English cities draw swords over Richard III’s final resting place

More than five centuries after he went down fighting, England's medieval monarch Richard III is in the middle of another battle – this time over where his newly discovered remains should be re-buried.

The Plantagenet Alliance, made up of Richard’s distant descendants, has asked England’s High Court to rule on plans to re-bury their ancestor’s remains in Leicester, the city where they were found two years ago under a municipal car park.

The alliance says the ministry of justice was “unreasonable” to give permission to Leicester to bury him in its cathedral and argues the decision on the final resting place of the last Plantagenet king should have been a matter of public consultation.

"It matters what happens when you identify the only king since 1066 whose remains were not identified," the alliance's counsel Gerard Clarke told the court in the first of two days of hearings on the complaint.

Remarkable find

The discovery of the skeleton of Richard, whose death effectively ended the Wars of the Roses, was one of the most remarkable English archaeological finds in recent times.

Leicester University archaeologists found the remains close to the site of the 1485 Battle of Bosworth where he was killed, the last English king to die in battle.

Leicester city council has unveiled plans for a £4 million (€4.7 million) visitors’ centre around the find.

The Plantagenet Alliance wants to see him buried in York, his northern power base during his 26-month reign.

Leicester's plans for "a tourist attraction should not trump the process" of proper decision-making, Mr Clarke said.
– (Reuters)