Richard
III's Bones: Where are they now?
Ed.
Note: Some popular histories report that Richard's bones are
buried under a car park in Leicester; others that they were
dug up at the Dissolution of the Monasteries and thrown into
the River Soar.
Here
are excerpts from the second edition of W. Hutton's The Battle
of Bosworth Field, between Richard the Third and Henry Earl
of Richmond, August 22, 1485, wherein is described the approach
of both armies with plans of the battle, its consequences, the
fall, treatment, and character of Richard, to which is prefixed,
by way of introduction, a history of his life till he assumed
the regal power. This edition, published in 1813 and reviewed
by Hutton, includes an introduction and additions by John Nichols.
Reproduced
here are Hutton's original remarks about the disposition of
Richard's body and additional material compiled by Nichols.
[Hutton's
original account, pp. 141-142]
The
body of King Richard being found among the slain, covered with
wounds, dust, and blood, after suffering many shameful indignities,
was hung over a horse, like a calf, behind a pursuivant at arms,
named Blanch Sanglier, or White-boar, the name of his office,
he wearing a silver boar upon his coat, the cognizance of Richard,
and was carried to Leicester in triumph, that afternoon. The corpse
was perfectly naked, the feet hung on one side, the hands on the
other, and the head lately adorned with a crown, dangling like
a thrum-mop. No King ever made so degraded a spectacle; humanity
and decency ought not to have suffered it. Carte says they
tied a rope about his neck, which is very probable, and perhaps
about his feet, or he could not well have been fastened to the
horse. This was meant as a disgrace to Richard, but it reflected
more upon Henry, or his followers; for to insult weakness is highly
blamable, but more to insult the dead.
The
corpse was exposed two days to public view, in the town hall;
this was Henry's policy, to prevent a future impostor, and his
pride to shew himself a conqueror, and then interred without ceremony,
in the Gray-friers' church. Here Richard rested about fifty years,
with a scrubby alabaster monument erected over him by Henry. At
the destruction of religious houses, his remains were turned out
of their little tenement by the town's people, and lost, and his
coffin of stone, was converted into a watering trough at the White-Horse,
inGallow-tree-gate. Thus all the grandeur for which Richard exerted
uncommon talents, ended in a stile below a beggar.
I
took a journey to Leicester, in 1758, to see a trough which had
been the repository of one of the most singular bodies that ever
existed, by found it had not withstood the ravages of time. The
best intelligence I could obtain was, that it was destroyed about
the latter end of the reign of George the First, and some of the
pieces placed as steps in a cellar, at the same inn where it had
served as a trough.
[J.
N. Nichols' addendum, pp. 219-224]
Richard,
it is universally acknowledged, performed prodigies of valour.
Desperate, perhaps, at the last, he rushed furious into the thickest
of the fight, slew numbers, and among them the standard-bearer
of Richmond, with his own hand; and fell at last, ingloriously
(if tradition may be credited), by a treacherous blow from one
of his own followers. His body was thrown across a horse, and
carried for interment to the Grey Friars at Leicester,
"After
revenge and rage had satiated their barbarous cruelties upon his
dead body, they gave his royal earth a bed of earth, honorably,
appointed by the order of King Henry the Seventh, in the chief
Church of Leicester, called St. Mary's, belonging to the order
and society of the Grey Friers; the King in short time after causing
a fair tomb of mingled-coloured marble, adorned with his statue,
to be erected thereupon; to which some grateful pen had also destined
an epitaph, the copy whereof (never fixed to his stone) I have
seen in a recorded manuscript book chained to a table in a chamber
in the Guildhall of London, which (the faults and corruptions
amended) is thus represented, together with the title thereunto
prefixed, as I found it:
"Epitaphium
Regis Richardi Tertii, sepulti ad Leicestriam, jussu et sumptibus
Sti Regis Henrici Septimi.
Hic ego, quem vario tellus sub marmore claudit,
Tertius a justa[a] voce Richardus eram.
Tutor eram patriae[b], patrius pro jure nepotis;
Dirupta, tenui regna Britanna, fide.
Sexaginta dies binis duntaxat ademptis
AEstatesque tuli tunc[c] mea sceptra duas.
Fortiter in bello certans[d] desertus ab Anglis,
Rex Henrici, tibi, septime, succubui.
At sumptu, pius ipse, tuo, sic ossa dicaras[e],
Regem olimque facis regis honore coli.
Quatuor exceptis jam tantum, quinque bis annis,
Acta trecenta quidem, lustra salutis erant.
Anteque Septembris undena luce kalendas,
Reddideram rubrae jura petita[f] Rosae.
At mea, quisquis eris, propter commissa precare,
Sit minor ut precibus poena levata [g] tuis."
***Various
readings in this epitaph, in a copy given by Sandford, p. 435,
from the Heralds' College MSS. vol. I p. 3:
a.
Multa; b. Nam patriae tutor; c. Non; d. Merito; e. Decoras; f.
Dedita jura; g. Fienda
Englished:
"I
who am laid beneath this marble stone,
Richard the Third, possess'd the British Throne.
My Country's Guardian in my Nephew's claim,
By trust betray'd I to the Kingdom came.
Two years and sixty days, save two, I reign'd;
And bravely strove in fight; but, unsustain'd
My English left me in the luckless field,
Where I to Henry's arms was forc'd to yield.
Yet as his cost my corse this Tomb obtains,
Who piously interr'd me, and ordains
That Regal honours wait a King's remains.
Th' year thirteen hundred 'twas and eighty-four,
The twenty-first of August, when its power
And all its rights I did to the Red Rose restore.
Reader, whoe'er thou art, thy prayers bestow,
T'atone my crimes, and ease my pains below."
[Buck's
Richard III, in the "Complete History of England," vol. I, p.
577.]
"The
wicked and tyrannical prince king Richard III. being slain at
Bosworth, his body was begged by the nuns [friers] at Leicester
(aliter Grey friers), and buried in their chapel there; at the
dissolution whereof, the place of his burial happened to fall
into the bounds of a citizen's garden; which being (after) purchased
by Mr. Robert Heyrick (some time mayor of Leicester), was by him
covered with a handsome stone pillar, three feet high, with this
inscription: 'Here lies the body of Richard III, some time king
of England.' This he shewed me (Christopher Wren, B.D.) walking
in the garden, 1612." [Wren's Parentalia, p. 114]
The
Rev. Samuel Carte, vicar of St. Martin's in Leicester, says, in
1720, "I know no other evidence that the stone coffin formerly
used for a horse-trough was king Richard's, but the constancy
of the tradition. There is a little part of it still preserved
at the White Horse Inn, in which one may observe some appearance
of the hollow, fitted for retaining the head and the shoulders."
Mr.
Throsby adds, "When I was a boy, the end that then remained stood
as a part of a heap of rubbish, in the inn-yard, of brick-ends,
stones, &c."
"King
Richard III, before the Battle of Bosworth, rode through the South
Gate [of Leicester]; a poor old blind man (by profession a wheelwright)
sat begging, and, hearing his approach, said, that if the Moon
changed twice that day, having by her ordinary course changed
in the morning, king Richard should lose his crown, and be slain:
And a nobleman that carried the Moon for his colours revolted;
thereby he lost his life and kingdom." ["Tenne strange prophecies,"
&c. 1644. ]
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