In the world of fiction the character of Manthara, an Aaya in the 6th BCE Hindu story Ramayana, is depicted as ‘hunch-backed, ugly and antagonistic in appearance’. In Victor Hugo’s story The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the residence of Paris are afraid of Quasimodo because of the way he looks. In history there are those who suffered the same indignity. King Richard III is one being vilified for centuries and depicted as a cruel hunchback.
Richard III's scoliosis is first mentioned in 1490 by historian John Rous ~ ‘unequal shoulders, the right higher and the left lower’ but it is Shakespeare’s king ‘…deformed, unfinished, sent before my time’ that we remember. However, Richard III wasn’t the only person in history to have suffered from a curved spine and mimicked for it, Henry, the son of William de Tracy, one of the four knights who set upon and murdered Thomas Becket was another.
In 1276, Henry de Tracy was referred to as le *bozu in an inquisition into the Devon manor of Morton (now Mortonhampstead) which was his father’s principal manor.
‘Morton. The manor, tenure unknown for, William de Tracy who held the barony of Braneys and Morton of the king in chief, took part (fuit in auxilium) in the martyrdom of St. Thomas of Canterbury, for which deed he went into exile and the barony became the escheat of King Henry the king's ancestor. The same William had a son Henry de Tracy, le Bozu, born in Normandy, who long after came to Geoffrey son of Peter, chief justice of England, grandfather of John son of John, praying him to aid him in recovering his inheritance…’ - Inquisition Post Mortem, Saturday after St. Edmund the King, 4 Edw. I.
In 1276, Henry de Tracy was referred to as le *bozu in an inquisition into the Devon manor of Morton (now Mortonhampstead) which was his father’s principal manor.
‘Morton. The manor, tenure unknown for, William de Tracy who held the barony of Braneys and Morton of the king in chief, took part (fuit in auxilium) in the martyrdom of St. Thomas of Canterbury, for which deed he went into exile and the barony became the escheat of King Henry the king's ancestor. The same William had a son Henry de Tracy, le Bozu, born in Normandy, who long after came to Geoffrey son of Peter, chief justice of England, grandfather of John son of John, praying him to aid him in recovering his inheritance…’ - Inquisition Post Mortem, Saturday after St. Edmund the King, 4 Edw. I.
*Bozu or Bossu is a derogatory French term for a person with kyphosis or an abnormal convex curvature of the spine.
My family history research into the Umfreville family led me to Henry de Tracy, he held, among others, the manor of Lapford in Devon. Here, in 1180, he granted the village a market/fair. By 1184 Lapford had passed to the Umfreville's and descended to John Umfrevilles in 1241.
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