King Richard III was probably hacked and stabbed to death in battle, according to a new study

[brentspeak]

Kind of a "No, duh?" conclusion.

Richard was a fool for putting himself in such a dangerous position in the first place, but give him credit for at least putting his own neck on the line. The last English king to die in battle. Not a good man, but who knows how much of his reputation was rewritten by the Tudors who usurped him?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/09/17/king-richard-iii-died-a-painful-death-according-to-a-new-study/

King Richard III was probably hacked and stabbed to death in battle, according to a new study

By Nick Kirkpatrick September 17

A forensic study released on Wednesday offers a picture of the last gruesome moments of King Richard III’s life before he died in 1485. He was the last English king to die in battle. His real story was mangled in memory forever by Shakespeare: While he appears to have had scoliosis, a sideways curvature of the spine, he was not the hunchback portrayed by The Bard.

But the study confirms contemporary accounts of his death in battle. “Richard’s injuries represent a sustained attack or an attack by several assailants with weapons from the later medieval period,” said Sarah Hainsworth, a professor at the University of Leicester and a co-author of the study. “The wounds to the skull suggest that he was not wearing a helmet, and the absence of defensive wounds on his arms and hands indicate that he was otherwise still armored at the time of his death,” she said in a statement describing the extensive study.

The king’s skeleton was found underneath a parking lot in 2012. The new study, published in the Lancet, used computer scans and other forensic techniques to examine Richard’s head, saying he suffered 11 wounds. The injuries were caused by weapons such as daggers, swords and a long metal pole with an axe and hook used to pull riders from their horses. Hainsworth, a professor of materials engineering, said the king was probably attacked by numerous assailants after getting off of his horse: “Medieval battle was bloody and brutal…. Richard was probably in quite a lot of pain at the end.”

Richard died at the Battle of Bosworth on Aug. 22, 1485, fighting an army led by Henry Tudor, who would become Henry VII. He was surrounded by enemy forces, according to one account, after his horse got stuck in a marsh.

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Good guess. Hacked and stabbed was how you died in battle...

back in the 15th Century.

[Art_from_Ark]

14. Brave Sir Robin was not afraid to get "all hacked and mangled",

at least, not according to his minstrel

[Aristus]

2. They say there's no fanatic like the convert. I'm a convert.

I grew up with Shakespeare's image of a deformed monster-king. I even got to act in a production of Richard III, and viewed him they way nearly everyone else does.

But the experience spurred me to read more about Richard, his reign, the Wars of the Roses, and the times in which he lived. When I found out that he was actually small and slight, rather than grotesque and deformed, that he was a capable administrator rather than a clueless wastrel, and that he was an astoundingly brave warrior and gifted general, my opinion of him changed markedly for the better.

Although there is no proof either way as to whether he had Edward V and his younger brother killed to solidify his own claim to the throne, there is reasonable doubt for him doing so. Especially if you consider the one suspect with a stronger motive than his own: Henry Tudor, later Henry VII. Henry wanted the throne as much as Richard, and didn't have the factor of blood-ties to the victims to give him pause before committing two juvenile homicides.

I continue to feel a great deal of admiration for the despised king Richard III. When his skeleton was discovered and pictures of it were posted on the net, the pitiful sight reminded me of a line from another Shakespeare play, King Lear: "Oh ruined piece of nature!"

[Demit]

3. Did you read 'The Sunne in Splendour'? Terrific book.

[Aristus]

4. Yeah. I own a copy.

Great book.

There's another, older, book in the same vein of rehabilitating Richard's image. The title is We Speak No Treason, a line from the play. I started reading it years ago, but never got into it. Maybe I'll try again someday.

[madinmaryland]

11. I read that book several years ago, also.

Excellent read, as are many of her others.

[JNelson6563]

5. I agree with your views on the infamous murders.

Ol' Henry was a shrew & wiley fellow.

Julie

[brentspeak]

6. To play devil's advocate

Even if there's no direct evidence that Richard had the boys murdered, there's no question at all that he them "disappeared". How come they were never in public again once Richard convinced Parliament to make himself king instead? He was supposed to be their "protector". There's also the matter of Richard ordering the quick executions of Edwards' handlers, not to mention having William Hastings executed (Hastings was supposed to be Richard's closest ally.)

[Aristus]

8. Yeah, these events do muddy the waters for anyone trying to rehab his image.

At best, he was recognizing the practical reality of an unstable throne. He had lived through the worst of the Wars of the Roses, and lost a brother to the Lancastrians. That, the treachery of another brother, and the death of a third (Edward IV) throwing the fragile peace into jeopardy, may have led him to make some unpleasant decisions in order to prevent the start of another war of succession.

[hfojvt]

10. I kinda thought this was all settled

Years back I read some mystery book that was about a King usually accused of regicide. And they went through it and decided that somebody else did it and then were ready to announce it when one discovered that some famous historian had beat them to that conclusion by a couple hundred years.

Of course, it was a work of fiction so none of it has to be true, but I like to think that good historical fiction is based on facts.

[Ron Obvious]

16. Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time perhaps?

That's how I first realised the Shakespearian villain was mostly fiction.

[hfojvt]

17. that sounds kinda familiar

But I have not heard that name in forever. But was that fiction or truth?

[Ron Obvious]

18. It's a classic English mystery novel

Chief inspector SomethingOrOther is recovering in the hospital, bored out of his skull and devours the books people bring him. One of them is a book of faces, and he becomes intrigued with the face of Richard III. From that face, he cannot believe him to be a monster (some policeman, eh?) and enlists the aid of his visitors (and a history student) to do research for him and discovers the truth about Richard III and that the Shakespearian villain was created because Shakespeare was writing for the Tudors.

So it's fiction, but the facts about Richard III in it are historical.

Enjoyable book, I thought.

[hfojvt]

19. oh I know it was fiction

but it mentioned some historian, and made it sound settled that Richard III was innocent and yet it is apparently still being taught that he was not.

Although I suppose many things can never really be known for certain in history.

For example, I am still trying to find out when the Indian named "Roman Nose" died. Dee Brown and others have him dying in 1868 or so at the Battle of Beecher's Island.

But another author (Berthrong) writing about Cheyenne reservation life, mentions an Indian named Roman Nose going to prison in the 1880s. Was that the same Roman Nose, or a different Indian with the same name?

I am hoping the prison has records or the nearby National Archives does.

[treestar]

21. True, he had no right to be King

There was the trumped up story of a prior marriage of Edward's to make the two boys illegitimate. The thing is, though, if hanging onto that, Richard should not have killed them as they were no threat. It would have made better sense not to kill them. Killing them makes it look as if he knows they had a greater right to the throne than he did.

There were other people with motives. The fiction of Philippa Gregory makes the most of the Tudor motive. Henry Tudor wouldn't have been king by conquest with the two boys ahead of him, and probably would not have bothered. And the way the boys disappeared - it could have been others who did it, and Henry VII was plagued with pretenders saying they were one of the boys grown up.

[hughee99]

7. More than 500 years later, prominent Brits are still getting hacked. n/t

[msanthrope]

9. Hey brent---on another thread, I'm still waiting for an answer from you! Don't want to

hijack your thread here, but will note that since you've made an extremely serious accusation against me, I expect you to answer for it.....

I shall be as determined as Richmond on this matter....the day will be mine, with the bloody dog dead. (To the jury, this is a quote from Richard III.

[treestar]

12. So amazing they actually found his remains

after all these years. He was the only King not given a burial.

[csziggy]

13. He was buried at the Church of the Grey Friars

Which was later destroyed by Henry VIII. The exact location was lost and part of the excavation which located Richard's remains was intended to find the church.

On 24 August 2012, the University of Leicester and Leicester City Council, in association with the Richard III Society, announced that they had joined forces to begin a search for the remains of King Richard. Originally instigated by Philippa Langley of the Society's Looking For Richard Project[143][144][145] and led by University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS), experts set out to locate the lost site of the former Greyfriars Church (demolished during Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries), and to discover whether his remains were still interred there.[146][147] By comparing fixed points between maps in a historical sequence, the search located the Church of the Grey Friars, where Richard's body had been hastily buried without pomp in 1485, its foundations identifiable beneath a modern-day city centre car park.[148]

On 5 September 2012 the excavators announced that they had identified Greyfriars church[149] and two days later that they had identified the location of Robert Herrick's garden, where the memorial to Richard III stood in the early 17th century.[150] A human skeleton was found beneath the Church's choir.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_III_of_England#Discovery_of_remains

[EX500rider]

15. Looks like maybe a war mace got him from behind with no helmet..

[cwydro]

20. What I love

is that they can tell a lot about his diet.

Ate a lot of swan, heron, and drank a lot of wine.

[Orrex]

22. Another case of malicious hacking.

And I thought that Kate Upton had it bad.