Richard III of England - Looking for Richard III's body

Here is our Geni project for members of Haplogroup J:

http://www.geni.com/projects/J-mtDNA/8529

I assume that they will now do DNA tests on the "Princes in the Tower",, the skeletons discovered in the walls of the Tower of London in the (?1700s) and transferred to (?) Westminster Abbey.

But unlike modern DNA tests this wont reveal the mudererer (if any): my bet is the Duke of Buckingham, who was Constable of the Tower at the time and who immediately started a rebellion against Richard III to become King.

I'm also a fan of the Duke of Buckingham as the murderer of the Princes in the Tower ;)

There is some chatter across the net that they might now do tests on the bodies that are thought to be the princes, but of course the mtDNA will be different. They'll have to do a yDNA test first to support a link to Richard III, then the mtDNA test will give us Elizabeth Woodville. That would be truly exciting stuff.

For that DNA testing, they'll have to get the Queen's permission - and the last time they asked, she said "No!"

Should we start a "Whodunit" discussion about the Princes? I'm game....

My understanding (from the journal of the Richard III Society) was that the Queen said No because there is a deep concern among her advisers that scientific tests could destroy too much material. Scientists have learned their lesson from all the material destroyed to conduct early carbon-dating tests -- if you wait, the science advances. More can be discovered with less destructive tests.

Thanks, Brendan. I actually had to dig around for a birth date for Anne St. Leger....

Details of facial reconstruction of Richard III have been released:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-21328380

He was my 15th great-uncle.

You

Edie Turner
your mother

Lucy Davis
her mother

Rev Charles Howard
her father

Rev Thomas Henry Howard
his father

Thomas Howard
his father

Thomas Howard
his father

Robert Howard
his father

Stanley Howard
his father

Hon Edward Howard
his father

Sir Henry Frederick Howard, 22nd Earl of Arundel
his father

Lady Alethea Talbot, Baroness Furnivall
his mother

Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury
her father

Gertrude Manners, Countess of Shrewsbury
his mother

Thomas Manners, 1st Earl of Rutland
her father

Anne St Leger
his mother

Anne of York, Duchess of Exeter
her mother

Richard III of England
her brother

6th cousin, 14x removed.

Richard III in a new guise.

http://www.geni.com/path/Christian+M%C3%B6rling+is+related+to+Richa...

Richard 111 is my 2nd cousin, 17 times removed !!!

Of course if Shakespeare's portrait of him was right, it's not terribly safe being one of his relations........

Shakespeare didn't give a toot about "historical accuracy" as long as he could write a thundering good play. And all his sources were suspect, since almost all of them were rubbishing Richard to shore up the (dubious) legitimacy of the Tudor claim.

It was even more dangerous to be a relative of Henry VII or Henry VIII ;)

Why are there so few direct descents? Because the Tudors eliminated the competition.

I've never liked the Tudors, tho' I admit that Elizabeth I had something. (Tortured people, I'd guess, being jumped-up upstarts), Executing the 91-year-old Countess of Suffolk for witchcraft goes rather further than anything Richard is accused of.

But while I like Richard III, and think him innocent of the murder (as I suppose it was) of the Princes in the Tower, he would either have had to eliminate them in due course or face possible elimination himself. Moral choices are difficult enough today, but for rulers then they were more difficult

Second cousin 19 times removed

He is my 10th cousin 16 times removed . I can see the resemblance now that his face is reconstructed :-)

@cornelis van amstel van mijnden is 5th cousin 7 times removed . See his face from a contemporary painting by Jan van Scorel at present in the Utrecht Central Museum

Did anyone see the clay head bust of Richard III that was constructed using the measurements of his skull? Wow!! I saw resemble right down to the NOSE!! especially the nose and cheek bones :) Found it on yahoo news

The reconstruction is much better-looking than the portraits, most of which have been altered to support the Tudor fable of a thoroughgoing villain that England was much better off without.

2nd cousin 17x removed. If his new profile picture is taken from the skull measurements, he resembled several people in my family.

He is my 1st Cousin, 16 times removed...

@Maven.. I agree it is much better but some of the portrait artist were pretty close back then. It turns out he had severe scoliosis whish gave the appearance of a hump.
@Maria..Its incredible how physical features can still be passed on and recognized after so many generations.

Scoliosis isn't the same thing as kyphosis. It's a side-to-side twist which can put the shoulders out of line (I have a slight case, and my shoulders are just uneven enough to annoy tailors). Kyphosis is the outward bend which results in "hunchback" - and apparently the skeletal remains don't support *that*.

Scoliosis is indeed when the spine twist sideways...however this usually also result in a rotational element causing the "rib-hump" of the "hunchback".
Kyphosis is the normal forward and backward curve of the spine when standing upright, viewed from the side. This curve can be exaggerated from may different reasons.
Depending on degree of rational and sideways involvement the shoulder girdle will have to sit different on the two sides. If involving the upper Thoracic and the Cervical spine the "Hump will be more pronounced as well. If it did do so, the nerves coming from the neck area could be much more likely to get trapped and cause pain and weakness into the arm!
The common type is called Idiopathic Scoliosis (means we don't know why) and develops during puberty.
Basically if Richard had lived into old age and potentially develop osteoporosis the "hump" would have been further pronounced, as you will see many examples of up and down any high street.
Our Dearly belated Queen Mother, Ingrid, of Denmark, who passed away in an advanced age, could be mentioned as a prime example of this.
Unless they rebuild his spine in an upright position with the ribs fixed to the sternum, taking care to position the vertebrae according to the scoliosis remodelling of them ..... please be careful to proclaim that he didn't have the "hunchback" ..... all indications so far is that he did...but to what degree we don't know before they measure the angles. The scan they performed on a flat surface taking no account of the true vertebral position.
Unsure if all ribs and sternum was found.

Well, any deformity can't have been *too* obvious - Richard and his wife had an "old-fashioned" (even for their day) coronation, with both of them stripped to the waist.

Well, they did call him a Hunchback back then, so it must have been somewhat noticeable.! And so you know they were striped to their waist. Sound kind of prevented. Well , they were odd back then. Not to say people can't be odd nowadays. Hope you aren't going by pictures. they make Mary mother of Christ with her breast hanging out in picture and you that would never have happened in public! It's like the status of David with water coming out of his privates. Not that, I don't care if it's art , is disguising and shouldn't be in a church but it is.

No, this was part of the coronation ceremony - the anointing. Modern ceremonies don't go that far (I'm not sure it was ever done again, to be honest), but Richard and Anne peeled right to the waist for the holy oil, and then pulled their robes back on. It's seldom mentioned because nobody wants to talk about bare titties in public.

Richard was *never* called a hunchback in his own lifetime. That only started with the Tudors, who had every reason to want to blacken his name. They would have preferred for history to forget him - and, ironically, their own defamation efforts ensured that he would be remembered.

People were what we would think of as physically disgusting in those days. 100 years after Richard III, regular bathing in Spain might get you tortured by the Spanish Inquisition as a probable Jew or Muslim masquerading as a Christian (why would a good Christian need to bathe?); 150 years after him Kings were still going to the toilet in public (with the people admitted thinking themselves privileged to observe his bodily functions); during his life-time forks for eating were just coming into fashion in Italy - everyone else ate with their hands; and I think the Duke of Buckingham who rebelled against Richard in 1483 was thought a good orator because he did not spit or publicly expel mucus from his nose during a speech.

People (in England, anyway) smelt different from now even as late as the 1960s.

But people loved each other (or not) just as they do now.