No clothes or personal objects were found and there were no traces of a coffin. The team used radar and radiocarbon dating as part of the project that located the body in front of the choir stalls of the friary. The grey, concrete car park with its red-brick walls and a payment hut, under which the bones were found, contrasts sharply with the grandeur of traditional sepulchers for English kings and queens at Windsor Castle and Westminster Abbey.Īsked if the prime minister agreed with some Conservative MPs who want a state burial for the late, a spokesman for David Cameron said: “The decision on burial is a matter for Leicester University who hold the license to exhume the remains.” Asked if the ceremony would be a royal affair, he said: “I’m sure those in London are watching carefully today.” to bring victory out of defeat,” said David Monteith, Canon Chancellor at the Cathedral. “These are the mortal remains of a person, an anointed Christian king who shared the faith proclaimed by the cathedral, a faith which promises redemption and hope. Richard, who died aged 32 after two years on the throne, will be interred at Leicester Cathedral, which traces its history to a Saxon bishop in AD 680, in line with guidelines about burying bodies close to where they are exhumed. The project almost ended prematurely, but funds from countries including the United States kept it afloat. The skeleton showed a high-protein diet of meat and fish that would reflect life at court.Īfter a detailed presentation focusing on the life, wounds and physique of Richard, Buckley, announced his conclusion to world media amidst cheers and applause. The curvature of the spine, so ruthlessly mocked by Shakespeare as “deformed, unfinished” and famously depicted by Laurence Olivier, was striking. I am determined to prove a villain.” CROOKED BONES REVEAL THE KING The feet were missing.Ĭonfirmation the bones were Richard’s hinged on DNA taken from the skeleton matching that of Michael Ibsen, a Canadian-born furniture maker in London who genealogists said was the direct descendant of Richard’s sister, Anne of York.Īdmirers of Richard hope that the discovery will help to dispel the image of Shakespeare’s physically impaired protagonist who said: “And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover. All of the “humiliation” wounds in his final hours were from swords, daggers or halberds and it appeared his hands had been bound. Other wounds were consistent with being caused after death when his body was taken from the battlefield to nearby Leicester on the back of a horse. The victor, the future King Henry VII, had Richard’s naked body exposed to the people of Leicester to show the battle was won, ending the bloody 30-year civil conflict known as The Wars of the Roses between the houses of York and Lancaster. A metal fragment was found in the vertebrae. The skull showed a blade had hacked away part of the rear of the skull. The skeleton had 10 wounds, eight of them to the head, clearly inflicted in battle and suggesting the king had lost his helmet. that beyond reasonable doubt the individual exhumed at Grey Friars in September 2012 is indeed Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England,” lead archaeologist Richard Buckley said. In one of the most significant archaeological finds of recent English history, a team from the University of Leicester said evidence showed a skeleton found last year in excavations of a mediaeval friary under a city car park was that of Richard. Cast by Shakespeare as a deformed tyrant who murdered two princes in the Tower of London, Richard was slain as he fought to keep his crown at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, crying out: “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”
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