I'm not evil, alright? It's just a squint.
…probably. The discovery of a medieval
skeleton in the remains of the Choir of Greyfriars church has inspired a lot of
excitement in recent days, for the bones could well be those of King Richard
III, one of the most controversial figures in English history.
It almost seems too good to be true, but it
certainly sounds like our man: Richard, as every schoolboy knows (or did,
before they discovered the pleasures of happy slapping and crack cocaine) was said
to be deformed, and was very definitely killed in battle against the ragtag
army of the Welsh usurper, Henry Tudor, at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. The
man found under a council car park near a ring road in Leicester
has an arrow-head in his back, pronounced scoliois or curvature of the spine,
and a mangled skull:
Just to be sure, a DNA test is now being
conducted, with the bones being tested against the DNA of Richard’s living
descendents, which will take about three months to complete:
Whether or not the bones really are those
of Richard III, what is undeniable is the emotional response from many quarters
to his possible discovery. Despite being over 600 years dead, Richard has a
great many fans and admirers, often termed ‘Ricardians’, and there is even a
Richard III Society dedicated to cleaning up his rather murky historical
reputation. Since the discovery of the bones journalists have been lining up to
say nice things about the man and his brief reign, such as this, um, interesting piece in The Telegraph
calling for a state funeral and comparing Richard favourably to ‘bloodthirsty
maniacs’ such as Edward I and Henry VIII:
Whatever is finally done with Richard’s
remains – assuming they are his – it would be nice to think that his discovery
and burial will lead to a more balanced assessment of a man who was neither
hero nor villain, toad-like hunchback monster or maligned hero-king. It’s
difficult to attempt a balanced picture of such a complex and divisive figure
in a few glib paragraphs, but I’ll give it a try.
King Richard III was memorably vilified by
Shakespeare as a matchless villain who intimated his evil thoughts to the
audience and slaughtered his way to the throne, mowing down Edward of
Lancaster, Henry VI, his brother George, Duke of Clarence, William Lord
Hastings, Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers…and of course, his two nephews, the
famous ‘princes in the Tower’, Edward V and Richard, Duke of York.
Of this rather impressive list of victims,
Richard certainly had Hastings killed in a shocking and illegal fashion, and
Anthony Woodville and his nephew Richard Grey were both seized and executed on
Richard’s orders. There is no direct evidence that he had a hand in the deaths
of most of the others, and none at all that he murdered the princes.
Various arguments and justifications have
been put forward justifying Richard’s apparently ruthless and self-serving behaviour leading to his seizure of power in 1483. The pulse-quickening joys of
contemporary documents such as Titulus Regius and the Stillington Precontract are often
wheeled out in Richard’s defence as part of explanations for his actions, and
in 1984 he was even granted a televised trial for his alleged murder of the
princes (verdict: Not Guilty). It has also been pointed out that up until 1483 he
was a model subject, absolutely loyal to his brother Edward IV, and never
showed any signs – unlike his grasping brother Clarence – of harbouring
treacherous ambitions.
The man does not lack for defenders, then, but
in this blog’s view none of it is enough to wipe his slate clean. The principal
charge against Richard’s reputation, the murder of his nephews, may never be
proved conclusively one way or the other, but at the time of their
disappearance from public view in 1483 he had the prime motive and opportunity
to be their assassin. Other suspects have been put forward – principally the
Duke of Buckingham and Henry Tudor – but none, to my mind, are convincing.
Whether or not Richard was capable of
ordering the deaths of innocents depends on your reading of the man. He was
raised during The Wars of the Roses, during which time much of England’s
baronage wiped each other out in an orgy of battlefield deaths and drumhead
executions. Richard’s own father was killed in battle, and from an early age he
was used to violent death and bloodshed: at the age of just 17, he took part in
the treason trials of Henry Courtenay and Lord Hungerford, and at 18 he fought
at the Battle of Tewkesbury, where the last Lancastrian army was defeated and
butchered with a cruelty typical of the age. Thus Richard grew up in an
atmosphere of murderous realpolitik and
bloodstained paranoia, where a man learned to act in ruthless and predatory
fashion if he wanted to survive.
Above all, Richard learned the importance of striking
quickly at those that threatened him, hence his actions in 1483. Remarkably
little sympathy is wasted on those that definitely did fall victim to Richard,
and some effort has been made to justify his actions by portraying them in a
negative light: Lord Hastings, for instance, in reality one of the most loyal
and capable supporters of the Yorkist regime, has been depicted in fiction as a
murderous paedophile. The fact that Richard’s thugs dragged Hastings out of a
council chamber and hacked his head off, without waiting for even the semblance
of a trial, is made much more palatable if Hastings can be vilified.
In the end, propaganda works both ways.
Richard suffered from it for many centuries, and now it seems that some of
those who wish to recast him as a tragic hero are prepared to exercise it on
his behalf. The grim and unexciting reality is that Richard III was a
competent, ruthless aristocrat, typical of his class and time, who got greedy
and paid for it on a bloody August day in 1485.
Rest in pieces, Your Highness…
