What two inncocent children?

You're not a Tudor in disguise are you, ID?

The two children whom this thread is supposed to be about.

Me a Tudor? That'd be a laugh. But if I'm a Tudor then you must be a payed up member of the Richard the Turd Society then Nordmann? Minette will be so pleased to have you on board.

Edit. Why have you lost your lovely luminous green colour Nordmann? You are now the same swampy (or is it a froggy?) shade as the rest of us.

I'm a Turdist and always have been. Those kids weren't innocent either. Bloody little LLFs - the pair of them.

I'm from Ireland - we tend towards 40 shades of green. (I feel a novel directed towards an Irish female illiterate readership coming on)

LLF's?

LLF Low Level Format
LLF Light Loss Factor (lighting)
LLF Least Laxity First
LLF Log-Likelihood Function
LLF Landmark Legal Foundation
LLF Lobster Liberation Front (UK)
LLF Line Loss Factor (UK energy)
LLF Lazar Levine & Felix LLP
LLF Lusk Legacy Foundation (charity)
LLF Learning and Leadership in Families
LLF Long Lost Friend (Internet slang)
LLF Live Life to the Fullest
LLF Limited Lock Facility
LLF Link Layer Forwarding
LLF Long-Living Filaments
LLF Load Loss Factor
LLF Limit Load Factor
LLF Laugh Like Freak (polite form)
LLF Lake Lavon Fishing (fishing forum)
LLF Load List File
LLF Love Lives Forever
LLF Longest Latency First
LLF Lemmy's Land Forum (video game forum)
LLF Little League Field (various locations)
LLF Little Loving Friends (small pets)

nordmann wrote:

I'm a Turdist ......I'm from Ireland - we tend towards 40 shades of green.

Now its becoming a Green Issue - or am I missing the point? It seems ever so organic, anyway.

ferval wrote:

What though would be on that wish list which you have so intemperately torn up? What would you like the investigation to reveal and what would that add to the present understanding?

I hope the skeleton does prove to be that of Richard, ferval, and, if it is, that the revelation that he did indeed suffer from a "severe" physical deformity will lead to discussion - perhaps reappraisal - of attitudes to disability in the past.

We assume, do we not, that deformity in earlier times *always* meant rejection and mockery; indeed that it was seen as symptomatic of a more serious *moral* defect, if not in the infant, certainly in the character of its mother. But was this *always* so? I've been mulling this over today - I remembered reading that Claude, the wife of Francis I of France, had a severe limp, as did her sister Renee. I checked this out just now, and discovered that both girls had indeed inherited a physical defect from their mother, Anne of Brittany: she limped badly too, but, far from being a major handicap and an embarrassment, Anne managed to make her affliction a fashionable mark of distinction - Court ladies actually copied her and started limping. They even wore shoes with one heel higher than the other to achieve the desired effect!

I want to find out more - I'm trying to track down a book called "A History of Disability" by Henri-Jacques Stiker - he seems to be the authority on this topic; apparently his study looks at attitudes to disability from ancient times. He starts with Oedipus.

I'm curiously examining my own reactions to the news that, after all the debate and argument, it could well be that Richard III really was badly disabled. I know I have to be careful in what I say because my reaction is very much a 21st century - and post 2012 Olympics - one. As I've said before, I'm staggered at the courage and determination Richard must have shown in training and disciplining a disabled body so that he could excel in medieval forms of combat. Because he did excel - no one, not even his worst enemies, denies that. He could control a powerful destrier (White Surrey was no docile cob!), could wield a heavy sword and battle-axe, and, it would seem, cope with terrible fatigue *and* live with chronic pain (idiopathic scoliosis is not painful, but untreated congenital scoliosis - from the little I've just been reading about the condition - is). I'm also angered that Henry Tudor exposed a possibly deformed body - completely naked - for the ignorant to jeer at. What a bastard that man was. Political necessity? Maybe, or just typical Tudor vindictiveness and bad form?

The other thing I'm toying with (a little bit reluctantly, it must be admitted) is how severe scoliosis can affect a child/adolescent psychologically, especially when such a child - a boy - has an older brother who is everything he is not: Edward of March was tall, perfectly formed and jaw-droppingly handsome. Dare I suggest - even tentatively - that there could have been some jealously and resentment - albeit unconscious and repressed - in Richard?

Oh heck, what am I thinking? Could it be that Shakespeare got it right, after all? Only joking - but gosh there's going to be some discussion and heated argument if dem bones are proved to be Richard's.

PS Now no gloating, ID - you must strive to be magnanimous to us, the apparently defeated . I'm sure Andrew Spencer won't gloat - he is a gentleman - but Catigern will have an absolute field day.

For anyone interested:

http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=15952

Temperance wrote:

I'm also angered that Henry Tudor exposed a possibly deformed body - completely naked - for the ignorant to jeer at. What a bastard that man was. Political necessity? Maybe, or just typical Tudor vindictiveness and bad form.

Dare I suggest that you are thinking in 21C terms here Temp. I think anyone else in Tudors shoes would not have acted differently, given the time and circumstances.

Temperance wrote:

PS Now no gloating, ID - you must strive to be magnanimous to us, the apparently defeated . I'm sure Andrew Spencer won't gloat - he is a gentleman - but Catigern will have an absolute field day.

Heavens, do I sound as if I'm gloating Temp? Sorry if so, it wasn't my intention at all, I'm just annoyed with the media hype and (near hysterical) over-reaction. It really doesn't bother me whether Richard had some deformity or not as I don't consider it overly important to the debate. Other than (if it does prove to be him) it will hopefully bring about a re-assessment of the events, for both sides of the argument.

Islanddawn wrote:

Temperance wrote:

I'm also angered that Henry Tudor exposed a possibly deformed body - completely naked - for the ignorant to jeer at. What a bastard that man was. Political necessity? Maybe, or just typical Tudor vindictiveness and bad form.

Dare I suggest that you are thinking in 21C terms here Temp. I think anyone else in Tudors shoes would not have acted differently, given the time and circumstances.

But did I not say that myself - that I was thinking in 21C terms, ID? Please read the relevant bit of my post again!

Sorry if this isn't relevant, but I'm finding this article fascinating:

http://www.class.uidaho.edu/normal/Readings/Institutional%20History.pdf

This snippet is what's intriguing me: "The networks of support that appeared to exist....provide evidence that medieval attitudes toward disability were more complex than is often believed and not entirely negative."

Mmm. I'm wondering again if things changed post 1500ish - all the witchcraft/deformity and general fruit of the devil's loins nonsense that took hold. More and Rous were both writing after 1500. But I don't know - this could be one of my wild ideas - got to read more.

I read the relevant bit the first time!

You said you had to be careful what you said because your reaction would be a 21C one, then in the following paragraph you fell into the very trap you were warning yourself not to do in the previous.

Do I have your permission to sit down again, Mrs Temp?

Temp, you might be interested in this "Disability in the Middle Ages: Impairment at the Intersection of Historical Inquiry and Disability Studies
Irina Metzler*
Department of History, University of Swansea*
from History Compass
Volume 9, Issue 1, Article first published online: 4 JAN 2011
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1478-0542.2010.00746.x/pdf

also her book "Disability in Medieval Europe" http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=alRZIEijOtgC&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=medieval+disability+&ots=4HU8ch1Eiv&sig=_Skg4P2G8gO9LIsjpweZqG-Z5d8#v=onepage&q=medieval%20disability&f=false

I've no longer got the papers I was looking for but indeed attitudes to disability were much more complex in the past, not least I imagine because there was so little that might be hoped to be done to prevent or cure it so it had to be accepted and adapted to. The study of disability is one of the 'queer' archaeologies which are receiving considerable attention now.

Compassion for the disabled seems to have been around since very early times as the Shanidar Neandertal with his severe deformities and the poor toothless old Dmanisi guy who would have needed someone to do his chewing for him indicate.

Grrr! It's all in the *same* paragraph!

No more time for squabbling - got to go now. I'm in enough trouble already for being "on that bloody history site again".

I don't mean to sound like some old cow of a boring teacher, ID - heaven forbid!

Ferval - just seen your post - thank you! Hopefully will respond when I've had a chance to follow up the links.

Grrrr! So it is in the same paragraph Temp!

But I still didn't misread the "relevant" bit!

I believe that a broken collar bone left untreated would leave the appearance of a raised shoulder. Possibly a fall from a horse, or somesuch, and I am sure that Richard had similar accidents many times.

I suppose the hype is a little over the top but I am quite chuffed that people are so interested in an event from the 15th century and it is causing all this attention. We haven't seen much of the follow-up stuff here, but when this was first on the news, it came in about number 5 on the most popular viewing on our online news site. I liked that (of course some news is pushed in your face more than others on this site, so more likely to be viewed).

We're going out to eat with some English friends tonight, one of whom is beside herself with excitement over Richards possible discovery and will be straight off to Leicester as soon as they are back in England. She is also a raving PG fan

There'll be no wine beyond one glass for me tonight, or I'll never keep my mouth shut and it will be handbags at dawn tomorrow.

Have fun tonight ID a few glasses of wine and you will have the whole 15c sorted out!! in the meantime it is a very intriguing subject and will probably have enough legs to keep us going for ages.

By the way what was the name of Vanora Bennetts book Temp, I can remember it but not the title, I think I will give it another go, just to read what a right basket Thomas More was.

Gran wrote:

By the way what was the name of Vanora Bennetts book Temp, I can remember it but not the title, I think I will give it another go, just to read what a right basket Thomas More was.

It was "Portrait of an Unknown Woman", Gran. Bennett is a much better writer than the awful PG, but nowhere near as famous. Life is so unfair.

A right basket! A right basket! Gran! That's no way to describe one of England's greatest scholars! Isn't it odd how historians and history fans deal with people? As Aunt Entity put it, "But how the world turns. One day cock of the walk. Next a feather duster."

St. Thomas More is certainly going through a feather duster period at the moment. I blame the Pope.

I wonder if More had scoliosis too? It seems that, like Richard* (embarrassed cough here), More had one shoulder slightly higher than the other:

"As we learn from Erasmus, having one shoulder visibly higher than the other was a characteristic of More's own personal appearance so there are private jokes here too. (Of More Erasmus wrote to Ulrich von Hutten: 'The right shoulder appears slightly more elevated than his left, and this trait, most readily apparent in his walk...') "

I still think More was laughing at everyone with his "History of Richard III" - maybe even laughing at the idea that deformity was a sign that you were one of the devil's own.

ID mentioned yesterday that my admiring Richard for his tenacity in overcoming a physical handicap was unwise - typical 21st C thinking. Yet there is evidence that many people *did* admire Richard. His *courage* is often mentioned. Am I allowed to speculate that it may have been that he was admired, not just because he was known to be fearless in battle, but also because people were aware that he had overcome a terrible handicap? No one could write openly of a disability of course - even to express admiration - the deformity could only be mentioned later, when he was dead. Then it could be used to mock and to vilify.

I'm going to check in a moment, but someone actually wrote of "a great heart in so little a body". Nearest anyone ever came to mentioning Richard's problems? Can't remember who it was, but it was a contemporary. Back in a minute when I've looked it up.

PS But historians don't work like this do they - come up with an idea and then search for evidence to prove it? Hanging offence. You're supposed to do it the other way round.

Disjointed message - sorry - but haven't really surfaced yet. Tea needed.



* Assuming the skeleton is proved to be Richard's, of course. It's getting a bit tedious having to repeat that all the time.

Thanks for the title Temp, I have just ordered it. If his body was that small it might be another help with identification.

Where is Minette when we need her?

Temperance wrote:

ID mentioned yesterday that my admiring Richard for his tenacity in overcoming a physical handicap was unwise - typical 21st C thinking. Yet there is evidence that many people *did* admire Richard. His *courage* is often mentioned.

I said no such thing Temp! Please re-read the relevant post and quote!

The comment I made (with relevant quoted sentence so there would be no confusion btw) was directed at your 21C vilification of Henry Tudor for displaying Richard's naked body. Whereby I simply pointed out that no-one else would have done differently given the time and circumstances.

I did NOT mention nor imply anything relating to your admiration of Richard, his courage, his prowess as a warrior, nor even his amazing ability to scratch his bum whilst charging at full tilt and wearing armour.

PS. Grrrr and Aggghhhhh, are we forever to be a cross-purposes here Temp?

No, let's talk about Downton Abbey instead.

Talking of bums, isn't that labrador's backside annoying?

Temperance wrote:

No, let's talk about Downton Abbey instead.

Agreed!

Temperance wrote:

Talking of bums, isn't that labrador's backside annoying?

Gawd Temp, now I'm never going to be able to see him without thinking of a dog's bottom....

Better the dog's bottom than the dog's ********, ID!

I've found a picture of that posh dog's bottom for you and it won't paste. Drat. Will try again in a sec.

Such a clean bottom, someone has been scrubbing that dog.

Apologies for all the bottoming out stuff yesterday, folks. I shall try to be more sensible today.

Don't be silly Temp, the brief change to a light topic was a well needed break from a subject in danger of becoming too serious.

Edit. Lord, they are milking this dig for all it is worth. The test results aren't even in yet and already the car park has become hallowed ground.

http://www.itv.com/news/central/2012-09-19/king-richard-iii-dig-attracts-an-audience/

Thought I'd post this. I think it's jolly interesting.

http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/exeterblog/blog/2012/09/19/shakespeare-and-the-body-in-the-carpark/

Cardinal Wolsey is also buried in Leicester, of course, but not in the car park. But no point in digging him up.

Minette has appeared - briefly - over on Englistory. Alas, she has disappeared again, rather like the Cheshire Cat.

Interesting post Temp, I will pop over and see what Minette had to say.

Minette was perhaps a mite more subdued than I remember. I am in the middle of "Portrait of an Unknown Woman" and looking at it from a different angle from my last reading, because then I had no idea what Vanora Bennett was getting at until reading her notes at the end.

Reading seem somewhat peeved that Leicester may have found it's Holy Grail, is the hunt now on for who has the best bones?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-19725972

Or a more interesting article on 7 English Kings with no confirmed burial site. Each more deserving of monetary investment into their discovery than the one in the car park, but largely seem to be ignored. Imo anyway.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-19487335

Interesting links, ID - thank you. I had no idea that *seven" kings (plus one Protector) have no confirmed graves.

I was particularly shocked to read about Oliver Cromwell's fate. I knew he had been exhumed, but I thought his body had been burnt - so he's buried (most of him) in some dreadful pit near Marks and Spencers at Marble Arch? Lord knows what they'd find if that place (Marble Arch, not Marks and Spencers) were investigated.

And Oliver's poor head - how undignified for it to be an exhibit in a travelling show. I'm glad it's back in Cambridge now.

Islanddawn wrote:

Reading seem somewhat peeved that Leicester may have found it's Holy Grail, is the hunt now on for who has the best bones?

Yes, this is all rather getting to be like the mediaeval acquisition of saintly relics and all unashamedly for the same reasons: money, power and influence. I'll bet there are now quite a few cathedrals and abbeys dusting off their archives and their archivists, and searching around to see if they might not have the odd forgotten royal duke or royal concubine lying unregarded in some ecclesiastic corner.

Who's going to be next I wonder?

EDIT : I was intrigued by the somewhat odd fate of James II .... divided up between various religious houses: a bit here, another bit there, these bits split up and sent to yet another couple of places etc ... and all because he himself was convinced he would eventually be put together again and buried at Westminster.

What an excellent, insightful analogy MM, I need to think about that. It's really very sad; the bits of dead kings being seen as so potent after all this time and this desire to see them buried appropriately and with due respect and Christian ceremony being so strong. How far have we really progressed?

Islanddawn wrote:

Reading seem somewhat peeved that Leicester may have found it's Holy Grail, is the hunt now on for who has the best bones?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-19725972

Or a more interesting article on 7 English Kings with no confirmed burial site. Each more deserving of monetary investment into their discovery than the one in the car park, but largely seem to be ignored. Imo anyway.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-19487335

Dont think of it as digging up a king. think of it as depriving social workers of a carpark. Cheap at half the price.

Temperance wrote:

ferval wrote:

Gosh Temp, you do give an authentic ring to your inventions, enough to fool the likes me of anyway.

Could it be a combination of both your and Nordmann's propositions? The body was displayed to prove that he was well and truly dead and stripped naked so as to confirm that the corpse on display was indeed him by his physical deformity, particularly so if he had facial injuries, as well as underlining his physical and so moral imperfections.

Yes - and your point about possible facial injuries is a good one.

But then again, the skeleton may not be that of our Richard!

PS The arrow still puzzles me. Was full (and presumably the finest available) body armour often pierced by arrows?

At close range then an arrow could penetrate plate but the emphasis is on could. There are a lot of variables to take into account and one is that any modern test thats been done is on a stationary replica rather than a peice thats moving in three dimensions. Theres a link to a web site attached where they thrash this subject over on a regular basis http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=15454

Odds are that it was something like this that did the damage to the skull. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcDCMhyOLAc The poleaxe or a bill, a sort of halberd. The spike on thise things is quite capable of penetrating armour so it could be that one of them did the back wound as well the iron found could well be part of the blade broken off in the body.

Going by the Towton graves most of the wounds appear to be head based with the rest of the bodies possibly still protected by the body armour. There are a lot of reasons why a helmet might get removed in battle, to improve breathing. So you can be recognised by your own troops if your trying to rally them. Or it just got knocked off or damaged to the point you remove it.

With hindsight though unless the church is packed with battle scarred blokes with dodgy backs the odds are it is Richard. In which case he built a chantry on York Minster specifically to hold his body. I think.

Construction of a college for 100 chantry priests under Richard's patronage was underway when he died, though after Bosworth it was abandoned and we now don't even know where it was - though more than likely near St William's College. New altars were installed in the minster as part of the same project - a sure sign that he was planning a burial there (the college priests' primary purpose as chantrists would have been to pray for someone in the afterlife). However another missing person - Richard's beloved son Edward who had died just the year before - might well have been buried in this college with a view to moving him in to the minster later, so it could also have been that all these preparations were just for him.

Really good post, bttdp - thank you. The links were very useful, especially the YouTube clip about the use of the pole axe.

I'm usually not in the least bit interested in weapons or armour, but this was fascinating. What a devastating weapon the pole axe was - I had no idea it could deliver a triple whammy: spike thrust - axe blow - hammer blow. The demonstration of what the hammer section could do to an armoured pig was terrifying: clearly several blows to tightly fitting plate armour and a man's ribs could be crushed, and - particularly gruesome - his internal organs mangled. Dreadful. How on earth did anyone survive on a battlefield?

Interesting too that there was even a class divide in the choice of weapons - I realised of course that only the warrior elite would have superior swords and armour, but I did not know that the bill hook (which was almost like a piece of farm equipment) was all the common foot soldier could afford. Was the pole axe used more by the mercenaries and other professional soldiers? It was obviously (as the narrator pointed out) an expensive weapon to produce.

Were the really good weapons stolen from fallen enemies on a battlefield, or was discipline imposed to forbid this?

Going back to Richard and the car park - another good article from the Guardian here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/sep/23/richard-3rd-third-iii-leicster-bones


How distressing that the bones of Alfred the Great probably ended up as fertiliser. Hamlet could have done a good speech about that.

"If it is Richard, he is not the only English monarch to have ended up in an unlikely spot. The closest parallel to the hunt for Richard were efforts by archaeologists in Winchester in 1999 to find Alfred the Great, who died in 899 and whose bones were moved at least twice, finally to Hyde Abbey in 1110.

That abbey was also destroyed in the dissolution of the monasteries, though bones were found when a prison was built on the site in the 18th century. The dig uncovered quantities of carved stone, and part of a pelvis eventually determined to be from an old woman who suffered from bad arthritis. Alfred, the archaeologists concluded sadly, was probably ground up for bonemeal fertiliser for the prison governor's garden."

And is Richard rapidly turning into the People's Hunchback - a King of Hearts? The bit about the "shrine" that has sprung up in Leicester Cathedral is a bit too much even for a soppy old Ricardian like me:

"Candles lit by a stream of visitors burn perpetually nearby and many people have left white roses since news of the bones' discovery went round the world."

Temperance wrote:

Really good post, bttdp - thank you. The links were very useful, especially the YouTube clip about the use of the pole axe.

I'm usually not in the least bit interested in weapons or armour, but this was fascinating. What a devastating weapon the pole axe was - I had no idea it could deliver a triple whammy: spike thrust - axe blow - hammer blow. The demonstration of what the hammer section could do to an armoured pig was terrifying: clearly several blows to tightly fitting plate armour and a man's ribs could be crushed, and - particularly gruesome - his internal organs mangled. Dreadful. How on earth did anyone survive on a battlefield?

Interesting too that there was even a class divide in the choice of weapons - I realised of course that only the warrior elite would have superior swords and armour, but I did not know that the bill hook (which was almost like a piece of farm equipment) was all the common foot soldier could afford. Was the pole axe used more by the mercenaries and other professional soldiers? It was obviously (as the narrator pointed out) an expensive weapon to produce.

Were the really good weapons stolen from fallen enemies on a battlefield, or was discipline imposed to forbid this?

Going back to Richard and the car park - another good article from the Guardian here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/sep/23/richard-3rd-third-iii-leicster-bones


How distressing that the bones of Alfred the Great probably ended up as fertiliser. Hamlet could have done a good speech about that.

"If it is Richard, he is not the only English monarch to have ended up in an unlikely spot. The closest parallel to the hunt for Richard were efforts by archaeologists in Winchester in 1999 to find Alfred the Great, who died in 899 and whose bones were moved at least twice, finally to Hyde Abbey in 1110.

That abbey was also destroyed in the dissolution of the monasteries, though bones were found when a prison was built on the site in the 18th century. The dig uncovered quantities of carved stone, and part of a pelvis eventually determined to be from an old woman who suffered from bad arthritis. Alfred, the archaeologists concluded sadly, was probably ground up for bonemeal fertiliser for the prison governor's garden."

And is Richard rapidly turning into the People's Hunchback - a King of Hearts? The bit about the "shrine" that has sprung up in Leicester Cathedral is a bit too much even for a soppy old Ricardian like me:

"Candles lit by a stream of visitors burn perpetually nearby and many people have left white roses since news of the bones' discovery went round the world."

If you go on Youtube or do a google search for just about any weapon under the sun then there is generally a video of some lad swinging one round in his back garden. There is a bit of a drive at the moment to "recover" the western martial arts. The earliest written texts come from arround the period of the wars of the roses so it will give yuo an idea of what the bloke who wrote the book thought a sword fight should look like. The early texts tend to be european though the earliest british guide is a bloke called Silver and he's from the elizabethen period. They are all very different from modern sport fencing they were intended to teach people to kill and when its done well you can see that clearly in some of the videos.

Effects of the weapons. If you have a sensitive nature dont do a video search for Zombie go boom. Its a sight thats feeding of the zombie craze by "reviwing the sort of weapons available to people to kill zombies. They use the sort of ballistic dummies used to test modern rifles, these are a sort of head and shoulders statue of a combination of a plastic skeleton covered in balistec gel to simulate flesh and bone. its absolutely F888ing horrendous what even quite simple weapons like clubs will do to unprotected flesh. if you dont want to watch, and I cant say as I blame you, lets just sayt that its a toss up as to who has the most gore on them the dummy of the guy swinging the club or axe or sword.

Armour offsets that a bit the thing to remember is that theres a bit more to a suit of armour then the steel. underneath that was worn a padded jacket which would take the sting out of some of the blows and there might be a mail shirt under their as well? http://www.paddedarmour.com/

The poor blokes just got to wear the jacket and if you have a look on My armoury theres a thread hidden somewere that shows it could be quite effective at stopping cuts and stabs. These doodahs have a lot of names gambeson for one I just call them padded jackets. LOL But they appear to be able to turn a definetely leathal wound into a survivable one.

As for the social divide in weapons. yep there definetely was one but the WOTR was a period of change from the old fuedal system to a semi professional army so its a bit difficult to explain. But here goes. basically if you owned a certain amount of land or property then you were obliged to either arm yourself to a set level or pay a sum of money to hire a suitably armed replacement in your place. The higher up the social scale you were then the better armed you were expected to be.

Weapons have the same sort of fashions as anything else. Like a guy today might swap his car every two or three years so a knight might cash in is suit of armour or sword to get a newer one. The old ones then go into a second hand market and gets bought by say a merchant who's landed the short end of the stick and has to turn out to fight. Also things like swords dont really go off. You can carry on using them even though they might be a couple of hundred years old so long as they arent rusted to buggery then bang a new handle on it an off you go. The cost of a suit of armour could vary from equivalent to a ferrari say to knackered old landrover sort of prices and at the lower end of the market older gear could be afforable to quite a wide range of people. But the down side is you need to know how to use a sword.

So if your a yeoman who is chosen to go or is stuck with it you can tap into that market or just take one of the billhooks of the farm to the local smith get a spike and a hook welded onto it get a six foot handle put on it and bobs your uncle. Its cheep, its effective and your pretty much familiar with how to use it because you spend most of the year swinging it at hedges. Your Mrs can run you up a padded jacket and a helmet can be brought, or you can use the one that grandad brought back from the day trip to agincourt. Your fuedal lord or the town council might make up a shortfall in things like clothes and boots and there you are ready to go.

Come the first battle, assuming you win, then you pick up better kit from the dead or prisoners, looting the field was possibly considered part of the wages? I've never really been clear on that. So our guy with the bill hook in a padded jacket becomes our bloke with a nice sallet, a bevor, a breastplate with one hole and some stains, a natty pair of steel cuffs and all the gold teeth he could pull..

As for the necro worship I dont know, I'll be honest I'd be pleased to see the documentary but don't really expect that it will completely answer things all it takes is one adoption somewhere in the family tree and even if the bones are dicky three its not provable. I don't think they can leave him sitting on a shelf though if it is him it just seems wrong to do that to whoever it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEuhKRhrvRM&NR=1&feature=endscreen

Quick video showing how a suit of armour could be put on. The black tunic thing the guy is wearing is a gambeson, or padded jacket. I think, no one seems to have explained to reinactors that black was a damn difficult colour to dye anything.

Not only was black difficult to dye it is also a ridiculously hot colour to be wearing, especially when campaign season was usually during the warm months and you were wearing a tin can. I reckon the gambesons would have normally been in a light colour.

There didn't seem to be any lining inside the helmet either, unless it was already built into it. But wasn't a leather (or something suitable) lining or cap necessary to protect the head from chafing on the metal and to absorb perspiration?

Speaking of tin cans, the bill hook looks like a giant can opener. Which is what it was meant to do, I suppose.

Islanddawn wrote:

Not only was black difficult to dye it is also a ridiculously hot colour to be wearing, especially when campaign season was usually during the warm months and you were wearing a tin can. I reckon the gambesons would have normally been in a light colour.

There didn't seem to be any lining inside the helmet either, unless it was already built into it. But wasn't a leather (or something suitable) lining or cap necessary to protect the head from chafing on the metal and to absorb perspiration?

Speaking of tin cans, the bill hook looks like a giant can opener. Which is what it was meant to do, I suppose.

That particular type of helmet has a padded lining sewn in. But your right there were padded caps worn under some of the other types.

The bill hook as a tin opener? God yes I'd never really thought of that before. I can tell you the little one I have for the garden will cut through an inch and a half thick privet branch without having much of a swing at it. Lord alone knows what it would cut through mounted at the end of an eight foot pole. Probably anything it wants to.

I suppose the soldiers would get used to it ? A lot will have grown up around farms and the autumn slaughtering, even the ones from the cities would have been used to seeing animals butchered in the streets they would have been familiar with the sight and smell of blood at least and have a reasnoble idea of destructive anatomy. Certainly no shrinking violets. Going on the Towton skulls there was at least one there with a healed sword cut to the face, running from around the base of the ear to the tip of the chin and deep enough to cut partially through the jawbone and take a tooth out. That had occurred about ten years before he ran out of luck at Towton, so there must have been some of them that actually enjoyed it and went back for seconds!

I just watched The Blood of the Vikings doc, earlier period I know, but many of the skeletons examined in that (whether A/S or Viking) had some serious wounds that had healed too, slices in the scull, arms, legs, hips etc. And they are only the wounds that show up on the bone, heavens knows how many flesh wounds they had had during their lives that had healed. And some skeletons showed multiple and viscious wounds as the cause of their deaths.

A brutal life and their pain thresholds must have been pretty high, much higher than us today. I'd imagine that most villages would have had some residents walking around with visible scaring or missing bits and pieces.

Thankyou so much dear Paul! So thoughtful and kind.

The only things which offend me SST are lies.
Which is why I suppose I get my knickers in a twist ab
out R.III.!

Cheers to you both, and much appreciation, Minette!

An award for digging up some bones in a car park? Nothing has even been proven yet. http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/Richard-III-archaeology-team-awarded-honour/story-17084892-detail/story.html

I see the results of the DNA are not expected before the end of the year and DNA testing does not take that long. In other words the announcement of the results is going to be as manipulated as the dig and be released in a channel 4 show that will be aired around Xmas to boost ratings?

Hello! I've actually been writing, re-writing and things! It's funny to think that when "it" eventually has been edited to bits you may recognize it's basic parts immediately! Talking of which, what a lovely Labrador, better if it had been Black like my Daisy who of course always has a pristine bottom, while the garden...doesn't. So moving on just a few matters to bear in mind when talking of Leicester, what happened to Richard III's armour?
Surely it must have been custom built to deal with the hump, withered or fearfully raised shoulder and one leg shorter than the other? If so, where are the suits of armour now? True after the Battles of Barnet and Tewksbury they would have been bashed around a bit, quite a lot really, but wouldn't the "silver, white" one he wore at Bosworth have been kept as a freak-show souvenier?
We have endless exhibitions at the Tower of London to show off the wonderful armour that old, impressive "soldier" Henry VIII wore with not a scratch, hole, rip, tear or dent in it, so why not keep the deformed/defamed armour of R.III? Surely not because the Tudors sent others to their deaths and Richard III was the last king of England to actually lead his men personally and so physically fight in a battle? From the age of sixteen he was wearing armour, mustering troops for his brother Edward IV on the Welsh Marches, where are they all now? Too full of dents and holes to bother with?

From Henry VII to George II (theoretically the last king of England to lead his men into battle! He couldn't be bothered to learn English to issue commands) it's interesting to see how much further and further away from the fighting they got! Richard III was the last soldier king who actually did not ask his men to do what he could not. Today we have drones and collateral damage.

But this aside, why doesn't anyone think it odd that R. III is the only king whose stripped and naked body was put on public display for nearly three days for all to inspect and ridicule and no one reported a hump, withered arms, or strange legs? The bodies of the murdered Edward II and later Richard II were put on display, briefly, for public inspection, suitably dressed of course. When Oliver Cromwell was dug up from the High Alter at Westminster Abbey, he was found to be wearing royal purple! R. III was naked. All we have of an "eye witness account" of his deformities has been "discovered" by the "historian" Alison Weir. It is an account of a pub brawl in the York Record Office over Northumberland's inabilty to act at Bosworth. Someone who is arrested has said, Richard was a "crook back" who had been "buried in a ditch like a dog". Do we believe that all football referees are illegitimate? This is truly clutching at straws!
The way in which the History of Richard III has been recorded is a perfect example of how History can be manipulated. Stalin and his "thought police" could have learned a lot from the Tudors. We are told that Elizabeth I did not, "want to make windows into men's souls" so she made her Spy Master, Francis Walsingham do it for her! Please note that the Garden Tower where the Princes in the Tower were housed in 1483 only became known as the Bloody Tower AFTER the reign of the Tudors! And when we are told that Edward V was dropped off at "St Paul's Churchyard" when Richard brought him to London, it was in fact the Palace of the Bishop of London in Cheapside, one of London's busiest meeting places. And yet Traditional Historians are still at it, twisting facts to suit them!
Time Team's Tony Robinson has "revealed" to us with the help of Michael Jones the scholar, that Edward IV was illegitimate then ran off to Australia to show us our "true king". He even got Michael Hicks to say that Edward IV may have been the illegitimate son of the Archer of Rouen and Cecily Neville, an idea he had previously scorned, on camera! I trusted Jones but have just aquired his book on Bosworth where he tells us how much the nightmare sequence in Shakespeare's "Richard III" fascinated him and this work is about his own thoughts about how Richard III may have actually felt! Ye Gods! Come back Barbara Cartland all is forgiven!
Why don't people deal with facts any more? Michael Hicks has just released a booklet about Anne Neville, although he had great trouble doing so, bearing in mind the lack of information there was about her...He made it up as he went along! No doubt to suit his own imaginings. "The greatest living expert on Richard III". BBC History magazine. Everyone else does!
And yet we wonder why the "enigma" of Richard III and the Princes in the Tower runs and runs?! After graduating I worked at Leicester University as an archaeological illustrator, the tales I could tell but a happy experience if competitve, after the suicide. I asked too many questions and so left to train as a journalist. I still ask too many questions and am still disappointed when people lie. Of course I don't trust Leicester Uiniv any more now than I did then, although lovely people! I think that all "Historians" should train as journalists. No more sloppy thinking, facts right or be sued, no "imaginings" and "possibilies". If you don't know , then say so! The Jeremy Paxmans of this world will always find you out! How I would love to meet Hicks, Weir, Gregory and sadly now Jones!
The History of Richard III is a perfect storm of Bad History and even worse historical research, a mob mentality of the established "historians", influenced by Shakespeare and the Tudors. Let us not forget that all the Royal Houses of England and Scotland, Wales was anexed, claim their Royal descent from the House of Tudor. If Henry VII was the true non-royal usurper, then where would we be?
Apologies it's so long! But had to be said.

Oh no! What a long...... blunder! Which will be lost no doubt.

Hi Minette - great to see you posting here, but I'm really none the wiser as to your thoughts on the discoveries in the car park!

You're still fighting the old war in the depths of the jungle, I think. Haven't things moved on a bit?

Have you come across "Blood Sisters" by Sarah Gristwood? Non-fiction. It's an attempt to "weave together" the stories of Margaret of Anjou, Cecily Neville, Margaret Beaufort, Anne Neville, Elizabeth Woodville, Margaret of Burgundy and our old friend, Elizabeth of York. It's OK, I suppose, but a bit too ambitious - trying to write about *seven* such women in one book doesn't really come off - all too superficial. Another bandwagon volume, I'm afraid.

Interesting that you say you are "still disappointed when people lie". When is a lie a lie, and when is it just someone else's viewpoint? I'm still battling with that one.

PS Just got Susan Brigden's biography of Thomas Wyatt - "The Heart's Forest". Suspect I'll be back in Tudor-land for a bit once I start on it.

Don't disappear.

There's a lot of BS beginning to infest the media lately regarding both Richard III and the Princes in the Tower which seems to me to be based on a complete lack of understanding regarding DNA and what extracted DNA can actually tell us. Some commentators are even getting DNA confused with carbon dating and hoping that the comparative age of all these bones proves x, y or z.

While I can understand a TV production company which has invested heavily in a project like this protecting their product and maximising their return, I sincerely hope that the same people are not (through press feeds and the like) fuelling this hollow controversy devoid of logic, sense and basic understanding of physics.

I admire Minette for her dogged stand on this issue and the questions she asks which she feels have a bearing on it. While I do not necessarily agree that Richard's armour, for example, would have been saved for "curiosity" purposes or the like, I simply do not see how we can - at so removed a stage - dispel the layers of propagandistic spin in which this story has been cocooned. Her approach is therefore probably one of the most astute in that it starts with a "qui bono" assumption which appears a reasonable one to make and then demands that the little fact which we can all agree on is at least considered in light of that assumption. Those facts which do not lend themselves to agreement are candidates for politically motivated invented testimony, or simply sheer invention itself, as in the case of the deductions made during Wright's inspection of the alleged princes' bones in the 1930s.

Two things are sure, regardless of what claims might be made on the heels of this important new archaeological find (whatever misgivings we might share regarding the method of its find). Nothing of certainty can be established regarding whether the skeleton is Richard's or not, only further theory enhanced by this new data. Secondly, whether or not the skeleton once indeed careered across Bosworth in full armour to its owner's doom, it gets us no nearer establishing any complicity in the death, disappearance, or even the smuggling to safety of the two princes through Richard's agency.