The Last Days of Richard III and the Fate of His DNA (14 page)

Both the Crowland chronicler and Vergil, in reporting Richard III's disturbed sleep and the reasons for it, state that the king himself was the ultimate source of their information. Frankly, this sounds inherently improbable. A far more likely source for any such report would have been the royal servants (who, unlike Richard himself, were still around after the battle). Clearly, at a period when dreams and portents were still taken seriously, it would ill have become a military commander who happened to experience a bad night's sleep on the eve of a battle to broadcast the fact to all and sundry the following morning. A far more likely response would surely have been to do everything possible to conceal the fact. Thus, if Richard III did behave in the manner reported, this was extraordinary conduct on his part and seems inexplicable.

The excuse given by both writers – that Richard looked drawn and wished to make it clear that this was not because he feared the enemy – really will not do, since Richard's reported solution was as bad as (if not worse than) the problem which he was supposedly seeking to resolve. If he looked drawn and wished to attribute this to something other than fear of his foes, he could simply have told his companions that he had been suffering from toothache.
²⁰
Moreover, the picture that emerges of a reluctant and lacklustre Richard on the morning of the battle, does not accord at all well either with the accounts of his evident courage during the preceding days, or with the subsequent reports of his bravery and determination on the battlefield itself. In the final analysis we have no possible way of knowing whether Richard III slept well or badly on the night of 21/22 August. However, even if we accept that his sleep was disturbed, there nevertheless seem to be sound reasons for doubting the
cause
alleged by both the Crowland author and Polydore Vergil.

One sentence from these narratives which is of some possible interest is the remark from the Crowland chronicler that Richard III ‘presented a countenance which was always drawn'. This sounds like the report of someone who had actually seen King Richard on a fairly regular basis, and it may, therefore, be accurate.
²¹
This detail is not essential to the story of Richard's troubled night (within which context it coincidentally occurs) since our other source, Polydore Vergil (who certainly had not seen Richard on a regular basis), omits it. However, it appears to accord quite well with the physical evidence of the earliest surviving copy of the portrait of Richard, the original of which, as we have already seen, was probably painted in 1485.

There are a number of possible explanations as to why Richard may have looked drawn, and the choice between them can be nothing more than guesswork. We know that Richard had suffered intimate bereavements during the course of 1484/85. He had also been catapulted into the role of king, a position which he had never expected to occupy, and which he may well have assumed more from a sense of duty than from any strong desire to do so. Having attained that exalted and lonely eminence, he had then learnt the hard way that those who protest their friendship and support are not always sincere. It is doubtful whether Richard III considered the throne a bed of roses.

8
‘He has now Departed from Amongst the Living'
¹

As we have seen, there are two important early written sources for the Battle of Bosworth: the Crowland Chronicle continuation and Vergil's history. Based upon these and upon the recent battlefield site excavations, we shall now attempt to reconstruct this much discussed battle.
²

Richard III is traditionally thought to have camped upon Ambion Hill the night before the battle. However, it is perhaps more likely that the large royal army camped in and around Sutton Cheney. Henry ‘Tudor' had spent the night of 21/22 August at Merevale. Like Richard, he was apparently wakeful. Before dawn, he is reported to have had a secret conference with Sir William Stanley. A conference which possibly included William's brother – and Henry's stepfather – Thomas, Lord Stanley. According to Vergil, Lord Stanley was present, though this has been disputed and Stanley himself later implied otherwise.
³
It is difficult to judge whether Stanley or Vergil was telling the truth. Our understanding of what Lord Stanley did – or did not do – is complicated by his own subsequent editing of history.

We shall presently summarise the events of King Richard's last morning on earth. Before we can do so, however, there are three important elements of our story which are somewhat contentious, and which therefore need to be reviewed in specific detail, in order that we can integrate them correctly into the broader picture of events. The three points in question are reports relating to Richard's last mass, to his breakfast on the morning of the 22 August, and to an object often referred to as the
Bosworth Cross
– but which should more accurately be called the
Bosworth Crucifix.

Whether he slept well or badly during the night of 21/22 August 1485, Richard III probably awoke early and we know that he rose at dawn (6 a.m. BST or 5 a.m. GMT on 22 August – see
appendix 3
). This was traditional on the morning of a battle, for the fighting itself often started at an early hour, and there were personal preparations and military dispositions to be dealt with first. There is no reason whatever to countenance the unfortunate and quite incredible twentieth-century invention that was added to the Bosworth legend in the 1920s,
⁴
which would have us believe that on the morning of the battle Richard III walked up to the parish church at Sutton Cheney to attend mass there. There is certainly no contemporary authority for this nonsense.
⁵
As we shall see later, when we explore the question of Richard's burial, in attempting to rediscover the
real
Richard III it is very important to deal ruthlessly with all the later mythology. Therefore, in view of recent attempts to defend the utterly improbable story that Richard heard his last mass in Sutton Cheney church, perhaps a little more needs to be said about this.

First, no parish church would have celebrated its regular daily mass at dawn! If Richard had walked to Sutton Cheney when he arose on the morning of 22 August, he would have found the door locked and no priest in attendance. If he took his own chaplains with him they would have needed to break in to the church and then into the sacristy to obtain the essentials for celebrating mass. There are no possible grounds for believing that they would have done this when they had all the necessary equipment for celebrating the liturgy with them in Richard's camp, and when mass could easily have been celebrated in the king's tent, using a travelling altar.

Our evidence for the presence in Richard's camp of his own clergy comes from the Crowland Chronicle, which specifically tells us that – just as one would expect – Richard III was accompanied in the royal camp by chaplains of the royal household. Like every Catholic priest, these royal servitors were under a religious obligation to celebrate mass on a daily basis. Thus there can be no possible doubt that all of them celebrated mass both on the eve of the battle (Sunday 21 August), and again on Monday 22 August.

Normally, one would simply have assumed that one or more of these chaplains celebrated mass for the king soon after he arose on Monday morning, and before he had breakfast. However, the Crowland chronicler reports that ‘at dawn on Monday morning the chaplains were not ready to celebrate mass for King Richard'.
⁶
Since, as we have already noted, the chronicler himself was almost certainly not present in the royal camp that morning, the source for his information on this point remains unknown. Thus it amounts merely to another piece of hearsay. Nevertheless, the statement as it stands may be literally correct. There is some evidence that the reports which imply there was a degree of confusion surrounding the preparations for the royal mass on the morning of 22 August may have originated with members of Richard III's own immediate entourage. In his
Account of Miracles Performed by the Holy Eucharist
, which Henry Parker, Lord Morley, presented to Queen Mary I in 1554, Morley – himself the son of a Yorkist who fought for Richard III at Bosworth – ascribed this information to a servant of Richard's called Bygoff (now usually identified as Sir Ralph Bigod). This man ‘sayd that Kyng Richard callyd in the morning for to have had mass sayd before hym, but when his chapeleyne had one thing ready, evermore & they wanted another, when they had wyne they lacked breade, And ever one thing was myssing'.
⁷

The preparations required for saying a low weekday mass, which would have been of quite short duration, were so basic and routine that any priest should have been able to accomplish them in a good deal less than half an hour, even with his eyes blindfolded. Since we know the chaplains were present, even if they were not ready the instant the king arose, it seems highly unlikely that they would not have been given rapid instructions to prepare themselves as soon as they knew that Richard was up. If bread and wine were not immediately on hand these could easily and promptly have been procured. Add to this the certain fact that the chaplains
had
to celebrate mass on a daily basis and one cannot but conclude that mass must have been celebrated in the royal tent as soon as the preparations for it were complete.

The fact that the Crowland writer also reports that breakfast was not ready when the king first got up can likewise be dismissed as relatively insignificant. As we have already seen, medieval breakfast was usually a very simple meal, probably comprising bread and wine. How long can this have taken to prepare? And since the king could not break his fast until after mass in any case, there would have been ample time to make the necessary preparations while mass was being said. In short, the reports of the Crowland chronicler may suggest either that Richard III got up earlier than expected, or that his servants overslept, but they certainly prove neither that no mass was celebrated for Richard III on the last morning of his life, nor that the king went into battle on an empty stomach. It may nevertheless be the case that, for his own ends, the chronicler deliberately wished to leave his readers with the impression that Richard III died in a godless and ravenous state.

Until recently, relatively few archaeological finds relating to the Battle of Bosworth had ever been discovered. There is one eighteenth century find, however, which tends to confirm that Richard III's camp was properly staffed by chaplains, equipped with all the necessary items for fulfilling their religious function. In the collection of the Society of Antiquaries of London there is a fifteenth-century crucifix 23 inches tall and 11 inches wide (585mm x 280mm).
⁸
It is generally known from its find location as the ‘Bosworth Cross', although it is in fact not a cross but a crucifix, since it bears an effigy of the crucified Christ. This object has an outer frame forming a foliated border (damaged at either extremity of the transverse limb of the cross).
⁹
The frame surrounds an inner cross formed of strips of decorated metal and bearing a
Corpus
(figure of Christ crucified) somewhat crudely cast in a bronze alloy. A knop on the crown of the head probably indicates that a nimbus was once attached. The whole object was originally gilded. Substantial traces of the gilding remain.

The arms of the crucifix end in roundels, which are decorated on the front with symbols of the four evangelists. The backs of these roundels display suns or stars with many rays, which have been interpreted as Yorkist emblems; the sunburst badge of Edward IV and, by extension, of the house of York.
¹⁰

The limbs of the inner cross which bears the
Corpus
are formed, both front and back, of strips of gilded metal, engraved with a foliate design. In the case of some other, similar crucifixes, such strips are of
champlevé
enamel, typically with the background coloured blue, but the Bosworth example was never decorated in that way. It is made throughout of a yellow bronze alloy, now darkened, and originally overlaid with gold. Presumably the evangelists' emblems on the roundels once had enamelled backgrounds such as are seen on other examples of this type of cross, but no trace of the enamel is now visible.

As now preserved, the item is mounted on a modern base for display purposes. It was originally designed to be used either as an altar crucifix, mounted on a base, and with the addition of side brackets supporting figures of the Virgin and St John, or as a processional cross, mounted on a staff. From the evidence of other, more complete specimens of the type, when mounted as an altar cross it would have had a six-lobed base surmounted by a dome, upon which a small open crown would have acted as the seating for the shaft of the cross. For processional use it would have been mounted on a long wooden stave, possibly covered by brass tubing.

Nineteenth-century speculation that this crucifix might have come not from the vicinity of the battlefield but from Husbands Bosworth has been shown by the present writer to be baseless.
¹¹
Although its precise find location cannot now be identified, the crucifix is an object of the correct period, and may well be a relic of the battle of 1485. A connection with the travelling chapel royal of Richard III, if unproven, is very plausible. In fact, the crucifix is described in a note in its file at the Society of Antiquaries as belonging to a class of objects ‘intended for use in minor churches and in private chapels'. It is, therefore, precisely the kind of artefact which one would expect to have figured amongst the church plate in use by those royal chaplains who, as we have already seen, undoubtedly accompanied Richard III to Bosworth.