Richard III Still Doesn’t Know Where He Is Going To End Up

It has been a long year since the bones of Richard III were unceremoniously discovered underneath a Leicester car park, and the poor old boy is still none the wiser as to where his final resting place will be.

The current arrangement is that he will be reinterred in Leicester Cathedral, while distant relatives are insistent that he should be buried in York.

The basis of the row centres on the licence to undertake the original dig that was issued to the University of Leicester, and the relatives claim that they should have been consulted at the time that the remains were confirmed as being those of Richard.

In 2012, the government granted a licence to the university to excavate the site and decide where the remains of the last Plantagenet king should be reburied, if he were to be found.

At the commencement of every dig where human remains are likely to be discovered archaeologists have to apply to the Ministry of Justice for a licence to exhume any that might be unearthed along the way.

But the king's 16th great niece Vanessa Row, of the Plantagenet Alliance, said: "Once someone becomes named it doesn't matter how old they are if they do have descendants they should be consulted on the final resting place."

She added: "They don't actually have a case to keep him there in my opinion. He is basically buried somewhere he was murdered and left and forgotten," she said. Verna Campbell, a member of the Richard III Society, also believes the king's remains should be buried in York.

Richard III - still a wandering soul

She said: "He was brought up in Middleham and he was at Middleham when he heard his brother had died. Basically he made the north his own."

However, Richard Buckley, who led the team that found his remains, said: "I do feel quite unhappy that people think the university did something incorrectly. We followed the same practice we have done for many years."

He added: "At the time we applied we didn't know we'd find Richard III but the application made it clear from the start that if we did find him he would be reinterred at Leicester Cathedral."
It will now be up to a judicial review to decide whether the procedure that led to his bones being excavated in Leicester and the decision to reinter them at the city's cathedral, was conducted correctly.

Meanwhile in Leicester, plans are proceeding apace for a visitor centre,  a revamp of the  Cathedral Quarter, and preparations for Richard's reburial. The cathedral is also set to launch a new website detailing its plans and stating its case to be the king's final resting place.

The Right Reverend Tim Stevens said "I think that as the court concentrates on the central question, which is 'where do human remains that have been disinterred belong?', the answer is in the nearest consecrated ground to the place of discovery. I'm sure that's the decision that we will obtain, we just have to wait for it."

Leicester's mayor Sir Peter Soulsby also questioned why the Plantagenet Alliance had any say in the matter when "basic maths" showed Richard, who had five siblings, could have many "collateral" descendants.

He added the king was born at Fotheringhay, in Northamptonshire, and brought up in Middleham, in north Yorkshire, and his title prior to becoming king was the Duke of Gloucester. Sir Peter said all of these places could mount a claim to be the burial place of Richard III.

However, the king's supporters in York maintain: "It was his city and he wanted to be buried here."
York, which has had its own Richard III visitor centre since the 1990s, claims an exhibition about the king helped the city achieve record visitor numbers last year.

The judicial review will take place at the High Court in London on 13 March.