The skeleton from Greyfriars has a number of interesting characteristics
that we've been able to learn a lot more about during the process of analysis. A lot of the
injuries were concentrated on the skull. In particular there were several glancing blows,
really from a sharp implement that had taken small quantities of bone off the surface of the skull.
We also identified a penetrating wound on top of the skull.
This was caused by something that had been brought down on top of the head with enough
force that it had actually dislodged two flaps of bone on the bone interior.
There was also a much larger wound on the base of the skull and in this case a whole portion of bone
appeared to have been cleaved off with a very sharp blade. Perhaps something along the lines
of a halberd – which is something that we know was often used during medieval warfare – and depending
on precisely how far the blade penetrated into the skull it could have caused death instantaneously.
So we do have at least one wound that is a very good candidate for being fatal
There were two further injuries on the skull. Firstly there was an injury to the cheekbone
and that took the form of a small rectangular outline penetrating injury. There was also
a cut mark that we were able to identify on the mandible – that's the lower jaw of
the skeleton – and that would have been caused by something along the lines of a dagger or a knife,
and again there doesn't seem to have been a huge quantity of force behind this blow.
Now it's interesting, if we look at these, that they are causing fairly minor disfigurement.
They're not completely destroying the face, and that was important because it was important
for Henry's side to be able to show that Richard actually was dead. There's always a potential with
these things that somebody's going to turn up six months down the line with an army at their back
claiming to be the person, and so it was very important that Henry VII could show
that he really had killed Richard and Richard was never going to be able to come into power again.
When we looked at the spine it became very clear that this was a condition that had affected
individual vertebrae as well as the shape of the spine as a whole.
So we can see signs on the individual vertebrae in the area of the rib cage
that they're not quite the right shape, they have abnormalities about them.
And when we look at the nature of these it suggests that the scoliosis the curvature
developed during adolescence rather than being a condition that this individual was born with.
We then have two further injuries on this skeleton. One of them was on a right rib and this
was another cut mark, so again something caused by a dagger or a knife or something similar.
Now interestingly this injury could not have been inflicted on an individual wearing armour,
so we know that this individual must have lost their armour by the time it occurred,
and one possibility is that this is another example of a post-mortem injury.
We know that the body was stripped after the battle.
The final wound that we've identified is on the pelvis, the hip bone of the skeleton,
and that's a wound that's been made by a blade. It's come from the back to the front
and it's actually gone all the way through. It's punctured the bone at the front of the pelvis.
We can be certain from the analysis of this skeleton that this individual died a violent
death. Now we can't say for sure which was the killer blow. We have examples of injuries that may
have proved fatal but the trouble with conducting your analysis of the skeleton is that you can
never be certain about what happened to the rest of the body. There are many ways of killing an
individual that do not involve any damage to the bones. You can stab them through the heart,
you can rip their guts out, there are all sorts of things that you can do that just
will not show off on the skeleton. So we cannot say that we have found the blow that killed him
but we can say for certain that we have found somebody who died a violent death.