Digging for Richard III - Mike Pitts

The title of this book, Digging for Richard III, highlights the angle taken by the author, Mike Pitts. Pitts is the editor of British Archaeology magazine & this is the story of the archaeological project that led to the discovery of the Greyfriars Church in Leicester & to the burial place of Richard III. The subtitle, How Archaeology Found the King, says it all.

The book is structured like a play, divided into Acts & Scenes. It begins with a brief overview of the Wars of the Roses & moves quickly to the beginning of the project when Philippa Langley, instigator of the Looking for Richard project, met Richard Buckley of the University of Leicester & asked him to undertake the dig. Philippa Langley’s story has been told in her book, The King’s Grave, co-written with historian Michael Jones. Pitts is respectful of Langley’s work but he’s telling the story from the perspective of the archaeologists involved. Several times he mentions the completely opposite aims of the two main players. Langley is only interested in finding the remains of the king &, after all, she is the one who came up with the money & funded the project. At the same time, the archaeologists are treating it as a normal dig, carrying out the preliminary planning & surveys & formulating their own objectives.

The archaeologists were wary of taking on a project that was looking for the remains of a specific person. Buckley was interested in finding out more about the history of Leicester & discovering the site of the Greyfriars Priory was his main aim. His project had several objectives.  The first was to find the remains of the friary. Then to identify the orientation of the buildings. Then, find the church, then the choir of the church which was where the historical evidence suggested that Richard III was buried. Only then would they begin searching for Richard's remains. As it turned out, they put in their three trenches &, on the very first day, found human remains that turned out to be Richard III.

I found the story of the dig fascinating, especially after having read Philippa Langley's book which focuses so much on her more emotional quest to rehabilitate Richard's reputation. I've written about my views on Richard III before & I find myself somewhere in the middle between the lovers & the haters. As a member of the Richard III Society, I'm thrilled to think that the Society was so involved in the Looking for Richard project. I've read everything I can find on the dig, the scientific results of the tests carried out so far & the implications for future study of Richard's scoliosis, for example. Langley was so sure that the hunchback of Shakespeare's play was a libel & a myth that to see the curved spine of the skeleton was a real shock. As more scientific work has been done, it already seems that the scoliosis that looked so extreme in the ground, may not have been so obvious when Richard was alive. He may have just had one shoulder higher than the other which, after all, was mentioned in his lifetime. He was rich enough to be able to afford good tailors & custom made armour to hide the problem. What does this mean for the view that the Tudors invented the deformity as a reflection of the blackness of Richard's soul? I don't think it means that because the Tudors were right about the deformity, they were necessarily right about everything else. Lots of food for thought & many more books & articles to read on both sides of the question.

Views on Richard III range from the white view that he could do no wrong & was a noble soul maligned by the Tudors & Shakespeare's play to the black view that he was a villain & monster who definitely murdered his nephews, his wife & old King Henry VI among others. My view is more grey than either of these. I started out with the white view after reading Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time when I was a teenager. However, the more I've read, the more I think that Richard was no better or worse than any other king or member of the nobility in that violent time. The conflicting views fascinate me & keep me reading everything about Richard that I can find & keeping as open a mind as possible.

Mike Pitts has written about the story of the dig for the general reader. If you've watched Time Team or read British Archaeology or Current Archaeology magazines, you won't be bamboozled by the science or the archaeological terminology. All of the sober analysis is here as well as the sheer excitement of the archaeologists when they realised that they'd found not only the Greyfriars church (which they had good reason to think they would find) but also the remains of the last English king to die in battle, one of the most controversial figures in English history, King Richard III.

The King's Grave : the search for Richard III - Philippa Langley & Michael Jones

The discovery of the grave of Richard III in the church of the Greyfriars in Leicester has been the story of the decade for those of us interested in history & archaeology. For those of us who are members of The Richard III Society, it's been an exciting time as we followed the Looking for Richard project every step of the way through regular updates from the Society as well as following the newspapers, blogs & websites speculating about the identity of the remains. Since February, when the remains found in the grave in the Social Services car park in Leicester (formerly the Church of the Greyfriars), were formally identified as being those of Richard III, the last English king to die in battle, the interest & attention has been intense. The current legal fight by a group called the Plantagenet Alliance (collateral descendants of Richard's family) to overturn the plans to bury Richard in Leicester Cathedral means that Richard III has barely been out of the headlines for over a year.

The Looking for Richard project was the passion of Philippa Langley, a screenwriter who became interested in Richard III, joined the Society & then became obsessed with finding his grave. Traditional stories described the hasty burial of the king after his death at the battle of Bosworth, the erection of an alabaster tomb over the grave ten years later (paid for by the victor of Bosworth, Henry VII), the destruction of the Church of the Greyfriars at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s & Richard's remains being thrown into the river Soar while his coffin was used as a horse trough at a local pub. Langley's research led her to doubt most of the traditional narrative & she became determined to find Richard's grave & ensure that he was given a dignified reburial in consecrated ground.

Other members of the Richard III Society supported her quest, including Annette Carson, author of Richard III : the maligned king & John Ashdown-Hill, whose research into the location of the Greyfriars Church as well as the DNA profile of Richard would prove crucial in proving that the remains discovered during the dig were, beyond doubt, those of Richard III. The King's Grave is Langley's account of her quest, from the spooky moment when she stood in the Leicester car park & felt that she was literally standing on Richard's grave to the long period of gathering funding for an archaeological dig (including an eleventh hour international appeal to the members of the Richard III Society to contribute when crucial funding was lost) to persuading Richard Buckley & the University of Leicester of the validity of her research & through the two week dig itself & the media storm that followed. Searches for named individuals are rarely undertaken by archaeologists & they are rarely successful. To find the right person in the right place with only a few trenches dug & on the first day of a two week dig was amazing - a million to one chance indeed.

I was surprised how suspenseful this was, especially as I knew the outcome & I'd followed the whole process as closely as was possible from the other side of the world. I've also seen the documentary The King in the Car Park that was filmed during the dig & read everything I could find from newspaper reports, the very informative Ricardian Bulletins & the scholarly articles that have been published so far. Langley's emotional highs & lows are vividly relived. Skeletal remains were discovered in the first trench dug on the very first day & she was immediately convinced that Richard had been found. Although she respected the archaeologist's desire for context & evidence, her belief never wavered. She was proved right as the skeleton was excavated & the damage to the skull & the curvature of the spine were revealed.  The Carbon 14 dating later placed the remains at the right historical period & the DNA research confirmed Richard's identity by matching his DNA with that of two descendants. The scene where she sees the skeleton displayed in a lab & listens to the professionals describing the extent of the scoliosis of the spine & the brutality of the battle wounds is very moving. This was one of the most powerful scenes in the documentary, as well.

Alternate chapters of The King's Grave have been written by historian Michael Jones. Jones fills in the background on Richard's life & times & discusses the main controversies of the reign - how & why Richard took the throne & the fate of the Princes in the Tower. Jones believes that Richard feared that his rule as Protector would not last long once Edward V was crowned & he feared for his future when the young King's Woodville relations resumed their influence over events. He believes that it was the discovery of a plot to rescue the Princes from the Tower that forced Richard's hand & led to him ordering their deaths. Philippa Langley doesn't agree with this interpretation & there's an Appendix that sets out the arguments for & against Richard's involvement in their disappearance. The alternate chapters work well in heightening the suspense of the dig & the scientific tests afterwards as well as filling in the background for readers who are not familiar with Richard's life.

The King's Grave is an excellent account of the search for Richard III & a useful introduction to his life. It's the perfect taster for the many scholarly articles that will follow & the research that will result into the man & this most controversial period of English history.

Richard liveth yet

Well, it's official. The remains found by the archeological team in a car park in Leicester are those of Richard III. The media conference held at the university of Leicester was very exciting. I was able to listen to it through the BBC Radio Leicester website. The scientific evidence was explained by the members of the archaeological & scientific team & all the evidence points to the conclusion that the remains are those of Richard III.

More information can be found at the websites of the Richard III Society which is about to be updated & the University of Leicester website here.

The results of the scientific testing, especially the DNA results, are fascinating & I can't wait to read more details about all this in future publications of the Richard III Society. I also hope that the documentary shown this evening in the UK, The King in the Car Park, is shown here or made available on DVD very soon so eager Ricardians can have a chance to see it all for themselves.

The quote I've used for the title of this post is from a poem written by the compiler of the Clare Roll, an armorial history of the Clare family who counted Richard, Duke of York among their descendents. Richard III was this Duke of York's son & the poem lists the children of the Duke of York & his Duchess, Cecily Neville. The description of Richard, Richard liveth yet, has been interpreted as meaning that Richard was a sickly child whose survival was worthy of note. It could also just mean that Richard was alive (at the age of three or four) unlike several of his siblings who had died young. Contemporary references to Richard's appearance will be re-examined with interest in the aftermath of the scientific observations & tests conducted on the remains.

These are very exciting times for anyone interested in medieval history.

The Resurrection of Richard III?

The discovery of a skeleton which could be the remains of Richard III (picture from here) is incredibly exciting. A team of archaeologists from the University of Leicester conducted a dig in a Council car park which was thought to be the site of the Greyfriars church where Richard's body was buried after the Battle of Bosworth in August 1485. Amazingly, the archaeologists found not only the church but the choir where Richard was said to have been buried. Then, they found a male skeleton with wounds to the head & scoliosis of the spine. It's almost too good to be true. DNA testing will be carried out as a descendant of Richard's sister, Anne, has been traced thanks to the research of  historian John Ashdown-Hill.

The Richard III Society has been instrumental in making the dig a reality with members carrying out extensive research & convincing the University team that there was enough evidence to prove or disprove the stories about the Greyfriars church which was destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s.

The Richard III Society website has a very informative article on the news here (click on What's New & scroll down a little for the press release). There's also news of a Channel 4 documentary to be shown later this year. Fingers crossed it's shown here as well. Richard is one of the few Kings of England whose burial site is unknown (not counting Edward V which is another story altogether!) but maybe this discovery will change that. More information on the discovery & links to other articles can be found here. I've been fascinated by Richard since I first read Josephine Tey's novel, The Daughter of Time, at high school. I'm a member of the Richard III Society & I've read countless books, both fiction & non-fiction, on the period & the personalities. I can't wait for the next instalment!