Comparison with the bones of men who died in a near contemporary English medieval battle could reveal similarities to the injuries suffered by the Greyfriars skeleton, but also possible differences indicative of how a king would be treated in battle.
The Battle of Towton was fought on 29 March 1461, a few miles south of the market town of Tadcaster in North Yorkshire, and it was reputedly one of the bloodiest battles in the Wars of the Roses. The Yorkists inflicted a crushing defeat on the Lancastrians. In July 1996 a roughly rectangular mass grave was discovered during construction work on the edge of the battlefield. In a pit some 6 m east-west and 2 m north-south, the remains of at least 61 people had been buried. The skeletons disturbed by the construction workers were removed and reburied, but a team from the University of Bradford excavated
And analysed the undisturbed part of the pit, recovering the remains of 38 individuals, all male and aged between 16 and 50 years.
Appleby and Woosnam-Savage examined a number of these remains, now kept at the Bioarchaeology Research Centre at Bradford, and discussed them with the Bradford archaeologists, including Jo Buckberry, comparing the injuries they had found with Appleby’s analysis of the Greyfriars skeleton. The comparisons were striking: evidence of battle wounds was discovered on almost all the skeletons, some certainly fatal. Twenty-seven skulls (98 per cent) showed major head wounds of the kind suffered by Richard. There were between 1 and 13 wounds per individual, though only two had more than 10 injuries. As with Richard, some were major injuries, while others were relatively superficial. Sharp force trauma from a bladed weapon was much more common than blunt force trauma or puncture wounds. There were many instances of sharp force trauma to the face, especially to the left side, indicating that they were inflicted in face-to-face combat by a righthanded opponent. The blunt force injuries were also mostly to the left. Square-shaped puncture wounds, similar to those on Richard’s skull (discussed in this chapter under ‘Battle Wounds’), were also found on several of the Towton skulls.
Many of the injuries could only be defined as ‘perimortem’, that is, inflicted around the time of death, as it was impossible to say with certainty whether they were sustained when the man was still alive, or shortly after death - often thought of as ‘insult injuries’, intended to humiliate the corpse of a dead enemy. A significant difference between Richard’s skull and a number of the Towton skulls was apparent to Appleby and Woosnam-Savage: some of the Towton skulls had suffered a series of savage blows, probably immediately after death, which would have seriously disfigured the faces, probably making them unrecognisable - this had not happened to Richard.
Battle Wounds (ja, rws, sh, gr)
When the bones and the high resolution scans of the Greyfriars skeleton were studied, they revealed 11 injuries from a variety of weapons (Figure 4.1). Another area of damage to the skull, separation of the sutures below the right eye, could have been caused by a blow, but also
Figure 4.1 Diagram showing the angle of entry of the weapons used in attacking Richard III. Source-. Appleby etal. (2014b).
By the result of the pressure of the soil in the grave as the bones decayed - the experts disagreed on this one.
It was clear to the expert team that Richard died a very violent death. Each of the injuries was distinct, unlike the overlapping blows often found in battle injuries and on some of the skeletons from Towton. This made it impossible to establish the sequence of injuries: either of the blows to the back of the head would have proved fatal.
The team were able to reject several previous suggestions about what happened to Richard in the last minutes of the battle. They found no evidence of an attempt to scalp him - Hainsworth believes anyone trying it would have started from the brow and worked towards the back of the head, but all the injuries to the top and back of the skull came from behind.
Most of the injuries were to the head. Around his face and jaw there were three wounds, none of which would have been fatal. A 10 mm square hole in the right maxilla (the right upper jaw), lines up with another hole through the back of the jaw, suggesting a stab wound from very close quarters perhaps with an edged weapon like a rondel dagger - a type of dagger that had a round or disc-shaped guard (hence its name), that could bear a domed pommel and that often had a stiff, square-section blade (Plate 10; the entry wound but not the exit wound is shown on Figure 4.1). There was also a 10 mm cut to the right of the mandible (the lower jaw), a smooth, narrow, v-shaped cut made by a slender, fine-edged knife or dagger. Another injury, also to the lower jaw, was made by a sharp blade, but this one was too indistinct for the weapon to be identified.
There were three shallow injuries to the dome of the skull, all inflicted with a sharp blade which sliced and removed part of the scalp and cut into the bone (Plate 11; not shown on Figure 4.1). The striation marks had the same pattern in the three injuries, but there wasn’t a match over a sufficient length to prove definitively that they were all caused by the same weapon. All of these wounds would have bled profusely, and could eventually have caused death from loss of blood or infection if left untreated, but they would not have been immediately fatal.
At the saggital suture, the point where the bones join at the top of the skull, there was a depressed keyhole shaped injury measuring 9 mm x 10 mm (Plate 12). The blow, delivered from above and at an angle, was violent enough to push two flaps of bone inwards towards the brain yet
Not strong enough to separate the flaps completely. Though it could have caused extensive internal and external bleeding, this would not have killed him immediately either. The shape of the injury was too small for a blow from a war hammer or mace and lacked any radiating fractures that may have resulted from an arrow strike. It was, again, probably caused by the square-sectioned tip of the blade of a rondel dagger - possibly the same weapon used to inflict the cheek injuries.
Woosnam-Savage’s interpretation was that it could suggest a possible attempted coup-de-grace, a final blow to finish off a dying man, with the point of the dagger placed right over the skull and the attacker then punching down on the domed end of the hilt. A late fifteenth-century illuminated manuscript illustration depicting the death of Wat Tyler shows a rondel dagger being used in exactly this manner. Alternatively, Woosnam-Savage suggests it is possibly an example of ‘overkill’, a phenomenon seen on many skulls from various medieval battlefields. The near contemporary chronicler Polydore Vergil describes the Battle of Bosworth as lasting only some two hours, and Woosnam-Savage believes that most of the sustained man-to-man fighting was probably over in possibly as little as 40 minutes.
There were two massive injuries to the lower side of the back of the skull (Plate 13). One was a 65 mm x 55 mm hole in the bone, with the straight smooth edges of sharp force trauma. It was caused by a large bladed weapon, possibly a sword but more likely by a blade mounted on a long wooden haft (staff) such as a halberd or bill. When Woosnam-Savage first examined this massive trauma he immediately noted the one description of the death of Richard that makes any mention of a weapon that was used to kill him. Molinet’s Chronicles, of about 1490, states, ‘One of the Welshmen then came after him [Richard], and struck him dead with a halberd (d’une halebarde). The other injury, to the lower left side, was a 32 mm x 17 mm hole with a radiating fracture. This injury lined up with further damage to the inner surface of the skull and to the atlas vertebra, the bone that supports the head, which had a distinct cut mark. These were probably caused by a stabbing blow from a sword tip, or possibly, the top spike of a bill or halberd that pierced right through bone and brain to the inside of the opposite side of the skull. Either of these injuries would have caused severe bleeding inside the skull and injury to the brain, and would have been fatal.
The sequence of these injuries cannot be proved, and it is unknown which of the two killed him. Hainsworth and Woosnam-Savage believe the larger of the two was delivered with the axe-blade of a halberd-like weapon which sliced through the skull to leave a hanging flap of bone. The smaller injury was probably the stabbing blow from a sword which penetrated the skull and went right through the brain: ‘Lights out immediately’, as Woosnam-Savage said grimly.
Near contemporary accounts of Bosworth record Richard fighting in the thick of the battle to the last. John Rous, who had known Richard, recorded, ‘though he was slight in body and weak in strength, to his last breath he held himself nobly in a defending manner, often crying that he was betrayed and saying, “treason, treason, treason”’. The anonymous author of the Croyland Chronicle, writing in 1486, gave this description of his death: ‘in the thick of the fight, and not in the act of flight, King Richard fell in the field, struck by many mortal wounds, as a bold and most valiant prince’. The Italian historian Polydore Vergil, no friend to Richard as he was writing for the Tudors 20 years after the battle, is believed to have based his account on eyewitness reports. He too wrote that Richard was killed ‘fighting manfully in the thickest press of his enemies’.
The three skull injuries bore out these accounts, suggesting that by this final stage of the battle Richard had lost his horse and then quite likely his footing, and must also have lost his helmet or had it forcibly ripped off him. There were no defensive wounds to the bones of his arms or hands, suggesting that up to the point of his death he was still wearing all his armour apart from his helmet, and that it was working effectively.
Woosnam-Savage is also an expert on the protection aristocratic soldiers had in war (he possesses his own replica suit of late fifteenth-century armour, and indeed wore it to his wedding). At this time, Richard would have gone into battle probably protected by plate armour together with elements of mail armour. He would have worn a helmet with a visor, and although the whole armour would have been custom-made for him particular attention would have probably been given to his breast - and backplates, which were worn over a heavily padded jacket, giving good protection to the vulnerable head and torso. He also probably wore a deep skirt of hooped steel plates protecting his lower body and beneath this a short mail skirt or
Breeches. On horseback his pelvis would have had some further protection from the war saddle.
The team was particularly interested in injuries that could not have been dealt while Richard was still in armour. Their conclusion was that - as in the despairing cry Shakespeare gives the character, ‘a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!’ - he was most likely unhorsed and without his helmet when the fatal head injuries were inflicted. It would appear, therefore, that he was then stripped of his remaining armour, which is in accordance with the historical accounts, and was almost certainly already dead, when he suffered these wounds.
There was one small injury, a v-shaped wound, in the right tenth rib, probably from a dagger blade (Plate 14). The shape of the cuts shows that the blade moved, either as the ribs twisted or because it became stuck and had to be jerked clear. The injury would not have been fatal, and it was the only one to the ribs. Richard’s armour would have been highly effective, and this blow could really only have been delivered after his body armour, including the backplate, had been removed.
He had one more grievous injury that also could probably not have realistically occurred while he was fully armoured. His pelvis was reconstructed to show how the bone-piercing injury 30 mm in length could have been caused. A fine-bladed weapon penetrated the right buttock, and passed right through the pelvic cavity (Plate 15). In life this would have damaged the internal pelvic organs including the bowel and caused massive bleeding. However, the injury seems to match those accounts which describe Richard’s stripped body being humiliatingly treated and slung over the back of a horse. With his arms on one side and his legs on the other this would have presented a perfect target and opportunity to inflict such a wound. ‘From the historical accounts alone I had perhaps expected to see evidence of humiliation injuries - and there they were before me, in the bones’, Woosnam-Savage said. Such humiliation or insult injuries are not unique, for he had also noted how mobile-phone footage of the killing of the deposed Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi, in Libya in 2011 showed an identical injury being inflicted in exactly the same location on the body, with what appeared to be a bayonet. The only difference was that Gaddafi was definitely alive when the injury was delivered. He continued ‘There could have been further soft-tissue damage but that evidence no longer survives.’
The team was also struck by how the wounds to the face, none fatal, caused very little damage to the underlying bone structure: indeed Woosnam-Savage speculates that the stab wound through the cheek may have been the result of somebody aiming at the eye socket in an attempt to make a quick killing and, in the process, missing. However, other team members do not think that it is possible to establish with certainty the direction from which the attack was made from the evidence of the wounds.
‘These injuries are very interesting’, Hainsworth said. ‘In the thick of battle, with tempers high and adrenaline surging, you have to imagine somebody in the most senior position of authority shouting orders to hold back and not to destroy his face - the obvious conclusion is that Richard had to remain recognisable after his death.’ Woosnam-Savage pointed out that Henry VII himself had specifically stated in a proclamation of 22-3 August 1485 that Richard was to be ‘laid openly, that every man might see and look upon him’, which by implication meant the corpse of Richard had to be recognisable.
World History
