Well, today on the blog we’re here to investigate another historical murder mystery: the Murders of Richard III.

First, a bit of backstory to the set up the murders in question.  It’s 1483 and Edward IV, the king of England, has just died. His son, Edward V, is 12. As is customary, the new king is sent to wait in the Tower of London before being officially crowned king, and his younger brother is sent with him to keep in company. Before long, questions are raised as to whether or not Edward IV was really the father of young Edward V. This throws the issue of who is to be the next king into question, and before the year is out, Richard, Edward IV’s brother,and Edward V’s uncle, is crowned king.

Edward V and his brother are never seen again.

Over the centuries, and thanks in no small part to Shakespeare’s play about Richard III, Richard is vilified as the foul murderer of his two young nephews in the bloody tower.

But did he really do it?

That’s the central conceit of the Murders of Richard III museum in York, England. It’s a fun, albeit very kitschy museum housed in an old medieval prison that sits atop one of the towers of the York city wall.

Tower in the York city wall, York, England

The wall tower in the wall dates from Richard III’s time, although it’s not clear (to me) if Richard ever went there himself, even though he was, as Shakespeare put it, that “son of York,” and therefore hailed from around these parts. Back in the day, though, this tower was definitely used as a prison, and the atmosphere as you climb the steps is appropriately spooky:

Up the steps to the museum in the York wall tower

The setup at the museum is that Richard III is on trial for the murder of his nephews.  There’s a mannequin of Richard standing in the dock, and you hear an audio tape of the dialog from the play The Murders of Richard III, with both the prosecution and the defense attorneys presenting their cases, as well as Richard himself giving testimony and answering questions.

I found it quite fun, but then I’m a sucker for a good historical mystery. And, one of my all-time favorite mystery books is The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, which has a modern-day detective solving this very mystery (if you’ve never read the book, I highly recommend it).

Also, back in high school I read up on all I could find about the Tudor dynasty. Richard III, of course, was  not a Tudor, being that “Son of York”  who was the last member of the house of York to fight against the house of Lancaster in the War of the Roses. The war ended when Richard III was defeated by Henry Tudor, from the Lancaster side. Henry Tudor, later Henry VII,  then joined the two houses by marrying Edward IV’s daughter, and the Tudor dynasty subsequently ruled England for several generations.

Now, the main thing to remember from that is that Henry VII’s granddaughter became Elizabeth I. And it was for her that Shakespeare wrote his plays, including the one about Richard III.

The argument presented at the museum, is that Shakespeare, wanting to curry favor with Elizabeth I, deliberately painted the blackest portrait possible of Richard III, to make Elizabeth’s grandfather seem like a really nice guy, relatively speaking. So, in  Shakespeare’s play, which was written more than 100 years after Richard’s death, Richard is shown to be cruel and conniving as well as a having numerous physical deformities, the latter of which are never mentioned in contemporary descriptions of Richard. Richard is also portrayed by Shakespeare to be unequivocally the murderer of the princes in the tower, even though there is no actual evidence to support that. (It’s never even been proved absolutely that that the princes actually died in the tower, although two small bodies found in 1674 in the Tower of London are nowadays thought to indeed be the bodies of the princes.

Anyway, the claim at the museum is that Richard just had a lot of bad PR, since his side lost the war, and in fact, someone else was responsible for killing princes in the tower (assuming they did in fact die there).

So, if Richard III didn’t murder the princes, then the question is, who did?

Well, murdering the princes cleared the way for someone to grab the throne. The only person other than Richard who had a motive was Henry Tudor, who just happened to be married to the daughter of Edward IV,  the sister of the two princes.  With the two male heirs out of the way, that cleared the path for Henry to stake a claim on the throne via his wife’s connection to Edward IV. So, it turned out to be highly fortuitous for Henry that the two brothers weren’t around by the time he was ready to take the throne.

Now, obviously, if you’re Shakespeare, you’re not going to do yourself any favors if you write a play that says that maybe your queen’s grandfather brutally murdered two kids in order to become king. Much better to say that the grandfather acted nobly, and in England’s best interest, by killing a bloodthirsty murderer who usurped the throne. Of course, you do need to whitewash the fact that even if he didn’t kill the princes, Henry VII was a rather a bloodthirsty usurper in his own right.

Details, details.

Anyway, visitors to the museum get to vote at the end of the presentation on whether or not they think Richard III was guilty, or whether history has dealt him an unfair hand all these years. When it came time to decide, I chatted with a married British couple who were also enjoying the museum. Funnily enough, when the husband declared his vote, he said that he came from Lancaster, so of course he had to side with the Tudor point of view on this one, and declared Richard guilty as sin.

His wife, however, actually came from York. So, while she privately agreed with her husband, she didn’t want that actually put down on paper. She reasoned you never really knew  what could happen if word got around that a person from York sided against Richard III. 😉

*****

Unfortunately, the museum didn’t allow photos to be taken inside the museum, but you can find some on the museum’s website here, which also has a lot more information to support the notion that Richard III wasn’t such a bad guy after all.

Now, while that museum’s central theme may seem like it’s nothing but pure hokum, Richard III has actually been in the mainstream press recently in England. Apparently, a body was unearthed beneath a carpark near the site of Richard’s last battle, and they think it might actually be the body of the king himself. A politician has now started a drive to give Richard a proper state funeral, if in fact the body is proven to be his.

See, 500+ years on and there really is a bit of a general movement to rehabilitate the reputation of Richard III.