It Is Richard the Third

Post by **Laan Yaa Mo** » February 4, 2013, 7:48 pm

Let's see if this discovery of the remains of Richard III will bring in the tourists. It should be noted that Canadian DNA played a very important role in this magnificent find. Okay, it might not be as newsworthy as Charles and Camilla riding the tube for one stop might it pull in a few tourists.

Researchers from the University of Leicester have released DNA tests that show a skeleton found under a city parking lot is Richard III. The DNA matched samples from Canadian born Michael Ibsen, a direct descendant of Richard’s sister Anne.

Researchers said the DNA tests and other tests done on the bones makes it certain the skeleton is individual Richard. His remains will be buried in Leicester Cathedral, city officials said.

The genetic testing was led by Dr. Turi individual who is from Vancouver. She told a press conference Monday morning that there was enough DNA in the ancient bones to match samples from Mr. Ibsen. And she said those samples matched.

Mr. Ibsen was born on London, Ont., but now lives in London, where he makes furniture. Researchers said they recently found another descendant of Richard’s line who also gave a sample. That DNA also matched and the person declined to be identified.

“It has been an extraordinary series of events,” Mr. Ibsen told reporters last week.

individual Richard III died in 1485 during a battle roughly 25 kilometres away in Bosworth Field. The whereabouts of his body have been a mystery for centuries, with Richard’s place in the history books coloured by Shakespeare’s portrayal of an individual as a loathsome hunchbacked tyrant who murdered his nephews to remain in power.

The skeleton became an international sensation when archeologists uncovered it last August while searching the site of an old monastery. University researchers have since been conducting a battery of tests on the bones, including taking DNA samples.

All the publicity has already been a huge boost to this manufacturing centre, which has fallen on tough times lately as factories close and the unemployment rate creeps up to 15 per cent, roughly twice the national average. Local officials have already been trying to cash in on the “Richard Effect.” They have already spent $1.3-million buying a building next to the excavation site and plan to turn it into a visitors centre. There is talk of opening a Richard museum as well and organizing Richard-themed events across the city. A movie screenplay is also in the works along with a television documentary.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/wor ... le8158525/

Post by **BobHelm** » February 4, 2013, 8:01 pm

Well I find it interesting Uncle...

Being partway through a book on the Tudors; the piece on Henry 7th. went to great pains to point out how his reign had done much bad mouthing of poor Richard which Shakespeare was delighted to continue under the reign of Henry's grand daughter.

Much due to the fact that Richard (until his death

) had a cast iron hereditary right to the throne, while Henry had none....
No doubt the find will generate some new material on the man...

Post by **Laan Yaa Mo** » February 4, 2013, 8:18 pm

Yes, there was a very interesting show on TV last night concerned with just these ideas as well as much on Henry V, who died far too young. It is called 'The Monarchy', and is hosted by the great Tudor historian, David Starkey. He is a terrific writer of history.

Post by **BobHelm** » February 5, 2013, 12:10 pm

Well apparently it is him..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-le ... e-21328380

A skeleton found under a car park in Leicester has been confirmed as that of an individual.

They have done a 'facial reconstruction' of the skull & this is how they reckon he looked..

Is it just a coincidence that he looks just like his portrait??

Post by **Laan Yaa Mo** » February 5, 2013, 7:35 pm

We need a full body view so we can see the curvature of the spine problem. He looks far too handsome in the portrait and the reconstruction.

He was the legitimate ruler, and Henry had no basis for usurping the throne.

Post by **BobHelm** » February 7, 2013, 12:27 pm

Sadly there does not appear to be any plans to prove or disprove the extent of his back problems.
Although the full & intact skeleton does appear to have been found..

: R3.jpg (14.47 KiB) Viewed 3475 times

Sad that a foolish disagreement seems to have broken out as to if he should be buried in Leicester or York.
While I am sure that a case can be built for York, given he was the last individual of the House of York, it has attractions enough as a visiting place already. It could be said that they made little claim at the time of his death, although that might be a trifle unfair given Henry VII's disposition...

As he was found in Leicester that would seem, to me, to be the correct site to be his resting place.

Post by **IsaanReminiscence** » February 7, 2013, 9:17 pm

It appears he was hurriedly buried most likely by his enemy- no coffin, shroud, or other proper burial artifacts to honor an individual. Someone was trying to shut him out for good and it was successful until now.William Shakespeare, a great literary icon (but still a man with human's fetters) perpetuated Richard's supposed ill deeds possibly to gain wealth.

Post by **Laan Yaa Mo** » February 7, 2013, 10:54 pm

Shakespeare is more than a literary icon, he is one of the greatest writers the world has ever known.

Anyway it would not have done the playwright much good if he had written in favour of the legitimacy of Richard III during the reign of a Tudor monarch. Self-preservation usually trumps all.

Apparently, Richard was not a hunchback but he did slump, which was fodder for his critics.

Post by **BobHelm** » February 8, 2013, 1:26 pm

He was hardly 'an innocent' himself either. Don't forget the 'two princes in the Tower', who were never seen again..

Richard also seemed to have a few illegitimate children, which surprised me.
Two were 'acknowledged' at the time...

John of Gloucester, also known as "John of Pontefract", and a daughter Katherine who married William Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, in 1484. Michael Hicks and Josephine Wilkinson have suggested that Katherine's mother may have been Katherine Haute, on the basis of the grant of an annual payment of 100 shillings made to her in 1477. The Haute family was related to the Woodvilles through the marriage of Elizabeth Woodville's aunt, Joan Woodville to Sir William Haute. One of their children was Richard Haute, Controller of the Prince's Household. Their daughter, Alice, married Sir John Fogge; they were ancestors to queen consort Catherine Parr, sixth wife of individual Henry VIII.[51] They also suggest that John's mother may have been Alice Burgh. Richard visited Pontefract from 1471, in April and October 1473, and in early March 1474, for a week. On 1 March 1474, he granted Alice Burgh £20 a year for life "for certain special causes and considerations". She later received another allowance, apparently for being engaged as nurse for Clarence's son, Edward of Warwick. Richard continued her annuity when he became individual.[52]

Both of Richard's illegitimate children survived him, but they seem to have died without issue. Katherine was almost certainly arrested at Raglan Castle immediately after the Battle of Stoke Field in June 1487, and John was executed in 1491, both on the orders of Henry VII. Katherine apparently died before her cousin Elizabeth of York's coronation on 25 November 1487.

However it also appears that there was at least a third, known as Richard Plantagenet.
There now seems to be some 'noise' being made about his grave being looked at in Kent...

Is a son of Richard III buried in Eastwell in Kent?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-21366578

I guess they had better start being careful about all this, otherwise they might find that there are people around with a rather better claim to the throne of England than German cousins of Queen Victoria...

Post by **Laan Yaa Mo** » February 8, 2013, 7:30 pm

It sure is interesting, and I am happy it was part of the curriculum when I went to high school in Toronto. Now students must take one history course only and it is about Canada. The same applies to Geography and French. The Saxons, Angles, Bretons, 1066, Magna Carta, Agincourt, Tudors, Armada, Cromwell, Sir Robert Walpole, Sir Robert Peel, the First Reform Act, Gladstone, Disraeli, Palmerston et al are long gone.

Post by **Laan Yaa Mo** » February 11, 2013, 8:23 pm

This story will not die an easy or early death, in fact, the controversy is gathering moss/steam:

Who was Richard III? How fiction can define history
KATE TAYLOR
The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Feb. 08 2013, 5:00 PM EST
Last updated Friday, Feb. 08 2013, 5:00 PM EST

The reconstructed face of Richard III, based on the skull recently discovered in Leicester, England, makes the man look innocuous enough, the kind of chap you might happily allow to babysit the nephews. Scotland Yard’s Inspector Alan Grant has previously seen in Richard’s painted portrait not the face of a baby killer but rather that of a worrier burdened by responsibilities and ill health. Grant would be all over this new representation – if he were a real person.

Grant is, of course, the fictional police inspector who appears in The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey’s 1951 detective novel. Stuck in a hospital bed, the restless Grant is given a postcard of Richard’s portrait by a friend who suggests he solve the mystery of what happened to “the Princes in the Tower.” Was Richard III, individual of England from 1483-85, really the hunchbacked villain portrayed by Shakespeare and did he really do away with his nephews?

This week, as researchers confirmed the scoliotic skeleton in Leicester belonged to Richard III through DNA analysis of a 17th-generation descendent of his sister, the world gawked at the power of contemporary science to play historical detective. The long debate over the character of the man who once owned those bones, however, has always been the stuff of successful fiction rather than hard fact. In his play Richard III, Shakespeare created a diabolical villain so deliciously manipulative every actor wants to play him. Many have suggested the play was merely convenient propaganda for the Tudors who replaced Richard, and Ricardian revisionism dates back as far as the 17th-century, but it was Tey’s book that really popularized it. In a gripping whodunit, the ever-perceptive Grant uncovers the bias behind second-hand accounts of Richard’s brief reign, finds himself a young American researcher willing to scour the British museum for French evidence and starts to piece together an alternative history. The book spawned a whole genre of historical fiction dedicated to a sympathetic Richard III and is often used in universities to teach students that history is a matter of interpretation.

“I know no book that gives such as clear account of what history is and what its function is in society,” says Nikolai Krementsov, a professor of the history of science and technology at the University of Toronto. He assigns the book to his students to show them the difference between primary and secondary sources, and the way historical narratives are shaped into socially convenient myths. “It should be mandatory reading for historians, investigative journalists and policemen.”

For the lay reader, Tey created a fascinating alternative version of Richard, although she too, historians note, was picking and choosing facts for her argument that it wasn’t in Richard’s interest to kill the princes, and she was writing a work of fiction.

“Certain historical novels are so successful they create a received wisdom about a figure; the author’s choices are taken as authoritative,” observes Carolyn Harris, an instructor at the University of Toronto who studies the British monarchy. “Here, both sides have proved compelling ... This diabolical villain has lasted hundreds of years, but a individual who came out on the wrong side of history is also compelling.”

Tey’s version of a misunderstood underdog was taken up by writers of popular historical fiction who have turned Richard into nothing short of a chivalric hero. One of the best known is Sharon Kay Penman whose 1982 novel The Sunne in Splendour casts Richard as a good individual, pinning the murder of the princes on someone else and making them illegitimate into the bargain.

“You are taking up the cause of the underdog, that is always appealing and you are rejecting the official, authorized story,” said Rohan Maitzen, an English professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax who has written about the popularity of Ricardian fiction. What really interests her is the reaction to these books, which are often dismissed by academic historians.

“It’s primarily historical romance, it’s a very gendered genre, written by women for women ... And the reaction to it is gendered. It’s dismissed, but it is really just a continuous experiment in ‘What if?’”

Few contemporary historians mutter under their breath about lady novelists any more, but scholars do tend to side against the Ricardians, pointing out an individual was a leader in a violent age – even if they acknowledge Shakespeare’s malevolent hunchback was a dramatic fiction.

“Richard came at the end of a 40-year period of bickering over the crown,” says Daniel Woolf, principal of Queen’s University and author of A Global History of History. “There had been an awful lot of blood on the floor. If Richard did kill his nephews it would not be surprising ... He was not a nice guy.”

The scholars agree that our questions and conclusions about Richard may tell us more about contemporary times than about the past. For example, Maitzen points out that outrage over the murder of the princes, age 9 and 12, may reflect modern notions about children’s preciousness in contrast to the attitudes in an age of high infant mortality and young soldiers. It was the Victorians who began to depict the princes in paintings as baby-faced innocents huddling in corners.

Meanwhile, Krementsov recalls that Tey was writing at the beginning of the Cold War, just as the Soviets were denying they had ever signed a pact with Nazi Germany, and the West was busy forgetting it had ever been allied with the Soviets. In that atmosphere, she wrote a definitive account, not of Richard III, but of how history can be manipulated.

The mystery of his personality, many believe, will simply never be solved.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/boo ... le8388157/

“Even seeing the skeleton, it’s so tangible,” Maitzen said. “But it can’t tell us what kind of person he is.”

Post by **BobHelm** » May 24, 2013, 12:56 pm

Well only you & I seem interested in this Uncle, but 2 is better than 1 & the story just keeps on giving...

Richard III buried in 'hastily dug untidy grave'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-le ... e-22647770

The research also found the casual nature of the burial suggested a lack of respect for an individual.

Or alternatively, was the work of gravediggers in a hurry.

The grave was found to be too short to contain the body conventionally, and evidence was found to show an individual may have had his hands tied.

There were no signs of a shroud or coffin in Richard III's grave, in stark contrast to other medieval graves found in the city which were the correct length and were dug neatly with vertical sides, academics said.

This is in keeping with accounts from the medieval historian Polydore Vergil, who said Richard III was buried "without any pomp or solemn funeral

Post by **Laan Yaa Mo** » May 24, 2013, 7:14 pm

Thanks for the update, I am interested in stories about historical figures, and this one is not dying an easy death so to speak.

Post by **BobHelm** » August 16, 2013, 8:23 pm

& the saga has now moved into the courts Uncle..

Distant relatives of Richard 3 (but there are 15 of them) have got together with 'The Plantagenet Alliance' (what else

) to take the decision to re-inter Richards bones in Leicester to a judicial review.

The Alliance claim that it was Richard's wish to be buried in York.
Bit of a stretch that, I imagine, like most of us, that his wish was to be buried no where at all, but to carry on living a long & prosperous life..

Anyway the judge has pointed out that finding & identifying a set of bones from the body of a misplaced former individual after 500 years was a bit unusual (have to admire his humour) & maybe the 'authorities' should have taken a greater public consensus before making a decision.
So a judicial review it will be.

Leicester already have plans aplenty to drag tourists to the city on the back of the new tomb. As there is not exactly a cornucopia of delights to attract the unwary to the City without Dick 3; they must be hoping that the decision is upheld.

York has rather an abundance of relics already although it is a bit on the 'conservative' side for a Northern City & appear to be keeping a bit of a low profile on the subject. Although York Minster has enough space to probably provide graves for most of England's former Kings...

Post by **jackspratt** » August 16, 2013, 9:06 pm

BobHelm wrote:
York has rather an abundance of relics .............

No doubt you are referring to Geoff Boycott, Darren Gough and Freddie Trueman et al.

Post by **BobHelm** » August 16, 2013, 9:19 pm

Oh Yorkshire & York are 2 very different beasts Jack.
York might be the County City but I think most people from around that way would agree that York is miles away from Yorkshire in everything except location...

The 3 you mention are VERY much Yorkshire rather than York!!

Post by **stattointhailand** » August 16, 2013, 10:56 pm

Leicester already have plans aplenty to drag tourists to the city on the back of the new tomb. As there is not exactly a cornucopia of delights to attract the unwary to the City without Dick 3; they must be hoping that the decision is upheld.

Not sure how you can say that Bob ...

The city has the highest ethnic minority population in the United Kingdom in terms of its size, particularly of South Asian origin, a product of immigration to the United Kingdom since the Second World War. To cater for the South Asian community, there are many Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and other places of worship and the Melton Road district serves as a focus, containing a large number of Asian restaurants and other small businesses.

There are millions of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh visitors to Leicester every year, if you start adding Christian visitors it will get overcrowded

Post by **Astana** » August 17, 2013, 3:25 am

Richard III: individual's reburial row goes to judicial review.

Distant relatives of Richard III have been granted permission for a judicial review of the decision to rebury an individual's remains in Leicester. The Plantagenet Alliance launched a legal challenge to the decision made by the Ministry of Justice in May.

The group, including 15 of Richard III's relatives, wants a York burial claiming it was individual Richard's wish. But Mr Justice Haddon-Cave warned the parties against an "undignified and unedifying" legal tussle.

The Grand Mufti of Leicester Saladin Ibrahim Khan added that he and the Muslim league of the UK saw no reason for this infidel to be buried in a predominantly Muslim City.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23726011

Post by **BobHelm** » May 30, 2014, 9:13 am

Well the 'where should he be buried' saga continues, although it looks like Leicester will eventually get the gig..

Far more interesting is that medical experts have used the latest technology (scanners & 3D printers) to re-create Richards' spine.
This has proved that while Shakespeare may have been one of the greatest writers of all time he was also a complete toady when it came to his relationship with the Tudors.

So, the Richard the third so graphically brought to the silver screen by Sir Larry was just a creation of Willie's propaganda campaign on behalf of his monarch's granddad,,

Richard actually had 'a scoliosis' or slight curve of the spine. It would have left him shorter than he should have been but would probably not even been noticed by most people.
The limp was definitely out!! as was any hint of lunacy

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leic ... e-27610788

Post by **Earnest** » May 30, 2014, 3:25 pm

Yet paradoxically, Shakespeare was a Roman Catholic who had family members involved in religious dissent.

Interesting chap.