Secrets of the Dead (2000–…): Season 13, Episode 6 - Resurrecting Richard III - full transcript
In 1485,
the infamous King Richard Ill
died in a bloody battle.
Remarkably, his remains
were discovered
under a parking lot in 2013,
but his skeleton,
with its severely curved spine,
has baffled experts.
How could a man
with such a severe deformity
have waged war so fiercely?
Now we've got somebody
who has scoliosis,
we should be able to see
what somebody like that
could actually do.
"Resurrecting Richard Ill."
"Secrets of the Dead"
was made possible in part
by the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting
and by contributions
to your PBS station from...
It was an incredible
archeological discovery.
In 2013, scientists announced,
the bones found
in an English parking lot
were those of the infamous
King Richard Ill
buried more than 500 years ago.
It was the result
of a DNA comparison.
I did a little dance
around the lab.
King Richard Ill was found
buried under a parking lot.
The earthly remains of the last
of the Plantagenets.
Richard Ill,
one of the most reviled
kings in British history...
No. No.
Chances of finding Richard
was... I don't know...
A million to one.
But that was just the start
of an extraordinary journey.
The discovery included Richard's
twisted spine,
which raised new questions.
With such an extreme
medical condition,
could Richard still be
the fearsome warrior
history books say he was?
But that curvature
is major curvature.
I mean, that's seriously
something going on.
So how do you get armor on that?
Over the last 12 months,
scientists have been trying
to answer that very question.
Now a look at their
amazing investigation.
It reveals what Richard's
backbone actually looked like...
He's virtually identical.
The ailments that plagued him...
The vast majority of people
have surgery to correct it.
Even his extraordinary
and perhaps unhealthy diet...
We've built
a very detailed picture
of an individual
from the late medieval period.
And with the help
of a unique body double,
scientists will demonstrate
how Richard fought and died.
Meet the real Richard Ill.
In 1483, this man
seized the English throne.
To some, he was an evil monster,
to others, a hero.
His name was Richard Ill.
In August 1485,
he was brutally slain
at Bosworth Field...
the last English king
to die in battle.
The histories
are very interesting
because even those written
by his enemies very soon after
make great play of the fact
that he died manfully.
He fought well,
died "in the thickest press
of his enemies."
More than 500 years later,
University of Leicester
archeologists
unearthed Richard's body,
diagnoses the scoliosis
that bent his spine,
and raised a question...
Could a man
with such a twisted back
really wear armor,
lead a heavy cavalry charge,
and kill several men
before dying
at the hands
of Henry Tudor's army?
Some people who have
written books about Richard...
have anticipated that
he might have sustained
significant back pain
or he might have had a limp
or not functioned so well
on the battlefield, for example.
For the first time ever,
scientists can study the bones
of an English king
and solve the mysteries
of his reign.
The team undertakes
two different investigations
to determine Richard's
true physical condition
and fighting ability.
First, they will
unlock the clues
hidden in Richard's bones,
using atomic
and microscopic analysis
to reveal new details about
his health, diet, and lifestyle.
It's extremely unusual
for us to be able
to apply this level of analysis
to human remains in archeology.
The team also wants to test
Richard's physical limitations
with a living subject.
They search for someone
who shares
Richard's extreme
spinal condition.
So, perhaps, putting
someone through their paces
wearing armor on horseback
would give us a much better idea
of whether a scoliosis
impeded your ability to do that.
Before they can
identify a suitable subject,
Dr. Jo Appleby
and Professor Piers Mitchell,
along with their colleagues,
must first create
a precise reconstruction
of Richard's backbone...
a critical task.
Laying the bones out on a table
only provides a best guess.
So radiologist Bruno Morgan
must rebuild
the entire spinal column
in 3 dimensions.
Experts at
Loughborough University
replicate each
of Richard's vertebra in detail.
Then Bruno pieces the puzzle
together.
The exercise reveals
something new...
Chronic arthritis.
These joints look
completely normal...
Nice, flat, smooth
facet joints...
But as we move up
to his thoracic spine,
we can see that the anatomy
has been disordered,
and this is the degenerative
osteoarthritis
that Richard'd have had
from his scoliosis,
and because of this,
there can be only one way
these facet joints fit together.
They fit together
a bit like a jigsaw.
The reconstruction
shows Richard's spine
was twisted at an angle
of up to 80 degrees.
Finding someone with
a similarly curved spine today
will be difficult...
but the Richard project
has long had uncanny good luck.
I got the strangest sensation
when I was in that area
in that place,
absolutely knew that I was
standing on Richard's grave.
And she was uncannily right.
Well...
No.
APPLEBY, ON TV: So what we're
actually seeing here
is that this skeleton, in fact,
has a hunchback,
Completely normal
for a normal body,
but I've just been excavating...
26-year-old Dominic Smee
watched the announcement of
the discovery of Richard's bones
on TV with his family.
APPLEBY, ON TV: So what we're
actually seeing here
is that this skeleton,
in fact...
I was kind of thinking,
"OK. This is quite weird,"
because there are a lot of
similarities between me and him,
and I thought,
"I wonder if something
is going on there.
This is a bit strange."
A few weeks later,
Dominic came across
an online lecture
exploring how Richard
might have fought in armor.
What did it really look like?
What did he actually wear?
Dominic was shocked.
He thought he was looking
at his own back.
What made the similarity
even more bizarre
was that Dominic spends
most weekends as a re-enactor
at the battlefield site
where Richard was killed.
The actual point
where it was revealed
on the television
that Richard had scoliosis,
it was quite
a mind-blowing thing, really.
I remember thinking, "Wow.
That's almost exactly
the same as Dominic."
It is quite eerie, really,
to see that.
Dominic e-mailed the lecturer
and offered to help.
For Dominic, talking
about himself and his back
has not been easy.
I was kind of thinking
maybe other people can notice
or see through my clothes
and see how I was feeling
when I looked in a mirror,
which is probably why
I kind of can empathize, really,
with how Richard may have felt.
But Dom has put
his own feelings aside
for the sake of science.
Well, he was kind of saying,
"This is what we think
"Richard's scoliosis
would have looked like.
This is what we think
he would have suffered with,"
and I thought, well,
maybe I'd be able to help
get rid of some
of those questions for him.
The team studying Richard Ill
now has someone who can serve
as his body double.
Hello.
Hi.
Welcome to the
Wallace Collection.
Yeah.
You've not been here
before, have you?
No.
Good. Excellent.
Well, let's go see some armor.
OK.
Dr. Toby Capwell is a
world-renowned expert on armor.
I didn't know
what to expect of Dominic.
I mean, he'd seen the lecture
that I had given.
I mean, I was immediately struck
by how sort of thoughtful
and interested he is.
The one thing that we
haven't really been
able to explore so far
is just how much
Richard's scoliosis
would have affected him
and affected his
knightly training
and his ability to fight.
That's an armor that appears
in just about every...
But does Dominic's
backbone really match
the extreme curve
of Richard's spine?
And it gives a great impression
of the knight...
CAPWELL, VOICE-OVER: It's
extraordinarily rare to find
anyone who has the exact kind
of scoliosis
to the same degree
as Richard Ill
because the vast majority
of people who have it
in that way have surgery
to correct it.
It's quite common now for people
with a curve of over 50 degrees
to undergo surgery to try
and straighten the spine
if possible.
So, Dominic,
first thing we need to do
is to have a good look
at your back.
For complex medical reasons,
Dominic has avoided surgery.
Then I can see that.
The only way
to establish a match
is to conduct
a detailed medical examination.
You can see that
the curve is to the right
over here in the thoracic area.
We can also see
how the shoulders
are at slightly
different heights.
So the right-hand shoulder
is a little bit higher
than the left-hand one.
You can see how we've
got an asymmetry here
where the waist kind of sits.
So, Dominic, these are
the x-rays of your back.
I can see that a lot of
elements of your spine
are very similar to Richard's.
First, you got
a right-sided curve
just like Richard has,
and the angle of the curve,
which we call the Cobb angle,
yours is about 70, 75 degrees,
and that's very
similar to Richard's,
which we've measured
to be between
about 60 and 80 degrees.
Dominic's body
resembles Richard's
in other ways.
What we notice when looking
at Richard's skeleton is,
he has fairly gracile,
very fairly slim bones,
and so in that regard, I think,
what we can tell
from the skeleton
would be compatible with
what we see with Dominic,
who clearly isn't
a very over muscular guy.
Piers performs one more task...
Comparing Richard and
Dominic's spines side by side.
We can see on Dominic
how this part
of the chest
is much more prominent
than this part, and this seems
to dip in, and that's because
of the position of the ribs,
and the reason that happens is,
the spine twists in a scoliosis.
It's not just
a sideways bending,
and that's shown
really nicely here
on Richard's scoliosis
because you can see
instead of the spinous processes
being in the midline, they point
right inwards like this,
and it shows
that there's this twist.
So the ribs would have
come out this way,
and the ribs on this side
would have gone inwards
just in the same way
that we see on Dominic.
We should pull the ribs out,
and if we had the ribs,
I think it would show
he's virtually identical.
Virtually identical.
For 500 years,
people have speculated wildly
about Richard's appearance.
Dominic is a unique
test subject.
Scientists can now re-examine
history's interpretation
of Richard
and provide a realistic picture
of the king.
They will train and test Dominic
to find out
exactly what Richard
was capable of.
It will all culminate
in a battle test
where he'll have to fight
in full armor...
lead a heavy cavalry charge,
and take on
some of the best
medieval fighters in Europe.
We should be able to see
what somebody like that
could actually do.
I think that's really exciting.
And then rotate.
If Dominic can do this,
then I'm sure Richard
would have managed to do it
because they have
very similar scolioses.
Meanwhile, analysis of his bones
is about to yield more
fascinating facts about Richard.
This will be the most detailed
portrait of a medieval monarch
ever assembled...
And reveal
his true physical condition
on the eve of his last battle...
What he was eating, drinking,
and his state of health.
Richard Ill
was a key participant
in one of British history's
most important conflicts...
The Wars of the Roses.
The War of the Roses
continues to captivate
the public imagination
because it has
so many small human
adventure stories.
There are so many
small, intricate elements
to this period in history,
the sort of very brutal
and uncompromising nature
of this internal
dynastic conflict.
After King Edward Ill
died in 1377,
there was a deadly feud
between the families
of two of his sons...
The Duke of York
and the Duke of Lancaster.
They fought over
the English crown for 100 years.
Richard was born at the height
of the conflict in 1452.
Some of the scientists
have traveled
to Richard's birthplace
in Northamptonshire
to find out if he was a fit
and capable warrior
at the Battle of Bosworth.
But it's good, isn't it?
It's gonna
be great. Yeah.
The castle, that
will be fantastic.
They want to know
whether Richard
maintained a healthy diet
over the course of his life.
Yeah, sort of just down there.
His bones should
contain telltale chemicals
that he absorbed
from the food and water
he consumed while living here.
The very earliest samples
that we have from Richard Ill
are from the dentin
within his teeth,
and those formed when he
was about 3 or 4 years old.
So that's the earliest
picture we have of him.
By analyzing
the chemical isotopes
in Richard's teeth,
legs, and ribs,
Angela Lamb and her colleagues
can create a complete profile
of Richard's diet
from birth to death.
First, she prepares tiny tooth
samples for atomic analysis.
What kind of condition
were Richard's teeth in?
There was some slight decay,
as you can expect from a person
of that age, but on the whole,
they were in pretty
good condition.
Angela measures
the chemical signature
using a mass spectrometer.
Look. That one looks
more limestoney.
The nitrogen isotopes
show an increase
in the amount of meats
and protein they were eating
and also increase in the amount
of fish they were eating.
Richard's values here,
you can see,
are at the top end
of comparable medieval
high-status individuals.
So he did have
a very high-status diet.
The data in his teeth
suggest Richard ate a diet
full of protein
and essential minerals.
He was a fit young boy...
but was he still fit at age 33
in his last battle?
Angela is hunting
for the answer in his bones.
Meanwhile,
the team's body double
is opening another unique window
into Richard's physiology.
Dominic Smee is being analyzed
by physiotherapist Claire Small.
Good. OK.
Same again.
You're gonna stand on one leg.
You're gonna take the arm out.
You're gonna take it
back as far as you can.
She is an expert
on spinal pathologies
and has worked
with paralympians.
Right. OK.
Now come and stand.
Come back to the middle.
Come and stand up.
This physical test
shows how a curved spine
might limit a person.
And on the other side.
I'm really impressed
with his range of motion.
In fact, he's got
better range of motion
than a lot of other guys
his age.
Try a little run,
breathing. Good.
Dominic and Richard
may be nimble and flexible,
but the treadmill test reveals
the first indication
of a physical problem.
And jump off.
Oh, enough.
I'll leave it.
OK.
I'm starting
to feel breathing...
Yeah.
It's getting a bit tight.
OK.
It's, my chest tightens up.
So it's more difficult
to breathe out quickly
to compensate for
the amount of oxygen
I need to keep running faster.
His ribs
won't expand and contract
because of the rotation
of his ribs
associated with the scoliosis.
So that means his lungs
aren't going to...
He's not going to have
the lung capacity
that would allow him to take in
maximum doses of oxygen.
The thing that is going
to defeat him is fatigue,
and, obviously,
if you're thinking
about someone in battle,
that's the sort of thing
that you can't afford,
is to get tired
because that then
makes you vulnerable
to attack by your enemy.
If Richard's
lung capacity was also limited,
he might have struggled
when fighting for long periods,
especially on foot.
It's an important consideration,
as Dominic moves on to
the next stage of his training.
There's a good bind.
You see that really
nice, little bind?
To determine whether Richard
really could have excelled
on the battlefield,
Toby Capwell
is introducing Dominic
to the brutal art
of medieval combat.
Toby is part
of an academic group
that has scoured rare
medieval combat manuals
and recreated this lost skill.
It's very short, sharp bursts
but a high amount
of energy that's expended
in that short amount of time.
So it makes you wonder
what it would have been like
to have to keep going
for the full time of a battle.
This has no safety precautions,
a real fight, life and death.
I mean, these things
are vicious.
So you reckon you
could face one of these?
Not quite at the moment.
The thing that Arne and Jorem
have immediately shown us
is the systematic complexity
of medieval fighting art.
There's nothing
brutish or untutored
about what they're doing.
It's very technical,
and a small,
more lightly built person
just has to be faster,
and they've got to be
better at those techniques.
They train to take on
bigger people.
There's a lot of binding.
Here...
Dominic's instructor
is medieval combat expert
Dave Rawlings.
So from here like so
is actually
exactly the same thing.
So, you see, we're training
a very small group of muscles.
Toby has brought along
weapons from a rare collection
for Dominic to get a feel for.
Have a feel of that,
not especially heavy.
Even a larger sword like this
is not especially heavy.
It's one of the great
myths and misconceptions
about medieval fighting
that the swords
are these big, clunky,
heavy things.
They aren't.
It's counterproductive
for them to be so.
It's quite sharp, as well.
And that sharpness and
the scary aspect of the sword
is very important to be aware of
as you're starting to train
because you always
have to be aware
of the possibility
that your opponent
could make your arm fall off.
It sort of focuses
the mind somewhat.
As a member of the nobility,
Richard would have been unable
to avoid his duty as a soldier.
They had a lot of responsibility
as politicians and MPs
and just as public figures,
but the fighting
is always still there.
They always need
to find some time
in their day to train
and to work with
their horses, as well.
And that was important
for the king, as well,
the monarch at that time.
This is still a time
when monarchs
were on the battlefield.
Richard dies leading his army
on the battlefield.
So far,
there does not appear to be
anything that he cannot
actually do.
There might be some things
he cannot reach as far
on a certain side,
but generally speaking,
he seems to be quite capable
of doing everything
that's thrown at him,
which I find really exciting.
Now continue that circle
and cut up from underneath.
Good. Hands up. Good.
How's that motion for you?
Is that all right?
Yeah.
It's interesting.
It will be interesting to see
how the difference of having
the weight of the armor on
and using a weapon...
Seeing what happens then.
But outfitting Dominic
in armor raises new challenges.
There's no English armor
surviving from the 15th century.
All of the thousands of armors
that were produced and worn
during the War of the Roses,
nothing that can be said
to be the work of
an English craftsman survives.
So Dominic
and the team travel to Sweden
to work with world-renowned
armorer Per Lillelund.
Good to see you, man.
It's been a while.
Dominic, Per.
Hey, nice to meet you.
Very pleased to meet you.
He's going to make Dominic
a fully functional suit
of medieval armor.
It must fit and flex
like a glove...
It looks really good.
But achieving this
with a twisted torso
is a journey into the unknown.
And this one here is...
We're now wrestling
with the same issues
that Richard's armorer
would have had to deal with
in the 15th century.
I was gonna
show you this one here.
That's a depiction
of Richard, as well.
Dominic had in interest
in Richard Ill
a long time before
the bones were found,
and, of course, there's
the Shakespearean image
of, you know,
the hunchback and all of that,
but there's been plenty...
For years, there's been
lots and lots of argument
that Richard
didn't have anything
wrong with him physically.
So what do
you think about all this
now with the evidence showing
that he actually
had this scoliosis?
It was just amazing
that is was so close to...
I mean, I remember when
I saw it and I thought,
"I'm sure that's like
what mine looked like."
Take the shirt off. Yeah.
A good armor
is an extension of your body.
A good armor is
a human exoskeleton.
I'm not gonna scrape it.
It's gonna be
quite a long process
before we've finished
to get it all to work.
You still have to shape
the plane out like that.
Oh, yeah, yeah, totally.
You curve more here,
and you curve more here.
While Per tries
to figure out how to build armor
for a long-dead king
with a twisted spine,
Dominic continues
his combat training.
Plus, we've got like this... slap.
I'm gonna hit you in the head.
Make sure you can block it.
Good. Block it.
Go forwards.
That's it.
Good, good, good.
Once more.
It's clear
that both Dominic and Richard
would have to be
in excellent physical shape
to cope with the rigors
of medieval warfare...
It's parallel to your foot.
But back in the laboratory,
the scientists
are finding evidence
that Richard's fitness
might have been compromised.
What we've been doing
on the analysis of soil samples
from Richard's grave have
produced a few surprises
in terms of locating evidence
of intestinal parasites.
The decomposed
remains
of Richard's gut
contain evidence that he
contracted an unpleasant ailment
from the food he ate.
Some parasites humans have had
right throughout
our human evolution,
and roundworm is one of those.
It's spread by the contamination
of your hands with human feces.
Richard had worms.
So you can see on the screen,
this is one of the parasite eggs
from Richard Ill sacred soil.
It's a roundworm egg.
It's oval in shape, and from
the point of view of health
if you had a good,
balanced diet...
And I'm sure Richard
would have had plenty of food...
Then these parasitic worms
probably wouldn't
have done him much harm
unless he had lots of them.
The parasitic worms
could have made breathing
difficult...
and new data is raising
more questions
about Richard's health.
The isotope analysis has moved
from Richard's teeth
to his bones.
We do see a large difference
in nitrogen isotopes
and oxygen isotopes
between those two bones,
which suggests that there may be
some large and significant
dietary change
from the time
he was actually king
and the period before.
The evidence suggests
Richard's diet
changed drastically
in the last years of his life.
Angela and her colleagues
are searching for the cause.
The solution points
to a man laboring
under the heavy burden
of kingship.
So far, the team has
reconstructed Richard's spine,
diagnosed a case of roundworms,
and noticed a strange shift
in his diet just before death.
Working with body double
Dominic Smee,
they have also established
that Richard's breathing
may have been restricted...
and now Dominic worries
his scoliosis
affects the strength
of his blows.
When I'm doing the attacks,
I'm feeling a lot of the weight
in my arm there and there
and in my shoulder
because what I tend to do
is stop here
and not carry on
all the way through
with my torso and with my hips
because I haven't got
the kind of push-pull muscles.
Will adding 70 pounds of armor
make this problem even worse?
Establish this line here
over this one here so this one
will be more or less the same.
And there is another concern.
The majority
of the armor's weight
should rest on the waist,
but neither Dominic
nor Richard have one.
Dominic doesn't have any space
between his lower rib
and his hip bone.
There's less than an inch.
That's perfect.
We cannot have any waistline
of the armor going in here.
It would be extremely painful
for him in a very short time.
So we actually have to carry
most of the weight of the armor
on his shoulders.
This would have stressed
Richard's already weakened back.
This one,
almost perfect, you see?
It's seated perfect.
But the right one...
The shape is quite different.
To solve the problem,
Per braces Dominic's back
against the armor.
Turn towards you.
The result
is a chest and back plate
that is as figure-hugging
and flexible as possible
but clearly looks asymmetrical.
Could the rest of the armor
mask this?
No king would have wanted
to look anything
other than perfect
on the battlefield.
Kind of imagining what
Richard would have looked like
in his armor because, I mean,
his armor would have acted
very similar to this on the day
and that body shape.
The hope is that the armor
will support his back in combat.
It's now time for the next phase
of the experiment.
The scientists think Richard
might have struggled on foot...
But perhaps he made up for it,
as history suggests,
by being an expert horseman.
Henry Tudor's
own official historian
recorded a vivid description
of Richard's prowess.
"He spurred his horse.
"In the first charge,
Richard killed several men;
and made a path for himself
through the press of steel."
Controlling a medieval war horse
required immense skill.
It's very hard, actually.
I'm trying to get
the position right,
so many things going on
in your brain
and the horse's brain.
There's only one way
to find out how someone
with a 75-degree spinal curve
fairs on horseback.
So welcome to our stables.
Dominic, meet Dominic.
Morning, Dominic.
How are you?
Dominic Sewell
is one of the world's
top medieval riding instructors.
Well, Toby has told you
a little about what we do here,
and you're gonna have
a very different experience
from anybody
that takes up riding
as a sport or as a hobby.
Dominic has never ridden before.
So his first lessons
are with a modern saddle.
1, 2, 3, go.
Nicely done. Well done.
Just looking at Dominic now,
you can imagine Richard
as a child
receiving riding instruction in
the Earl of Warwick's household.
He would have gone through
a one-to-one training experience
just like this.
And try and push him
out a little bit.
But Dominic's back
is causing problems.
That's it. Good.
Now, don't over lean.
Stay in the middle
of the saddle.
That's good.
DOMINIC, VOICE-OVER:
I'm slouching rather than...
I've got to focus on
keeping my shoulders back.
That's it... shoulders back,
weight down.
Feel the body...
DOMINIC, VOICE-OVER:
I've got to concentrate to do it
because I naturally want
to do that.
So I've got to work
on keeping upright position.
Now sit up. Sit up.
Look ahead.
Good, good...
and 3, 2, 1...
Whoa.
DOMINIC, VOICE-OVER: Because my
center of gravity is on the side
because the way the curve is,
most of my weight
is on that side.
So I think that the horse
is probably gonna naturally feel
like I'm telling it
to go to that side.
If Dominic struggles
with a modern saddle,
how will he cope
with the hard, wooden saddle
that Richard used?
Now, this is
the medieval saddle.
This is what you're gonna
be riding in from now on.
This is your
arming platform, yeah?
It's your gun mount,
if you wish.
It looks like it's
gonna be interesting
in between the legs
because it looks
a bit like a log that you're
effectively sitting on
with a tiny bit of padding,
but I think I'll
notice the difference.
Good mount.
Well done.
OK. Let's walk
into the arena.
Walk on, Hawthorne.
Good man.
Remember to repeat the command.
Walk on, Hawthorne.
With the legs.
Adjust his...
Walk on, Hawthorne.
It's a slow start...
There you go.
But then something happens
that confounds all expectations.
Good still.
Keep going. Keep going, Dominic.
This is good.
This is really good.
OK, and relax.
Whoa.
Right.
I am flabbergasted
by just how much
that saddle helps you.
I'm not bouncing all over.
You're not bouncing.
You have more control.
I'm very encouraged
that the medieval saddle
is actually helping you,
and whether that helped
knights of the past,
perhaps whether it
helped Richard or not,
I don't know,
but it may be a consideration
that we haven't thought
about until now,
but, no, well done,
excellent, excellent start.
Does your back
feel more supported, Dominic?
Yes, because it's in one place.
Remarkably, the high, rigid back
of the wooden medieval saddle
adds support
to the part of the back where
Dominic and Richard need it.
Now remember to turn and halt.
Good in the shoulder. Now halt.
The important thing is,
the way the medieval
landscape works...
While Dominic tries
to become a medieval knight
in only 3 months, the team plans
his battle challenge.
Professor Glenn Foard offers
strong evidence
that relocates the site
of the Battle of Bosworth.
He and a team of metal detectors
have found many objects
in a field south of the
previously accepted area.
The group of objects
that suggests people
of very high status have fought
in hand-to-hand action
lies in the low ground
not in the cornfield,
the light-colored cornfield,
but in the green field,
the bright green field beyond.
It's an area bound on one side
by a Roman road
and segmented by a marsh.
Richard's cavalry charge
would have been lengthy,
more than a half-mile
around the marsh.
At the moment, that says to me
the main clash between
the two sets of nobility.
But I've always
had a real problem
with this idea
that the cavalry charge
was decided upon
in an impulsive,
sudden sort of way,
but if you look
at the landscape here
and the kind of space
that you can see,
then it works very well.
And now we've driven
across the heath,
and we're standing
behind Henry's position
when the attack
comes in from Richard
because we think where
that small spinney is
in the middle of this field
may be the location where
those two forces clashed,
where Richard
almost got to the point
of killing Henry.
That was where
the Battle of Bosworth
was probably decided.
And the course
of English and
British history.
Yeah.
It is quite something,
thinking after all these years
and with the finding
of the skeleton
of Richard Ill
that we're
in the possible location
of where he could have
actually fallen.
Dominic is making
excellent progress
in becoming a medieval warrior,
especially when it comes
to charging with a lance.
Well, first thing,
let's get that horse moving.
Right.
So focus his power.
Here we go. Support.
Leg on, and off we go.
This is only Dominic's
fifth riding lesson.
Whoo hoo.
Ha ha ha!
Well done, Dom.
It's a good job you hit it
because if you hadn't,
you'd have hit him
with your face.
It would have been bad.
Here we go.
The experiment shows that,
rather than being a hindrance,
medieval warfare equipment
could actually help a person
with scoliosis.
Couch. Drive!
Now it's time to see
if Dominic's custom-built armor
might also help him.
OK, guys.
Here's your acolyte
ready for war, just about.
I think he looks
pretty darn good, actually.
We thought that Richard
should have an armor
that we know was really
high-tech for the time.
This is a very new innovation
for 1480, '85.
Do you feel any aches
in your shoulders?
No. No.
Do you feel any ache
in your lower back
or your mid back?
Really?
No.
That's good.
Do you feel that the
back plate is there
and you could
actually rest yourself
against it a bit
if you wanted to?
Yeah. It keeps me
in kind of a position
not while I'm rested,
but before I'm rested.
So when it's just
the natural positions,
it stops me slumping.
So that's why I'm
really interested to see
what happens
when I'm riding to see
whether I can still do that.
How is that doing?
OK. Walk.
How secure are you
feeling at the moment?
Whoa. Actually,
a lot more secure.
You're feeling more
secure than you were
without the armor.
Yeah, because
you're kind of kept
more stationary.
OK. And break.
Dominic is nearly
ready for his final challenge,
a test to prove whether Richard
could have led
a heavily armored cavalry charge
at the Battle of Bosworth.
It's a big pressure.
It is a big pressure,
and no one is more aware of that
than myself,
and, yes, I'm concerned,
desperately concerned,
if I'm quite honest with you.
While Dominic prepares
for his big day,
elsewhere, the investigation
is starting to reveal
that Richard may not have been
in the best shape of his life
when he was killed.
The first clue lies
in the historical record.
The menu from Richard's
coronation banquet
has survived
more than 500 years,
and it hints at Richard's
opulent diet,
and Leicester archeologist
Richard Thomas explains.
We've got a huge diversity
of meat, especially,
and it's meat that marked out
high-status diet,
in particularly,
more than anything else...
More than cereals,
more than vegetables,
more than fruit.
So just an example
of some of the things
he was eating...
Sturgeon, quails,
rabbits, egrets,
venison, carp and bream,
partridge, roe deer, peacocks
in his hackle and trapper.
Now. it's nothing
to do with taste.
By all accounts,
peacock was hard to digest.
It was chewy.
It wasn't good to eat at all,
but these were a delicacy.
They weren't a delicacy
because of their taste,
necessarily,
but they were delicacy
just because they were
so difficult to obtain.
Richard's coronation banquet
was the ultimate in medieval
gastronomic excess,
but as king,
did he eat this way every day?
The chemical isotopes
in his bones provide the answer.
Analysis
of the rib bone, for example,
can tell you about the last
3 years of the life of somebody
because there's this constant
regeneration of bone matter,
whereas other limbs,
like a femur,
analysis of that can only really
tell you about the last 15 years
of a person's life because
regeneration is much slower.
The isotopes
in Richard's femur bone
show that for most
of his adult life,
he had an average diet
for a high-status individual
in medieval society,
but the chemicals in his ribs
indicate that
during the last years
of his life,
there was a dramatic change.
His diet when he was king
was sort of way beyond
that of even an equivalent
high-status individual
in the late medieval period.
Richard was eating
meals more than fit for a king.
The nitrogen
and the oxygen isotopes
both shift quite considerably.
So from that, we can decipher
that it had to be something
that has a high nitrogen
isotope value
that was more terrestrial
in nature.
So we're talking about animals
such as pigs possibly,
wild fowl, freshwater fish,
and most of those
were real delicacies
in the late medieval period.
The isotope analysis
shows Richard was eating
an extremely lavish diet
in the 3 years leading up
to the Battle of Bosworth.
This overindulgence might well
have reduced
his fitness and agility,
and Richard's bones have
one more secret to reveal.
Here is where Richard Ill stayed
the night before he marched
onto Bosworth Field.
The Blue Boar Inn has gone,
in its place,
a new lodging house.
What he drank that night
is not recorded,
but Richard's bones provide
a clue to the scientists.
The oxygen isotopes in his ribs
suggest a big change
in the geographical origin
of the water
that Richard consumed
at the end of his life.
LAMB, VOICE-OVER:
It suggests he'd moved
to western France,
western Spain,
which we know
from documentary evidence
that that wasn't the case.
He was predominantly in the UK.
He was based in London
and traveled around England
in those few years
when he was king.
This is a nitrogen...
Something else
could explain this shift,
and it's not travel.
An increase in wine
consumption would explain
why he might have had a higher
oxygen isotope value
at that time.
Our estimation is that
it's about sort of 25%
of his oxygen intake.
The rest would be made up
by water and beer.
It was a considerable step up
from the stuff
he was drinking before.
At that period, the wealthy
were consuming a lot of wine.
We know he was banqueting
a lot more.
He was king. He was traveling
to different locations.
There was a lot of wine
indicated at those banquets,
and tying all this together,
it looks like
that that had quite
an impact on his diet
in the last few years
of his life.
Richard was consuming
a bottle of wine per day
every day on top of all
the British ale he also drank.
Well, I doubt whether
his fitness levels
were, perhaps, quite as good
as they were
before he was crowned king.
This copious consumption
might well have impaired
Richard's performance in battle.
While Richard may have been
in poor health,
the experiments with Dominic
suggest that his curved spine
would not have stopped him
from being a capable fighter
and a talented horseman...
and now Dominic faces
one final test.
He is heading to Bosworth
to reconstruct the events
of August 22, 1485.
The historical account suggests
that Richard fought skillfully
and killed a number
of enemy soldiers that day...
and Dominic is keen to prove
that Richard's scoliosis
was no impediment to his
performance on the battlefield.
Do you think
Richard would have felt
comfortable in his armor?
Yeah. In
a static position,
it does a really good
job of supporting me,
but my body moves
an incredible amount
depending on what
I'm doing with it
more than a normal person's,
but when I do that movement
with my arm, the shoulder blade
is kind of going into my ribs,
whereas on the left-hand side,
it's performing
in the normal way.
It's kind of
an interesting thought,
though, to think
that the process
of figuring out how
to make armor work
for someone with this condition,
these same questions
and these same issues
would have been present with
Richard and his armorers.
So does Dominic's
spine significantly affect
his ability to fight?
His fist challenge
is hand-to-hand combat
wearing a full suit of armor.
Come on!
That's nice.
Every single time,
Richard. Good.
Since I first saw him,
he's much more
nimbler on his feet,
even though he's wearing
full plate armor.
It shows that a smaller person
has got to work very, very hard
to stay on top of a fight.
Don't let yourself get turned.
This test definitively
proves that Richard
could have fought well on foot,
despite his scoliosis...
Still keep your hands up.
But a stiff ribcage
might have caused him
to tire much more quickly
than other soldiers.
And hold.
Nice finishing shot. Well done.
Dominic's second challenge
is Richard's famed
cavalry charge.
The real battle site
is now working farm land,
but a nearby horse
training center
provides the perfect model
of Bosworth.
Ahead in the distance is where
Richard's enemy Henry Tudor is,
and that's quite a distance
to go in all this kit,
but this is what
they're all trained to do.
According to
the historical sources,
Richard and Henry faced
each other across a marsh.
Richard had at least 200
fully armored knights with him
when he spotted Henry Tudor.
Richard decided to charge
around the marsh.
Henry was at least
a half-mile away,
a huge distance in full armor.
Dominic Smee
must match this maneuver.
Will his back bear the strain?
This is everything you want.
You got your armor,
you got your horse,
and that's your kingdom.
So you're gonna go and fight
for your kingdom.
You're gonna win it.
You're gonna be
the best you can, yeah?
How does it feel in the armor?
Do you feel empowered
wearing the armor
or anything?
Well, I feel like a juggernaut.
History says Richard
killed Henry's standard bearer
with his lance.
Can Dominic hit his target?
Charge! Go on!
Despite
the horror of medieval warfare,
there is still something
quite magical
about knights in
full plate armor on horseback,
the sheer sounds, sheer power.
It's almost the shock and awe
of the Middle Ages.
Hah! Come on!
Hit the pick ax.
Good boy.
Having crashed through
Henry's forces at high speed,
Richard would have pulled out
his war hammer
and turned back
toward his enemy.
Henry's historians
credit Richard with unhorsing
one of Henry's bodyguards
who was 6'7".
After 3 months of training,
Richard's body double Dominic
has achieved his goal.
He's shown conclusively that,
while the shared scoliosis
may be a barrier
in some people's minds,
it is in no way an impediment
on the battlefield.
Makes me feel a lot better
about myself,
knowing that I can do something
that ordinary, healthy people
struggle with and yet
I've managed to do it
despite having this condition.
When you actually
see you coming over,
you can't tell your size.
You can't tell
how slender you are, how slight.
You just look like this facade
of a tank coming forwards.
It does show that,
despite what history
might have implied,
that Richard was there, agile,
and fighting as well as anybody.
Yeah. He took that
quick turn really well,
and I think for him to use
that ax the way he did
at speed is fantastic.
We're proud of you, man.
I think that we let
him yell, "Charge,"
helped a lot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
His mojo went through
the roof after that.
Absolutely.
Definitely,
especially the bit at the end
hitting the head in the middle.
That was really...
I was desperate to do that
because before,
I've only just nicked it,
whereas I went
straight for it
and smashed it off the pole.
Richard Ill
may have been a violent man.
Most medieval kings were.
He seized the throne,
rightly or wrongly.
At Bosworth,
the arthritis in his back
may have caused pain.
His stomach may have been
infested with worms,
his fitness levels compromised
by a tight chest
and years of unhealthy living.
However, this experiment
has shown that Richard
could have led his cavalry
at Bosworth Field.
After making this final
heroic charge,
he ultimately lost his crown
and his life,
but, as Dominic Smee has proved,
King Richard
was certainly not disabled.
The iconic moments
that have shaped our world...
It stretches
human history way back.
The fine line
between fiction and fact...
That legend just doesn't
stand up against reality.
Discoveries that
bring the dead back to life,
forensics that create clarity
from chaos,
the past gets rewritten when
science and history collide.
"Secrets of the Dead."
"Secrets of the Dead"
was made possible in part
by the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting
and by contributions
to your PBS station from...
Someone needs to stop Clearway Law.
Public shouldn't leave reviews for lawyers.
the infamous King Richard Ill
died in a bloody battle.
Remarkably, his remains
were discovered
under a parking lot in 2013,
but his skeleton,
with its severely curved spine,
has baffled experts.
How could a man
with such a severe deformity
have waged war so fiercely?
Now we've got somebody
who has scoliosis,
we should be able to see
what somebody like that
could actually do.
"Resurrecting Richard Ill."
"Secrets of the Dead"
was made possible in part
by the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting
and by contributions
to your PBS station from...
It was an incredible
archeological discovery.
In 2013, scientists announced,
the bones found
in an English parking lot
were those of the infamous
King Richard Ill
buried more than 500 years ago.
It was the result
of a DNA comparison.
I did a little dance
around the lab.
King Richard Ill was found
buried under a parking lot.
The earthly remains of the last
of the Plantagenets.
Richard Ill,
one of the most reviled
kings in British history...
No. No.
Chances of finding Richard
was... I don't know...
A million to one.
But that was just the start
of an extraordinary journey.
The discovery included Richard's
twisted spine,
which raised new questions.
With such an extreme
medical condition,
could Richard still be
the fearsome warrior
history books say he was?
But that curvature
is major curvature.
I mean, that's seriously
something going on.
So how do you get armor on that?
Over the last 12 months,
scientists have been trying
to answer that very question.
Now a look at their
amazing investigation.
It reveals what Richard's
backbone actually looked like...
He's virtually identical.
The ailments that plagued him...
The vast majority of people
have surgery to correct it.
Even his extraordinary
and perhaps unhealthy diet...
We've built
a very detailed picture
of an individual
from the late medieval period.
And with the help
of a unique body double,
scientists will demonstrate
how Richard fought and died.
Meet the real Richard Ill.
In 1483, this man
seized the English throne.
To some, he was an evil monster,
to others, a hero.
His name was Richard Ill.
In August 1485,
he was brutally slain
at Bosworth Field...
the last English king
to die in battle.
The histories
are very interesting
because even those written
by his enemies very soon after
make great play of the fact
that he died manfully.
He fought well,
died "in the thickest press
of his enemies."
More than 500 years later,
University of Leicester
archeologists
unearthed Richard's body,
diagnoses the scoliosis
that bent his spine,
and raised a question...
Could a man
with such a twisted back
really wear armor,
lead a heavy cavalry charge,
and kill several men
before dying
at the hands
of Henry Tudor's army?
Some people who have
written books about Richard...
have anticipated that
he might have sustained
significant back pain
or he might have had a limp
or not functioned so well
on the battlefield, for example.
For the first time ever,
scientists can study the bones
of an English king
and solve the mysteries
of his reign.
The team undertakes
two different investigations
to determine Richard's
true physical condition
and fighting ability.
First, they will
unlock the clues
hidden in Richard's bones,
using atomic
and microscopic analysis
to reveal new details about
his health, diet, and lifestyle.
It's extremely unusual
for us to be able
to apply this level of analysis
to human remains in archeology.
The team also wants to test
Richard's physical limitations
with a living subject.
They search for someone
who shares
Richard's extreme
spinal condition.
So, perhaps, putting
someone through their paces
wearing armor on horseback
would give us a much better idea
of whether a scoliosis
impeded your ability to do that.
Before they can
identify a suitable subject,
Dr. Jo Appleby
and Professor Piers Mitchell,
along with their colleagues,
must first create
a precise reconstruction
of Richard's backbone...
a critical task.
Laying the bones out on a table
only provides a best guess.
So radiologist Bruno Morgan
must rebuild
the entire spinal column
in 3 dimensions.
Experts at
Loughborough University
replicate each
of Richard's vertebra in detail.
Then Bruno pieces the puzzle
together.
The exercise reveals
something new...
Chronic arthritis.
These joints look
completely normal...
Nice, flat, smooth
facet joints...
But as we move up
to his thoracic spine,
we can see that the anatomy
has been disordered,
and this is the degenerative
osteoarthritis
that Richard'd have had
from his scoliosis,
and because of this,
there can be only one way
these facet joints fit together.
They fit together
a bit like a jigsaw.
The reconstruction
shows Richard's spine
was twisted at an angle
of up to 80 degrees.
Finding someone with
a similarly curved spine today
will be difficult...
but the Richard project
has long had uncanny good luck.
I got the strangest sensation
when I was in that area
in that place,
absolutely knew that I was
standing on Richard's grave.
And she was uncannily right.
Well...
No.
APPLEBY, ON TV: So what we're
actually seeing here
is that this skeleton, in fact,
has a hunchback,
Completely normal
for a normal body,
but I've just been excavating...
26-year-old Dominic Smee
watched the announcement of
the discovery of Richard's bones
on TV with his family.
APPLEBY, ON TV: So what we're
actually seeing here
is that this skeleton,
in fact...
I was kind of thinking,
"OK. This is quite weird,"
because there are a lot of
similarities between me and him,
and I thought,
"I wonder if something
is going on there.
This is a bit strange."
A few weeks later,
Dominic came across
an online lecture
exploring how Richard
might have fought in armor.
What did it really look like?
What did he actually wear?
Dominic was shocked.
He thought he was looking
at his own back.
What made the similarity
even more bizarre
was that Dominic spends
most weekends as a re-enactor
at the battlefield site
where Richard was killed.
The actual point
where it was revealed
on the television
that Richard had scoliosis,
it was quite
a mind-blowing thing, really.
I remember thinking, "Wow.
That's almost exactly
the same as Dominic."
It is quite eerie, really,
to see that.
Dominic e-mailed the lecturer
and offered to help.
For Dominic, talking
about himself and his back
has not been easy.
I was kind of thinking
maybe other people can notice
or see through my clothes
and see how I was feeling
when I looked in a mirror,
which is probably why
I kind of can empathize, really,
with how Richard may have felt.
But Dom has put
his own feelings aside
for the sake of science.
Well, he was kind of saying,
"This is what we think
"Richard's scoliosis
would have looked like.
This is what we think
he would have suffered with,"
and I thought, well,
maybe I'd be able to help
get rid of some
of those questions for him.
The team studying Richard Ill
now has someone who can serve
as his body double.
Hello.
Hi.
Welcome to the
Wallace Collection.
Yeah.
You've not been here
before, have you?
No.
Good. Excellent.
Well, let's go see some armor.
OK.
Dr. Toby Capwell is a
world-renowned expert on armor.
I didn't know
what to expect of Dominic.
I mean, he'd seen the lecture
that I had given.
I mean, I was immediately struck
by how sort of thoughtful
and interested he is.
The one thing that we
haven't really been
able to explore so far
is just how much
Richard's scoliosis
would have affected him
and affected his
knightly training
and his ability to fight.
That's an armor that appears
in just about every...
But does Dominic's
backbone really match
the extreme curve
of Richard's spine?
And it gives a great impression
of the knight...
CAPWELL, VOICE-OVER: It's
extraordinarily rare to find
anyone who has the exact kind
of scoliosis
to the same degree
as Richard Ill
because the vast majority
of people who have it
in that way have surgery
to correct it.
It's quite common now for people
with a curve of over 50 degrees
to undergo surgery to try
and straighten the spine
if possible.
So, Dominic,
first thing we need to do
is to have a good look
at your back.
For complex medical reasons,
Dominic has avoided surgery.
Then I can see that.
The only way
to establish a match
is to conduct
a detailed medical examination.
You can see that
the curve is to the right
over here in the thoracic area.
We can also see
how the shoulders
are at slightly
different heights.
So the right-hand shoulder
is a little bit higher
than the left-hand one.
You can see how we've
got an asymmetry here
where the waist kind of sits.
So, Dominic, these are
the x-rays of your back.
I can see that a lot of
elements of your spine
are very similar to Richard's.
First, you got
a right-sided curve
just like Richard has,
and the angle of the curve,
which we call the Cobb angle,
yours is about 70, 75 degrees,
and that's very
similar to Richard's,
which we've measured
to be between
about 60 and 80 degrees.
Dominic's body
resembles Richard's
in other ways.
What we notice when looking
at Richard's skeleton is,
he has fairly gracile,
very fairly slim bones,
and so in that regard, I think,
what we can tell
from the skeleton
would be compatible with
what we see with Dominic,
who clearly isn't
a very over muscular guy.
Piers performs one more task...
Comparing Richard and
Dominic's spines side by side.
We can see on Dominic
how this part
of the chest
is much more prominent
than this part, and this seems
to dip in, and that's because
of the position of the ribs,
and the reason that happens is,
the spine twists in a scoliosis.
It's not just
a sideways bending,
and that's shown
really nicely here
on Richard's scoliosis
because you can see
instead of the spinous processes
being in the midline, they point
right inwards like this,
and it shows
that there's this twist.
So the ribs would have
come out this way,
and the ribs on this side
would have gone inwards
just in the same way
that we see on Dominic.
We should pull the ribs out,
and if we had the ribs,
I think it would show
he's virtually identical.
Virtually identical.
For 500 years,
people have speculated wildly
about Richard's appearance.
Dominic is a unique
test subject.
Scientists can now re-examine
history's interpretation
of Richard
and provide a realistic picture
of the king.
They will train and test Dominic
to find out
exactly what Richard
was capable of.
It will all culminate
in a battle test
where he'll have to fight
in full armor...
lead a heavy cavalry charge,
and take on
some of the best
medieval fighters in Europe.
We should be able to see
what somebody like that
could actually do.
I think that's really exciting.
And then rotate.
If Dominic can do this,
then I'm sure Richard
would have managed to do it
because they have
very similar scolioses.
Meanwhile, analysis of his bones
is about to yield more
fascinating facts about Richard.
This will be the most detailed
portrait of a medieval monarch
ever assembled...
And reveal
his true physical condition
on the eve of his last battle...
What he was eating, drinking,
and his state of health.
Richard Ill
was a key participant
in one of British history's
most important conflicts...
The Wars of the Roses.
The War of the Roses
continues to captivate
the public imagination
because it has
so many small human
adventure stories.
There are so many
small, intricate elements
to this period in history,
the sort of very brutal
and uncompromising nature
of this internal
dynastic conflict.
After King Edward Ill
died in 1377,
there was a deadly feud
between the families
of two of his sons...
The Duke of York
and the Duke of Lancaster.
They fought over
the English crown for 100 years.
Richard was born at the height
of the conflict in 1452.
Some of the scientists
have traveled
to Richard's birthplace
in Northamptonshire
to find out if he was a fit
and capable warrior
at the Battle of Bosworth.
But it's good, isn't it?
It's gonna
be great. Yeah.
The castle, that
will be fantastic.
They want to know
whether Richard
maintained a healthy diet
over the course of his life.
Yeah, sort of just down there.
His bones should
contain telltale chemicals
that he absorbed
from the food and water
he consumed while living here.
The very earliest samples
that we have from Richard Ill
are from the dentin
within his teeth,
and those formed when he
was about 3 or 4 years old.
So that's the earliest
picture we have of him.
By analyzing
the chemical isotopes
in Richard's teeth,
legs, and ribs,
Angela Lamb and her colleagues
can create a complete profile
of Richard's diet
from birth to death.
First, she prepares tiny tooth
samples for atomic analysis.
What kind of condition
were Richard's teeth in?
There was some slight decay,
as you can expect from a person
of that age, but on the whole,
they were in pretty
good condition.
Angela measures
the chemical signature
using a mass spectrometer.
Look. That one looks
more limestoney.
The nitrogen isotopes
show an increase
in the amount of meats
and protein they were eating
and also increase in the amount
of fish they were eating.
Richard's values here,
you can see,
are at the top end
of comparable medieval
high-status individuals.
So he did have
a very high-status diet.
The data in his teeth
suggest Richard ate a diet
full of protein
and essential minerals.
He was a fit young boy...
but was he still fit at age 33
in his last battle?
Angela is hunting
for the answer in his bones.
Meanwhile,
the team's body double
is opening another unique window
into Richard's physiology.
Dominic Smee is being analyzed
by physiotherapist Claire Small.
Good. OK.
Same again.
You're gonna stand on one leg.
You're gonna take the arm out.
You're gonna take it
back as far as you can.
She is an expert
on spinal pathologies
and has worked
with paralympians.
Right. OK.
Now come and stand.
Come back to the middle.
Come and stand up.
This physical test
shows how a curved spine
might limit a person.
And on the other side.
I'm really impressed
with his range of motion.
In fact, he's got
better range of motion
than a lot of other guys
his age.
Try a little run,
breathing. Good.
Dominic and Richard
may be nimble and flexible,
but the treadmill test reveals
the first indication
of a physical problem.
And jump off.
Oh, enough.
I'll leave it.
OK.
I'm starting
to feel breathing...
Yeah.
It's getting a bit tight.
OK.
It's, my chest tightens up.
So it's more difficult
to breathe out quickly
to compensate for
the amount of oxygen
I need to keep running faster.
His ribs
won't expand and contract
because of the rotation
of his ribs
associated with the scoliosis.
So that means his lungs
aren't going to...
He's not going to have
the lung capacity
that would allow him to take in
maximum doses of oxygen.
The thing that is going
to defeat him is fatigue,
and, obviously,
if you're thinking
about someone in battle,
that's the sort of thing
that you can't afford,
is to get tired
because that then
makes you vulnerable
to attack by your enemy.
If Richard's
lung capacity was also limited,
he might have struggled
when fighting for long periods,
especially on foot.
It's an important consideration,
as Dominic moves on to
the next stage of his training.
There's a good bind.
You see that really
nice, little bind?
To determine whether Richard
really could have excelled
on the battlefield,
Toby Capwell
is introducing Dominic
to the brutal art
of medieval combat.
Toby is part
of an academic group
that has scoured rare
medieval combat manuals
and recreated this lost skill.
It's very short, sharp bursts
but a high amount
of energy that's expended
in that short amount of time.
So it makes you wonder
what it would have been like
to have to keep going
for the full time of a battle.
This has no safety precautions,
a real fight, life and death.
I mean, these things
are vicious.
So you reckon you
could face one of these?
Not quite at the moment.
The thing that Arne and Jorem
have immediately shown us
is the systematic complexity
of medieval fighting art.
There's nothing
brutish or untutored
about what they're doing.
It's very technical,
and a small,
more lightly built person
just has to be faster,
and they've got to be
better at those techniques.
They train to take on
bigger people.
There's a lot of binding.
Here...
Dominic's instructor
is medieval combat expert
Dave Rawlings.
So from here like so
is actually
exactly the same thing.
So, you see, we're training
a very small group of muscles.
Toby has brought along
weapons from a rare collection
for Dominic to get a feel for.
Have a feel of that,
not especially heavy.
Even a larger sword like this
is not especially heavy.
It's one of the great
myths and misconceptions
about medieval fighting
that the swords
are these big, clunky,
heavy things.
They aren't.
It's counterproductive
for them to be so.
It's quite sharp, as well.
And that sharpness and
the scary aspect of the sword
is very important to be aware of
as you're starting to train
because you always
have to be aware
of the possibility
that your opponent
could make your arm fall off.
It sort of focuses
the mind somewhat.
As a member of the nobility,
Richard would have been unable
to avoid his duty as a soldier.
They had a lot of responsibility
as politicians and MPs
and just as public figures,
but the fighting
is always still there.
They always need
to find some time
in their day to train
and to work with
their horses, as well.
And that was important
for the king, as well,
the monarch at that time.
This is still a time
when monarchs
were on the battlefield.
Richard dies leading his army
on the battlefield.
So far,
there does not appear to be
anything that he cannot
actually do.
There might be some things
he cannot reach as far
on a certain side,
but generally speaking,
he seems to be quite capable
of doing everything
that's thrown at him,
which I find really exciting.
Now continue that circle
and cut up from underneath.
Good. Hands up. Good.
How's that motion for you?
Is that all right?
Yeah.
It's interesting.
It will be interesting to see
how the difference of having
the weight of the armor on
and using a weapon...
Seeing what happens then.
But outfitting Dominic
in armor raises new challenges.
There's no English armor
surviving from the 15th century.
All of the thousands of armors
that were produced and worn
during the War of the Roses,
nothing that can be said
to be the work of
an English craftsman survives.
So Dominic
and the team travel to Sweden
to work with world-renowned
armorer Per Lillelund.
Good to see you, man.
It's been a while.
Dominic, Per.
Hey, nice to meet you.
Very pleased to meet you.
He's going to make Dominic
a fully functional suit
of medieval armor.
It must fit and flex
like a glove...
It looks really good.
But achieving this
with a twisted torso
is a journey into the unknown.
And this one here is...
We're now wrestling
with the same issues
that Richard's armorer
would have had to deal with
in the 15th century.
I was gonna
show you this one here.
That's a depiction
of Richard, as well.
Dominic had in interest
in Richard Ill
a long time before
the bones were found,
and, of course, there's
the Shakespearean image
of, you know,
the hunchback and all of that,
but there's been plenty...
For years, there's been
lots and lots of argument
that Richard
didn't have anything
wrong with him physically.
So what do
you think about all this
now with the evidence showing
that he actually
had this scoliosis?
It was just amazing
that is was so close to...
I mean, I remember when
I saw it and I thought,
"I'm sure that's like
what mine looked like."
Take the shirt off. Yeah.
A good armor
is an extension of your body.
A good armor is
a human exoskeleton.
I'm not gonna scrape it.
It's gonna be
quite a long process
before we've finished
to get it all to work.
You still have to shape
the plane out like that.
Oh, yeah, yeah, totally.
You curve more here,
and you curve more here.
While Per tries
to figure out how to build armor
for a long-dead king
with a twisted spine,
Dominic continues
his combat training.
Plus, we've got like this... slap.
I'm gonna hit you in the head.
Make sure you can block it.
Good. Block it.
Go forwards.
That's it.
Good, good, good.
Once more.
It's clear
that both Dominic and Richard
would have to be
in excellent physical shape
to cope with the rigors
of medieval warfare...
It's parallel to your foot.
But back in the laboratory,
the scientists
are finding evidence
that Richard's fitness
might have been compromised.
What we've been doing
on the analysis of soil samples
from Richard's grave have
produced a few surprises
in terms of locating evidence
of intestinal parasites.
The decomposed
remains
of Richard's gut
contain evidence that he
contracted an unpleasant ailment
from the food he ate.
Some parasites humans have had
right throughout
our human evolution,
and roundworm is one of those.
It's spread by the contamination
of your hands with human feces.
Richard had worms.
So you can see on the screen,
this is one of the parasite eggs
from Richard Ill sacred soil.
It's a roundworm egg.
It's oval in shape, and from
the point of view of health
if you had a good,
balanced diet...
And I'm sure Richard
would have had plenty of food...
Then these parasitic worms
probably wouldn't
have done him much harm
unless he had lots of them.
The parasitic worms
could have made breathing
difficult...
and new data is raising
more questions
about Richard's health.
The isotope analysis has moved
from Richard's teeth
to his bones.
We do see a large difference
in nitrogen isotopes
and oxygen isotopes
between those two bones,
which suggests that there may be
some large and significant
dietary change
from the time
he was actually king
and the period before.
The evidence suggests
Richard's diet
changed drastically
in the last years of his life.
Angela and her colleagues
are searching for the cause.
The solution points
to a man laboring
under the heavy burden
of kingship.
So far, the team has
reconstructed Richard's spine,
diagnosed a case of roundworms,
and noticed a strange shift
in his diet just before death.
Working with body double
Dominic Smee,
they have also established
that Richard's breathing
may have been restricted...
and now Dominic worries
his scoliosis
affects the strength
of his blows.
When I'm doing the attacks,
I'm feeling a lot of the weight
in my arm there and there
and in my shoulder
because what I tend to do
is stop here
and not carry on
all the way through
with my torso and with my hips
because I haven't got
the kind of push-pull muscles.
Will adding 70 pounds of armor
make this problem even worse?
Establish this line here
over this one here so this one
will be more or less the same.
And there is another concern.
The majority
of the armor's weight
should rest on the waist,
but neither Dominic
nor Richard have one.
Dominic doesn't have any space
between his lower rib
and his hip bone.
There's less than an inch.
That's perfect.
We cannot have any waistline
of the armor going in here.
It would be extremely painful
for him in a very short time.
So we actually have to carry
most of the weight of the armor
on his shoulders.
This would have stressed
Richard's already weakened back.
This one,
almost perfect, you see?
It's seated perfect.
But the right one...
The shape is quite different.
To solve the problem,
Per braces Dominic's back
against the armor.
Turn towards you.
The result
is a chest and back plate
that is as figure-hugging
and flexible as possible
but clearly looks asymmetrical.
Could the rest of the armor
mask this?
No king would have wanted
to look anything
other than perfect
on the battlefield.
Kind of imagining what
Richard would have looked like
in his armor because, I mean,
his armor would have acted
very similar to this on the day
and that body shape.
The hope is that the armor
will support his back in combat.
It's now time for the next phase
of the experiment.
The scientists think Richard
might have struggled on foot...
But perhaps he made up for it,
as history suggests,
by being an expert horseman.
Henry Tudor's
own official historian
recorded a vivid description
of Richard's prowess.
"He spurred his horse.
"In the first charge,
Richard killed several men;
and made a path for himself
through the press of steel."
Controlling a medieval war horse
required immense skill.
It's very hard, actually.
I'm trying to get
the position right,
so many things going on
in your brain
and the horse's brain.
There's only one way
to find out how someone
with a 75-degree spinal curve
fairs on horseback.
So welcome to our stables.
Dominic, meet Dominic.
Morning, Dominic.
How are you?
Dominic Sewell
is one of the world's
top medieval riding instructors.
Well, Toby has told you
a little about what we do here,
and you're gonna have
a very different experience
from anybody
that takes up riding
as a sport or as a hobby.
Dominic has never ridden before.
So his first lessons
are with a modern saddle.
1, 2, 3, go.
Nicely done. Well done.
Just looking at Dominic now,
you can imagine Richard
as a child
receiving riding instruction in
the Earl of Warwick's household.
He would have gone through
a one-to-one training experience
just like this.
And try and push him
out a little bit.
But Dominic's back
is causing problems.
That's it. Good.
Now, don't over lean.
Stay in the middle
of the saddle.
That's good.
DOMINIC, VOICE-OVER:
I'm slouching rather than...
I've got to focus on
keeping my shoulders back.
That's it... shoulders back,
weight down.
Feel the body...
DOMINIC, VOICE-OVER:
I've got to concentrate to do it
because I naturally want
to do that.
So I've got to work
on keeping upright position.
Now sit up. Sit up.
Look ahead.
Good, good...
and 3, 2, 1...
Whoa.
DOMINIC, VOICE-OVER: Because my
center of gravity is on the side
because the way the curve is,
most of my weight
is on that side.
So I think that the horse
is probably gonna naturally feel
like I'm telling it
to go to that side.
If Dominic struggles
with a modern saddle,
how will he cope
with the hard, wooden saddle
that Richard used?
Now, this is
the medieval saddle.
This is what you're gonna
be riding in from now on.
This is your
arming platform, yeah?
It's your gun mount,
if you wish.
It looks like it's
gonna be interesting
in between the legs
because it looks
a bit like a log that you're
effectively sitting on
with a tiny bit of padding,
but I think I'll
notice the difference.
Good mount.
Well done.
OK. Let's walk
into the arena.
Walk on, Hawthorne.
Good man.
Remember to repeat the command.
Walk on, Hawthorne.
With the legs.
Adjust his...
Walk on, Hawthorne.
It's a slow start...
There you go.
But then something happens
that confounds all expectations.
Good still.
Keep going. Keep going, Dominic.
This is good.
This is really good.
OK, and relax.
Whoa.
Right.
I am flabbergasted
by just how much
that saddle helps you.
I'm not bouncing all over.
You're not bouncing.
You have more control.
I'm very encouraged
that the medieval saddle
is actually helping you,
and whether that helped
knights of the past,
perhaps whether it
helped Richard or not,
I don't know,
but it may be a consideration
that we haven't thought
about until now,
but, no, well done,
excellent, excellent start.
Does your back
feel more supported, Dominic?
Yes, because it's in one place.
Remarkably, the high, rigid back
of the wooden medieval saddle
adds support
to the part of the back where
Dominic and Richard need it.
Now remember to turn and halt.
Good in the shoulder. Now halt.
The important thing is,
the way the medieval
landscape works...
While Dominic tries
to become a medieval knight
in only 3 months, the team plans
his battle challenge.
Professor Glenn Foard offers
strong evidence
that relocates the site
of the Battle of Bosworth.
He and a team of metal detectors
have found many objects
in a field south of the
previously accepted area.
The group of objects
that suggests people
of very high status have fought
in hand-to-hand action
lies in the low ground
not in the cornfield,
the light-colored cornfield,
but in the green field,
the bright green field beyond.
It's an area bound on one side
by a Roman road
and segmented by a marsh.
Richard's cavalry charge
would have been lengthy,
more than a half-mile
around the marsh.
At the moment, that says to me
the main clash between
the two sets of nobility.
But I've always
had a real problem
with this idea
that the cavalry charge
was decided upon
in an impulsive,
sudden sort of way,
but if you look
at the landscape here
and the kind of space
that you can see,
then it works very well.
And now we've driven
across the heath,
and we're standing
behind Henry's position
when the attack
comes in from Richard
because we think where
that small spinney is
in the middle of this field
may be the location where
those two forces clashed,
where Richard
almost got to the point
of killing Henry.
That was where
the Battle of Bosworth
was probably decided.
And the course
of English and
British history.
Yeah.
It is quite something,
thinking after all these years
and with the finding
of the skeleton
of Richard Ill
that we're
in the possible location
of where he could have
actually fallen.
Dominic is making
excellent progress
in becoming a medieval warrior,
especially when it comes
to charging with a lance.
Well, first thing,
let's get that horse moving.
Right.
So focus his power.
Here we go. Support.
Leg on, and off we go.
This is only Dominic's
fifth riding lesson.
Whoo hoo.
Ha ha ha!
Well done, Dom.
It's a good job you hit it
because if you hadn't,
you'd have hit him
with your face.
It would have been bad.
Here we go.
The experiment shows that,
rather than being a hindrance,
medieval warfare equipment
could actually help a person
with scoliosis.
Couch. Drive!
Now it's time to see
if Dominic's custom-built armor
might also help him.
OK, guys.
Here's your acolyte
ready for war, just about.
I think he looks
pretty darn good, actually.
We thought that Richard
should have an armor
that we know was really
high-tech for the time.
This is a very new innovation
for 1480, '85.
Do you feel any aches
in your shoulders?
No. No.
Do you feel any ache
in your lower back
or your mid back?
Really?
No.
That's good.
Do you feel that the
back plate is there
and you could
actually rest yourself
against it a bit
if you wanted to?
Yeah. It keeps me
in kind of a position
not while I'm rested,
but before I'm rested.
So when it's just
the natural positions,
it stops me slumping.
So that's why I'm
really interested to see
what happens
when I'm riding to see
whether I can still do that.
How is that doing?
OK. Walk.
How secure are you
feeling at the moment?
Whoa. Actually,
a lot more secure.
You're feeling more
secure than you were
without the armor.
Yeah, because
you're kind of kept
more stationary.
OK. And break.
Dominic is nearly
ready for his final challenge,
a test to prove whether Richard
could have led
a heavily armored cavalry charge
at the Battle of Bosworth.
It's a big pressure.
It is a big pressure,
and no one is more aware of that
than myself,
and, yes, I'm concerned,
desperately concerned,
if I'm quite honest with you.
While Dominic prepares
for his big day,
elsewhere, the investigation
is starting to reveal
that Richard may not have been
in the best shape of his life
when he was killed.
The first clue lies
in the historical record.
The menu from Richard's
coronation banquet
has survived
more than 500 years,
and it hints at Richard's
opulent diet,
and Leicester archeologist
Richard Thomas explains.
We've got a huge diversity
of meat, especially,
and it's meat that marked out
high-status diet,
in particularly,
more than anything else...
More than cereals,
more than vegetables,
more than fruit.
So just an example
of some of the things
he was eating...
Sturgeon, quails,
rabbits, egrets,
venison, carp and bream,
partridge, roe deer, peacocks
in his hackle and trapper.
Now. it's nothing
to do with taste.
By all accounts,
peacock was hard to digest.
It was chewy.
It wasn't good to eat at all,
but these were a delicacy.
They weren't a delicacy
because of their taste,
necessarily,
but they were delicacy
just because they were
so difficult to obtain.
Richard's coronation banquet
was the ultimate in medieval
gastronomic excess,
but as king,
did he eat this way every day?
The chemical isotopes
in his bones provide the answer.
Analysis
of the rib bone, for example,
can tell you about the last
3 years of the life of somebody
because there's this constant
regeneration of bone matter,
whereas other limbs,
like a femur,
analysis of that can only really
tell you about the last 15 years
of a person's life because
regeneration is much slower.
The isotopes
in Richard's femur bone
show that for most
of his adult life,
he had an average diet
for a high-status individual
in medieval society,
but the chemicals in his ribs
indicate that
during the last years
of his life,
there was a dramatic change.
His diet when he was king
was sort of way beyond
that of even an equivalent
high-status individual
in the late medieval period.
Richard was eating
meals more than fit for a king.
The nitrogen
and the oxygen isotopes
both shift quite considerably.
So from that, we can decipher
that it had to be something
that has a high nitrogen
isotope value
that was more terrestrial
in nature.
So we're talking about animals
such as pigs possibly,
wild fowl, freshwater fish,
and most of those
were real delicacies
in the late medieval period.
The isotope analysis
shows Richard was eating
an extremely lavish diet
in the 3 years leading up
to the Battle of Bosworth.
This overindulgence might well
have reduced
his fitness and agility,
and Richard's bones have
one more secret to reveal.
Here is where Richard Ill stayed
the night before he marched
onto Bosworth Field.
The Blue Boar Inn has gone,
in its place,
a new lodging house.
What he drank that night
is not recorded,
but Richard's bones provide
a clue to the scientists.
The oxygen isotopes in his ribs
suggest a big change
in the geographical origin
of the water
that Richard consumed
at the end of his life.
LAMB, VOICE-OVER:
It suggests he'd moved
to western France,
western Spain,
which we know
from documentary evidence
that that wasn't the case.
He was predominantly in the UK.
He was based in London
and traveled around England
in those few years
when he was king.
This is a nitrogen...
Something else
could explain this shift,
and it's not travel.
An increase in wine
consumption would explain
why he might have had a higher
oxygen isotope value
at that time.
Our estimation is that
it's about sort of 25%
of his oxygen intake.
The rest would be made up
by water and beer.
It was a considerable step up
from the stuff
he was drinking before.
At that period, the wealthy
were consuming a lot of wine.
We know he was banqueting
a lot more.
He was king. He was traveling
to different locations.
There was a lot of wine
indicated at those banquets,
and tying all this together,
it looks like
that that had quite
an impact on his diet
in the last few years
of his life.
Richard was consuming
a bottle of wine per day
every day on top of all
the British ale he also drank.
Well, I doubt whether
his fitness levels
were, perhaps, quite as good
as they were
before he was crowned king.
This copious consumption
might well have impaired
Richard's performance in battle.
While Richard may have been
in poor health,
the experiments with Dominic
suggest that his curved spine
would not have stopped him
from being a capable fighter
and a talented horseman...
and now Dominic faces
one final test.
He is heading to Bosworth
to reconstruct the events
of August 22, 1485.
The historical account suggests
that Richard fought skillfully
and killed a number
of enemy soldiers that day...
and Dominic is keen to prove
that Richard's scoliosis
was no impediment to his
performance on the battlefield.
Do you think
Richard would have felt
comfortable in his armor?
Yeah. In
a static position,
it does a really good
job of supporting me,
but my body moves
an incredible amount
depending on what
I'm doing with it
more than a normal person's,
but when I do that movement
with my arm, the shoulder blade
is kind of going into my ribs,
whereas on the left-hand side,
it's performing
in the normal way.
It's kind of
an interesting thought,
though, to think
that the process
of figuring out how
to make armor work
for someone with this condition,
these same questions
and these same issues
would have been present with
Richard and his armorers.
So does Dominic's
spine significantly affect
his ability to fight?
His fist challenge
is hand-to-hand combat
wearing a full suit of armor.
Come on!
That's nice.
Every single time,
Richard. Good.
Since I first saw him,
he's much more
nimbler on his feet,
even though he's wearing
full plate armor.
It shows that a smaller person
has got to work very, very hard
to stay on top of a fight.
Don't let yourself get turned.
This test definitively
proves that Richard
could have fought well on foot,
despite his scoliosis...
Still keep your hands up.
But a stiff ribcage
might have caused him
to tire much more quickly
than other soldiers.
And hold.
Nice finishing shot. Well done.
Dominic's second challenge
is Richard's famed
cavalry charge.
The real battle site
is now working farm land,
but a nearby horse
training center
provides the perfect model
of Bosworth.
Ahead in the distance is where
Richard's enemy Henry Tudor is,
and that's quite a distance
to go in all this kit,
but this is what
they're all trained to do.
According to
the historical sources,
Richard and Henry faced
each other across a marsh.
Richard had at least 200
fully armored knights with him
when he spotted Henry Tudor.
Richard decided to charge
around the marsh.
Henry was at least
a half-mile away,
a huge distance in full armor.
Dominic Smee
must match this maneuver.
Will his back bear the strain?
This is everything you want.
You got your armor,
you got your horse,
and that's your kingdom.
So you're gonna go and fight
for your kingdom.
You're gonna win it.
You're gonna be
the best you can, yeah?
How does it feel in the armor?
Do you feel empowered
wearing the armor
or anything?
Well, I feel like a juggernaut.
History says Richard
killed Henry's standard bearer
with his lance.
Can Dominic hit his target?
Charge! Go on!
Despite
the horror of medieval warfare,
there is still something
quite magical
about knights in
full plate armor on horseback,
the sheer sounds, sheer power.
It's almost the shock and awe
of the Middle Ages.
Hah! Come on!
Hit the pick ax.
Good boy.
Having crashed through
Henry's forces at high speed,
Richard would have pulled out
his war hammer
and turned back
toward his enemy.
Henry's historians
credit Richard with unhorsing
one of Henry's bodyguards
who was 6'7".
After 3 months of training,
Richard's body double Dominic
has achieved his goal.
He's shown conclusively that,
while the shared scoliosis
may be a barrier
in some people's minds,
it is in no way an impediment
on the battlefield.
Makes me feel a lot better
about myself,
knowing that I can do something
that ordinary, healthy people
struggle with and yet
I've managed to do it
despite having this condition.
When you actually
see you coming over,
you can't tell your size.
You can't tell
how slender you are, how slight.
You just look like this facade
of a tank coming forwards.
It does show that,
despite what history
might have implied,
that Richard was there, agile,
and fighting as well as anybody.
Yeah. He took that
quick turn really well,
and I think for him to use
that ax the way he did
at speed is fantastic.
We're proud of you, man.
I think that we let
him yell, "Charge,"
helped a lot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
His mojo went through
the roof after that.
Absolutely.
Definitely,
especially the bit at the end
hitting the head in the middle.
That was really...
I was desperate to do that
because before,
I've only just nicked it,
whereas I went
straight for it
and smashed it off the pole.
Richard Ill
may have been a violent man.
Most medieval kings were.
He seized the throne,
rightly or wrongly.
At Bosworth,
the arthritis in his back
may have caused pain.
His stomach may have been
infested with worms,
his fitness levels compromised
by a tight chest
and years of unhealthy living.
However, this experiment
has shown that Richard
could have led his cavalry
at Bosworth Field.
After making this final
heroic charge,
he ultimately lost his crown
and his life,
but, as Dominic Smee has proved,
King Richard
was certainly not disabled.
The iconic moments
that have shaped our world...
It stretches
human history way back.
The fine line
between fiction and fact...
That legend just doesn't
stand up against reality.
Discoveries that
bring the dead back to life,
forensics that create clarity
from chaos,
the past gets rewritten when
science and history collide.
"Secrets of the Dead."
"Secrets of the Dead"
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by the Corporation
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