As most of you know by now, there were some exciting developments last week in the search for the grave of Richard III! When I last wrote about it on the Sunday news round-up of September 9, the archaeological team had confirmed that they had received an additional week to dig in light of their discoveries.
Here’s a timeline of relevant events prior to the 21st century [Source]:
* Richard III was buried in the church in 1485 after the defeat at Bosworth and a tomb was erected over the grave ten years later.
* In 1538, Greyfriars was closed during the Dissolution and by the early 17th century the church had fallen into ruin.
* In 1600 the Mayor of Leicester, Robert Herrick, bought the site and had a house built, with a memorial pillar of Richard III’s grave erected in the garden.
* The land was sold in the early 18th century to Thomas Novle and then is sold to the Leicester city council in 1914, who paved over the land for a car park in 1940.
Archaeologists confirmed that they had found the remains of the Greyfriars Church and the 17th century garden that contained the memorial pillar. They then extended the three trenches in hopes of finding the choir area of the church which is thought to be where Richard was buried. (I once again recommend this BBC article for a background on the historical detective work that lead to the dig and, now very importantly, the genealogy work that found a descendant of Richard III’s sister Anne of York for DNA testing.)
Unbeknownst to the public at the time, human remains had been found at the site and on September 4th exhumation began. On September 11 (in my time zone) news had leaked about the remains and that there would be a press conference at 11 a.m. UK time on Wednesday September 12th with details. At the time I was excited by the possibilities, but I knew that finding human remains while digging in a church site wasn’t that unexpected. But I was very curious to hear what they had to say. Given that they were putting together a press conference, I was thinking that they might have some additional evidence that they might have actually found Richard III – and that turned out to be the case!
Here’s a summary of the findings that point to the potential of this being Richard III’s skeleton [Source]:
1. The remains
If it is Richard III, and I hope it is. He should be buried with his wife. With a Funeral Mass.
For all his faults he was still a british monarch .Let him be buried with his wife its the least we can do.
Richard should be buried with Anne Neville his wife with a proper funeral mass as they were both English Catholic monarchs and they deserve a proper memorial. Anne should be identified and husband and wife either moved to the North and buried in York Minster or given a moderate but official Catholic and honoured ceremony in Westminster Abbey. Please do not insult their memory with a Protestant service.