Following his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, Richard III's shattered body was stripped naked, taken on the back of a horse into the city of Leicester, and put on display in the Collegiate Church of the Annunciation of Our Lady of the Newarke. Three days later, with the victorious Henry Tudor keen to return to London to take up his crown, it was hastily buried at Grey Friars Church. In 1538, after Richard's remains had lain there for just 53 years, Grey Friars Church was dissolved. It was subsequently demolished, and the site was built over several times over the ensuing centuries.
A story grew up locally that at the time of the church's dissolution, Richard's remains had been exhumed and thrown into the River Soar. But not everybody believed it – least of all the Richard III Society, who initiated a detailed search for the likely location of Richard's grave. They concluded in 1975 that it was under a car park belonging to the city's Social Services Department.
At the instigation of the Society, a search began in August 2012, and almost immediately a skeleton was found, in a hastily–dug grave. The spine was curved, which conformed to what was known about Richard II's physique, and it had wounds that were consistent with contemporary accounts of those that resulted in his death. Carbon dating indicated that death had occurred between the years 1455 and 1540. The bones were of a man in his late 20s or early 30s; Richard III had been 32 years old at the time of his death in 1485.
The crucial DNA evidence required comparison with an individual who was descended from either Richard himself or one of his siblings, and via a single–gender line – since analysis depends on characteristics that are inherited either exclusively from the female parent or exclusively from the male. In 2005, genealogists had identified Michael Ibsen, a 55–year–old man who had been born in Canada but was living and working in London, whose mother was believed to be a sixteenth–generation descendant (via a maternal line) of Richard's sister, Anne of York. In February 2013, having compared Ibsen's DNA with that of the skeleton, scientists were able to confirm "beyond all reasonable doubt" that the skeleton found underneath the car park in Leicester was that of King Richard III.
One of the terms on which the archaeological excavation had been allowed was that if the search for Richard's remains was successful, they should be reinterred in Leicester Cathedral – just a stone's throw from the site of the dig. Cases were made for reburial in either York Minster or Westminster Abbey, but 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, the remains of Richard III were reburied in the Cathedral Church of St. Martin, Leicester. A visitor centre was built on the original burial site, where members of the public can view the grave and a projected image of the skeleton as it was found.
© Haydn Thompson 2021