Apart from a sister who lives near Leicester, I can’t claim any personal connection with the not-so-merry monarch, but I did entertain myself, while doing the ironing the other night, by watching the Channel 4 documentary, The King in the Carpark. on Channel 4’s version of iplayer, Four on Demand. It’s up there for another 24 days if you want to take a shufti.
The programme was fronted by the comedian, Simon Farnaby, which, for the channel that brought us Time Team, seems odd. Surely this was a job for Tony Robinson?
I’ve got a shrewd suspicion that it started life as a comedy project that got overtaken by events. The thing is, the chair of the Richard 111 Society, Philippa Langley, looked like such a sitting duck for future sniggering. As she entered the brick and asphalt social services car park, she pointed to where a parking bay was marked with the letter R (the other letters of the alphabet were there, marking the various spaces) and announced tremulously that Richard was there. Yes, that’s right; under the R.
The only thing was that she was right. And that was weird. The archaeologists obligingly dug where she’d indicated and – Lo and Behold! – two leg bones and a curved spine later and blow me, we were looking at the guy himself. The archaeologists clearly didn’t quite know what to make of it; at this stage they hadn’t even found any proof that they were on the site of the old Greyfriars Priory, where Richard was rumoured to have been buried, let alone finding pay-dirt straight off. These Indiana Jones type goings-on don’t generally happen on real digs. What was odd, was that Richard, poor bloke, in addition to his other woes, had a Roman nail rattling round inside his skull. So not only did he have a catalogue of injuries to fuel an entire series of Casualty, he’d also fallen on a very meaty nail. It just wasn’t his day...
As Simon Faranby said, as the science got more and more precise, narrowing down exactly who the bones belonged too, the history got more and more foggier. Because, although Philippa Langley, who raised money for the dig, clearly believed that every nasty thing said about R111 was Tudor propaganda (and was occasionally in tears, such were the depth of her feelings) you can ask, even if you’re not an avid fan of Henry V11, exactly what did happen to the Princes in the Tower. They just seem to vanish. And, as the boys, Edward and Richard, were the sons of Edward 1V, and therefore the obvious heirs to the throne, it seems very much to Uncle Richard’s advantage that they should disappear.
In 1674 the skeletons of two children were discovered under the stairs leading to the White Tower. Charles 11 believed the remains were those of the Princes and had them re-buried in Westminster Abbey. The bones were examined in 1933 and found to belong to two children, one aged seven to eleven and the other eleven to thirteen. As they’d obviously been buried surreptitiously and were the right age, it seems likely that they are, indeed, the remains of the two boys.
The clincher in the chain of evidence to prove the Car Park King was really and truly Richard 111 came in the person of Michael Ibsen, descended from Richard 111’s sister. His DNA was a match and – bingo! There we were. Even Simon Farnaby couldn’t find much comic relief there as it really was jaw dropping.
Michael Ibsen is the nephew of Richard 111, seventeen generations removed. If the story about the Princes is true, maybe it’s just as well those seventeen generations are in the way...
Totally amazing, Dolores! A friend made a DVD of "King in the Car Park" and will be posting it to me, but i didn't know the background about the Richard III lady pointing out the spot. it gives me shivers.
ReplyDeleteAnd the facial reconstruction! He looks just like the portrait that everyone said was posthumous so probably not at all what Richard looked like.
I've been convinced of Richard's innocence ever since reding Josephine Tey's DAUGHTER OF TIME many, many years ago. Hmmm, wonder if they'll be trying for DNA on the "prices' bones" now.