… ‘King in the Car Park'.
"For two short years he was King of England, one of the most powerful men in the world. Then he was killed, desecrated, and dumped in a hastily dug grave, the location of which would be forgotten and rediscovered, centuries later, under a parking lot.
So ends the tale of Richard III, which over the last several months has played out like an episode of Game of Thrones combined with CSI and told by archaeologists.
In February, researchers announced a DNA match between Richard III's living descendants and the skeleton believed to be his. Now a new article in the journal Antiquity describes the king's demise in gruesome, glorious detail…
Richard III died in 1485 in the battle of Bosworth, the last clash of the War of the Roses, a decades-long struggle for England's throne between the royal houses of Lancaster and York. Richard III was the last Yorkist king, and his succession by Henry Tudor marked the end of the Middle Ages.
A century of peace would follow, but it started on a bloodthirsty note. Richard III's body was reportedly stripped naked, despoiled and publicly displayed for several days before its burial at the Greyfriars monastery in Leicester.
Small and poor, the Greyfriars monastery was abandoned a half-century after Richard III's burial and subsequently demolished. In the 17th century, a former mayor of Leicester built a house on the land, and though he erected a memorial pillar in the garden, the monastery's location would be forgotten over subsequent centuries of development.
Working from an 18th-century map (below), members of the Richard III society, a modern fan club for the king, and University of Leicester archaeologists determined the monastery's present-day location: under a parking lot.
Though Richard III's skeleton showed that he died covered in wounds, two in particular were likely fatal: blows from a sword and perhaps a halbard that left yawning holes in the base of his skull (above). Other wounds, such as a sword-thrust to the right buttocks, appear to be what researchers call "humiliation injuries," inflicted after Richard III's death…
Full article and pics here.
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Amicalement
Armand
begins his series on how to paint a 15mm DBA army well, in a reasonable time frame.
