Piteously slain and murdered

It has been confirmed through DNA analysis that bones of a man found last September in a Leicester car park are those of Richard III, last of the Yorkist kings of England, and last king to die on the field of battle. He was killed on Bosworth Field by forces of Henry Tudor in 1485, age 32.

I know it’s a chink in my Armor of Cynicism (okay—it’s a thumping great crevasse in my Armor of Cynicism), but I’ve always thought that Richard got an undeserved bad rep courtesy of Henry’s spin machine, which was then embellished by Shakespeare’s tragedy about the winter of our discontent.

Henry was a half-Welsh usurper who was trying to establish legitimacy for himself and his dynasty. Shakespeare’s patron for most of his career was Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudor line (it lasted but three generations), so he was basically sucking up to the boss when he wrote about a twisted hunchback who was the personification of evil.

He is presumed to have ordered the murders of his nephews in the Tower of London in 1483; sons of Richard’s late brother Edward IV, they were alleged to have been got rid of to remove any question of legitimacy to his wearing the crown. There’s a whole lot of hoo-ha about this—whether Edward’s marriage to the princes’ mother was actually legal, whether the boys were legitimate heirs, and who would benefit most from their deaths. There’s also a lot of hoo-ha about Richard being a tyrant, a madman and a disastrous ruler. But I don’t believe the facts that have come down to us bear that second lot of hoo-ha out, and I do believe that the hoo-hawers ought to take a good look at the early years of Henry VII’s reign when he was solidifying the throne.

(The hoo-ha has not come to an end with the discovery of Richard’s bones. The cities of Leicester—where he was killed/found—and York—his home town—have both laid claim to him, with rights to entomb him and get all the subsequent tourist business. I believe Leicester has won out—after all, they actually have the skeleton in their possession.

(But what I find fascinating is that, when she was sounded out as to whether Richard might be laid to rest in Westminster Abbey with other kings of England, Elizabeth II—whose dynasty possibly wouldn’t be sitting on the throne if Richard hadn’t been deposed—has made it known that she would not be amused by this. Talk about being a sore winner.)

Richard died with a sword in his hand; his body was mutilated and ultimately buried within a Franciscan friary (because that’s how you treat defeated enemies when you need to lay a foundation for your own precarious legitimacy).

And here’s what the City of York recorded at the time, ‘King Richard, late mercifully reigning over us, was through great treason…piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this city.’