‘The king in the car park’: new light on the death and burial of Richard III in the Grey Friars church, Leicester, in 1485
By Richard Buckley, Mathew Morris, Jo Appleby, Turi King, Deirdre O’Sullivan and Lin Foxhall
Antiquity, Vol.87 (2013)
Abstract: Archaeologists today do not as a rule seek to excavate the remains of famous people and historical events, but the results of the project reported in this article provide an important exception. Excavations on the site of the Grey Friars friary in Leicester, demolished at the Reformation and subsequently built over, revealed the remains of the friary church with a grave in a high status position beneath the choir. The authors set out the argument that this grave can be associated with historical records indicating that Richard III was buried in this friary after his death at the Battle of Bosworth. Details of the treatment of the corpse and the injuries that it had sustained support their case that this should be identified as the burial of the last Plantagenet king. This paper presents the archaeological and the basic skeletal evidence: the results of the genetic analysis and full osteoarchaeological analysis will be published elsewhere.
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Richard III (1483–85) is probably England’s most familiar medieval king. Immortalised by Shakespeare and others as an infamous villain, but with a strong cohort of modern-day supporters, he has remained a highly controversial figure of both history and drama since his death.
King Richard was killed at the Battle of Bosworth, the culmination of the Wars of the Roses, on 22 August 1485 (Foarde & Morris 2012: 91–95). Afterwards, the victor, Henry Tudor, now King Henry VII, brought Richard’s naked body back to Leicester for public display, probably in the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the intra-mural religious precinct of the Newarke (BL Harley MS 542: f.34). On 25 August, the body of the defeated king was laid to rest with minimal funerary rites in the medieval church of the convent of the Friars Minor (the Franciscans, also known as the Grey Friars; Rous 1745 [1486]: 218; Halle 1970 [1550]: f. xxxv; Polydore Vergil 1972 [1555]: 25.25; Baldwin 1986: 21). Ten years later, King Henry VII had an alabaster tomb erected over the grave. The friary was dissolved by King Henry VIII in 1538 and most of the buildings were demolished soon after.
By Richard Buckley, Mathew Morris, Jo Appleby, Turi King, Deirdre O’Sullivan and Lin Foxhall
Antiquity, Vol.87 (2013)
Abstract: Archaeologists today do not as a rule seek to excavate the remains of famous people and historical events, but the results of the project reported in this article provide an important exception. Excavations on the site of the Grey Friars friary in Leicester, demolished at the Reformation and subsequently built over, revealed the remains of the friary church with a grave in a high status position beneath the choir. The authors set out the argument that this grave can be associated with historical records indicating that Richard III was buried in this friary after his death at the Battle of Bosworth. Details of the treatment of the corpse and the injuries that it had sustained support their case that this should be identified as the burial of the last Plantagenet king. This paper presents the archaeological and the basic skeletal evidence: the results of the genetic analysis and full osteoarchaeological analysis will be published elsewhere.
Richard III (1483–85) is probably England’s most familiar medieval king. Immortalised by Shakespeare and others as an infamous villain, but with a strong cohort of modern-day supporters, he has remained a highly controversial figure of both history and drama since his death.
King Richard was killed at the Battle of Bosworth, the culmination of the Wars of the Roses, on 22 August 1485 (Foarde & Morris 2012: 91–95). Afterwards, the victor, Henry Tudor, now King Henry VII, brought Richard’s naked body back to Leicester for public display, probably in the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the intra-mural religious precinct of the Newarke (BL Harley MS 542: f.34). On 25 August, the body of the defeated king was laid to rest with minimal funerary rites in the medieval church of the convent of the Friars Minor (the Franciscans, also known as the Grey Friars; Rous 1745 [1486]: 218; Halle 1970 [1550]: f. xxxv; Polydore Vergil 1972 [1555]: 25.25; Baldwin 1986: 21). Ten years later, King Henry VII had an alabaster tomb erected over the grave. The friary was dissolved by King Henry VIII in 1538 and most of the buildings were demolished soon after.
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