A VINDICATION OF THOMAS MORE’S HISTORY.

A VINDICATION OF THOMAS MORE’S HISTORY. Richard III’s skeleton has recently been discovered and the identity of the skeleton has been confirmed to a high degree of probability by DNA evidence (although this article by Alok Jha in the Guardian explains that the DNA evidence is not dispositive). The skeleton showed extreme scoliosis, a curving of the spine. Thomas More—and Shakespeare, following More—portrayed Richard as a hunchback, whose physical deformity reflected his evil nature. Scoliosis is a serious, painful condition, as this article by Julie Myerson, a fellow sufferer with Richard, explains. But having a hunch back is a much more serious condition. Richard was not a hunchback, so More was wrong. Yet for me, who has always attributed a subjective probability of about 50% to the possibility that More made up the hunchback business out of whole cloth, as Tudor propaganda, Thomas More—the historian—has been vindicated. Perhaps some of the other things More wrote were not simply propaganda. Perhaps Richard was responsible for the deaths of the princes in the tower.