My mom introduced me to Richard III

 Like most people who know anything about Richard III, I got my first impression about him from Shakespeare. For me, he was the arch villain I loved to hate. And who could not love Laurence Olivier’s brilliant portrayal, or Ian McKellen’s controversial one. They both brought Shakespeare’s villain to life creating a man with whom the audience could even sympathize.

Richard III

One day, about nine years ago, my mother asked me if I had ever read Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman. I hadn’t, but since my mom has great taste in books (I agree with her choices), I went to the library the next day and borrowed this nearly thousand page historical fiction. I was spellbound from the start. Penman introduces us to a seven year-old boy, who eventually becomes the king of England—not through treachery and murder that Shakespeare would have you believe—but through unwavering loyalty to his brother, Edward IV and through a strange twist of fate. On his deathbed, Edward IV names his brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, protector to his oldest son, Edward who was still a minor. Richard was not there when Edward IV died, but only learned of the events about a week after the fact. While serving as protector, Richard learns from the Bishop of Bath that Edward IV had been previously married before he had married the mother of his children, and that his first wife was still alive at the time of the bigamous marriage. All Edward’s children were legally declared bastards, thus unable to inherit title. Richard of Gloucester was next in line.

I was so blown over by these and other revelations in Sunne in Splendour, that I had to do my own research. I found Richard’s life so compelling that I found I wanted to have a chat with him. The only way I could think of doing that was to write him into the 21^st-century. It started small, but grew to three novels, the first two of which are published and the third a work in progress.

Myth busting series: Did Edward V have a diseased jaw?

In 1674, workers at the Tower of London exposed bones of two children in a pit ten feet deep under a stairwell that was part of the White Tower. About four days after the bones were found, Charles II, then king of England, declared these bones were those of the princes and placed in an urn in Henry VII’s chapel in Westminster Abbey after giving them a funeral. In 1933 Professor Wright examined the bones and concluded the lower jaw of the older child was diseased. If Edward V had a diseased or infected jaw, then this finding would strengthen the theory that the bones belonged to the princes. But did he?

I could find no specific mention of Edward V having had a diseased jaw or having serious health problems in searching through contemporary documentation. The one mention I did find is from Mancini’s Usurpation: “...the young king, Edward V, felt himself to be awaiting death in the Tower.” Mancini mentions Argentine (Edward V’s physician) by name but doesn’t claim to have received this information directly from Argentine.

Edward may well have feared for his life since the important members of his entourage (Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan) had been arrested, held for treason and later executed.

The next account is found in More’s History of King Richard the Third (not contemporary, but he did have access to people who were Richard III’s contemporaries). The dowager Queen, Elizabeth protested that the younger prince “...nedeth good loking to, hath a while ben so sore diseased vexed with sicknes, and is so newly rather a lyttle amended then well recouered...” While this is hearsay, she may well have protested in this manner in an attempt to keep Richard of York with her in sanctuary rather than give him up to their uncle. In any case, even More’s account doesn’t say that Edward was ill.

Another factor may be from the excavation and examination of bones from a cousin, Anne Mowbray. The bones showed she had a rare congenital absence of both left second molars. According the to the 1965 article on Anne Mowbray’s teeth, the older of the tower bones shows the distal maxillary premolars had failed to develop and the younger of the bones had a suppressed second milk molar.

In the absence of DNA evidence that would match the bones’ DNA to Elizabeth Woodville and Edward IV, and facial reconstruction using the skulls and then seeing if either skull matches up with portraits of Edward V, this, for me, is the most convincing argument that the bones could be those of the princes.

References:

C. A. J. Armstrong, ed., The Usurpation of Richard III, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1936.

Bertram Fields, Royal Blood, New York, ReganBooks, 2000.

Thomas More, The History of King Richard the Third, online at University of Oregon, read here.

Article on Anne Mowbray’s teeth from Br Med J, v.2(5477); Dec 25, 1965, link to PDF excerpt.