The body of a man found buried beneath a council car park in the UK is almost certainly that of the last Plantagenet King of England, Richard III, according to academics.
There are still so many unknowns about Richard’s motivation, his crimes, his psychological state
The remains, undisturbed less than a metre below ground on the site of an old friary in Leicester for more than 500 years, will now be interred in the city’s cathedral.
DNA recovered from the remains, radio-carbon dating, battlefield wounds found on the skeleton, and the link between what was found during the dig and what was mentioned in documentary sources from the period, combined to allow Leicester University academics to conclude the identity was “beyond reasonable doubt”.
King Richard, the last of the country’s Plantagenet monarchs, was cut down at the decisive and bloody Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, ending the Wars of the Roses and leaving Henry VII as the new king and first of the Tudor dynasty.
At the time it was recorded that King Richard had been buried in Grey Friars, a friary in the city following the battle.
Four years ago, a fundraising drive kickstarted by the Richard III Society, embarked on a push to finally uncover the truth of his final resting place, by making an archaeological dig on the site of the friary – a modern-day city council car park.
Archaeologists from the University of Leicester recovered a body – which showed signs of battle injuries including 10 separate wounds and scoliosis (a curvature) of the spine, in tune with unflattering historic accounts claiming the king was hunch-backed.
Following extensive tests, Richard Buckley, dig project leader, said: “It is the academic conclusion that beyond reasonable doubt, the individual exhumed at Grey Friars in September 2011 is King Richard III – the last Plantagenet King of England.”
The confirmation will not, however, strip the mystery from one of William Shakespeare’s greatest plays – The Tragedy of King Richard III – a literary expert has predicted.
Philip Schwyzer, professor of renaissance literature at the University of Exeter, said confirmation that the remains found in Leicester are those of the last English king killed in battle solved only a small part of Shakespeare’s great enigma.
Schwyzer said: “There is still plenty of mystery in this work – the fact that we now know of Richard III’s final resting place is only a piece in that puzzle.
“There are still so many unknowns about Richard’s motivation, his crimes, his psychological state.
“I think Shakespeare was hinting at the audience to address those unanswered questions in his play. Richard’s body is left on stage at the end, with no narration of where it will be laid to rest.
“I think Shakespeare was telling us that we are never going to get all the answers.”