't know about.

The odds are that this is Richard but definitively - no they can't be that sure as to say 100%.
 
Interesting analysis LauraS3514. Thank you for the link. After reading it, I agree that the remains are almost certainly belong to Richard III. I am not sure that it is "moving the goalposts" to point out that it could be a descendant from one Joan Beaufort's female relatives, but I agree that the chances are low.

I'm looking forward to visiting the final resting place, wherever that is.
 
Well, this sure throws a wrench in the works, but I'm still betting that it's Richard's remains. And at this point, this poor king needs a permanent resting place so if it's to be Leicester rather than York, then so be it.
 
Iluvbertie said:
There could be any number of unacknowledged people with that Mtd DNA though - as many illegitimate children also had further illegitimate descendants, particularly female whom they didn't know about.

The odds are that this is Richard but definitively - no they can't be that sure as to say 100%.
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If we were talking of Y-chromosome DNA I'd have to agree with you, as quite a few people in history had different biological fathers than their pedigrees may state. :D (Before DNA profiling, proof of paternity was a whole lot harder than proof of maternity.) But mtDNA passes solely through the female line - we all carry only our mother's mtDNA - so our biological fathers wouldn't figure in the mtDNA profile at all. I suppose there could have been an unacknowledged illegitimate daughter of one of the women in that family who was secretly adopted by another family who later had a slightly-built, well-fed male descendent (from an otherwise all-female line) with scoliosis who died near Bosworth of horrible head wounds and was given the prime burial spot in the Greyfriar's choir but a careless grave whose facial reconstruction just happens to look exactly like portraits of Richard III ... :D

Dr John Ashdown-Hill found an all-female line of descent from Richard's sister Anne down to the Ibsens, and another was later found by the U of L. These two separate lines shared the same mtDNA with the Greyfriar's remains. Given all the other evidence that I listed above, the odds that it is someone other than Richard III are nearly non-existent.
 
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