Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
TIDY HUMP SUM
Richard lll’s missing cash books are sold for £20k
A BUNDLE of old papers bought at a country sale sold for £20,000 after being identified as royal account books belonging to Richard III.
They show the notorious monarch, often portrayed as a limping murderous hunchback with a withered arm, had an annual income of £500, today’s equivalent of £500,000, from his Duchy of Cornwall estates.
The parchment documents, written in Latin, date from 1483, the year Richard became king.
How they came into the hands of the anonymous seller is a mystery. But experts say they are remarkably well preserved.
They were valued by Bonhams in Exeter and auctioned to a mystery buyer at the firm’s London offices for five times their estimated price.
Experts say they show highly detailed totals for rents, sales and receipts.
Peter Hammond, of the Richard III society, said: “It is not exactly his income, it was what they got from Duchy manors and so on.
“Bureaucracy was alive and well in those days with amazing records.”
Richard was killed at Bosworth Field in 1485 at the end of the Wars of the Roses.
His body, flung into a forgotten grave, was unearthed in a Leicester car park in 2012 and later buried in the cathedral.