Richard III & the Car Park

[Errata]

Errata
(James I for instance is with Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, for no logical reason except, I suppose, that there was space at the time.)

The modern view seems to be: let the dead rest in peace.

Phil H

So much for that, then. But I though all the Stuarts were tucked in with other people because they didn't go for that whole pomp and ceremony make an effigy of me thing. Something about being supremely Scottish.

[Phil H]

I don't know about the "supremely Scottish" thing - Charles II's effigy still exists in the Abbey collection for instance.

But the Stuarts did go in for low key funerals (by royal standards, at least) - usually at night, family not present (I believe) and none of them have tombs or monuments. It must just have been the "fashion" at the time.

Phil H

[Errata]

I don't know about the "supremely Scottish" thing - Charles II's effigy still exists in the Abbey collection for instance.

But the Stuarts did go in for low key funerals (by royal standards, at least) - usually at night, family not present (I believe) and none of them have tombs or monuments. It must just have been the "fashion" at the time.

Phil H

Well, Charles doesn't count. He was more French than Scottish. At least in personality.

[RivkahChaya]

Why exactly is a living descendent necessary? I mean, we know where Cicely Neville is, We know where Edward is, surely mDNA results from his parents would provide better comparison that someone 20 generations down the line?

A living descendant is better than a corpse. For one thing, the rate of mutation over generations is more reliably predictable mathematically than the rate of decay of a corpse. There are more variables in corpse decay, and less is known about them. Also, a living descendant is an infinite source. You can cross-check as many times as you want, because doing a cheek swab for skin cells is very easy and not invasive; it's also very reliable. It's no longer necessary to do a blood draw for DNA testing.

Additionally, in a corpse older than about 15 years-- it varies greatly, but it's a question of embalming, and the presence of skin and fluids-- you will need to be able to get bone marrow, or dental pulp, and you may not be able to get that, or it may all be contaminated. In the case of corpses whose provenance is not certain (burials and reburials not fully documented), and which have at times been interred very close to other corpses in porous caskets, or non-porous, but with seams, and the bones are fractured, which can happen with time and climate, or may have happened if the body was forced into a position while in rigor, the marrow may be contaminated. It is possible to sort out different donors when several are present, and to guess with fair reliability which donor is the corpse, and which are contaminants, by which DNA is present in the greatest quantity, but it's just introducing more variables when it isn't necessary, because there is a living donor. Plus, it adds a lot of time to the process, and limits the amount of sample you have to test.

Now, I don't know what the history or condition of the royal bodies are, but I'm guessing no one knows without disinterring them first, it might end up being a fruitless task to disinter a body from which usable DNA cannot be extracted. With a living descendant, you know you will be able to get usable DNA, with very little invasion. If there is a question of the living descendant is may be a mistake in genealogy, but that possibility exists with corpses as well. As Phil mentioned, there is the rumor that Edward VI was not really the son of his mother's husband. Disinterring a body, just to find a "mistake" like that is a much bigger deal than getting a DNA result from a living person that shows that there was a mistake in documentation somewhere.

Again, I don't know if this person in Canada is the only potential mDNA source. Maybe it's the only person located, or the only one to respond to the email. If the results are uninterpretable (negative in a way that does not give any information, for example), then there may be other people who have not been located, or who did not respond to initial inquiries, and these will be pursued more aggressively.

[Phil H]

There are quite a few lineal descendents of Richard. A recent book identified one line, all female, and provide illustrations of each generation - though it did not I think include the gentleman chosen. presumably he represents a different line.

Charles doesn't count. He was more French than Scottish. At least in personality.

True - he resembled his maternal grandfather, Henri IV of France (and Navarre), in looks and irrespressable sexuality!

They were an odd bunch. Mary Queen of scots was, of course, reburied in westminster with a huge monument over her. Charles I was buried at St George's pretty hugger-mugger after his execution. Plans for a grandiose reburial and monument came to nothing. James II fled to exile and a foreign grave. William III (Stuart by birth and marriage, I suppose, though Dutch in almost every way) has no British monument and Anne was buried in a coffin that was almost a cube in dimensions, she was so bloated with dropsy. Sad.
Phil H

[RivkahChaya]

There are quite a few lineal descendents of Richard. A recent book identified one line, all female, and provide illustrations of each generation - though it did not I think include the gentleman chosen. presumably he represents a different line.

The gentleman chosen will not be a direct descendant of Richard III. He will be a direct descendant of Cecily Neville, or one of her sisters, or maternal grandmother, if they are looking at mDNA. The m in mDNA stands for mitochondrial, and that is the outer membrane of an ovum, or any cell, except mature red blood cells, sperm cells, and a few others. Mitochondria is used for the exchange of fuel, and sperm cells are one-time use cells.

Now, you can use a male descendant from an unbroken line for testing, because the Y-chromosome mutates very slowly, relative to the other chromosomes, and is much smaller than the others, but since it is nuclear, it still mutates more than mitochondria, and is also more subject to decay. Mutation, again, is predictable, but decay is less so. Or, more fairly, decay is predictable if you can account for every variable, but that is usually impossible. Is a femur fractured? Yes? when, in the 400 years the corpse was buried? was it close to another body at any time the bone was fractured, or did the fracture happen after a burial in isolation? Is it possible the person died of bone cancer?

There's hope. If Richard was buried once and left undisturbed, there's very good chance for good data.

The Romanovs were identified to a person, based on reassembling the skeletons, which were incomplete, and been mutilated, and burned with fire and chemicals, but some DNA was extracted, enough that the skeletons were assembled in ways that a panel of experts agreed were correct, and tallied with height and gender data, as well as what was known about the family (there were scanty dental records, but there were some, and while exact heights weren't known in each case, there were dressmaker records, and pictured showed who was taller than whom, with only Anastasia and the tsarevich potentially growing more since the last pictures, yet, all the bones were assigned to a body, with little dispute, and none left, and the DNA of all the woman matched Prince Philip (who shared a matrilineal descent), except one woman, who was the wrong age to be either the tsarina or any of the grand duchesses anyway, and was probably the lady-in-waiting who was rumored to have been killed with the family.

That case was much more complicated, and it was sorted out.

Like I said, the only real problem is the potential for a mistake in the genealogy of so many generations, and not due to bad research, but to someone fibbing along the way.* I suspect that can be ferreted out, though.

And then, if they really don't have a living descendant with good provenance, then they can talk about disinterment.

*This is another good reason for using mDNA rather than Y-chrosome testing; it's easier to fib about the father, than about the mother, and even when it's a case of passing one's grandchild off as one's child (a la Ted Bundy) it is usually the very young mother's parents, not the father's, who do that, so the matrilineal information relative to mDNA is still correct, whereas the Y-chromosome information is not.

[Phil H]

Rivkah - I was not specific enough.

Richard II did not, of course, have any direct descendents - his son predeceased him. You are quite right - and in the book it is, I think Richard's sister's line that is followed.

Thanks for putting me right.

Phil H

[Errata]

Rivkah - I was not specific enough.

Richard II did not, of course, have any direct descendents - his son predeceased him. You are quite right - and in the book it is, I think Richard's sister's line that is followed.

Thanks for putting me right.

Phil H

Doesn't he? He had a bastard daughter who married, though I confess that I don't know anything about what happened after that.

[Phil H]

Good point, you are right.

I think the daughter was called Katherine, there was also an illegitimate son, John.

She, I think was married off. He was executed under the Tudors, I believe.

Phil H

[RivkahChaya]

Good point, you are right.

I think the daughter was called Katherine, there was also an illegitimate son, John.

She, I think was married off. He was executed under the Tudors, I believe.

Phil H

Unfortunately, a son by a daughter, or a daughter by a son isn't useful after a couple of generations. mDNA passes unaltered from mother to child-- it is completely uninfluenced by the father's DNA, because sperm cells don't have mitochondria. The Y-chromosome is passed from father to son, and since there is just one, you know where it came from. There is very little information on the Y-chromosome, compared to the others, which is why it is mutation resistant, sort of; any mutation in the Y-chromosome can easily produce an nonviable embryo, as opposed to mutations in the X-chromosome, which can be "covered" by a non-mutated pair, or even by duplicated information in the same chromosome, because the X is huge (which is sort of funny, because on the level of DNA, women are bigger than men, by about 2%).

Just as a note, current research in DNA is producing ways of determining which of a pair of chromosomes came from which parent (another interesting aside-- the same mutation can produce a different genetic syndrome in an offspring, depending on whether the gene came from the mother or the father). This has implications for testing, because if other chromosomes, or parts of chromosomes are found to be resistant to mutation, they become a means of tracing family lines without having to look for unbroken paternal or maternal lines.

Again, though, I think Henry VII saw to it that the York-Y stopped during his reign. None of Edward's sons survived, Clarence's son didn't, I don't think any of the other Neville boys lived long enough to have sons, and I don't think there were male cousins that had sons that lived through the Tudors. How far back do we know Richard's paternal ancestry, to find a paternal great-grandfather, then look for a male-line descendant from him? I know I can Google this, but I am anxiously checking election returns in another screen right now. Obama just needed two more electoral votes, last time I checked, with none of California reporting, and Florida at 92% reported, and Obama ahead by .2%.

[Phil H]

Edward III is probably the best bet for an ancestor of RichardIII. His blood, through John of Gaunt, the Beauforts, Henry VII, Mary Queen of Scots, James I, the Hanoverians, Queen Victoria comes down to the present Queen.

Some female gaps there.

Phil H

[RivkahChaya]

Edward III is probably the best bet for an ancestor of RichardIII. His blood, through John of Gaunt, the Beauforts, Henry VII, Mary Queen of Scots, James I, the Hanoverians, Queen Victoria comes down to the present Queen.

Some female gaps there.

Phil H

You've got to have an unbroken male line, or it's no good. You want to be able to match the Y-chromosome, and you can do that only with a male descendant from an unbroken line.

All the gene pairs, except, in men, recombine, or mix, so that the number 7 chromosome your father gives you is mix of the one he got from his mother, and the one he got from his father.

A woman gets two X-chromosomes, and they recombine, so the X-chromosome I got from my mother was a recombination of the one from her mother, and the one from her father. However, the one I got from my father did not recombine with his Y-chromosome, because in men, there is no recombining of sex chromosomes. That would mean my X-chromosome from my father is identical to the one he got from his mother, and, of course, the Y-chromosome my brother got is identical to the one my father had.

My father has a brother. He may have received the same X-chromosome that my father got, which would mean that my two female cousins on that side of the family share one X-chromosome with me. If my uncle got a different one, though, no such luck. At any rate, our children all have recombined X-chromosomes, with the ones we got from our mothers.

Now, my brother, and my male cousins on my father's side all have the same Y-chromosome, and so do their sons. My girl cousins share mitochondrial DNA, and so do their children. My son and I don't share theirs, but we do share it with cousins on my mother's side of the family.

Does it make sense yet?

There are two rare conditions that could screw things up, but they are rare enough not to be worth mentioning unless there are uninterpretable results.

[Phil H]

Then with Richard III - after so long - female descent is what we'll have to settle for.

Phil H

[RivkahChaya]

I was looking at this site. It does appear that all the male lines, going back as far as Henry III, either daughter out, or end in no heirs at all. I realize some of the men who left no heirs were killed in wars, or judicially, after being in prison, or something, and didn't have the opportunity to leave heirs, like George, Duke of Clarence's son.

But obviously, that family tree is not exhaustive. There may be side branches that are not included. The way it seemed to work in royal families, though, is that all the men stayed close to the "tribe," and the drifters were women. Any men unaccounted for would probably be illegitimate-- and I have no doubt there are plenty-- but, well, not to put too fine a point on it, they lack provenance.

If there are men who are undocumented, other sons of Edward III who are undocumented in the official rolls, but historians do know about, there might be an unbroken line there, but I doubt it. I'm pretty sure in the middle ages, kings kept track of anyone who was a potential threat, or ally, or heir.

[Phil H]

Isn't it a truism of the pre-DNA-aware world, that:

a) you can almost always determine the MOTHER of a child - she gave birth to the baby;

b) the identity of the FATHER is entirely (in most cases) is dependent on the mother's word.

hence why harem's existed and royal woman in particular were always closely guarded and protected to stop them straying.

It is entirely possible that some stray paternal DNA got into the line at certain point. For instance, in our period was Henry VI (reputedly sainted and unworldly) really the father of Edward of Lancaster; and as I have mentioned, the paternity of Edward IV has been called into question.

Phil H