2012 archaeological event
The remains of Richard III, the last English king killed in battle and last king of the House of York, were discovered within the site of the former Grey Friars Priory in Leicester, England, in September 2012. Following extensive anthropological and genetic testing, the remains were reinterred at Leicester Cathedral on 26 March 2015.
Richard III, the final ruler of the Plantagenet dynasty, was killed on 22 August 1485 in the Battle of Bosworth Field, the last significant battle of the Wars of the Roses. His body was taken to Greyfriars, Leicester, where it was buried in a crude grave in the friary church. Following the friary's dissolution in 1538 and subsequent demolition, Richard's tomb was lost. An erroneous account arose that Richard's bones had been thrown into the River Soar at the nearby Bow Bridge.
A search for Richard's body began in August 2012, initiated by Philippa Langley and the "Looking for Richard" project with the support of the Richard III Society. The archaeological excavation was led by University of Leicester Archaeological Services, working in partnership with Leicester City Council. On the first day a human skeleton belonging to a man in his thirties was uncovered showing signs of severe injuries. The skeleton, which had several unusual physical features, most notably scoliosis, a severe curvature of the back, was exhumed to allow scientific analysis. Examination showed that the man had probably been killed either by a blow from a large bladed weapon, probably a halberd, which cut off the back of his skull and exposed the brain, or by a sword thrust that penetrated all the way through the brain. Other wounds on the skeleton had probably occurred after death as "humiliation injuries", inflicted as a form of posthumous revenge.
The age of the bones at death matched that of Richard when he was killed; they were dated to about the period of his death and were mostly consistent with physical descriptions of the king. Preliminary DNA analysis showed that mitochondrial DNA extracted from the bones matched that of two matrilineal descendants, one 17th-generation and the other 19th-generation, of Richard's sister Anne of York. Taking these findings into account along with other historical, scientific and archaeological evidence, the University of Leicester announced on 4 February 2013 that it had concluded beyond reasonable doubt that the skeleton was that of Richard III.
As a condition of being allowed to disinter the skeleton, the archaeologists agreed that, if Richard were found, his remains would be reburied in Leicester Cathedral. A controversy arose as to whether an alternative reburial site, York Minster or Westminster Abbey, would be more suitable. A legal challenge confirmed there were no public law grounds for the courts to be involved in that decision. Reinterment took place in Leicester on 26 March 2015, during a televised memorial service held in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury and senior members of other Christian denominations.
Death and initial burial.
King Richard III of England was killed fighting the forces of Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, the last major battle of the Wars of the Roses. The Welsh poet Guto'r Glyn credited Richard's death to Sir Rhys ap Thomas, a Welsh member of Henry's army who was said to have struck the fatal blow. Richard III was the last English king to be killed in battle.
Richard's body was stripped naked and taken to Leicester where it was put on public display. The anonymous "Ballad of Bosworth Field" says that "in Newarke laid was hee, that many a one might looke on him"—almost certainly a reference to the collegiate Church of the Annunciation of Our Lady of the Newarke, a Lancastrian foundation on the outskirts of medieval Leicester. According to the chronicler Polydore Vergil, Henry VII "tarried for two days" in Leicester before leaving for London, and on the same date as Henry's departure—25 August 1485—Richard's body was buried "at the convent of Franciscan monks ["sic"] in Leicester" with "no funeral solemnity". The Warwickshire priest and antiquary John Rous, writing between 1486 and 1491, recorded that Richard had been buried "in the choir of the Friars Minor at Leicester". Although later writers ascribed Richard's burial to other places, the accounts of Vergil and Rous were seen by modern investigators as the most credible.
Burial site.
In 1495, ten years after the burial, Henry VII paid for a marble and alabaster monument to mark Richard's grave. Its cost is recorded in surviving legal papers relating to a dispute over payment showing that two men received payments of £50 and £10.1s, respectively, to make and transport the tomb from Nottingham to Leicester. No first-person descriptions of the tomb survive, but Raphael Holinshed wrote in 1577 (perhaps quoting someone who had seen it in person) that it incorporated "a picture of alabaster representing [Richard's] person". Forty years later, Sir George Buck wrote that it was "a fair tomb of mingled colour marble adorned with his image". Buck also recorded the epitaph inscribed on the tomb.
Following the dissolution of Greyfriars in 1538, the friary was demolished and the monument was either destroyed or slowly decayed as a result of being exposed to the elements. The site of the friary was sold to two Lincolnshire property speculators and was later acquired by Robert Herrick, the mayor of Leicester (and eventual uncle of the poet Robert Herrick). The Lord Mayor Herrick built a mansion close to Friary Lane, on a site now buried under the modern Grey Friars Street, and turned the rest of the land into gardens. Although Richard's monument had evidently disappeared by this time, the site of his grave was still known. The antiquary Christopher Wren (father of Sir Christopher Wren the architect) recorded that Herrick erected a monument on the site of the grave in the form of a stone pillar three feet (1 m) high carved with the words, "Here lies the Body of Richard III, Some Time King of England." The pillar was visible in 1612 but had disappeared by 1844.
The cartographer and antiquarian John Speed wrote in his "Historie of Great Britaine" (1611) that local tradition held that Richard's body had been "borne out of the City, and contemptuously bestowed under the end of Bow-Bridge, which giveth passage over a branch of Soare upon the west side of the town." His account was widely accepted by later authors. In 1856 a memorial plaque to Richard III was erected next to Bow Bridge by a local builder, stating, "Near this spot lie the remains of Richard III the last of the Plantagenets 1485". The discovery of a skeleton in 1862 in the river sediments near the bridge led to claims that Richard's bones had been found, but closer examination showed they were probably those of a man in his early 20s and not Richard's.
The origin of Speed's claim is unclear; it was not attributed to any source, nor did it have any antecedents in other written accounts. The writer Audrey Strange suggests that the account may be a confused retelling of desecration of the remains of John Wycliffe in nearby Lutterworth in 1428, when a mob disinterred him, burned his bones and threw them into the River Swift. The independent British historian John Ashdown-Hill proposes that Speed made a mistake over the location of Richard's grave and invented the story to account for its absence. If Speed had been to Herrick's property he would surely have seen the commemorative pillar and gardens, but instead he reported that the site was "overgrown with nettles and weeds" and there was no trace of Richard's grave. The map of Leicester drawn by Speed incorrectly shows Greyfriars where the former Blackfriars was, suggesting that he had looked for the grave in the wrong place.
Another local legend arose about a stone coffin that supposedly held Richard's remains, which Speed wrote was "now made a drinking trough for horses at a common Inn". A coffin certainly seems to have existed; John Evelyn recorded it on a visit in 1654, and Celia Fiennes wrote in 1700 that she had seen "a piece of his tombstone ["sic"] he lay in, which was cut out in exact form for his body to lie in; it remains to be seen at ye Greyhound [Inn] in Leicester but is partly broken." William Hutton found in 1758 that the coffin, which had "not withstood the ravages of time", was kept at the White Horse Inn on Gallowtree Gate. Although the coffin's location is no longer known, its description does not match the style of late 15th-century coffins, and it is unlikely to have had any connection with Richard. It is more likely that it was salvaged from one of the religious establishments demolished following the Dissolution.
Herrick's mansion, Greyfriars House, remained in the possession of his family until his great-grandson Samuel sold it in 1711. The property was subsequently divided and sold in 1740; three years later, New Street was built across the western part of the site. Many burials were discovered when houses were laid out along the street. A townhouse, 17 Friar Lane, was built on the eastern part of the site in 1759 and survives today. During the 19th century, the site was increasingly built on. In 1863 Alderman Newton's Boys' School built a schoolhouse on part of the site. Herrick's mansion was demolished in 1871, the present Grey Friars Street was laid through the site in 1873, and more commercial developments, including the Leicester Trustee Savings Bank, were built. In 1915 the rest of the site was acquired by Leicestershire County Council which built offices on it in the 1920s and 1930s. The county council relocated in 1965 when its new County Hall opened, and Leicester City Council moved in. The rest of the site, where Herrick's garden had once been, was turned into a staff car park in about 1944, but was not otherwise built on.
In 2007, a single-storey building from the 1950s was demolished on Grey Friars Street giving archaeologists the opportunity to excavate and search for traces of the medieval friary. Very little was unearthed, except for a fragment of a post-medieval stone coffin lid. The results of the dig suggested that the remains of the friary church were farther west than previously thought.
"Looking for Richard" project.
The location of Richard III's body had long been of interest to the members of the Richard III Society, a group established to bring about a reappraisal of the King's tarnished reputation. In 1975 an article by Audrey Strange was published in the society's journal, "The Ricardian", suggesting that his remains were buried under Leicester City Council's car park. The claim was repeated in 1986, when historian David Baldwin suggested that the remains were still in the Greyfriars area. He speculated, "It is possible (though now perhaps unlikely) that at some time in the twenty-first century an excavator may yet reveal the slight remains of this famous monarch."
Although the Richard III Society remained interested in discussing the possible location of the king's grave, they did not search for his remains. Individual members suggested possible lines of investigation, but neither the University of Leicester nor local historians and archaeologists took up the challenge, probably because it was widely thought that the grave site had been built over or the skeleton had been scattered, as John Speed's account suggested.
In 2004 and 2005, Philippa Langley, secretary of the Scottish Branch of the Richard III Society, carried out research in Leicester in connection with a biographical Richard III screenplay and became convinced that the car park was the key location for investigation. In 2005, John Ashdown-Hill announced that he had discovered the mitochondrial DNA sequence of Richard III after identifying two matrilineal descendants of Richard III's sister Anne of York. He also concluded, from his knowledge of the layout of Franciscan priories, that the ruins of the priory church at Greyfriars were likely to lie under the car park and had not been built over. After hearing of his research, Langley urged Ashdown-Hill to contact the producers of Channel 4's "Time Team" archaeology series to propose an excavation of the car park, but they declined as the dig would take longer than the standard three-day window for "Time Team" projects.
Three years later, writer Annette Carson, in her book "Richard III: The Maligned King" (the History