Royal burial places

This post in the Times details the final resting place of every English and then British monarch since 1066, although Harold II (probably Waltham Abbey) is omitted. Note from the interactive map that there are four (plus the Empress Matilda) burials in France and one in Germany. There are none in Scotland, Wales, Ireland or…

Ten years ago today …

… it was announced that the remains discovered on the site of the Leicester Greyfriars were indeed those of Richard III. On this page you can see both mitochodrial DNA lines: the first by John Ashdown-Hill and the back-up by Leicester University, both to collateral descendants in Commonwealth nations. Here you can see how easy it…

Identifying another King

The monarch in question is Robert I (Bruce) and the investigation, as part of the Foundation for Mediaeval Genealogy’s Declaration of Arbroath Family History Project, is being carried out by the University of Strathclyde: Graham Holton has reported good progress in this press release: Genetic marker discovered for descendants of Bruce clan, January 2022.A distinct…

THE DENIALISTS AND COLDRIDGE:

‘THEY DON’T LIKE IT UP ‘EM!’ The news {pingback to 9/4} about a potential important new discovery regarding the fate of Edward V, elder of the ‘princes in the Tower’ at Coldridge church in Devon took recent U.K. newspapers by storm, gaining a considerable amount of press coverage in a short span of time, much…

Edward V and Coldridge: the evidence so far

Thanks to this Daily Telegraph article last December, the world is now far more aware of  the distinct possibility that the former Edward V lived on as “John Evans” at Coldridge in Devon into the reign of Henry VIII, his nephew, as a parker minding deer for his half-brother Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset. In…

The forensic genealogy that identified Richard III moves on apace

Almost six years ago now, it was confirmed that the remains identified under a car park in Leicester were those of Richard III. One of the principal components of this identification was that the remains shared the mtDNA of Michael Ibsen, a maternal line relative traced by John Ashdown-Hill, as was Wendy Duldig by the…

Long live the King

This interesting tome has finally appeared in paperback. The opening Parts read like an abridged biography of the story familiar to us through Warner’s The Unconventional King, but to be read with an open mind as to whether Edward II survived his “official death” today in 1327 or not. The reader will re-learn the events…

The history of Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset….

This interesting, very readable article is about Henry VIII’s illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset. It’s interesting and very readable, and definitely not anti-Richard III, mostly the opposite in fact. But it doesn’t spare Henrys VII and VIII. I enjoyed reading it in spite of a few bloopers that are nevertheless not…

Barbara Talbot

On page 130 of The last days of Richard III and the fate of his DNA, John Ashdown-Hill described John Talbot of Lacock, father of one of the many Barbaras in Richard’s mtDNA, as “John Talbot belonged to a cadet line of the descendants of the great John Talbot”, but there is no table to…

Coming Upon the King: My Accidental Path Toward Becoming a Ricardian

I’ll be perfectly honest with you: I was never really that interested in Richard Plantagenet, later Richard III. In school I had avoided the Anglo-Saxons like the plague, and Richard, well, perhaps like a round of the flu. He wasn’t quite as intimidating, despite the double-murder allegation lodged, and I got away with not having…