The New Murrey and Blue blog

I have recently perused the critical pages (180-191) of Michael Hicks’ latest work: “The Family of Richard III”, relating to the evidence of the remains found in the former Greyfriars.

He states that the mitochondrial DNA evidence only shows that the remains are of an individual related to Richard III. He doesn’t admit that the Y-chromosome tests prove the existence of at least one “milkman” between Edward III and either Richard III or (more probably) the family of today’s Duke of Beaufort. He states further that the other physical evidence only shows a man of the right age group, with scoliosis who died in battle at any time in the right century – suggesting Lord Richard de la Pole as a random alternative, although we know where he was buried (the Augustine Basilica of San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro) and there is no evidence whatsoever that he could have been moved since 1525, apart from him being at least a decade older than his uncle at death. John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, also suggested, was seven years younger than Richard III.

The missing word is “and”, whereas “or” is widely implied. Take the set of people known to share Richard III’s mtDNA, as per point one, descended from Catherine de Roet or her sisters, her brothers having died either too early or at too great an age. Take the set of 25-40 year-old men with scoliosis who ate a good diet and died in battle from 1450-1530, as per point three, excluding those who are known or widely believed to be buried elsewhere. Now, because the evidence really is mutually supporting, look at the intersection, not the union, of those two sets – as demonstrated in Appendix 1 of Ashdown-Hill’s “The Mythology of Richard III” (pp.176-181) – it leaves only Richard III himself and very few obscure relatives who probably died in infancy.

What really disappoints me is that I expected some serious counter-evidence, such as Lady de Roet’s identity or, better still, that of her mother, allowing us to identify and investigate more of Richard’s hitherto unknown cousins. It doesn’t, although it does (p.190) identify that Catherine de Roet bore Swynford and Beaufort sons so close together as to create confusion (see the Y-chromosome reference). Once again, has Hicks hedged his bets by conceding the opposing case in the middle of a paragraph?