The voice of King Richard III

There have been several media reports about a project to reconstruct the voice of King Richard iII. The result seemingly spoken by an avatar ( which manages to look very unlike both the initial reconstruction of the King’s head from his skull as found in Leicester and the recognised portraits ) has been on exhibition in York in recent days. The Guardian reports on it at Hi-tech recreation of Richard III’s voice has a Yorkshire accent 

I am sure the devotees of the King will be deeply moved by it as it has been in parts sponsored by the Richard III Society. The choice of a Yorkshire accent will also appeal to those who make so much of his time spent in the county and his apparent popularity there.

I cannot claim any expertise in matters of dialect and pronunciation and indeed in the way in which those have changed over the centuries. However listening to the re-created ‘voice’ I felt myself completely unmoved by it and indeed it seemed really rather implausible. 

First of all, Yorkshire accents very considerably over quite small distances, and reflect influences coming from neighbouring areas and also legacies from the distant past.  Thus the East Riding accent preserves both dialect words and pronunciation that reflects Danish heritage of the area. The dialect of the Tees Valley as much that of the north east as it is of the county of Broad Acres.

Secondly, English pronunciation has evolved significantly since the fifteenth century. Whilst this is recognised in this recreation, it does not seem to match up very well with reconstructions of the language of Chaucer or of the late sixteenth century language as used and understood by Shakespeare ( mention him not to the Richard III enthusiasts ) and his contemporaries.

Thirdly, although King Richard spent a number of years in Yorkshire we do not know what the voice patterns of his parents’ household were, he was born in Northamptonshire, which might give him an East Midlands tone, then spent some time in his early years on the Welsh borders at Ludlow, as well apparently in Warwick’s household in Yorkshire or elsewhere. By the end of the 1460s he was then in and around London, as well having a second exile in Flanders, before he moved to make Yorkshire his primary residence. By that time it is likely that his accent would have already been largely formed. If he did actually speak with a northern accent it might well have reinforced. alongside his northern followers, the point emphasised by Charles Ross in his biography of him, that he was an outsider to the London and southern political elite. Caxton’s point about the mutual incomprehension of a Yorkshireman and a Kentish woman is an indicator of how accent and dialect marked individuals out. 

Fourthly, and here I speak ( pun intended ) from personal experience, it is perfectly possible to live in Yorkshire for much longer than the total life of King Richard and to have only slight elements of a Yorkshire accent - mainly in the enunciation of vowels.

Fifthly although we know modern ‘received pronunciation’ is largely a product of the 1920s following the establishment of the BBC radio service, and that before then prominent public figures spoke with accents that might seem surprising today. The surviving recording of Gladstone shows elements of his Scottish ancestry as well as his Liverpudlian birthplace. I have read that Lord Curzon the “ most superior person”, Oxford educated, Viceroy of India and political heavyweight always spoke with a noticeable Derbyshire accent. To what extent the leading figures of fifteenth century England spoke with a distinctive accent is not clear, if knowable. In the sixteenth century that is evidence for the fact that King Henry VIII had a rather high-pitched voice and Queen Elizabeth I recorded by one French ambassador in her native years as speaking with the aristocratic drawl that uses long m-drawn out vowel sounds as in paar maa fwaa for par ma foi. 

Maybe King Richard III did speak like the reconstruction, but I am far from convinced.