Digging Richard III

Last week archeologists searching for the remains of Richard III at the site of Greyfriars in Leicester discovered a skeleton they think is a prime candidate:

Five reasons were given: the body was of an adult male; it was buried beneath the choir of the church; there was scoliosis of the spine, making one shoulder higher than the other; there was an arrowhead embedded in the spine; and there were perimortem injuries to the skull.

If laboratory tests, including DNA comparisons, verify that’s the body of the king, the Richard III Society says “we look forward to their eventual interment in an appropriate place with the dignity due to an anointed English king.”

Some feel that place would be York Minster, or somewhere in Leicester, but Dian Crayne points out that as an anointed King of England he is entitled to Westminster Abbey.

I supposed reinterring him beneath the stage of the (new) Globe Theater would be right out, even if the version of Richard seen in Shakespeare’s play is largely the reason the for the worldwide interest in this news item.

3 thoughts on “Digging Richard III

  1. Sorta old news… I read about it in the mainstream news sites several days ago, maybe a week. If it is Richard III, they have a complete set now — him and the two boys interred under the staircase in the Tower of London. While nobody can prove the two skeletons are Henry VI and his brother, who else would they be? It isn’t as though the English were in the regular habit of burying boys under staircases. Of course, it makes you wonder where Henry Tudor is? Maybe they could all be assembled for a travelling history pagent — “End of the War of the Roses!”

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