Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and that makes this a
Speaker 2: good old fashioned episode of stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: That's right. This is where we well, we don't debate,
Speaker 1: because we don't really do that. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the merits of Richard the Third and the people
Speaker 1: that say that Richard the Third was a lousy king
Speaker 1: and terrible person, and other people will say, nah, that
Speaker 1: was rewritten by people who didn't like him, and he
Speaker 1: was actually a pretty great king. And we'll get into
Speaker 1: all that right now.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's a great intro. So Richard the Third is
Speaker 2: that you may his name may ring a bell if
Speaker 2: you're not already familiar with him, because there is a
Speaker 2: very very famous play by Shakespeare called The Tragedy of
Speaker 2: Richard the Third. And in this play, Richard the Third
Speaker 2: has a hunch back, he is a withered arm, he
Speaker 2: has a horrible, dark soul at his core. He's a
Speaker 2: terrible person, a murderer of children, a usurper to the throne.
Speaker 2: And because this is Shakespeare, you know Shakespeare. That's how
Speaker 2: everybody's thought of Richard the Third publicly or popularly for
Speaker 2: hundreds of years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like Shakespeare wouldn't have a hit piece on somebody right.
Speaker 2: No way, if there was even one Shakespeare. I was
Speaker 2: thinking back to our episode on I think it was like,
Speaker 2: did Shakespeare really write all that stuff? That is one
Speaker 2: of my all time favorite episodes because I knew nothing
Speaker 2: about it, and yet there's this huge, rich subculture of
Speaker 2: people who like talk about this and investigate it and
Speaker 2: debate it. I love that one totally. But Shakespeare did
Speaker 2: basically write this play, probably at least in part to
Speaker 2: flatter Queen Elizabeth, who is the reigning monarch at the time,
Speaker 2: and he was a very loyal subject her. Queen Elizabeth
Speaker 2: was related to the guy who took over from Richard
Speaker 2: I after Richard the Third was killed before that guy's
Speaker 2: very eyes.
Speaker 1: That's right, And this story will get a little confusing
Speaker 1: as we go back and go through it, because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of Richard's, there's a lot of Edwards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's not the hardest thing to keep straight. We're
Speaker 1: going to do our best, but we if in order
Speaker 1: to talk about Richard the Third, we have to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about the War of the Roses, which
Speaker 1: were these bloody civil wars fought over the fourteen hundreds
Speaker 1: basically in England, like, hey, who's in control here? Which
Speaker 1: family has a right to the British throne? Most of
Speaker 1: it was between the House of York and the House
Speaker 1: of Lancaster, whose symbols were the White Rose for York
Speaker 1: and the red Rose for Lancaster. There we go were
Speaker 1: the roses white versus red.
Speaker 2: Yes, that also explains that movie with Michael Douglas and
Speaker 2: Danny DeVito and Kathleen.
Speaker 1: Turner, one of my favorite all time movies.
Speaker 2: That is a great movie.
Speaker 1: It is great and holds.
Speaker 2: Up, does it? I haven't seen it in a loi.
Speaker 1: It's still so very funny.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, the Houses of York and Lancaster were both
Speaker 2: part of the Plantagenet dynasty, and that dynasty had been
Speaker 2: ruling England from eleven to fifty four up to the
Speaker 2: point where we pick up our story. So like it
Speaker 2: was a big deal that these two houses were warring
Speaker 2: one another for control and even bigger deals. We'll see
Speaker 2: that somebody who was basically unrelated to either one would
Speaker 2: come in and end the Plantagenet dynasty. Richard the Third
Speaker 2: was the last Plantagenet king.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he was born in fourteen fifty two. He
Speaker 1: was Team York. His dad, Richard was the third Duke
Speaker 1: of York, and it was his dad who was a
Speaker 1: big player in the early part of the War of
Speaker 1: the Roses. In fourteen fifty five he went to dethrone
Speaker 1: King Henry the sixth, who was a Lancaster, and that
Speaker 1: really kicked off the Wars of the Roses. I think
Speaker 1: I've been saying singular like the Danny de Vido movie,
Speaker 1: but technically it's the Wars of the Roses.
Speaker 2: I think it's all combined collectively under the umbrella the
Speaker 2: War of the Roses. And you could consider each of
Speaker 2: these skirmishes or battles in it.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so we're right and wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah so, but the thing to remember is that these
Speaker 2: were incredibly vicious, bloody battles being fought by ultimately two
Speaker 2: different sides of the same large family. But like the
Speaker 2: term machiavellian is just perfectly used in this era. Like
Speaker 2: these people were like, you're my brother in law, and
Speaker 2: I'm gonna cut your head off because I want to
Speaker 2: get this other guy who's my cousin to the front
Speaker 2: throne so I could take over my brother in law's
Speaker 2: land like stuff like that. This was like the War
Speaker 2: of the Roses. And to give you an example of
Speaker 2: how brutal it was, when Richard the Third's father, Richard
Speaker 2: the third, Duke of York died, he died in battle
Speaker 2: and his head was cut off and displayed on a pike,
Speaker 2: and they put a paper crown on it. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: he was king at the time. The king had his
Speaker 2: head cut off and a paper crown put on because
Speaker 2: the other house had won and now they were the kings.
Speaker 1: So after Richard's father, Richard once again died and his
Speaker 1: head was put on a pike, his big brother Edward
Speaker 1: I think he had three kids total, took up the
Speaker 1: mantle to take up the fight and he defeated the
Speaker 1: Lancasters at the Battle of Tauton, in which I think
Speaker 1: it's the bloodiest battle in British history. Twenty eight thousand
Speaker 1: deaths man, which is just remarkable loss of life in
Speaker 1: any war, much less one in the fifteenth century. So
Speaker 1: after that happened, Henry six goes to Scotland. He's like,
Speaker 1: I'm out of here and Richard's brother was crown King Edward,
Speaker 1: so all of a sudden he's King Edward the Fourth.
Speaker 1: The Yorks are in power, and Richard is second in
Speaker 1: line at this point, behind only his older brother George.
Speaker 2: And George is a great example of what kind of
Speaker 2: duplacitousness and maneuvering was prominent in this era. He was
Speaker 2: executed under his brother's orders by being drowned in a
Speaker 2: that of wine, executed for treason. And this wasn't like
Speaker 2: saying I want to take the throne. He really was
Speaker 2: treason is and plotting against his own brothers. So like
Speaker 2: that was just something that happened in this family at
Speaker 2: the time during the War of the Roses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Previous to that, when the Yorks were
Speaker 1: in power, it was only for a couple of years
Speaker 1: because in fourteen sixty nine Henry the six was reinstalled.
Speaker 1: He's like, I've been to Scotland for a while. I'm
Speaker 1: coming back because my wife, Margaret of Andrew led a
Speaker 1: orchestrated a rebellion that worked, so thank you for that.
Speaker 1: Now I'm back in charge. But then Edward and both
Speaker 1: Richard and George, because George was not dead at this
Speaker 1: point right, they came back defeated Henry the six again,
Speaker 1: and this was basically for good in fourteen seventy one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Edward the fourth, Richard's brother, is now on
Speaker 2: the throne. He has two sons, Edward and Richard. We're
Speaker 2: going to put them to the side for a little
Speaker 2: bit because he could not get more confusing if you
Speaker 2: try to bring them in right now, we call him.
Speaker 1: Eddie and Rick, yeah, or Eddie and Dick, how about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And Edward the fourth, this is when he has
Speaker 2: his brother George executed to drowning a vat of wine,
Speaker 2: and Edward the Fourth died and I was looking into it.
Speaker 2: It's mysterious how he died. He just died suddenly. It
Speaker 2: wasn't violently. He died of some sort of illness. But
Speaker 2: in his will he named his brother Richard Richard the
Speaker 2: Third lord and protector over Edward's son Edward, who was
Speaker 2: going to now become King Edward the fifth. He was twelve,
Speaker 2: though Richard the Third was thirty at the time, and
Speaker 2: Richard the Third was like, I actually think that I
Speaker 2: would make a better king. Yes, I know that through
Speaker 2: royal lineage, Like Edward the Fifth is in line to
Speaker 2: take the throne. He's twelve, and I don't really like
Speaker 2: his jokes. He's terrible joke teller. I tell great jokes.
Speaker 2: I should be king. So he started to do some
Speaker 2: maneuvering and kept putting off the coronation, putting off the
Speaker 2: coronation until he was able to produce a rumor. As
Speaker 2: we'll see, that said the King Edward the fifth, the
Speaker 2: twelve year old was illegitimate, his father had not borne
Speaker 2: him or his father was illegitimate, and he didn't have
Speaker 2: any real claim to the throne. Hence Richard the Third
Speaker 2: did and it worked, so Richard the Third became king.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he had to do a little bit of
Speaker 1: other maneuvering to get this done. At one point he
Speaker 1: met up with two of his deceased brother's closest advisors,
Speaker 1: a guy named Anthony Woodville and a guy named Richard Gray,
Speaker 1: and this was like, Hey, the coronation's coming up for
Speaker 1: this twelve year old to be king. And the very
Speaker 1: next day he had Richard the Third had Woodville and
Speaker 1: Gray arrested on charges of trying to usurp the throne,
Speaker 1: and they were executed very quickly, along with another close
Speaker 1: friend of his brother's William Hastings, so like he was,
Speaker 1: you know, if it looks as if it appears to
Speaker 1: look Richard the Third was just kind of cleaning house
Speaker 1: of anyone from his brother's old team that would have
Speaker 1: supported the boy king.
Speaker 2: Basically, yeah, and this was basically his brother's in laws
Speaker 2: that he was killing off. He didn't want them to
Speaker 2: try to vie for power because the mom of Edward
Speaker 2: the Fifth, the young twelve year old, she could have
Speaker 2: a ton of power, and so so could her brothers
Speaker 2: and all that kind of stuff. So they were basically
Speaker 2: like wiping out the other side of the family. Remember,
Speaker 2: I said, Richard the Third kept putting off the coronation
Speaker 2: and putting it off. Well, typically if you're waiting to
Speaker 2: be coronated king, you would hang out in the Tower
Speaker 2: of London. And since he was able to keep putting
Speaker 2: off the coronation, Edward the Fifth, who the kid who
Speaker 2: would be Edward the Fifth, was basically locked away in
Speaker 2: the Tower of London, and like a month or so
Speaker 2: after he got there, his younger brother, Richard, who was
Speaker 2: nine at the time, showed up and they were kind
Speaker 2: of compartmentalized away in the Tower of London, out of
Speaker 2: public view, just held off to the side while Richard
Speaker 2: was doing his maneuvering.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So while this is going on, these two boys
Speaker 1: in line in front of Richard the Third are basically
Speaker 1: hidden away in the Tower of London, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, the Church of England says, you know what,
Speaker 1: that marriage wasn't even legitimate, King Edward the fourth, your
Speaker 1: older brother and his wife Elizabeth. It was an illegitimate
Speaker 1: marriage because Edward. I think there were a couple of things.
Speaker 1: One was Edward had supposedly been engaged to another woman
Speaker 1: when they married, which would be big of me at
Speaker 1: the time. But didn't they also say that Elizabeth had
Speaker 1: a previous marriage or something like that.
Speaker 2: No, they said that Edward the fourth and Richard the
Speaker 2: Third's father right, that he had had an affair that
Speaker 2: bore Edward the fourth.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but Richard the third was legitimate, So he was saying, like,
Speaker 2: my brother wasn't even a legitimate king while he was alive,
Speaker 2: so his sons definitely aren't. I am though, because my
Speaker 2: parents bore me legitimately. And so there were two illegitimate
Speaker 2: rumors that were being bandied about at the time, and
Speaker 2: I guess one of them got picked up on by
Speaker 2: the Pope I believe, who said, yeah, we're cool with this,
Speaker 2: and an Act of Parliament was passed that basically said
Speaker 2: Richard the third has gone now from Lord Protector, he's
Speaker 2: now king because he's the legitimate heir to the throne.
Speaker 1: Right, And that was June twenty sixth, fourteen eighty three.
Speaker 1: And maybe we'll take a break and talk about what
Speaker 1: happened to these boys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I need to take a breath.
Speaker 1: All right, we're going to figure all these Dixon eddies
Speaker 1: out and we're going to come back and talk about
Speaker 1: it right after this.
Speaker 2: So, Chuck, you asked before we left, what happened to
Speaker 2: the two princes? That is one of the greatest mysteries,
Speaker 2: one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in English history. Still today,
Speaker 2: we don't know what happened to them, And there's a
Speaker 2: lot of great answers, and there's evidence that suggest one
Speaker 2: way or the other, but there's nothing definitive, so we
Speaker 2: can't really say what happened. But all we know is
Speaker 2: that while he was sequestered, that was the word I
Speaker 2: was groping for earlier. While he was sequestered, away or
Speaker 2: while they were Edward the fifth and his younger brother Richard,
Speaker 2: they like, they were seen increasingly less in public, usually
Speaker 2: walking around the grounds of the Tower of London because
Speaker 2: they're basically being held hostage until I think in the
Speaker 2: fall of fourteen eighty five, I've they just disappeared from
Speaker 2: public view. No one ever heard of them again as
Speaker 2: far as the historical record is concerned.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the spin doctors even wrote a song
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and they gave some pretty great advice.
Speaker 1: I agree. Uh. Oh, now that stupid song is going
Speaker 1: to be in my head. It's been in my head
Speaker 1: for a while, has it really, Yeah, because of this episode.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't even think about it until two seconds ago.
Speaker 1: So you were on that already.
Speaker 2: For a long time.
Speaker 1: Yes, So, like you said, they were last seeing summer
Speaker 1: of fourteen eighty three. Of course, they're the you know,
Speaker 1: we'll just call him team Antie Richard. They were the
Speaker 1: ones that were saying, like, this guy clearly murdered these boys,
Speaker 1: and everybody knows it. He got his henchman, Sir James Terrell,
Speaker 1: to do so. In Shakespeare's play, he whispers to that henchman,
Speaker 1: come to me, Terrell soon act to have to supper
Speaker 1: and now shout tell the process of their death. So
Speaker 1: Shakespeare certainly bought that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we should say Shakespeare wrote The Tragedy of
Speaker 2: Richard the Third about one hundred years after Richard died,
Speaker 2: and the idea that rich of the Third murdered directly
Speaker 2: because if he if they were murdered, he almost certainly
Speaker 2: did it himself. A lot of people argue. Other people say, yes,
Speaker 2: Sir James Terrell probably had somebody do it, and the
Speaker 2: ideas that they were smothered with pillows, But this idea
Speaker 2: doesn't pop up in writing until after Richard's death. And
Speaker 2: the whole idea is is that he he had really
Speaker 2: great motive to kill these kids because they even if
Speaker 2: they were illegitimate, they could go off grow up train. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there would probably be a montage of some sort as
Speaker 2: their training, and they could come back and try to
Speaker 2: topple him from the throne through battles and violence, and
Speaker 2: he was just wiping out this, you know, future challenge
Speaker 2: to his rule. He was not the only one who
Speaker 2: had that motive. There were a handful of other people
Speaker 2: around the time who had just as good a motive
Speaker 2: of wiping those two kids out for the exact same reason.
Speaker 2: So that alone is not that's not like the most
Speaker 2: damning evidence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I could see the montage.
Speaker 2: Bit bit dip was that two princes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know that one part where he's kind of scatting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was good.
Speaker 1: Actually, so the montage could have happened for sure. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you are team Richard, they will likely say, man,
Speaker 1: there's no way he would have been fool enough to
Speaker 1: do that. He didn't kill those guys. Maybe he moved
Speaker 1: him up to the north and hid them away because
Speaker 1: he wanted them to be safe for something. Uh, but
Speaker 1: Richard never said anything about it. Uh. There was no
Speaker 1: evidence for centuries, like literal evidence tying anything there. But
Speaker 1: fairly recently there was a British TV historian that discovered
Speaker 1: a will that included a necklace that belonged to Edward
Speaker 1: the Fifth, the boy who would be king. This will
Speaker 1: was drawn up thirty three years after he disappeared, and
Speaker 1: it belonged to a wealthy London widow named Margaret Capel,
Speaker 1: who just so happened to be the sister in law
Speaker 1: of that henchman James Terrell. So the man who either
Speaker 1: possibly murdered those two guys or at least was in
Speaker 1: on the plot ended up with this necklace that was
Speaker 1: given to his wife thirty three years later. So it's
Speaker 1: not like, hey, this is literal evidence, but it's pretty shady.
Speaker 2: It is, especially if you combine it with other evidence
Speaker 2: people have generated over the years. But can we talk
Speaker 2: for a second about why we don't know any of this,
Speaker 2: from the murder mystery to whether they were legitimate or not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean one reason is just that history wasn't
Speaker 1: recorded the same and there's just a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: that wasn't noted at the time, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's part of it. I read also that the
Speaker 2: Tutors when they took over after killing Richard the Third,
Speaker 2: destroyed a lot of the Platagenet like document in England.
Speaker 2: And then also there's not a lot of historians working
Speaker 2: at the time. Luckily, there were a couple of chronicles
Speaker 2: that were created. One was by a monk named Dominic
Speaker 2: Mancini or Mancini. He happened to be in England at
Speaker 2: the time while this is going on, and went back
Speaker 2: to Italy and wrote about it. So he had a
Speaker 2: pretty good in what you would think impartial chronicle of
Speaker 2: the whole thing. He didn't really have a dog in
Speaker 2: the fight. And then there's something else called the Krolin Chronicle,
Speaker 2: which was a chronicle that had been added to over
Speaker 2: hundreds of years by some local monks at a nearby abbey.
Speaker 2: And these two don't always agree. Sometimes they contradict each other.
Speaker 2: Sometimes one talks about an event, the other one doesn't
Speaker 2: mention it, so you can kind of piece it together.
Speaker 2: But like if you take Edward the forces will for example,
Speaker 2: where he made Richard the third lord protector, that will's gone.
Speaker 2: We don't know if Richard made that up. We don't
Speaker 2: know what the deal is. Without firsthand evidence and sources,
Speaker 2: primary sources, all of this is essentially conjecture and up
Speaker 2: for debate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And that's you know, that's why people
Speaker 1: still debate this stuff today. And there's you know, pro
Speaker 1: Richard team an anti Richard team. As far as his rule,
Speaker 1: he only ruled for a couple of years, from fourteen
Speaker 1: eighty three to fourteen eighty five. And this is again
Speaker 1: where people will debate what kind of king he is
Speaker 1: because some people will say that, you know, he fought
Speaker 1: for the rights of the poor, he only convened one
Speaker 1: parliament that he used to pursue like some pretty progressive
Speaker 1: agendas for the time, like presumption of innocence was created
Speaker 1: under his watch.
Speaker 2: And universal pre k Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: A lot of his rule was pretty tragic, though there
Speaker 1: was a lot of war. One of his closest allies
Speaker 1: ended up turning against him. The Duke of Buckingham switched
Speaker 1: over in aligned with the Tutors Henry Tudor. Specifically, they
Speaker 1: were a different family who had this you know, they
Speaker 1: said they had a claim to an ancestral line that
Speaker 1: was I guess to our modern eye seems fairly big,
Speaker 1: but back then it seemed important enough to go to
Speaker 1: war over.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The Lancasters were basically like looking anywhere for somebody
Speaker 2: who had a legitimate claim. So they went to a cousin's, cousins,
Speaker 2: next door, neighbors, friends, dog's brother to find Henry Tudor,
Speaker 2: who you could connect the dots to the throne. So
Speaker 2: he did have a legitimate claim, but he was, like
Speaker 2: you said, essentially a different family. He was just barely
Speaker 2: a Lancaster. He was a tutor. But this is who
Speaker 2: they brought to bear has claimed to the throne to
Speaker 2: challenge the Yorks in the form of Richard IID for
Speaker 2: this throne and his former friend, the Duke of Buckingham.
Speaker 2: They staged the Buckingham Rebellion and it just got squashed
Speaker 2: almost immediately, So within months of being coronated, his rule
Speaker 2: was challenged right away. But he managed to get rid
Speaker 2: of that and I think another one and hang in
Speaker 2: there for a couple of years before fortune turned against him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, he also had personal tragedy a
Speaker 1: few months after that. His only child, Edward died, his
Speaker 1: wife died not long after that, and then Henry Tudor
Speaker 1: comes to knocking again. He is, you might have stopped
Speaker 1: me once, but you're not going to stop me again.
Speaker 1: And on August twenty second, fourteen eighty five, they went
Speaker 1: to battle again at Bosworth Field outside of Leicester, and
Speaker 1: this is where Richard as King fought and was killed
Speaker 1: in battle. I think the last English king to actually
Speaker 1: die on the battlefield, right, yes, but he was the
Speaker 1: last king, and he by all accounts died in a
Speaker 1: pretty brutal way if you consider, like you know, blunt
Speaker 1: force trauma and head damage to be a brutal way
Speaker 1: to go and I do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, as we'll see, they found his skull and
Speaker 2: they examined it and found that he had not one,
Speaker 2: but two potential death blows delivered to his head. One
Speaker 2: was a sold thrust, so imagine sticking his sword into
Speaker 2: somebody's head, through their skull and into their brain. That
Speaker 2: happened to him. And then somebody came up with a
Speaker 2: pike or a halberd, which is a very sharp axe
Speaker 2: on one side and a point, very sharp point on
Speaker 2: the other opposite the axe blade. And apparently a pikeman
Speaker 2: came up and cut off essentially the lower part of
Speaker 2: his skull and took a big chunk of his brain
Speaker 2: stem with it. So either one of those, which everyone
Speaker 2: happened first, killed them virtually instantly. That was not the
Speaker 2: end of the torment to his poor body, though.
Speaker 1: No, they he didn't get the hat on a pike
Speaker 1: with a paper crown. They instead stripped him down nude
Speaker 1: and paraded him through town on the horse. And apparently
Speaker 1: people were like you know, jabbing and stabbing at his
Speaker 1: body on the horse, and he was literally had stab
Speaker 1: wounds in his butt. He was buried, historically speaking, he
Speaker 1: was buried in a place called Greyfriars Franciscan Church in Leicester,
Speaker 1: and other people say, no, it was. He was exhumed
Speaker 1: by a mob. They threw him into a river, and
Speaker 1: that was sort of we'll get to that, but it was.
Speaker 1: I guess we've already ruined the fact that it's not
Speaker 1: a mystery anymore, but it was a mystery for a while.
Speaker 2: It was. And we should say when he was buried
Speaker 2: at Greyfriars too, it was hastily. There was like I
Speaker 2: saw that he was basically put in a shallow grave
Speaker 2: that his legs were sticking out of when they finished,
Speaker 2: so they had to break his legs, so like put
Speaker 2: him in there like it wasn't. It was the kind
Speaker 2: of grave that could very easily be lost to history.
Speaker 2: So Richard the third is dead. He just died in battle.
Speaker 2: Apparently Henry Tudor is crowned King Henry the seventh. On
Speaker 2: the battlefield, they took the crown off of Richard's dead
Speaker 2: body and put it onto Henry. So there's now a new,
Speaker 2: entirely new family running the show, the Tutors. And almost
Speaker 2: immediately they did they they started a propaganda campaign against
Speaker 2: Richard the Third that culminated later on in Shakespeare, Like
Speaker 2: I said, Elizabeth was a relative granddaughter I think of
Speaker 2: King Henry the seventh, so he was trying to basically
Speaker 2: curry favor, show appreciation for her. But long before him,
Speaker 2: I mean basically overnight they started slamming Richard the third,
Speaker 2: I think is what it's called slamin him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the earliest historical records we really have on Richard
Speaker 1: the third are from that Tudor period. They are not
Speaker 1: flattering at all. One guy named John Rousse. He was
Speaker 1: a guy, and this is kind of pretty decent evidence
Speaker 1: that it was a smear campaign. He was a historian
Speaker 1: who wrote about him before and after his death. While
Speaker 1: he was alive, he was saying, great leader, he helped
Speaker 1: the rich and the poor. I'm up with King Richard
Speaker 1: after Henry the seventh and the Tutors take over. He's like, no, Actually,
Speaker 1: he was a monster, and like maybe a literal monster
Speaker 1: because he was born at two years old, he spent
Speaker 1: two years in the womb. He came out with a
Speaker 1: full set of teeth, he had hair down to his shoulders.
Speaker 1: He was accessively cruel. He's basically the Antichrist, and he
Speaker 1: actually used that word then a guy and named Sir
Speaker 1: Thomas Moore picked up where Rouse left off. He was
Speaker 1: alive when Richard died. He was only eight years old, though,
Speaker 1: but he was a close advisor to Henry the Seventh,
Speaker 1: that Tudor king, and he wrote that Richard was a malicious, wrathful,
Speaker 1: envious person from before his death. Ever, Perverse said he was,
Speaker 1: and this is where you get the idea of him
Speaker 1: being you know, deformed or something what we would now call,
Speaker 1: you know, like a body physical difference. He was little
Speaker 1: of stature, ill featured of limbs, crooked backed, his left
Speaker 1: shoulder much higher than his right, hard favored an appearance.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And also so if you're like, why are they
Speaker 2: picking on this guy's appearance. At the time, physical differences
Speaker 2: were equated with moral failings, right, So if you hunched
Speaker 2: back in a withered arm, it meant you were really
Speaker 2: dark on the inside, like you're outside reflected your inner self.
Speaker 2: And Shakespeare relied very heavily on Thomas Moore's account. But Chuck,
Speaker 2: I think the fact that the tutors found it necessary
Speaker 2: to launch a smear campaign immediately against Richard the Third
Speaker 2: to me strongly suggests that he was not hated in
Speaker 2: fury and considered a cruel monster while he was alive.
Speaker 1: I agree, because otherwise they'd be like, hey, we're good.
Speaker 1: Everyone hated that.
Speaker 2: Guy, exactly.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking how awful it would have been.
Speaker 1: I mean up until recently really, but back then, if
Speaker 1: you had some sort of physical difference, you were just
Speaker 1: born a certain way for people to think, like, hmm,
Speaker 1: that means they're like an evil, awful person on the
Speaker 1: inside as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, until like the nineteen nineties. Basically, it was
Speaker 2: like then.
Speaker 1: I did want to mention quickly. I saw The Goodbye
Speaker 1: Girl the other day, the Richard Dreyfuss movie, the Neil
Speaker 1: Simon movie.
Speaker 2: Okay, whose movie was it?
Speaker 1: Well, Richard Dreyfus star and Neil Simon wrote it. Okay,
Speaker 1: Marcia Mason was in it too. It's just a classic film.
Speaker 1: But Richard Dreyfus very famously is in New York to
Speaker 1: play Richard the Third and is trying to do this
Speaker 1: very very strange or he's sort of forced into doing
Speaker 1: this very strange portrayal of Richard the Third after he
Speaker 1: was ready to play it straight as it already weird.
Speaker 2: Richard the Third, Oh yeah, I've got to see that. Then,
Speaker 2: that sounds great. Neil Simon's wonderful.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's such a classic film. I love it. Back
Speaker 1: when somebody like Richard Dreyfus could be a leading man
Speaker 1: in Hollywood.
Speaker 2: Another movie I have not seen, but I want to
Speaker 2: is a documentary that al Pacino made because he's apparently
Speaker 2: a huge Shakespearean and was basically obsessed with the tragedy
Speaker 2: of Richard the Third, so much so that he made
Speaker 2: a documentary about Richard. Have you seen it?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, I saw it in the theater. That's when
Speaker 1: I was living in New York or New Jersey. So
Speaker 1: I saw it in New York. Yeah, it's good, very good.
Speaker 2: I will see it. Then if Chuck says it's very good,
Speaker 2: everybody that means see it.
Speaker 1: So Shakespeare's play, like you said, was hugely popular. So
Speaker 1: this was really the image that we were stuck with.
Speaker 1: Maybe we should take our second break, let's do it,
Speaker 1: all right. Well, we're going to come back and talk
Speaker 1: about people that tried to redo that redo right after this,
Speaker 1: all right, So I mentioned that people came to redo
Speaker 1: the redo of Richard the Third's reputation. They are called
Speaker 1: Ricardians and This happened in nineteen twenty four where a
Speaker 1: group of people finally stood up and said, you know what,
Speaker 1: We're tired of this rewriting of history. We're going to
Speaker 1: form an actual society called the Richard the Third Society,
Speaker 1: and our goal is to redeem his reputation. To quote,
Speaker 1: strip away the spin, the unfair innu window tutor, artistic shaping,
Speaker 1: and the lazy acquiescence of later ages and get at
Speaker 1: the truth end quote.
Speaker 2: But you have to imagine a nineteen twenties British aristocrat
Speaker 2: saying right.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that was my best job.
Speaker 2: This group is known as Riccardians. Informally, this group has
Speaker 2: chapters all over the world, particularly in parts of the
Speaker 2: world that England has touched, like Canada, the United States, Australia,
Speaker 2: New Zealand and of course in the UK. There's plenty
Speaker 2: of them, but they are really dedicated to this. If
Speaker 2: you go on their website, they're the essays and the
Speaker 2: articles that they have are really detailed, so much so
Speaker 2: that I would almost advise them to maybe dial it
Speaker 2: back to Okay, average person, it's it's it's a lot
Speaker 2: because they're so intensely into it. This era was so
Speaker 2: intensely complicated and complex, but like they are very much
Speaker 2: dedicated to reforming his image. Apparently they'll hand out pamphlets
Speaker 2: that are critical of the Tragedy of Richard. I at
Speaker 2: performances of the Tragedy of Richard the Third, like they're
Speaker 2: rabble rousers when it comes to Richard the Third's reputation.
Speaker 1: You know, it would be funny as if you went
Speaker 1: to the website and it was like one of those
Speaker 1: early aughts, it's like black background with like shaking pink
Speaker 1: letters and it's got the spin doctors.
Speaker 2: Playing with comic sands of course wit it.
Speaker 1: So that would mainstream in the nineteen fifties because of
Speaker 1: a book. It was a very popular detective novel called
Speaker 1: a Daughter of Time in which they reimagine the disappearance
Speaker 1: of the two princes as a modern murder mystery where
Speaker 1: scotland Yard gets involved and scottland Yard says, Henry the
Speaker 1: seventh was the guy who murdered these two boys. It
Speaker 1: wasn't rich It was a very big book, bestseller in fact,
Speaker 1: and it kind of helped shape the narrative starting or
Speaker 1: reshape the narrative, I guess starting in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: by saying Stikett Shakespeare.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was really critical of received wisdom in general.
Speaker 2: Like this Scotland yard inspector who's laid up in the
Speaker 2: hospital and is just amusing himself by solving this cold
Speaker 2: case mystery, comes to the conclusion that he can't show
Speaker 2: at all that Richard the third was responsible. In in fact,
Speaker 2: he thinks it might have been Henry the seventh and
Speaker 2: or his mother who killed these kids, because remember I said,
Speaker 2: a lot of people had a reason to off them
Speaker 2: or get them out of the way and along the way.
Speaker 2: This detective is very critical of historians and how they
Speaker 2: just basically will rely on rumor and unsubstantiated stuff as
Speaker 2: fact and that becomes history. And this really changed people's
Speaker 2: views about historians and history, but also especially about Richard
Speaker 2: the third, and that was the thing that really kind
Speaker 2: of turned the for him somewhat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, somewhat. The other interesting thing and this is where
Speaker 1: like again we sort of gave it away, but there
Speaker 1: was a mystery for a long time of what actually
Speaker 1: happened to Richard. I was that body really buried? Was
Speaker 1: it tossed into the river? When a really well balanced
Speaker 1: biography came out in the nineteen fifties from Paul Murray
Speaker 1: Kendall called Richard the Third. A woman named Philippa Langley
Speaker 1: read it and got very interested. She's a historian and
Speaker 1: a screenwriter obviously a Ricardian, and she was like, I
Speaker 1: want to figure out what happened to this body. That's
Speaker 1: still the mystery of what happened to Richard the third.
Speaker 1: And so I'm gonna get on the case and sort
Speaker 1: of mountain amateur which turned into, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: a professional investigation.
Speaker 2: She's gonna sniff them off the case.
Speaker 1: Sniff them off the case.
Speaker 2: I still, after all these years, do not know how
Speaker 2: to use that correctly in a sentence.
Speaker 1: It's always correct. That's the beauty of the phrase.
Speaker 2: Oh oh good good. I love it even more so.
Speaker 2: Her whole thing was to basically use like cold case
Speaker 2: investigative methods like the fictional detective did and a daughter
Speaker 2: of time to finding where Richard the Third's body was.
Speaker 2: And by this time historians have basically narrowed it down
Speaker 2: to a handful of blocks in the downtown part of Lester.
Speaker 2: Like they knew Greyfriars was a real place. There was
Speaker 2: a really good chance that he was in fact buried
Speaker 2: at Greyfriars after his death. And even though Greyfriars had
Speaker 2: been demolished like fifty years after Richard died, there were
Speaker 2: still historical recordings that it was generally in this area
Speaker 2: of downtown Leicester. One of the areas was under an
Speaker 2: apartment building. Just so happened that that apartment building was
Speaker 2: demolished at some point I think in the early two thousands,
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven, and they were able to excavate
Speaker 2: beneath it and found no evidence of Greyfriars, So basically
Speaker 2: attention turned to the parking lot, and when they turned
Speaker 2: to the parking lot, they found Philip A. Langley standing
Speaker 2: there saying I've been telling you for two years now
Speaker 2: that this is where this guy's buried. I just know it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean she had been there in two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, in two thousand and five, and I guess
Speaker 1: just had a feeling like he's under this friggin parking lot,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, Except she didn't say friggin because she's
Speaker 1: from England. She said they're fracking, fracking, that's right. So
Speaker 1: she approached the University of Leicester and said, hey, how
Speaker 1: about this. I think Richard the thirds of her in
Speaker 1: that parking lot, under that parking lot, why don't we
Speaker 1: excavate that thing at great cost? And it's going to
Speaker 1: be expensive, and it's in the middle of a big
Speaker 1: city and probably won't find him. But I feel pretty
Speaker 1: sure that we will. But other people are saying that
Speaker 1: there's no way, and the University of Leicester said sure.
Speaker 1: I think she was pretty doggedly persistent. Took a few
Speaker 1: years and a lot of calls and a lot of meetings,
Speaker 1: but finally she got the permissions, She won the support
Speaker 1: of the city council, even those Riccardians. The Richard the
Speaker 1: Third Society chipped in thousands of pounds to make this happen.
Speaker 1: University of Lester also pitched in a little bit. They
Speaker 1: finally had enough money five thousand pounds to rent a
Speaker 1: ground penetrating radar system to survey that parking lot and
Speaker 1: they went, something's down there, you guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's somebody wearing a T shirt that says Greyfriar.
Speaker 2: So I think this is the place.
Speaker 1: I fought in the Four of Roses and all I
Speaker 1: got with this les T shirt.
Speaker 2: I don't want to gloss over, like what Philip A.
Speaker 2: Langley contributed, she really got this thing going, like, I
Speaker 2: don't Chee's one. I don't think the University of Lester
Speaker 2: would have done this ever had it not been for her.
Speaker 2: She obtained permits to do this dig. Like she really
Speaker 2: went to town, but she wasn't an ARCHAEOLOGI just the
Speaker 2: University of lesterhead archaeologists. After that ground penetrating radar, she
Speaker 2: was like, I'm telling you, I told you guys, let's
Speaker 2: dig here. So then on August twenty twelve, they started
Speaker 2: that dig, and this was it's a you know, a
Speaker 2: car park, a parking lot. It's big enough that if
Speaker 2: you're excavating it with brushes like toothbrushes and dental picks,
Speaker 2: it's going to take you a while. The longer it takes,
Speaker 2: the more expensive it's going to be. So they dug
Speaker 2: in for a really long dig. Within hours, they discovered Richard.
Speaker 1: The Third Yeah, or you know, they just discovered a
Speaker 1: skeleton and they excavated the rest of the area. They
Speaker 1: found all right, this is definitely beneath the former Greyfriars
Speaker 1: Church here, and so everyone's getting pretty excited at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: A few weeks later September twelfth, they finally call a
Speaker 1: press conference and they say, everybody, we have a skeleton
Speaker 1: that's an adult male in his thirties. Richard died at
Speaker 1: thirty two. It's got severe curvature of the spine that
Speaker 1: looks like scoliosis, which you know, is consistent with maybe
Speaker 1: one shoulder being higher than the other. Had some serious
Speaker 1: head trauma, looks like a death blow to the head.
Speaker 1: And the date, you know, matches the historical record, so
Speaker 1: we are pretty sure we have Richard the third year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a it was a big deal. There's
Speaker 2: a good movie that came out in twenty twenty two
Speaker 2: called The Lost King that's about Philippa Langley and.
Speaker 1: This this Oh I didn't know about that.
Speaker 2: It's really good. Steve Coogan plays her husband. It's a
Speaker 2: great movie. But it's definitely it's based on her book
Speaker 2: Looking that's based on her project, the Looking for Richard Project,
Speaker 2: so it's very sympathetic to her and it's very critical
Speaker 2: of the University of Leicester and it really kind of
Speaker 2: became prominent in the movie, at least at this press
Speaker 2: conference where she showed up expecting to be part of
Speaker 2: this whole thing and she was just sidelined from that
Speaker 2: point on by the university who had this huge press conference,
Speaker 2: really well done press conference, and they announced this to
Speaker 2: the world. This was an enormous deal, especially in the
Speaker 2: UK obviously, and then I think just a couple of
Speaker 2: weeks after that or within the next several months, they
Speaker 2: did some more tests. These were DNA tests, and they
Speaker 2: were like, they held another press conference, they like, this
Speaker 2: is definitely Richard the third Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it was one of those ninety nine point
Speaker 1: nine percent certainties. Basically through DNA they got him, they
Speaker 1: found him. Some people say they called it the luckiest
Speaker 1: archaeological dig in history, which to me like sells her
Speaker 1: a little short, because she did a lot of good
Speaker 1: It didn't seem like luck to me. She literally found
Speaker 1: the place and said dig there. That's not luck, that's
Speaker 1: like good work.
Speaker 2: I think sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, they did say it was like a one
Speaker 1: in a million thing. But again, I don't know call
Speaker 1: it a great discovery. But when someone says I think
Speaker 1: he's buried under this and he is, that's not.
Speaker 2: Luck, that's guidance.
Speaker 1: That's selling her short. Who played her in the movie.
Speaker 2: Sally Hawkins, I think I don't I'm pretty sure that
Speaker 2: was her name.
Speaker 1: I love Sally Hawkins.
Speaker 2: Oh good, then that's who it was.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't she The Shape of Water? That weird movie?
Speaker 2: I did not see that movie.
Speaker 1: Oh well, it won the Oscar and it was a
Speaker 1: little weird. But yeah, that's that's Sally Hawkins. I love her.
Speaker 1: She's great.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, then you would like this movie even more
Speaker 2: now because she is great, isn't it.
Speaker 1: She was in the Paddington movies, which are fantastic if
Speaker 1: you haven't seen them.
Speaker 2: I saw the first one in the theater.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The second one's even better.
Speaker 2: Oh really, yeah, I was not expecting that, chuck.
Speaker 1: Yeah it was. It's like one of the sequels out
Speaker 1: did the first kind of things like well, there's not many,
Speaker 1: but yeah.
Speaker 2: So you may be sitting there, especially if you're genealogically mine,
Speaker 2: and be like, well, how did they know? How did
Speaker 2: they do a DNA test on the skeleton? Like did
Speaker 2: they swab its tooth and then its toe and compare them. No.
Speaker 2: There was a group of genealogists who got to work
Speaker 2: tracking down descendants of Richard the Third. His only son
Speaker 2: died long before he could have had kids, so he
Speaker 2: had no heirs whatsoever. So this is a bit of work.
Speaker 2: And they tracked down two different people. One guy was
Speaker 2: in Canada and they said, you are definitely a direct
Speaker 2: descendant of Richard the Third. Can we stick this cotton
Speaker 2: swab in your mouth and swirl it around for thirty seconds?
Speaker 1: And he's like, do I get anything else? Like can
Speaker 1: I be king?
Speaker 2: They're like, we've brought this Richard the Third tope bag
Speaker 2: as a thank you gift, and he said, what's in it?
Speaker 2: And they're like, nothing, it's just the toe bag.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with a swab, put that in your mouth. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they they they tracked down a relative and
Speaker 1: made that certainty certain which is just remarkable. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's DNA changed. Was just such a game changer for everything.
Speaker 1: There was always so much guesswork before, like hey, we're
Speaker 1: pretty sure, but now with ninety nine point nine percent certainty,
Speaker 1: like they found their guy.
Speaker 2: Even without it. I'm not quite sure what they found
Speaker 2: that was in controvertible evidence that it was Greyfriars. But
Speaker 2: if they had found grayfires and then they found this skeleton, yeah,
Speaker 2: killed in battle obviously Sla Spine had who had scoliosis,
Speaker 2: who was the right age, Like I think we would
Speaker 2: still all be like, yeah, that was Richard the third
Speaker 2: But yeah, the DNA definitely seals it for sure.
Speaker 1: They were able to give him like a burial fit
Speaker 1: for a king. Eventually they had a big He was
Speaker 1: reinterered at Leicster Cathedral. Benedett, Cumberbatch was there, the Queen
Speaker 1: was there. Cumberbatch read an original poem that he did
Speaker 1: not write. But like it was, it was a lot
Speaker 1: of fanfare. It didn't really I mean, it proved that
Speaker 1: he wasn't like quote unquote hunchback. He may have had scoliosis,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't some like deformed monster. It did not
Speaker 1: answer anything obviously about what happened to the two princes.
Speaker 1: It's not like he they buried him with a you know,
Speaker 1: a confessional scroll that he had written down or anything
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: I didn't do it. I was framed. Yeah, so I
Speaker 2: think when the remains were found, one of the headlines
Speaker 2: of the papers in England, Philip A. Langley read said
Speaker 2: referred to Richard ID as a child killer. And so
Speaker 2: she was like, you know what, I think I need
Speaker 2: to come up with another project now that the last
Speaker 2: one was successful. So she's got the Two Princes project.
Speaker 2: Now she's trying to figure out a proof that he
Speaker 2: did not kill the two Princes and or who did?
Speaker 2: I think? She published a book claiming that it was solved,
Speaker 2: and everyone's like, this isn't actually solved. But she did
Speaker 2: come up with some pretty good evidence that suggests that
Speaker 2: those princes made it out of the tower outside of
Speaker 2: England and managed to grow up and were not killed
Speaker 2: by Richard. That's her new jam.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but Chris Baron hit him with a cease and
Speaker 1: desist and shut it all down.
Speaker 2: Who oh is that the spin Doctor's guy?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: How do you know his name?
Speaker 1: I looked it up. Okay, but that is the weird
Speaker 1: kind of musical stuff that I remember. I just didn't
Speaker 1: remember that. Emily's always like, how do you remember the
Speaker 1: bass player from Poison or whatever?
Speaker 2: Ricky Rouse?
Speaker 1: That was Ricky Rockett. Guitar player Bobby dal was based layer.
Speaker 2: Okay, thanks, you got anything else? I'm Richard the third Chuck.
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. This is a fun one if
Speaker 1: you can keep track of all the Edwards and the Richards.
Speaker 1: It's actually not the hardest thing to follow, and super interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah it is. I love this one. Too well. Since
Speaker 2: we both loved this episode, I think everybody that means
Speaker 2: it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: And you know what, this is another rare shout out
Speaker 1: because we want to honor a Boy Scout, an Eagle Scout.
Speaker 1: This from Rebecca Joiner. Hey, guys, my son John just
Speaker 1: achieve rank of Eagle Scout and we'd like to for
Speaker 1: you guys to come to his court of honor in
Speaker 1: Michigan this June. A tradition in the Boy Scouts to
Speaker 1: invite some of their Scout's favorite celebrities to their court
Speaker 1: of honor. John is sixteen years old. Part of the
Speaker 1: troop I told her I wouldn't say the troop on
Speaker 1: the air, but part of a troop here in Michigan.
Speaker 1: He has served in the Honor Guard twice, been a
Speaker 1: week at the Scout ranch, and started a five K
Speaker 1: to support type one diabetes in honor of his brother Bo.
Speaker 1: His Eagle Scout project was to retire over six thousand
Speaker 1: flags from the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans and Cemetery.
Speaker 1: He also cleaned and organized their outbuilding to protect future flags.
Speaker 1: We listen to you guys as a family at least
Speaker 1: once a week and between you and Joe Rogan, I
Speaker 1: feel like he's getting at least a somewhat balanced view
Speaker 1: of the world. Please, guys, just let me believe that.
Speaker 1: So thanks again. That's Rebecca Joiner and Rebecca. We just
Speaker 1: wanted to give a big shout out to John. Congratulations
Speaker 1: buddy on the achieving the rank of Eagle Scout. That
Speaker 1: is quite an achievement and all the work you've done,
Speaker 1: all the volunteer stuff you've done, is just awesome and
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're just headed toward great things in life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like a congratulations. John. Thanks for listening
Speaker 2: to us. We appreciate you. If you want to be
Speaker 2: like it's John's mom's name Rebecca Rebecca and send us
Speaker 2: an email about your kid or somebody you know and
Speaker 2: love in your life who's just great. We love to
Speaker 2: hear those kind of things. You can send us an
Speaker 2: email to stuffs at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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