The Search for Richard III is Not Over. No Bones About It

"Richard's himself again." A line from the play "Richard III?" Yes. But from Shakespeare? No. "Lord, what fools these mortals be." Now that's from Shakespeare.

In March 2015, in a solemn and elaborate ceremony--fit for a king, really--formerly disconnected bones and a detached skull, pieced together to resemble a skeleton, were laid to rest in Leicester Cathedral. These bones are now called the earthly remains of Richard III. More than five hundred years after his death, how did these bones come to be identified as Richard's?

To hear historian John Ashdown-Hill tell the tale, the journey began in 2003, when he set out to find the maligned king's final--but not quite--resting place. Ashdown-Hill concluded that persistent legends claiming the body was tossed into the river Soar or buried under Bow's Bridge were "rubbish." Richard was, in fact, buried under a parking lot in what must have been the site of Greyfriar's monastery in Leicester.

He e-mailed his conclusions to Philippa Langley of the Richard III Society.  Langley was financing an extensive search for the body.  She took a look at the parking lot and saw the letter "R."  Perfect!  R for Richard.  R for rex, meaning king.  She had a feeling in her bones.  What more would you want?  It might as well have been an X, marking the spot.

The heavy equipment rolled in.  The concrete was jackhammered, and the digging began.

Incredibly, two leg bones were found.  Some time later, a disjointed skull, separated and at an angle over loose vertebrae, as well as bones from two normal arms--not withered, as Shakespeare described--were unearthed.

It had to be Richard.  After all those years of searching, all the money, all the ego-involvement, it had to be.

The University of Leicester, which participated in the exhumation, took CT scans and arranged for radiocarbon dating to determine the approximate age of the bones.  They extracted four small pieces from a rib and sent two to the Glasgow University and two to Oxford for testing.  The idea was that two pieces at two different facilities "should provide consistent results--and indeed it did."

So says the University of Leicester's website.

Glasgow and Oxford both concluded with 95% probability that the samples dated from 1430-1460, or, from 1412-1449.

There was just one small problem.  Richard died in 1485. 

"Oh, dear," says the Leicester website.

What had been called their "thrilling prospect," their "global sensation," this "testament to their unparalled skill," was snatched away by those infernal scientists and their 95% certainty.

But wait.  When there's fame, fortune, and prestige involved, academics don't give up.  All they needed was the "Bayesian statistic modeling technique" and...fish.  Richard must have eaten a lot of fish.  He must have!  And fish can make all the difference in the world.

How?  The amounts of carbon-14 vary over the years, as well as between the atmosphere and the oceans.  "Radiocarbon dating of marine organisms can be out by several hundred years..." the website explains, and "to a lesser degree in terrestrial life where seafood forms part of the diet."

Simple solution!  Throw out the bad results, and blame it on that damn fish.

And so, using the Bayesian "modeling technique," based on incomprehensible, unverifiable formulas--we won't say "fishy"--the approximate dates came back from 1475-1530 "with a 69% confidence."

When did 69% once become more reliable than 95% twice?

But, it proved nothing anyway, so on to the DNA testing.  You can always count on DNA to save the day.

Too bad the Y-chromosome didn't match.  That's the genetic material passed down from father to son.  Richard's son died in childhood, so no direct line of male descendants exists.  Only one putative living male relative was found.  He was nineteen generations removed, and from an indirect line.  And his Y-chromosome wasn't compatible.  Either he wasn't a Plantagenet or the bones were not Richard's.  Or Richard wasn't a Plantagenet.  Or, oh, forget about it.  Generally speaking, no match means no match.  The party's over.  Go home and nurse your headache.  Maybe change your name and withdraw from society.

But wait.  There was a match; two, in fact, with the mitochondrial DNA.  That is the genetic material in the egg which a mother passes to all her children, male and female.  The problem is, after many centuries the number of people with the same mitochondrial DNA grows exponentially.  How many mothers with how many female children did Richard have in his background?  His mother alone had five sisters.  Perhaps these bones were a distant cousin. 

This debacle might well be an example of the "six degrees of separation" in action.

And we can't ignore the issues of contamination and degradation of DNA fragments.  Bones carelessly tossed into the ground--as seems to have been done with the "parking lot king"--and unearthed many years later, are not the best evidence of identity.

My niece Lisa did not believe in the accuracy of DNA results which identified damaged, decomposed bone fragments as the remains of Czar Nicholas, Alexandra, and four of their children.  Lisa and I also never believed that Queen Victoria passed the gene for hemophilia to the Czar's son, Alexei.  Lisa e-mailed one of the scientists involved in the testing to ask if the gene for hemophilia was found.  The response that it was unnecessary, as everyone knows Alexei had hemophilia.

Now the Russian Orthodox Church has its doubts that the bones given a royal burial belonged to the Czar and his family.  It has asked for the exhumation of the remains for more testing.

With apologies to Colley Cibber, Richard is not himself again.  There is no good reason to believe he lies in Leicester Cathedral.  But unlike the poor soul whose bones were taken from where they had lain for so many hundreds of years, maybe Richard can now rest in peace.  Wherever his grave may lie.