The Crimes of Richard III
mcdnab:
Just to add my points to this
1) Richard of Gloucester was loyal to his brother throughout his life - but being a loyal brother doesn't necessarily continue after the said brother is dead - particularly if you are being urged to take over the throne by friends and supporters.
2) There is NO evidence that Edward IV named a protector in his will, a) his will doesn't survive and b) a King's will was not binding in law and as in earlier cases was often ignored by his council.
3) No one took up arms against Richard of Gloucester following Edward's death in fact Rivers progress south with the young King was nothing if not slow which suggests he saw no threat.
4) The only real bad blood that existed was between Hastings and Dorset - Richard until 1483 was on reasonable terms with Rivers, the Queen and Dorset - he'd knighted the Queen's brother during the war with Scotland a year earlier.
5) The King and his brother were not seen after the summer of 1483 that suggests they died of a) natural causes one of them maybe but both is unlikely b) were murdered by Richard or one of his supporters with access to the tower or c) were perhaps killed in a botched escape attempt or d) escaped to quiet anonymity. Richard had forced Parliament to declare them illegitimate (which was in fact the job of the church not parliament) therefore he ahd little to gain for letting someone see them to prove rumours of their deaths were false that he didn't is to me damning.
I agree that no modern court would convict but i can assure you a medieval one would have done
TimM:
The bones of the two children that were found, a century later, were examined in 1933. However, back then there was no way to tell whose remains they were.
Today, with DNA, they would be. Of course, the Royal Family and the Church Of England would have to give permission first. DNA has settled a lot of historical mysteries, maybe it could solve this one too.
Mind you, this would not solve the mystery of whether Richard III or Henry Tudor was guilty to not, but it would at least prove that those are the remains of the two princes.
Suzanne:
Balanced new biography of Richard III argues the King was a "split personality"
http://www.royalhistorian.com/the-medieval-book-reviews-4-richard-iii-a-life-by-david-baldwin/
DNAgenie:
TimM wrote: Quote
The bones of the two children that were found, a century later, were examined in 1933. However, back then there was no way to tell whose remains they were.
Today, with DNA, they would be. Of course, the Royal Family and the Church Of England would have to give permission first. DNA has settled a lot of historical mysteries, maybe it could solve this one too.
Mind you, this would not solve the mystery of whether Richard III or Henry Tudor was guilty to not, but it would at least prove that those are the remains of the two princes.
Which particular DNA test did you have in mind to show that the remains belonged to the two princes? The possiblities would include Y-DNA, mtDNA and autosomal DNA, but in each case you need someone to test against, and that's where we might run into a problem. Do you know of any living male-line or female-line relatives, or any living close cousins, who might take a DNA test for a comparison?
Then there's the problem of extracting usable lengths of DNA from very old bones. There might be enough for mtDNA but hardly likely for any other tests to be feasible.
Kimberly:
As far as I am aware, the urn contains a hotch - potch of bones, including chicken bones !
I would be interested to know how on earth somebody has managed to claim a possibility that Richard suffered with Coeliac disease.
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