DNA Confirms Parking Lot Remains Belong To King Richard III 212
An anonymous reader writes "It turns out that the remains found in a parking lot in Leicester, England belong to none other than King Richard III, one of the most reviled monarchs of English history. Scientists announced on Monday that they were able to confirm the identity of the skeleton through DNA testing."
Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
I haven't gotten a straight answer from MSM accounts as to why they even suspected this might be KR3.
Certainly, every time someone is dug up they don't say, "Oh look we found a body, better test it to see if this one is King Richard III maybe its him this time?"
Do you take the Tudors as historians? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Most reviled"... but also among the most defended (though the former lead to the latter).
Not that I'm particular thrilled with the idea of kings in general, but most everything bad about him was written by people with a vested interest in running him down.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
He would have been buried under a large paving stone in the floor of the church. It would have been engraved with his name, but was probably lost when the church was demolished. The Tudors had no interest in preserving his memory, which was a threat to their legitimacy.
Re:Do you take the Tudors as historians? (Score:5, Interesting)
He was responsible for the North of England while his brother was king. There were laws protecting the weak from the strong, laws which were habitually ignored. He changed that and as the king's brother had the muscle to make it stick. When the French persuaded the Scottish king to distract the English by conducting raids in the border areas, he took an army to Edinburgh and did some serious damage there. The people in the north loved him. Unfortunately the Duke of Northumberland did not like the competition and betrayed Richard. The City of York tried to provide an army to support Richard but Northumberland was the one who should have led it and he simply left those soldiers behind so he could change sides.
The new king Henry sent Northumberland out to raise taxes. His bodyguard left him unprotected. Commoners dragged him from his horse and killed him. Two generations after Richard's death, the king's reprasentative in the North was complaining that he was being measured against Richard and no-one could live up to that example.
Who killed the Princes in the Tower? It may have been Richard, it was most certainly not the knight who subsequently confessed to it but it was probably Lord Buckingham. He was Richard's must trusted subordinate, had access and seems to have done the deed immediately before he rebelled against Richard and tried to become king himself. He was utterly outclassed as a general and his army was no match for Richard's.
Re:Why? (Score:0, Interesting)
More then likely, he was found with jewelry or something that gave the hint.
My question is, why would he be buried under a parking lot?
Because fate loves irony. He died shortly after offering his kingdom for a horse, and he was found under the wheels of a Mustang.
That's not ironic, that's a coincidence (if it were true).
Except it is not true. He was offered the chance to escape on a horse but he chose to fight on. The accepted history comes from the Lancastrian propagandist the Earl of Oxford a playwright.
Re:Do you take the Tudors as historians? (Score:4, Interesting)
My understanding is that the shadow of the Princes' disappearance and likely murder still hangs heaviest over Richard III. While some have accused Henry VII of the crime, the timing does not quite work out, even though Henry VII would likely have been as quick to dispatch the Princes as Richard III, as they would have represented a substantial threat to his pretty weak claim to the throne.
People have to put themselves in the time and place. In essence it was in the closing years of a civil war that would not be put to bed until Henry Tudor was victorious at the Battle of Bosworth Field. In such times, those seeking power will do some pretty awful things. You don't have to go back 500 years to find examples of murder to get rid of inconvenient rivals. Lenin ordered the deaths of the Romanovs for fear that they would undermine the young Soviet state. Napoleon had the duc d'Enghien, Louis Antoine, tried and executed on trumped up charges over fears that he might be the focus of Bourbon plotters seeking to overthrow him.