Finding Richard III:

The Official Account of Research by the Retrieval and Reburial Project

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• Publisher: Imprimis Imprimatur
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9780957684034
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Archéologie

Their task was to locate a lost grave in an obliterated church. The 'Looking For Richard' team of historians and researchers spent many years amassing evidence. Now for the first time they reveal the full story of how that evidence took them to a car park in Leicester. Reports of the dig and DNA fingerprinting were shown world-wide and won awards. But the years of prior detective work have never before been recognised. Latin texts, mediaeval priories, old maps, long-lost memorials, misleading tales of grave desecration... not a Dan Brown novel, but a sober account of how painstaking studies of historical records achieved the goal of finding Richard III. Informed by Dr John Ashdown-Hill's sound knowledge of the Franciscans (Greyfriars) and their architecture, together with his discovery of Richard III's mtDNA, the LOOKING FOR RICHARD PROJECT launched by Philippa Langley rested on solid foundations. It rested equally on her own exhaustive research into the Greyfriars site, and her indomitable determination to see it through. Other members made up a team that until now kept a low profile, combining to facilitate, raise the money (the search cost some 00), and cultivate an ethos that laid emphasis on respect for a king who fell defending crown and country. Historian Dr David Johnson and his artist wife, Wendy Johnson, proposed a tomb design that won approval from the Richard III Society, whose members overwhelmingly financed the search. Edited with the sure touch of writer and author Annette Carson, this publication reveals how scholarship and research into 500 years of history underpinned an enterprise of which the world saw only the triumphant end result.

1
Death and Burial: Sine ullo funere honore

On 22 August 1485 Richard III was killed at the battle of Bosworth (known variously at the time as Redemore¹ or Sandeford²). According to the contemporary report of the chronicle of Crowland Abbey, ‘he received many mortal wounds and, like a spirited and most courageous prince, fell in battle on the field and not in flight’ (Nam inter pugnandum et non in fuga ... Richardus multis letalibus vulneribus ictus quasi princeps animosus et audentissimus in campo occubuit).

In death his body was widely reported as subjected to indignities: ‘many other insults were offered’, the Crowland chronicle remarks, which included having a felon’s halter placed around his neck as he was carried to Leicester ‘with insufficient humanity’ (multasque alias contumelias illatus ipsoque non satis humaniter propter funem in collum adjectum usque ad Leicestriam deportato).³

On arrival in Leicester Richard’s body was exposed to public gaze, as the new King Henry VII announced in a public proclamation: ‘... brought dede of the feld unto the towne of Leicestre, and ther was laide oppenly that every man mighe se and luke upon him’.⁴

Reliable sources for what happened during the ensuing days in Leicester are scant and inconsistent, but some accounts mention his body being taken to ‘the Newarke’, which is generally held to refer to the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, known as St Mary-in-the-Newark, a Lancastrian foundation. The Frowyk Chronicle reports that Richard was ‘... bered atte Laycet[er] in the newe vorke’.⁵

This assertion that he was buried in the Newark has given rise to the tentative suggestion that he might have been interred there, at least initially.⁶ However, since his eventual grave is consistently reported to have been in the Franciscan Priory Church at Leicester, a temporary interment followed by exhumation appears to receive little corroboration. The most likely explanation for references to ‘the Newarke’ is that St Mary-in-the-Newark was chosen as the location for the public display of the late king’s body on arrival in Leicester.

The Warwickshire priest and antiquary John Rous, writing after 1486 and before 1491, states that ‘finally’ he was ‘buried in the choir of the Friars Minor at Leicester’ (finaliter apud fratres Minores Leicestriæ in choro est sepultus).⁷ In the Anglica Historia, commissioned by Richard’s successor Henry VII, Polydore Vergil indicates that the new king arrived in Leicester on the evening of 22 August and ‘tarried for two days’ to make preparations for moving on towards London (versus parandi causa duos moratur dies). His version has Richard’s body ‘conveyed to the convent of Franciscan monks [sic] at Leicester ... and there buried two days after’ (Ricardi corpus ... Lecestriam ad coenobium Franciscanorum monachorum deportatur ... biduo post terra humatur). The first half of this sentence confuses monks with friars, but overall it appears that his burial was effected on the same day as Henry VII’s departure, i.e. on 25 August.⁸

Although a variety of fifteenth-century writers came up with their own ideas of his burial place, the reports of Rous and Vergil mentioning the Greyfriars received first-hand confirmation from two sixteenth-century chroniclers, John Leland and Raphael Holinshed, writing within c.60-90 years of Richard’s death. This and other evidence is discussed below in section 3 (‘Memorials of Richard III’).

Polydore Vergil, having reported with satisfaction that Richard’s body was transported to Leicester ‘naked of all clothing’ on the back of a horse with his arms and legs hanging on each side (cuncto nudatum vestitu ac dorso equi impositum, capite et brachiis ac cruribus utrinque pendentibus), completed the picture of disparagement by noting that his interment was afforded no funeral solemnity (sine ullo funere honore).⁹ In this he was followed by succeeding writers. The brothers would of necessity have given Richard proper Christian burial in accordance with the rites of the Catholic Church, therefore Vergil’s comment should be taken to indicate that no solemn ceremonial took place, such as would have been appropriate to the rank of an anointed king. This omission was germane to the ethos of the retrieval and reburial project.

2
Mendicant Orders and the Layout of
a Mediaeval Priory

Following defeat at Bosworth and exposure of his remains to public view in Leicester, Richard III was said by John Rous (pre-1492) and Polydore Vergil (post-1512) to have been buried in the Priory Church of the Franciscan friars (Greyfriars), a Mendicant order whose precinct lay between Leicester Guildhall and St Martin’s Church on its northern side, and the town wall to the south. As mentioned above, John Rous specified the burial place as the choir of the Priory Church. Understanding the probable layout of a Franciscan priory was therefore crucial for locating its choir and the possible site of Richard's tomb on the ground.

Mendicant orders are religious orders of the Catholic Church which traditionally depend on charity for their livelihood. They comprise chiefly Franciscans (Greyfriars), Dominicans (Blackfriars), Carmelites (Whitefriars), and Augustinians (Austin friars).¹⁰ Such orders were founded in the late twelfth or early thirteenth centuries and spread through Western Europe in the thirteenth century. The Franciscans were introduced to England in 1224.

Unlike monks, the friars of the Mendicant orders were not confined to their religious house, but worked out in the community. One of their key roles was participation in the public ministry of the Church, and this included preaching to the people.¹¹ As a result, while their cloisters and the choir of their priory church were normally inaccessible to those who were not members of the religious order, it was essential for the nave of their priory church to be accessible to the laity. In the case of religious houses situated in small villages (e.g. Little Walsingham, Norfolk; Clare, Suffolk, see Fig. 1) this presented no problem. For friaries situated in towns it normally meant that the church needed to be located near a public highway, in order that the lay people of the town could have ready access to the nave of the church. The best preserved example of what this meant in terms of the location of the church building can very clearly be seen in Norwich, where the former Dominican Priory survives as a concert hall and meeting rooms.

The Dominican Priory in Norwich also raises another very important issue. Like all mediaeval churches, priory churches were always orientated west-east, with the choir at the eastern end and the nave at the western end. In the case of the Norwich Dominican Priory the church was aligned adjacent to a road which also ran east-west, and which lay on the southern side of the church. Thus the cloisters (through which lay people were not allowed to pass) had to be sited on the north side of the church.

However, another Norwich mendicant priory had a different orientation. The Norwich Carmelite Priory Church was noted by Dr John Ashdown-Hill to be aligned with its western end adjoining a roadway. Thus the Carmelite Priory could have had its cloisters situated either on the north side of the church, or on the south side. Ashdown-Hill predicted that the cloisters lay on the south side. Other researchers suggested that the cloisters were sited to the north of the church. In the case of the Norwich Carmel this issue has not yet been resolved.

A similar situation existed in mediaeval Leicester. There, for example, the Augustinian Priory (Austin Friars) was located outside the town walls (i.e. in a semi-rural area) and, like the Norwich Carmel, its church was orientated with the western end of the nave fronting a roadway. As a result, access to the Austin Friars Church would have been completely unaffected by the positioning of the cloisters.¹² In theory, the friars would have been free to place their cloisters either on the north of their church or on the south, as in the case of the Norwich Carmel. In actual fact, excavation has shown that they built their church towards the southern end of the site, with their cloisters to the north of the church.

On the other hand Leicester’s Franciscan Priory had an entirely different location, with a significant highway on its northern side. As a result, the Franciscan friars would have been absolutely obliged to take account of access for lay visitors when deciding the relative locations of their church and cloisters. The only realistic option open to them was to build the church on the northern side of the site, adjacent to the road, and then place the cloisters (inaccessible to the laity) on the southern side of the church.

While the cloister and domestic buildings might be situated either on the north side of the church or on the south side (depending on the location of the site), typically the friaries and churches of mediaeval Mendicant religious houses did follow a standard plan (see Figs 1 & 5). The nave, at the western end of the church, often had side aisles, but the choir, at the eastern end, normally had none, and usually the church had no transepts (i.e. was not cruciform in plan). The nave and choir were normally separated by an ambulacrum, ‘slype’ or walkway which gave access from the street through to the domestic buildings of the priory. Above the slype there was normally a bell tower (often octagonal in plan), surmounted by a spire (Fig.3).¹³

During the period approximately 1995-2010, in connection with his wider historical research, Ashdown-Hill studied a number of Mendicant religious houses, including Walsingham Greyfriars,¹⁴ Norwich Blackfriars, Colchester Greyfriars, Norwich Whitefriars,¹⁵ Clare Priory (Austin friars),¹⁶ and Leicester Greyfriars. The evidence from well-preserved buildings or ruins, such as Walsingham Greyfriars and the Norwich Blackfriars, and also of well excavated si...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Death and Burial: Sine ullo funere honore
• 2 Mendicant Orders and the Layout of a Mediaeval Priory
• 3 Memorials of Richard III
• 4 Modern Research
• 5 DNA of Richard III and his Siblings
• 6 Inception of the Search for Richard III
• 7 Local Topography and Archaeology
• 8 Facilitation
• 9 The Dig
• 10 Reburial and Commemoration
• Postscript
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Author Biographies