LEICESTER, England, — A skeleton with a cleaved skull and a curved spine entombed under a parking lot is that of Richard III, archaeologists said yesterday, solving a 500-year-old mystery about the final resting place of the last English king to die in battle.
Cast by Shakespeare as a deformed tyrant, Richard was slain in a bid to keep his crown at the 1485 Battle of Bosworth Field, immortalized by the words: “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”
“It’s the academic conclusion . . . that, beyond reasonable doubt, the individual exhumed at Grey Friars in September 2012 is indeed Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England,” lead archaeologist Richard Buckley said.
The skeleton had 10 wounds, eight of which were to the head clearly inflicted on the battlefield. A sword had cleaved away part of the rear of the skull. A metal fragment was found between Richard’s vertebrae.
After the battle, the victor, the future King Henry VII, had Richard’s naked body exposed to the people of Leicester to show the battle was won, ending the bloody 30-year civil conflict known as The Wars of the Roses.