Did the ghost of Richard III alert seeker to his humiliating grave?

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
2/5/2013
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Archaeologists have confirmed the body as that of Richard III.

He was a short-lived monarch, much maligned by history, and buried in an unmarked grave following his death in battle. Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England has been found, buried without so much as a shroud, at a friary near where he fell.

It's likely that Richard III was as much maligned in history as he was in real life.

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LONDON, ENGLAND, (Catholic Online) - Archaeologists had an idea of where the missing king was buried, but urban sprawl and development made searching for the king quite difficult. Despite the challenges, intrepid archaeologists managed to find the remains of Richard III buried under the pavement of a parking lot in London.

However, screenwriter Phillipa Langley, walking throught he parking lot that was most recently used for a social services facility said she felt a chill despite on a hot summer's day, much like "the same feeling I have had before when a truth was given to me."

Was it the ghost of Richard alerting her to his restless grave?

Ghost or no, her bizzare feeling led her to finance the initial exploration of what lay below the pavement. Just three feet down, the King's bones were discovered.

The discovery has solved a long mystery of what happened to the king's body. We now know with certainty that he was killed in battle, his corpse mutilated and bound, and buried in a shallow grave. His memory would come to us filtered through the reports of his Tudor adversaries and Shakespeare's works. History would remember Richard III as a bloodthirsty tyrant who murdered his nephews to become king.

Details from the grave revealed that Richard was killed by wounds likely sustained in the Battle of Bosworth, the final battle of the War of the Roses, which saw the rise of the Tudor Dynasty. Legend says he was killed in the battle, and analysis of his remains show he was struck in the dead with a pole-arm, likely a halberd.

Physically, Richard was known to be short, mostly because of a spinal curvature that left his left shoulder shorter than the right. He walked with a stoop. Still, he rode and fought with his men on that fateful day in 1485.

In what history remembers as the last great mounted charge of the medieval era, Richard led 1,500 knights to their doom in a small valley near Market Bosworth. The legend of the battle suggests that Richard was a courageous fighter who fought bravely to the death, refusing the leave the battle, even once defeat became evident.

It is unclear which blow felled Richard, however, the young king was probably struck with both an arrow in the back and a halberd at the base of his skill. Either wound would have been fatal.

After his death, the victors proceeded to humiliate him further by stripping his body of clothing and thrusting a weapon of an unknown type into his backside, then binding the hands of his corpse like a criminal. Eventually he was thrown into a shallow grave and left to be forgotten.

However, Tudor chroniclers would not let Richard be forgot, as they blamed him for a litany of problems which beset the newfound Tudor dynasty.

In the humiliating grave, his body laid undisturbed for centuries until sometime in the 19th century an outhouse was dug at the feet of his grave. Indeed, the kings feet were likely lost in that excavation, the digger blissfully unaware of what he had found.

Later, the outhouse went away and eventually the ground where he lay eventually became a parking lot.

Archaeologists analyzed the skeleton in secret, seeking to confirm their find before making an announcement that Richard had been found. Researchers used a DNA sample, providing by a living descendant of Richard's matrilineal family line, and discovered an exact match. Everything fell into place, the body was that of King Richard.

Now that the find has been announced, it comes down to what shall be done with his remains. Some have called for a state funeral for the King. No matter what, historians will use the new information and public interest to rethink Richard III's reign and whether or not he was fairly portrayed by Shakespeare.

Chances are, our history of the unfortunate monarch will need to change at least somewhat, proving that history does in fact change as new evidence is discovered and new questions are asked.

� 2013, Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

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Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013
General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.
Missionary Intention: Middle Eastern Christians. That the Christian communities of the Middle East, often discriminated against, may receive from the Holy Spirit the strength of fidelity and perseverance.

Keywords: ghost, Richard III, king, England, parking lot, toilet, grave, discovery

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1 - 3 of 3 Comments

Bono95
2 months ago
Hi, Kinkysox, I'm a big fan of Richard III too, and I totally agree he deserves a respectful, faithfully Catholic funeral. I'm an even bigger fan of St. Thomas More, and his "History of King Richard III", though decidedly unflattering, is actually not as much of a smear campaign as that of several other anti-Richard writers. More never actually got to finish his history, at least a few parts of it are notes or drafts of some sort that are so baffling and seemingly worthless that we would need St. Thomas himself to explain them to us, and it seems it was also intended as more than a biography of the last Plantagenet king. One More biography I read said that the "History" was something of a writing warm up or practice exercise, and Erasmus of Rotterdam, one of St. Thomas's BFFs, was working on a writing about what you want in a good king, so More might have been following him up with an example of what you DON'T want in a good king, and he chose Richard III as a hypothetical example because it would appeal to Tudor audiences. Granted, Henry VII (and later Henry VIII, he was still a good Catholic when More wrote his "History") would make a much more fitting example, but that might have gotten St. Thomas's head cut off sooner. Anyway, I knew Richard was a devout Catholic, but I didn't know about his devotion to Mary. Thanks for sharing that. If Richard III went to Mass and Confession before the Battle of Bosworth Field, maybe he's in Heaven now, and if he is, I have little doubt that he and St. Thomas More are good buddies. :-D
Kinkysox
4 months ago
The Tudors wanted to destroy King Richard III's reputation to justify their flimsy claim to the throne of England, helped by Tudor-era people such as Shakespeare and - it hurts me to say this - Thomas More.

It is very telling that the children's book series, Horrible Histories, have more books detailing the brutality and terror of the Tudors than other historical eras.

Had King Richard reigned for longer, he would prove to have been a great and just king.

When the grave was reopened, torrential rain poured down on Leicester that day. A case of 'happy the corpse the rain falls on' . The speed with which King Richard's remains were found, tested and identified by DNA is nothing short of both miraculous and a result of tenacity on the part of the King Richard III society, University of Leicester and Leicester City Council.

Having watched the documentary following the story of the excavation, I was moved to tears and watched it again online to take it all in.

Like all kings up to Henry VIII, English monarchs were Roman Catholic. King Richard was no exception and he was devoted to Our Lady.

The Greyfriars buried King Richard 500 years ago. There is talk of arranging a Royal funeral in Leicester Cathedral - however, I read that it will be an ecumenical one.

I find that a strange decision. The lost Russian Imperial Family of the Romanovs were re-interred according to the Russian Orthodox Rite.

It should be in the form of a Latin Mass celebrated by the Papal Nuncio and other prominent Catholic clergymen as fitting for King Richard III.

It would be an insult to his memory that it should be anything but a Roman Catholic Latin Mass.

After all it was the Tudor King Henry VIII who established the Church of England, breaking from Rome.
abey
4 months ago
For a person, that too a King to have fought in the center of the battle as one who stood his ground to the last breath, potraying him as a Evil Tyrant is but desecrating the English phrase "Lion Hearted", is but a serious question for it does stink of false "Propaganda'" & to this Tudors & Shakespearen words are to be taken with a pinch of salt. It is interesting to also know that King Henry 8 in whose time the "engineered" split from the Catholic church took place is seen at war in the famous painting in the Battle of Spurs against the French in 1513 riding a White Horse in the center of the Battle, when in the truth he stayed behind the front lines.

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