Digging for Richard III - Mike Pitts

The title of this book, Digging for Richard III, highlights the angle taken by the author, Mike Pitts. Pitts is the editor of British Archaeology magazine & this is the story of the archaeological project that led to the discovery of the Greyfriars Church in Leicester & to the burial place of Richard III. The subtitle, How Archaeology Found the King, says it all.

The book is structured like a play, divided into Acts & Scenes. It begins with a brief overview of the Wars of the Roses & moves quickly to the beginning of the project when Philippa Langley, instigator of the Looking for Richard project, met Richard Buckley of the University of Leicester & asked him to undertake the dig. Philippa Langley’s story has been told in her book, The King’s Grave, co-written with historian Michael Jones. Pitts is respectful of Langley’s work but he’s telling the story from the perspective of the archaeologists involved. Several times he mentions the completely opposite aims of the two main players. Langley is only interested in finding the remains of the king &, after all, she is the one who came up with the money & funded the project. At the same time, the archaeologists are treating it as a normal dig, carrying out the preliminary planning & surveys & formulating their own objectives.

The archaeologists were wary of taking on a project that was looking for the remains of a specific person. Buckley was interested in finding out more about the history of Leicester & discovering the site of the Greyfriars Priory was his main aim. His project had several objectives.  The first was to find the remains of the friary. Then to identify the orientation of the buildings. Then, find the church, then the choir of the church which was where the historical evidence suggested that Richard III was buried. Only then would they begin searching for Richard's remains. As it turned out, they put in their three trenches &, on the very first day, found human remains that turned out to be Richard III.

I found the story of the dig fascinating, especially after having read Philippa Langley's book which focuses so much on her more emotional quest to rehabilitate Richard's reputation. I've written about my views on Richard III before & I find myself somewhere in the middle between the lovers & the haters. As a member of the Richard III Society, I'm thrilled to think that the Society was so involved in the Looking for Richard project. I've read everything I can find on the dig, the scientific results of the tests carried out so far & the implications for future study of Richard's scoliosis, for example. Langley was so sure that the hunchback of Shakespeare's play was a libel & a myth that to see the curved spine of the skeleton was a real shock. As more scientific work has been done, it already seems that the scoliosis that looked so extreme in the ground, may not have been so obvious when Richard was alive. He may have just had one shoulder higher than the other which, after all, was mentioned in his lifetime. He was rich enough to be able to afford good tailors & custom made armour to hide the problem. What does this mean for the view that the Tudors invented the deformity as a reflection of the blackness of Richard's soul? I don't think it means that because the Tudors were right about the deformity, they were necessarily right about everything else. Lots of food for thought & many more books & articles to read on both sides of the question.

Views on Richard III range from the white view that he could do no wrong & was a noble soul maligned by the Tudors & Shakespeare's play to the black view that he was a villain & monster who definitely murdered his nephews, his wife & old King Henry VI among others. My view is more grey than either of these. I started out with the white view after reading Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time when I was a teenager. However, the more I've read, the more I think that Richard was no better or worse than any other king or member of the nobility in that violent time. The conflicting views fascinate me & keep me reading everything about Richard that I can find & keeping as open a mind as possible.

Mike Pitts has written about the story of the dig for the general reader. If you've watched Time Team or read British Archaeology or Current Archaeology magazines, you won't be bamboozled by the science or the archaeological terminology. All of the sober analysis is here as well as the sheer excitement of the archaeologists when they realised that they'd found not only the Greyfriars church (which they had good reason to think they would find) but also the remains of the last English king to die in battle, one of the most controversial figures in English history, King Richard III.

Blood Sisters - Sarah Gristwood

The Wars of the Roses or the Cousins' War as it's becoming known is one of those fascinating yet potentially confusing periods of history. The struggles between the Houses of Lancaster & York for the English crown began with the usurpation of Richard II in 1399, erupted into civil war in the 1450s & didn't really end until the Tudor dynasty exiled or executed the last remaining Yorkist pretenders in the 16th century. It's handy to have a detailed family tree by your side when reading about this period, especially as the genealogical intricacies of the descendents of Edward III are crucial. The fact that there are several Elizabeths, Margarets, Edwards & Richards among the cast only add to the potential confusion.

Sarah Gristwood's new book examines the tumultuous 15th century from a different angle, through the lives of seven women who were intimately involved in the struggle.  Focusing on the women of the period is a fascinating way to look at the events from a different but no less political angle.  The sources for women's lives in this period are scanty but these women - the wives, mothers & daughters of kings, had more chance of entering the historical record than any other women of the time.

Margaret of Anjou (called Marguerite here to differentiate her from two other Margarets) arrived in England from France as a 15 year old girl to marry King Henry VI, an unworldly young man whose disastrous reign was the catalyst for the civil war. Marguerite found herself in the position of leader of her husband's cause when Henry fell into a catatonic state & left her in the position of safeguarding the throne for him & their son, Edward. Margaret Beaufort was a cousin of Henry's descended from the illegitimate union of John of Gaunt & Katherine Swynford. The Beauforts had been legitimized by Henry IV with the proviso that they had no claim to the throne. Margaret was married at 12 to Edmund Tudor from another illegitimate branch of the royal family. At 13, she was a widow with a son, Henry Tudor, who would one day claim the throne.

Cecily Neville was married to Richard, Duke of York, an ambitious man who would begin by offering himself as Protector of the kingdom during Henry's mental illness & end by claiming the crown himself before being killed in battle. Cecily was the mother of two kings, Edward IV & Richard III. Her daughter, Margaret, would marry the Duke of Burgundy & play a vital role in helping her brothers during their reversals of fortune as well as supporting the claims of several pretenders to the throne after the Battle of Bosworth & the victory of Henry Tudor in 1485.

Elizabeth Woodville was a widow with two young sons when she caught the eye of the handsome new king, Edward IV. She refused to become his mistress and, not used to refusal, Edward married her & made her queen. Her spectacular rise to power wasn't approved by everyone. The nobility were appalled at Edward's lack of propriety in an age when the king's marriage was a matter of diplomacy not romance. Elizabeth's large family were also a disadvantage. they all wanted rich marriages & estates & many noses were put out of joint by this sudden influx of  new blood. However, Elizabeth gave Edward a large family, including two sons & her eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, who would eventually marry Henry VII.

The most shadowy of the women in the book is Anne Neville. Daughter of the Kingmaker Earl of Warwick, Anne had less power & was more of a pawn than any of the others. Married first to Marguerite's son, Edward, Prince of Wales when her Yorkist father fell out with Edward IV, she was  widowed soon after when Edward was killed at the Battle of Tewkesbury. Her second marriage, to Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later Richard III), may have been a love match or may have been a marriage of convenience because Richard wanted to acquire her considerable inheritance. We know virtually nothing of Anne's feelings or thoughts. The chroniclers tell of her grief when her only son died but there's nothing to tell us how she felt about becoming queen or if she believed the rumours that Richard wanted her dead so that he could marry his niece, Elizabeth of York. We know nothing about her relationship with that niece, or her relationship with her mother-in-law Cecily Neville or sisters-in-law, Elizabeth Woodville or Margaret of Burgundy.

Gristwood uses the image of Fortune's Wheel several times & it's an apt description of the lives of all these women. They all knew great good fortune as well as horrible reverses. The personal connections between the women are so interesting. Anne Neville was daughter-in-law to both Marguerite of Anjou & Cecily Neville. Marguerite & Margaret Beaufort knew each other & exchanged presents. Cecily Neville left Margaret Beaufort a legacy in her will. Elizabeth Woodville & Margaret Beaufort conspired against Richard III after he took possession of the throne & planned the marriage of their children to unite the warring factions of Lancaster & York.

The relationship between Margaret Beaufort & her daughter-in-law Elizabeth of York has always been a cause of speculation. Margaret Beaufort was a forceful woman who had dedicated her whole life to putting her son, Henry, on the throne. After Bosworth, she was known as the King's Mother & signed documents with Margaret R which could have meant Margaret Richmond (one of her titles) or could have been her way of reminding everyone that Henry's claim came through her. There are indications that Henry & Elizabeth's marriage was companionable & happy but Elizabeth played no part in politics & has been overshadowed completely by her mother-in-law.

I've read many books about this period & I have many more books on the tbr shelves. I've been fascinated with the story of Richard III since I was a teenager & I've read biographies of all the main characters. I enjoyed Blood Sisters because Sarah Gristwood told me the familiar story in a fresh, new way. Gristwood tells the story well with admirable clarity considering the difficulties of differentiating between several people of the same name. Her interpretation of the familiar sources was always interesting & well-argued & she discovered connections between the women that I hadn't been aware of. If you're interested in the period or in women's history, I think you'd enjoy Blood Sisters as much as I did.