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Documentary, Fact Or Fiction - Richard III - Wars Of The Roses King
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00:00This is a murder mystery.
00:02Here in the Tower of London 500 years ago,
00:05a crime was committed that was so vile,
00:08it continues to haunt us even to this day.
00:11The murder of two young boys, aged 9 and 12.
00:16We know them as the princes in the town.
00:20They're the heirs to the throne.
00:25And the killer, it's always been assumed, was their evil uncle.
00:29Hunchback Richard III, who murdered them
00:32in order to seize the throne for himself.
00:35It's one of the most famous murders in English history.
00:38Even today, Richard III is seen as the arch-villain of English kings.
00:43But I'm here to ask one simple question.
00:46Did he really do it?
00:48Because behind the cardboard cut-out villain,
00:51there's a much more complex and fascinating character.
00:59Piecing together a murder mystery 500 years on is a tall order,
01:07made harder by having to sift the facts from state propaganda.
01:14Details of the murder were only released 20 years after the event.
01:18This story condemned Richard with a potent mixture of rumour,
01:22character assassination and alleged confession.
01:30The official version is that Richard ordered his servant,
01:32James Tyrrell, to kill them.
01:34They were smothered in their sleep.
01:36Then Tyrrell had them buried in the tower.
01:38It's a version that was given some credence when, in 1674,
01:42two skeletons were discovered here, at the base of the tower.
01:48In the 1930s, they were scientifically analysed.
01:51But the study showed only that they were the bones of children.
01:55And even if modern DNA conclusively proved that they were the prince's bones,
01:59it doesn't mean Richard killed them.
02:04So there's no smoking gun.
02:06Instead, we have to look at the balance of probability,
02:09judging Richard by opportunity, character and motive.
02:13The first motive.
02:15The most well-known source is very clear about why Richard killed the princess in the tower.
02:19But we learn this not from a historian, but a playwright.
02:23Now it's the winter above.
02:25A horse!
02:26A horse!
02:27My kingdom for a horse!
02:29And murder while I smile.
02:31Shakespeare's Richard III is an unforgettable character,
02:34a bitter psychopath,
02:36lurching from murder to murder,
02:38wife, brother, as well as the princes,
02:40all for the same reason.
02:45For Shakespeare, the motivation was simple.
02:47Richard was a cripple.
02:50Uncle, my brother mocks both you and me
02:53because that I am little like an ape.
02:55He thinks that you should bear me on your shoulder!
03:01Richard's hunchback and withered limbs
03:03are the most noticeable thing about him.
03:05It's the physical expression of the evil within.
03:19But Shakespeare was writing over a hundred years after the event.
03:24And we have to remember who he was writing for.
03:27Queen Elizabeth I,
03:29the granddaughter of Henry VII,
03:31the man who finally overthrew and killed Richard.
03:36Here, at the Society of Antiquaries,
03:39there are clues that Shakespeare's portrait of Richard
03:42is deeply flawed,
03:43right down to the humpback.
03:49There was a dreadful belief at the time
03:55that wickedness did show itself in deformity.
03:59And we all know Thomas More made a lot of it,
04:01and what about Shakespeare, what he made of it?
04:03This is the best-known portrait of Richard.
04:06It clearly shows his right shoulder
04:08to be higher than his left.
04:10But Pamela Tudor Craig,
04:12a world expert on the art of Richard's period,
04:14has made an extraordinary discovery.
04:16The hump has been painted in.
04:20That's this one here?
04:21This one here.
04:22The originally normal back
04:25was raised only a matter of half an inch or so
04:29at some subsequent date,
04:31probably very soon after it was painted,
04:33and another link of the chain of his collar
04:35was added very badly
04:37to suggest that he was unequal.
04:40And it's just enough,
04:42because this shoulder is very sloping down that way,
04:44and it does make an unevenness.
04:47Is it just me,
04:48or do his eyes look a bit mean
04:50and his jaw looks a bit tense?
04:53Absolutely.
04:54And the X-ray that's been made of this,
04:57which showed that the shoulder has been raised,
04:59also showed that the eyes were not originally so narrow
05:02and the mouth not originally quite so tight.
05:06The evidence has been tampered with.
05:09Richard has been stitched up.
05:11In those days,
05:12if you wanted a copy,
05:13you had to paint it again.
05:15And as copies of this painting were made,
05:17the hump got bigger and bigger.
05:20And to prove the point,
05:24here at the Society of Antiquaries,
05:26we have a second earlier portrait,
05:28one which clearly shows he doesn't have a hump.
05:35This one hasn't been doctored.
05:37The Tudors never got at this one.
05:39It was in the country, in Norfolk,
05:42picked up in the 18th century,
05:44and that's how it got here.
05:45But did Richard have simpler motives
05:48that any detective would recognise?
05:51Greed, jealousy or lust for power.
05:57Richard III came at the end of 30 years of turmoil
06:01known as the Years of the Roses.
06:03Powerful barons with allegiance to the Red Rose of Lancaster
06:07or the White Rose of Yorkshire,
06:09Red Alliances, Top of Kings and the Reet of Havre.
06:15Richard's eldest brother, Edward IV,
06:17seized the throne in 1461.
06:20Richard was just Duke of Gloucester.
06:22According to Shakespeare,
06:24Richard was jealous and schemed for power from the start,
06:28even before the princes were born.
06:31Once again, Shakespeare seems to have got it completely wrong
06:34because there's no evidence whatsoever
06:36to suggest that prior to Edward's death,
06:38Richard was anything other than the most loyal
06:40and devoted younger brother.
06:45There was a traitor in the family, but it wasn't Richard.
06:49It was his big brother George, Duke of Clarence.
06:53In 1469, Clarence rose up against Edward.
06:57Allying with powerful nobles, he raised an army
07:00and, in a dramatic coup, toppled Edward from the throne.
07:05Edward was forced to flee to the Low Countries.
07:08He took a boat from here at King's Lynn.
07:10It's said that he left in such a hurry
07:12he was forced to hand over his fur gown
07:14in order to pay the captain.
07:16He left with just a small band of followers,
07:19but it included the 18-year-old Richard.
07:24It looked like the end of the road for Edward.
07:27A new regime was in power.
07:29This was the moment when anyone wanting to promote their own interests
07:32should have jumped ship and changed sides.
07:36Not Richard.
07:38I don't think he was a scheming villain right from the start.
07:42I think his most characteristic feature before 1483
07:47is his loyalty to his brother, Edward IV.
07:51The two brothers spent a bleak winter in exile.
07:55The following spring they returned,
07:57landing just a few miles up the coast from here.
08:01But they had with them little over a thousand men.
08:04The odds were still against them.
08:07Then Edward made a breakthrough.
08:09He persuaded the pickled Clarence to change sides again
08:12to stab his fellow rebels in the back.
08:15The tide turned,
08:16and with Richard fighting bravely at his side,
08:19Edward smashed the rebels.
08:21He was King of England
08:22and the House of York was united once more.
08:25But Edward never forgot the behaviour of his two brothers
08:28during that dark winter.
08:31They say drink can kill,
08:33and in Clarence's case this was literally true.
08:35Eight years after the failed coup of 1470,
08:39Clarence was again found guilty of treason.
08:42And this time Edward was in no mood to show any mercy.
08:46Nevertheless, as a favour to his mother,
08:48he allowed Clarence to choose his method of execution.
08:53This is Malmsy wine,
08:55what nowadays we call Madeira.
08:57And rather than face being hung, drawn and quartered,
09:01Clarence chose to be suspended upside down
09:04in a barrel of this until he drowned.
09:07Richard's fate was very different.
09:14He was rewarded with vast estates in the north of England.
09:18By the time he was 23,
09:20he was the richest, most powerful noble in the land,
09:23a king's right-hand man,
09:25a model for us.
09:26And when Edward was blessed with the birth of two small boys,
09:32the future of the House of York looked secure.
09:38England had found stability at last,
09:40and Richard had shown not the slightest sign
09:42of wanting the throne for himself.
09:47We're beginning to get a sense
09:49that history may have done Richard III an injustice.
09:52He wasn't a hunchback, he didn't betray his brother.
09:55At the moment he certainly doesn't look like the kind of man
09:57who would murder his nephews.
09:59And I'm not the only person to think that.
10:01Incredibly, 500 years on,
10:03he's the only king of England with his own fan club.
10:11This is the Richard III Society.
10:14Each year it gathers at this small country church
10:17close to the scene of Richard's death
10:19to honour his memory.
10:21He has 4,000 members and branches all round the world.
10:26His mission?
10:27To resurrect the dead king's reputation.
10:37It's because there's a mystery,
10:38people get fascinated by that,
10:40and then it goes on from there.
10:42And once you start investigating it,
10:44you find he's really a rather nice person.
10:47It's perhaps a sense of justice,
10:49a desire to right a wrong that's done to somebody.
10:52I can't bear people who say there have been objective,
10:56but in fact are very cleverly putting in adjectives
10:59to make Richard sound bad.
11:02Richard was in control of the north of England for 12 years
11:12following Clarence's rebellion.
11:14It's his positive achievements here
11:16that his supporters put forward as evidence in his favour.
11:19First, he was a brave and fearless soldier.
11:23He'd shown personal courage fighting with Edward,
11:26and in 1482 he led a successful invasion of Scotland,
11:30recapturing the town of Bury.
11:39Next, in an age of corruption and lawlessness,
11:42he was fair and just,
11:44putting an end to the petty feuding of local nobles.
11:47The north had been very disturbed since the,
11:52at least the mid-1450s.
11:55I think Richard does bring a degree of stability
12:01and peace to the north that he hadn't seen for years.
12:06He uses his council as a means of arbitration in disputes.
12:11That's not new, lots of other nobles did it,
12:14but he did it very effectively.
12:16And he continued that as king.
12:19He seems to have developed a particular dislike
12:22for the bad administrator.
12:24How we wish we had Richard III now.
12:29These don't seem to be the actions of a morally bankrupt man,
12:33and there's more character evidence
12:35to balance the picture of a monster
12:37we've been given by Shakespeare.
12:39The records show that he endowed universities,
12:42gave generously to the church,
12:44and paid for masses to be said
12:46for the souls of fallen comrades.
12:48And it wasn't just a matter of four.
12:55He was a pious man who read complex works of theology.
12:59The remnants of his personal collection
13:01are still held in the British Library.
13:03For most 15th century nobles, books were just a status symbol,
13:12lavishly illustrated works purely for show.
13:16Richard's books are rather different.
13:29For a start, many of them were second-hand.
13:33Take a look at this one.
13:36It's plain.
13:38It's unadorned.
13:39It's well-thumbed.
13:41Richard's even written in it.
13:44See that there?
13:45It says R. Gloucester.
13:47Richard bought these books for himself,
13:49and he bought them to read,
13:51not just to stick up on a shelf.
13:53None of the evidence so far about Richard's motivation
13:57fits with him being the prime suspect in our murder mystery.
14:01He was a model brother to the king,
14:03and as far as his nephews were concerned,
14:06a model uncle.
14:08Then, in April 1483,
14:11the king caught a chill after going boating.
14:13Within a few days, he was dead.
14:16Suddenly, everything changed.
14:19So who were the princes in the tower?
14:29Well, in the spring of 1483,
14:32Richard's brother, King Edward IV, died unexpectedly.
14:35He was just 40.
14:37The crown passed automatically to his eldest son,
14:40who became King Edward V.
14:42He was only 12 years old.
14:44His brother, just nine,
14:46had the same name as his uncle Richard,
14:48who, as we've already seen,
14:50had been a model second-in-command to his older brother.
14:53Suddenly, everything was up in the air.
14:55It's from this moment
14:57the clock begins ticking towards the death of the two princes.
15:02Edward's death provided Richard with an opportunity and a motive,
15:06and he certainly seems to have undergone a radical change
15:08because immediately he threw off his role as loyal lieutenant
15:12and moved centre stage.
15:14Edward's son, the uncrowned Edward V,
15:17was travelling from Wales to London for his coronation,
15:20and Richard immediately rushed south to intercept him here,
15:24on Northampton.
15:27You've had 12 years of relative peace and stability
15:30under Edward IV,
15:31and now everything's thrown into the melting pot again.
15:34And I think people are really scared anyway
15:36when you get a minor inheriting the throne,
15:40because that obviously opens up the possibility
15:42for political intrigue and factionalism,
15:45even if you don't have an uncle
15:47who decides to go for the throne himself.
15:52It's now that the evidence starts to mount up.
15:55The only proof of Richard's villainy
15:57is his conduct over the next ten weeks.
16:00He met first with the young king's guardian,
16:03Earl Rivers, who was the queen's brother.
16:05Richard told Rivers he wished simply to join the king's party
16:09on its progress to London,
16:11to add to the magnificence of its entry into the capital.
16:14They drank until late into the night.
16:17But at dawn the next day, Richard was struck.
16:21Armed retainers reversed into Rivers' bedchamber
16:24and arrested him.
16:27He and other senior advisers to the king
16:29were immediately hauled off to Richard's castle
16:31at Pontefract in Northern England.
16:40It was the sort of bold and decisive move
16:42which, as we'll see, was about to become Richard's trademark.
16:45With Rivers and the others now under arrest,
16:48he raced down what's now the A5
16:50to the village of Stony Stratford.
16:52This house used to be the Rose and Crown
16:55and there's a well-established legend
16:57that it's here that the king himself was staying.
17:02Thank you very much.
17:06The king was told that Rivers had been arrested
17:09because he and the rest of the queen's family
17:11were plotting to assassinate Richard.
17:14The young king, just 12 years old, protested their innocence.
17:18Earl Rivers, he said, was a loyal subject.
17:21But it was no use.
17:23Politely but firmly, Richard told the king
17:25he would now be travelling down to London under his protection.
17:29The two now set off together for the capital.
17:38We've got a poignant memento of the few brief weeks
17:41Edward V was king of England
17:43and it may even date from that journey.
17:46It's an official document signed by Edward and Richard.
17:49Richard has added his personal motto.
17:53Loyalty binds me.
17:59To us, this motto seems cruelly ironic.
18:01But when Richard arrived in London a few days later
18:04it wasn't to a hostile reception.
18:06In fact, his seizure of the young king was popular.
18:10What he'd done was to wrench Edward from the hands of the queen's family
18:14who were universally loathed.
18:16They were seen as upstarts.
18:18Edward IV, it was felt, had married beneath himself.
18:22And the traditional nobility resented the power the queen's family wielded.
18:27Far better, the young king should be in the hands of his uncle.
18:31A true blue blood.
18:35So when Richard suggested that Edward stay here at the tower
18:38no one thought there was anything wrong with that.
18:40It was, after all, where kings traditionally stayed prior to their coronation
18:44and hadn't yet acquired the sinister reputation that it gained in the Tudor age.
18:49So, Edward moved in sometime in mid-May
18:52and his younger brother followed shortly afterwards.
18:55They would never leave again.
19:00Richard was calling himself Lord Protector, the king's chief advisor.
19:05But if you looked closely at the kind young king,
19:08you could see cracks in the mask.
19:13He'd already been accepted as the chief counsellor,
19:16so the government of the kingdom was going to be conducted under his leadership.
19:20And this was quite normal and as expected.
19:23However, it wasn't normal in minorities for the protector,
19:28as Richard III made himself in the end,
19:30to both have the responsibility of the government kingdom
19:35and have the custody of the person of the king.
19:39Was he up to something?
19:43Did he really have the young king's best interests at heart?
19:48If he didn't, there was a major obstacle in his way.
19:53The one man who would certainly resist any attempt by Richard of Gloucester
19:59to take the throne is William Lord Hastings,
20:01who is one of Edward IV's most loyal supporters throughout his reign.
20:08And he's probably the man who's most committed
20:12to ensuring that Edward V is crowned and rules.
20:16So if you're going to go for the throne in Richard III,
20:19Richard the Gloucester's position,
20:20if you're going to go for the throne,
20:22William Lord Hastings is certainly a man
20:25that you're going to have to take out.
20:29On the morning of June 13th, 1483,
20:32Richard called a meeting with the Royal Council.
20:35Naturally, among those attending was the king's chamberlain,
20:39William Lord Hastings.
20:46It was like a board meeting.
20:48On the agenda, the coronation.
20:50No-one expected what happened next.
20:53He started by pulling the same trick he'd used on rivers at Northampton.
20:57He lulled them into a false sense of security.
21:00He was relaxed, friendly.
21:02He even suggested that they sent out for some strawberries.
21:05And he left the meeting for a while.
21:14When he returned, Richard's mood had changed.
21:17According to one report, he bared his arm,
21:20which had developed an infection.
21:21He was a victim, he said, of sorcery.
21:24The queen was plotting against him.
21:26Then he rounded on Lord Hastings,
21:29accusing him of being in league with his enemies.
21:33He slammed his fist on the table.
21:35Of this signal, armed men rushed into the room.
21:40Poor Hastings barely had time to splutter a denial
21:43before he was dragged off.
21:45A few minutes later, he was dead.
21:48Beheaded on a makeshift block on Tower Green.
21:52I'm standing on Tower Green, the village green.
21:53I live here. It's my home.
22:07It's where I walk every evening to relax and unwind after a busy day at the office.
22:24Hastings is said to be the first person to be executed inside the tower.
22:31It's possible that the two princes might have seen the summary execution.
22:35They'd have understood its significance for their own position.
22:39Richard had shown his hand, and now there was no going back.
22:42It had been a typically dramatic, even reckless coup.
22:50But what looks like a man on the make
22:52may have been a man who felt deeply threatened.
22:56I think Richard III probably was making a political judgement
23:00about his best interest, calculating that if he didn't make himself king,
23:06in the long run, he'd become a victim of the reign of Edward V.
23:11In particular, a fear that he had about the influence of a queen's family
23:16around the young king, Edward V,
23:20and the possibility that he couldn't hold on to power.
23:25If you ask what Richard had to lose, it was this.
23:29Under his brother, he'd been given vast estates in the north of England,
23:33hundreds of thousands of acres.
23:36But land that had been given by one king
23:38could be taken away at a stroke by a new king.
23:46There's another possibility that he genuinely believed he was the rightful king.
23:52It's certainly what he claimed at a specially staged event
23:55nine days after the death of Hastings,
23:57just a short walk from the Tower and St Paul's.
23:59Richard had already eliminated opposition with immobility.
24:05Now he made a bid to win over public opinion.
24:09On this spot, in the shadow of the old medieval St Paul's Cathedral,
24:14stood something called St Paul's Cross, which acted as a sort of outdoor pulpit.
24:19And here, on June 22nd, an extraordinary statement was made.
24:25It was meant to be a sermon, but the crowds knew the bishop reading it was Richard's mouthpiece,
24:32and he was announcing Richard's own claim to the crown.
24:35What stunned everyone were the grounds he used to justify it,
24:39a series of quite scandalous revelations about Richard's own family.
24:42Edward, Richard's brother, had been born out of wedlock, and so had the two princes.
24:48This left only one legitimate heir to the throne.
24:52At this moment, Richard himself was supposed to appear in one of the galleries of the cathedral
24:57to shout of, Long live King Richard, from the crowd.
25:01But, unfortunately, he mistimed his entrance, and so was met by stunned silence.
25:07As a piece of theatre, it was a fiasco.
25:09But Richard had made sure he had backup.
25:13Even as he fluffed his queue, an army was on its way south,
25:17summoned by Richard from his northern power base.
25:20It was clear he was going to seize the throne whatever anyone thought.
25:26Three days after declaring himself king, Richard executed Earl Rivers
25:30and the other men he had arrested at Northampton.
25:32Then, on July 6th, 1483, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was crowned King Richard III of England at Westminster.
25:44But one huge problem remained, or rather two small problems.
25:48Somewhere deep in the bowels of the tower, the two triboids.
25:51Richard had seized the throne, outmanoeuvring the opposition and moving with extraordinary speed and decisiveness.
26:09But in the tower, the two princes remained a threat to his power.
26:14They seemed to have been more than aware of the danger they were in.
26:18The young king, reported a contemporary chronicler, sought remission of his sins by daily confession and penance,
26:26because he believed that death was facing him.
26:29Before the coronation, the boys had been seen regularly, playing in the grounds.
26:36But now, the sightings stopped altogether.
26:40Edward IV's sons had been disappeared.
26:47The princes were taken right into the bowels of the white tower here,
26:51and almost as soon as Richard had been crowned, rumours began circulating that they'd been got rid of.
26:56No court would convict Richard on the evidence.
27:05The princes had disappeared, but in law that doesn't prove a crime's been committed.
27:10The story that Richard got his servant to kill the princes only came to light 20 years later.
27:16The bones of the young boys were discovered 200 years afterwards.
27:20If the Tudors had the man who'd done the deed, why couldn't they also produce the bodies?
27:24The evidence against Richard is purely circumstantial, and doesn't sit easily with what we know of his character after he was crowned.
27:33If someone like the Bishop of St David's, like Dom Slankton, who one knows quite a lot about, he was a rather delightful, well-educated cleric,
27:47if he says about Richard, God has sent him to us for the wheel of us all.
27:54I never liked the condition.
27:56Any prince has got great thanks of God and love of all his subjects, rich and modesty of mind.
28:01Behind whom shall we place our Richard?
28:05None.
28:07Certainly none.
28:12But if not Richard, then who?
28:14Like the identity of Jack the Ripper or the shooting of JFK, there's been a whole host of pet theories and alternative suspects.
28:24First up, the Duke of Buckingham.
28:27No portrait exists, but he was a slippery careerist who helped Richard's bid for the throne.
28:32But if he did have a hand in it, he seems to have regretted it pretty quickly.
28:37In the tense months following the coronation, there was a major rebellion against Richard.
28:43Buckingham, perhaps feeling the tide was turning, threw in his love with the rebels.
28:48They started by aiming to free Edward V from the tower, but halfway through, switched to supporting a minor Welsh noble, Henry Tudor.
28:56A sure sign that the people believed the princes were already dead.
29:02Henry Tudor would eventually become Henry VII, which brings us to our second suspect, Henry Tudor's mother.
29:10The theory is that she had the prince's guilt as part of a scheme for her own son to emerge as the principal rival to Richard.
29:18Murderous or not, that's what happened.
29:21But in the end, the rebellion went off at half-cock and was easily suppressed.
29:24Henry had to scuttle back to exile in France.
29:28But one objection rules out both of these suspects, and it also gives us our only real alternative murder.
29:37To kill the princes, you had to get at them.
29:40With the two boys locked securely in the tower, only the king has access to them.
29:45But which king?
29:47Richard was only on the throne for two years before Henry VII took over.
29:50Suppose Henry, at his moment of triumph, had ridden into London and found the two boys still alive in the tower, the true heirs to the throne.
30:01Is Henry VII our real villain?
30:03There's little doubt that Henry would have killed them if he'd found the princes alive. Their claim to the throne was better than his.
30:13The Tudor smear campaign against Richard could be just a cover-up. It's a lovely theory.
30:18But common sense says it just doesn't hold water.
30:22If they weren't dead, why didn't Richard produce them and parade them through the streets of London to prove they were still alive?
30:32And if they weren't dead, or if she didn't think they were dead, why did their mother, Elizabeth Woodville, support a rebellion, apparently, to put Henry Tudor of Richmond on the throne?
30:47Which takes us back to our prime suspect.
30:49If this was an Agatha Christie novel, then the murderer would turn out to be the least likely suspect, Henry or Buckingham or whoever.
30:59But history isn't like that.
31:01For me, at any rate, Richard remains the most likely culprit.
31:05He had the means, he had the motive, and his behaviour since his brother's death had shown a streak of ruthlessness.
31:11But there's still one unsolved mystery.
31:15OK, Richard usurped the throne and murdered the incumbent king.
31:20But in the Middle Ages, that was par for the course.
31:30I think it's probably a mistake to select Richard III for special denigration.
31:3615th century politics was a brutal game. Kings were killed in battle, imprisoned, starved. In one case, gruesomely murdered with a red-hot poker.
31:49It's difficult to find too many 15th century kings who one would really want to spend a lot of time with, in all honesty.
31:56At Kings Lynn, Richard had seen a king turfed out of his own country. He needed to be tough to survive.
32:03It's probably easiest to think of these people, not like our present-day royal family, the Queen and Harry and Wills and Prince Charles.
32:12But as present-day mafia dons, with their bands of thugs and their struggles for power.
32:18No matter how many people got hurt, how many people got killed, it was just business. Nothing personal.
32:24So why are we called Richard? He's the victim of a process of myth-making and legend. And that process began here, in this bleak field.
32:38It was here that he met his nemesis, Henry Tudor.
32:41He's the grandson of an illegitimate son, the bastard son of John of Gaunt, who's the third son of Edward III. So he has no claim to the throne at all.
32:55I was going to say, that doesn't sound very impressive.
32:57It's very unimpressive.
33:00This second rebellion of Henry's was the last round of the Wars of the Roses, and Henry led it for one simple reason.
33:07He was the only claimant to the throne the House of Lancaster had left.
33:12Henry had been in exile in France for the last 14 years, and the army he brought to England comprised mainly of French mercenaries.
33:20This was a foreign invasion, not a popular uprising.
33:25He landed at Milford Haven in Wales on August 7th.
33:29Two weeks later, he arrived at Bosworth Field in Leicestershire. Richard was waiting for him.
33:41The battle that took place here on August 22nd 1485 seems to divide English history in two.
33:46At some time, round about mid-morning on that day, the old, savage, warlike era of the Middle Ages ended, and the enlightened, modern times of the Tudors began.
34:00At least, that was the Tudor propaganda.
34:03For Shakespeare, Bosworth was a simple morality tale.
34:06It's the place where the child murderer got his comeuppance.
34:19Give me another horse!
34:25Mind up my wounds!
34:26Shakespeare makes it seem as though Richard had lost the battle before he started.
34:30He was haunted by nightmares, he was alone and friendless.
34:34But actually, it wasn't anything like that.
34:37On the morning of the 22nd, you'd have put your money on King Richard.
34:41Henry Tudor, the Welsh pretender, was a rank outsider.
34:44At dawn, the two men mustered their troops.
34:49And Henry would have been only too aware of the disparity in their forces.
34:53His army numbered around 5,000.
34:56Richard's was probably closer to 10.
34:59And Richard believed God was on his side.
35:02He paraded the cross before his men.
35:04Perhaps this one, which was found nearby many years later.
35:07In every way, he had the strongest position.
35:15Henry was down there in that hollow where the flagpole is.
35:18And Richard was up here on the hill.
35:20So the King had got the advantage of the high ground.
35:23And he'd got an army about twice as big as Henry's.
35:26But he'd got his problems too.
35:28He'd spent an uneasy night.
35:30Shakespeare reckons he was racked with conscience.
35:33But it's more likely that he was wrestling with practical issues.
35:37The medieval armies were made up of the retinues of various nobles.
35:42With each fighting out of the landowner.
35:44And Richard was painfully aware that he was heavily dependent on the troops of one man.
35:49Lord Stanley.
35:51A powerful landowner from the north-west of England.
35:54Who also happened to be Henry Tudor Stepford.
35:58Lord Stanley was a man who'd always managed, always managed to be on the winning side.
36:02And gradually became a very powerful and influential person.
36:07So that most kings needed him on their side.
36:12Something he was able to use to his own advantage.
36:16So Richard was up here.
36:18Henry was down there.
36:19And over there somewhere was Stanley with his troops, hedging his bets, waiting to jump in when he saw what was best for Stanley.
36:28The battle started at the bottom of the hill when the two vanguards engaged.
36:33It would have been brutal and bloody.
36:35Blow for blow, arrow for arrow, the battle raged from the early morning.
36:42Everyone knew that time was on Richard's side.
36:46The longer the battle lasted, the more likely his superior numbers would attempt to balance.
36:51Then suddenly Richard noticed that just over there, to the left of where those farm buildings are today,
36:56Henry and a few of his followers had become detached from the main body of the army.
37:02His old reckless streak reasserted itself.
37:06What if he could kill Henry?
37:08He could finish the battle and save his kingdom at one blow.
37:11He couldn't resist it.
37:13He gathered together some of his most loyal supporters and ordered a cavalry charge.
37:17Down the hill and straight at Henry.
37:19The two forces clashed at a place called Sandiford, which was probably somewhere around here.
37:36Richard killed Henry's standard bearer, he killed a second man,
37:40and by this time he was probably just yards away from Henry,
37:44who would have been surrounded by a mass of French mercenaries.
37:46But at that moment, Richard's horse was killed from under him.
37:51This all or nothing gamble had failed.
37:58The attack faltered.
38:00Then the final nail was driven in Richard's coffin,
38:03as Lord Stanley at last committed himself on Henry's side.
38:09Looking up to see Stanley's troops swarming around him,
38:13Richard must have realised he'd had it.
38:14But he fought on, according to eyewitnesses, screaming in fury of the treachery of his allies.
38:21One thing even Richard's enemies never questioned was his courage.
38:29Forget a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.
38:32One of his men offered him a horse so he could make his escape,
38:35but he refused and went down fighting.
38:37He was probably hacked to death by French pikemen as he lay writhing in the mud.
38:45And his body was stripped naked, slung over a horse,
38:49and then paraded through the streets of Leicester.
38:52Thus died the last medieval king of England.
38:55He's the only English monarch without a tomb.
39:09They buried him in a nearby monastery.
39:12Later, when Henry Tudor's son, Henry VIII, dissolved the monasteries,
39:15his bones were dug up and thrown away.
39:19It's said his coffin ended up as a horse trough.
39:23The Tudors wanted to rob him of all dignity.
39:26One of the aims of Tudor propagandists is to paint a really black picture of the Wars of the Roses
39:34as a warning as to what can happen when you have dynastic strife.
39:38And since Richard III is the last of the Wars of the Roses kings
39:43and the one whom Henry VII turfs off the throne anyway,
39:46he comes in for particularly powerful denigration.
39:51For the Tudors, Richard became a lesson from history.
39:54This was what happened when you overthrew the rightful king.
39:59But we found the one-dimensional villain presented by Shakespeare is a caricature.
40:04The real Richard probably murdered his nephews,
40:07but he was far from being the monster of popular legend.
40:11And that's where our story might have ended.
40:14But then, while we were making this programme,
40:17a chance discovery in a French archive turned all of this on its head,
40:21forcing us to totally rethink not just Richard, but every royal since.
40:34Our inquiry into the murders of the princes in the Tower has led us back to the prime suspect Richard III.
40:40But it was never quite clear what drove him,
40:44why it was that the loyal brother of the years before 1483 was suddenly transformed into a brutal usurper.
40:51Then, while we were making this programme, a new discovery was made, one which provided an extraordinary answer.
41:03It was made not in England, but here at Rouen in Normandy.
41:08Richard, remember, based his right to the throne on the claim that his brother Edward, who was the father of the two princes,
41:16was illegitimate and shouldn't have been crowned king at all.
41:20And it was this claim that was central to the sermon that was preached at St Paul's Cross four days before Richard became king.
41:27But it's a claim that's always been laughed at by historians, until an English historian was rootling around in the records at the cathedral here,
41:37and came up with a fascinating document.
41:45To understand it, we need to go back a bit to the period before Richard was born, before the Wars of the Roses,
41:51when England was still at war with France. Richard's father, the Duke of York, was serving with the English garrison here at Rouen.
42:01Rouen was the English HQ in France, and he had his whole family with him.
42:06Richard's eldest brother, later King Edward IV, was born here in 1432.
42:12And the key thing to understand is that Edward only became king because the Duke of York was of royal blood.
42:21Mike Jones was just here to research the Hundred Years of War,
42:26when he stumbled across a passing reference to the Duke of York in the daily log of the cathedral.
42:32Unfortunately for Edward IV, he was good at maths.
42:36It was here in Rouen, in 1441, that Edward IV was conceived, wasn't it?
42:41That's right.
42:43So why is this document so important?
42:45This is the cathedral register for the summer of 1441.
42:48It tells us that clergymen are being paid for a sermon to be delivered for the safety of the Duke of York going to Pontoise on campaign.
43:04He wasn't there at the crucial time. He's not with his wife.
43:07So, even though Edward IV was conceived here, his dad wasn't here?
43:13That's right.
43:15It had to be somebody else.
43:16It would.
43:17It's there in black and white.
43:21Here's the maths.
43:24Everything indicates he was born at full term.
43:27There's no record of him being small or sickly.
43:30In the Middle Ages, they didn't understand about 40-week pregnancies, but we know that Edward's birth date of April 28th means he must have been conceived around the first week of August.
43:40The Duke of York was fighting in Pontoise from July 14th to August 21st, but the register provides further evidence.
43:51When the second son, who was to die young, was born a year later, the register records a massive celebration for his Christmas.
43:58No expenses spared. The whole cathedral is thrown open, the relics, the choir singing, the most precious objects are put on the altar.
44:12Edward's christening is hushed up. It's in a tiny private chapel on the castle.
44:17It's so extraordinary to celebrate the second son with so much more honour than the first, unless, with the second son, the couple had more to celebrate.
44:29Edward's got to be a bastard, isn't it?
44:31I think so.
44:33The records here back up gossip from the time, because when Richard made his extraordinary claim at St Paul's Cross that Edward was illegitimate, it didn't come out of the blue.
44:47All Edward's life, people were whispering behind his back that he was a bastard.
44:54What made them so sure was that he looked nothing like his father, unlike his brother Richard, who was the spitting image of their dad.
45:01Richard and his father were small. Edward was a six-foot-four giant.
45:06And Edward's own mother is reported as twice saying he was illegitimate.
45:12Up till now, historians have simply dismissed these reports as too incredible.
45:17We even have a candidate for the real father.
45:21The rumour at the time was that he was an English archer called Blayborne. Burly, handsome, a bit of rough.
45:28So it may be that Edward IV, rather than being descended from the noble house of York, was in fact the child of a presumably very tall archer from the garrison at Roar.
45:40And if Richard was aware of this, then suddenly we see him in a very different light.
45:44If he was the legitimate king, then what does that make the two little boys in the tower?
45:51This new evidence suggests they were the sons of an impostor, with no true claim to the throne at all.
45:59While Edward was alive, Richard had little option but to be loyal.
46:03After all, look what had happened to Clarence.
46:07But now, with Edward dead, it was his duty as the only surviving brother to restore the honour of the House of York and remove the corrupted line.
46:17Does that mean he killed them?
46:19I think he did.
46:21But I think it was a matter of necessity rather than evil, grasping ambition.
46:26Why necessity?
46:27Because they attracted the faction that wanted to unseat the rightful claim and put their rivals on the throne.
46:36And yet it did affect him afterwards?
46:38I think it had a colossal effect on him.
46:41He felt that it was an act that he had to do, and at the same time must have felt enormous remorse for what was a grievous sin.
46:48But the Battle of Bosworth meant Richard failed.
46:52The legitimate line died out.
46:53It was the archer's DNA, through Edward, which entered the royal bloodstream.
46:58Because as well as the princes in the tower, Edward had a daughter, and she became the bride of Henry Tudor,
47:05who wanted what he thought was good royal blood to boost his own feeble claim to the throne.
47:10The rogue genes were firmly lodged in the royal line.
47:13We started out on a royal murder mystery.
47:22We discovered a Richard III who was far more rounded and complex than the traditional image, but who probably did murder his nephews.
47:29But we finished by uncovering a far greater scam, the real skeleton in the royal closet.
47:37Anything the royals get up to today pales by comparison, and the consequences reverberate down the centuries.
47:44It means that some of the most famous characters in history, like Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, shouldn't be there at all.
47:53Every single member of the royal line since has been tainted by the blood of the archer of Roar.
47:58So solving one mystery has left me with another, and it's one that I simply haven't been able to get out of my mind.
48:06The monarch's claim to the throne, their right to live in the big house over the road, is based simply on being descended from the right person.
48:15But if Edward IV corrupted that line, then who should really be wearing the crown today?
48:21Is there someone out there with more royal blood than the present inhabitant?
48:25Who is Britain's real monarch?
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