Display and Pay

We stood just off the circular path around the Battle ground of Bosworth Field.

Another of the regularly placed  information boards in multi-european languages  was read with interest but importantly testified that we were looking over the spot where Richard the Third, King of England for only two short years from 1483 to 1485, is reputed to have been slain.

It was a poignant moment because only the evening before we had been to Stratford upon Avon to see a production of the Shakespeare Play about the very man. He was just 32 years old.

It is quite common and  inevitable with the passage of time that the reputation of a single figure can fluctuate from a great and noble King to a calculating murderer. It is on the same theme as a terrorist in his own time being regarded as a freedom fighter by later generations.

Richard III was a fascinating character made both dramatic and sinister by his physical appearance caused by scoliosis of the spine depicting him as shuffling and stooping and with a crooked, shambling action in movement. He may have been confined to anonymity by these deformities but showed great fortitude, self belief, self preservation and ruthlessness through his achievements in his time.

He was the last Yorkist King of England and, in his demise on the battlefield, the last monarch since Harold at Hastings to die in such a way.

After the defeat of his army with his death his body was taken away for internment at the Church of The Greyfriars in the City of Leicester but the building and any memorial were lost either through conspiracy, carelessness or just through the relentless progress of urban redevelopment over the subsequent half a millennia.

The historic site of the Church became a surface car park in the 1960's and it was only until a couple of months ago that a determined and co-ordinated effort was made to excavate in the quest for his alleged resting place.

Just a few days ago the bones of an adult male were found under the position of the former church choir. The evidence to support that this is actually Richard III is either very coincidental or compelling.

The skull shows signs of impact damage. The removal of the body on horseback from Bosworth was reputed to have been rather haphazard and with reports of the trailing head striking the parapet of a bridge on its way from the killing fields.

The spine has an embedded arrowhead to a depth to cause immediate death which was a typical form of fatal injury in medieval warfare.

Interestingly the course of the skeletal spine shows distortion and curvature consistent with scoliosis.

The archaeological project has been wide ranging as befits the potentially momentous discovery of a key character in our nations history. Descendants, some sixteen generations down the line, have been forthcoming in providing swabs for DNA testing which will take place in the quiet, sombre and civilised environment of a laboratory.

If subsequently and irrefutably confirmed to be Richard the Third,  I expect the debate will really begin about what to do with him and the measures of determining whether he was a good king or a psychopath will be applied in judgement.