Sorry, in the first paragraph, face-up over a horse' should be face-down
over a horse''! =^..^=
From: SandraMachin
Sent: Sunday, September 15, 2013 7:44 PM
To:
Subject: Re: Richard III
doubts
Hello Marie. If Bosworth was the time his spine was finally seen to be
crooked, when did the stories about it begin to circulate? Immediately? Or was
there a delay? If the latter, why? Clearly I'm wondering if he was as fully
naked and displayed, face-up over a horse, as we have been lead to understand.
Humiliating him was obviously a spur in the proceedings, but it was his face
that Henry would have been particularly keen on displaying to the world. Richard
was memorable, his face could not have been mistaken by all those who saw him
ride out from Leicester to do battle.
This brings me to wonder (meandering imagination surfaces again, I fear)
exactly how Richard was slung over the horse. Naked, yes, but which way over the
animal's back, face-up or face-down? Not such a stupid question, and one that
has been raised before, I think. Face-down, he would bend quite easily, but his
face wouldn't be visible, especially with all that hair. Unless they cut it off,
which the complete absence of his hair now cannot prove one way or the other.
But still his face would not be clear. If it was face-up, showing his features
quite well, how would his body have bent over the horse? He was not a big man,
and the horse might have been large it would if it was a warhorse but they
had no need to fear damaging him or causing pain, because he was already well
and truly dead. So who cares? Hurl him over, lads. OK, there are humiliation
wounds to his buttock, and it is taken for granted that this could only be
because he was slung over the horse face-down. But what if that buttock wound
was inflicted at some other moment? Before he was hurled over the horse? Or when
he was dragged off it? What, even, if he was covered but for his face? Such a
buttock wound could still be inflicted. The whereabouts of a man's buttocks is
easy enough to guess from the way his face is shown. Anything is possible, no
matter how unlikely. Yes, he probably had scoliosis, I'm not saying otherwise,
I'm just wondering who could have seen what when he was hauled back to
Leicester. Afterward he would have been laid out on display face-up, surely? So
no one would see his spine then. And would they really have left the King of
England lying there absolutely in the raw? Would even Henry Tudor sanction that?
Not to say he didn't, just that there can be doubt. Do we actually have proof he
issued such an order? Or did not correct the outrage when he heard of it.
What if being dragged or flung face-up over the horse caused damage to
Richard's spine? Would a spine that was thus damaged, immediately at death or
just afterward, show that damage for what it was caused by over five hundred
years later, after being squeezed into a too-small grave all that time? A
crunched spine is a crunched spine, the cause, unlike knife wounds and so on,
might not be so obvious or identifiable. And might such damage be perceived,
now, purely as the result of natural physical deformity, aided by being too long
in the ground? Flinging him over a horse on his back would likely hurt the
spine, but would leave the ribs unharmed, which Richard's are.
I guess I don't know quite what I am trying to get at here (nor does anyone
else, I'll bet!) but there seems to me to be a possibility that Richard's spine
as it is at present, might not have been the same up to the moment of death, as
might seem to us to be the case. In other words, might there have been other
factors in the distortion of Richard's spine than a natural malformation and
burial in a grave that was too small for him?
That's enough from me, I think.
Sandra
=^..^=
From: mariewalsh2003
Sent: Sunday, September 15, 2013 7:03 PM
To:
Subject: RE: Re : Re: Richard III
doubts
Daivd wrote:
"However, if you have two conflicting pieces of evidence - say a painting
that seems to have been changed in a subtle way, or Rous who contradicts
himself, then you can not draw a logical conculsion that the later evidence was
necessarily a result of political pressure. It could be the other way, or more
likely the artist / writer acting with more freedom about the previous
regime."
Marie responds:
Or it could be that everybody was painting either what they saw or knew to be
true: the original artist nor the artist, his 16th century copyist, and the
person who made the alteration to the extant copy. Paul does have a point -
scoliosis doesn't apparently show up much under clothing, and this would be even
more the case with the heavily padded togs that 15th-century noblemen wore. And
if the scoliosis was not as severe as Leicester have led us to believe then
there is even less chance that it would have been visible when Richard was
clothed. But at Bosworth Richard's condition was robbed of its usual
camouflage, and he was bent over the back of a horse, bringing his spine into
relief. From that point on there was general knowledge that he had had a crooked
back.
So the man who painted Richard's portrait may have faithfully painted what he
saw.
By the by, I notice that Margaret of Bavaria was painted in such a way that
the majority of her spine is off picture, only the neck and shoulder area (one
shoulder) showing. Also, I personally don't know the sources for Margaret having
a hunchback, and we perhaps need to be careful because until last year the Tudor
references to Richard's 'crookback' were also assumed to refer to kyphosis.
Marie
--- In ,
<> wrote:
Paul,
I am not in the Richard was deformed camp.
But I am
in the camp that believes that the Tudors did not force people to make up
stories about him.
Your reply to my email has arrived before the
original.
However, if you have two conflicting pieces of evidence -
say a painting that seems to have been changed in a subtle way, or Rous
who contradicts himself, then you can not draw a logical conculsion that
the later evidence was necessarily a result of political pressure. It
could be the other way, or more likely the artist / writer acting with
more freedom about the previous regime.
As an example, take the
extant portrait of Margaret of Bavaria - a known sufferer of Kyphosis
(classic hunch back). It shows no sign of her condition.
The
easiest way to find it is from the Kyphosis wikipedia page under famous
sufferers.
Regards
David
From: Paul Trevor Bale
<paul.bale@...>;
To:
<>;
Subject: Re:
Richard III doubts
Sent: Sun,
Sep 15, 2013 8:37:40 AM
On 15/09/2013 00:05, Durose David wrote:
> My view on Richard's spine is that
it is not surprising at all that there is little mention of it in his
lifetime - it takes a special courage to speak truth unto power.
Clearly you are in the Richard was deformed
camp. That damn woman on the
tv programme screaming about
something she was not qualified to make any
comment on!
Actually my view is that nobody mentioned it
during his lifetime because
nothing was visible, as in the
case of many of our contemporaries who
have scoliosis,
Michael Phelps being the one I always mention. Had
anything
been visible his enemies would have made much of it. Not even
Collyngbourne mentioned anything physical, missing a great
opportunity
had there been anything there.
Paul
--
Richard Liveth Yet!
