The Last Days Of Richard III And The Fate Of His DNA (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
Certain aspects of this fifteenth-century routine would have differed from modern norms. It might, therefore, be helpful at this point to explore the kind of timetable which would have governed Richard’s daily existence. At the same time we may also examine such evidence as we possess regarding the physical setting against which those last weeks and months of Richard’s life were lived; the attire he wore, and the kind of activities which engaged him. The obvious essentials of the daily human round of activities have not changed. However, in the fifteenth century Christian religious observance certainly played a greater part in day-to-day life than it appears to do for the majority of English households today. At dawn, when the bells of monastic, conventual, collegiate and cathedral churches rang for the early morning office, it was not necessary for lay people to be up and about, nor were they expected to take any formal part in the worship. Nevertheless, it was expected that if the sound of the bells happened to awaken them, they would utter some of the better-known set prayers, either in Latin or in the vernacular, before pulling up their blankets and going back to sleep.2 By the 1480s the simple and easily memorised thrice-daily devotion of the Angelus had reached England, where its spread had been encouraged by Richard III’s erstwhile supposed sister-in-law, Elizabeth Woodville.3 Attendance at mass certainly was expected, and a late fourteenth-century description of how mass was celebrated indicates that this differed very little from the modern rite.
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