The burial place of Richard III
by Lynda Pidgeon

The burial place of Richard III and the fate of his bones following the dissolution of the monasteries has given rise to much discussion, even leading to the suggestion of trying to recover his bones. Is it possible even to be certain where Richard was buried let alone determine the ultimate fate of his bones for recovery?

We know that his body was taken to Leicester and displayed for several days before burial. Henry VII issued a proclamation following the battle of Bosworth in which he listed the dead, among them Richard:-

Thus we know he was brought to Leicester. Events now start to become confused. A contemporary chronicle written over the period 1483-85 mentions Bosworth and the fate of Richard. The chronicle comes from the household of Sir Thomas Frowyk, a Yorkist official, who was also related to Anne Nevile. At Bosworth, fighting for Richard, was his cousin Sir Richard Charlton, who also died in the battle. It is possible that while trying to find out about the fate of his cousin Frowyk also obtained information about Richard.

The same yere Kyng Richard was scelyne att Redmore feld viij mile Beseide Coventr’ upon seint Bartilmewis eve eve {sic} And bered ate Laycet’ in the new (vorke) god have his soulle (Sutton)

From this we might assume the body was buried in the Newarke at Leicester, i.e. the church of the Annunciation of Mary the Virgin. The church had been founded by Henry, Earl of Lancaster in 1330 and enlarged by his son, another Henry. Henry also provided the church with a holy relic, a thorn from the crown of sorrows. Because of the associations with the house of Lancaster it has been suggested that Henry VII felt it inappropriate to keep Richard’s body here and so it was moved.

The next mention of Richard’s fate after Bosworth comes in a Spanish chronicle written in March 1486 by Diego de Valera. His chronicle was compiled from the reports of merchants and others who had been in England at the time, including Juan de Salazar, an adventurer who had fought for Richard at Bosworth. After the battle according to de Valera:-

… Henry was acclaimed king by all. He had the dead king exposed to public view for three days at a little hermitage near the battlefield, covered from the waist down with a piece of poor black cloth. (Hanham)

This confirms the exposure of Richard’s body, but hardly fits the description of the church of the Annunciation. There is however a hermitage in Leicester although this could not really be described as close to the battlefield. These are the only reports which might be considered ‘Yorkist’. Other chronicles were written later under Tudor influence. At this point in time all we can really say for certain is that Richard’s body was exposed to public view, most likely in Leicester, and that he was buried in the Newarke.       

The first ‘Tudor’ chronicle is the revised Latin chronicle of John Rous, in which he says Richard          

… at last was buried in the choir of the Friars Minor at Leicester. (Hanham, p. 123).

The next account comes from a case heard in York in May 1491. During a drunken argument it was alleged that Richard was ‘… buried in a dike like a dog’. This was countered with the statement that ‘… the king’s good grace had given him noble burial’. (Hanham, p. 63). This was not in fact quite true, but can we assume from this that Richard was buried in an unmarked grave?

Henry did have plans for a tomb to be made for Richard. In his household accounts for September 1495 is the record of £10 1s being paid to James Keyley for a tomb for Richard in Grey Friars. However there is another document which shows that the contract for the tomb was given to Walter Hylton. Following a dispute between the contractors the case was taken to Chancery. In the record of this the tomb was dsecribed as being built at the ‘Newark’; however, this was crossed through and changed to the ‘friars’. It would seem that even government officials were uncertain of where Richard was buried. A possible explanation may be that Richard was originally buried in the ‘Newarke’, but was later moved to the ‘friars’. The clerk writing the document assumed the ‘Newarke’ because this was a popularly known fact, but during the course of the hearing it became apparent that the body was moved at the time that the tomb was built, and the clerk simply went back and corrected his assumption.

Henry’s historian Polydore Vergil writing in 1513 confirms the Grey Friars as does Fabyan in his chronicle of 1516. This postdates the tomb ordered by Henry VII and so is perhaps more likely to be correct.

In 1543 Leyland reported visiting Leicester and seeing the tomb in the church at Grey Friars. Unfortunately he gave no description so it cannot be compared to the contract given by Henry VII.  

However one of the earliest Yorkist revisionists, George Buck, writing in 1619 does give a description:-

Friars would have gone, so Buck could not have seen it for himself. Also he seems to be making two churches into one. Thus begins the descent into myth and hearsay.

One curious story dating from a similar time to Buck is that of Robert Herrick. Herrick had built a house, ‘Beaumanor’ within the friary site. Christopher Wren, who visited in 1612, claimed that Herrick had marked the spot of Richard’s burial with a column. Its position was based on the memory of elderly residents in Leicester. However Speed claimed the site was overgrown in 1611 and Buck fails to mention any memorial. Wren also stated that according to Herrick nuns had rescued Richard’s body. The inscription claimed ‘Here lies the Body of Richard III’, but this was unlikely if the nuns had taken the body away, the friary belonged to Augustinian monks. It seems that ‘living memory’ was already becoming muddled.

If the body did lay in what became Herrick’s garden there is another possibility. The garden extended towards St Martin’s Lane, on the other side of the lane was St Martin’s church. In the late eighteenth century the Leicester historian John Throsby said that some bones had been found in the 1740s at the St Martin’s end of the site.

Assuming that Richard was buried in the Grey Friars, what happened when the church was pulled down in the dissolution? Alternatively if he was left in the Newarke, what happened when this area was redeveloped?

The possibilities would appear to be:-

The Grey Friars

The Newarke

See a plan of medieval Leicester to get a view of the geography of the town at
www.leicester.gov.uk/departments/print.asp?pgid=803

Bibliography

David Baldwin, ‘King Richard’s Grave in Leicester’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological & Historical Society, vol. 60, 1986, pp21-4.
Charles J Billson, Medieval Leicester, Leicester, 1920
George Buck, The History of King Richard III, ed. A N Kincaid, Gloucester, 1982
Rhoda Edwards,’ King Richard’s Tomb at Leicester’, in James Petre ed., Richard III Crown and People, Gloucester, 1985
Peter W. Hammond, ‘The Burial Place of Richard III’, in Richard III Crown and People
Alison Hanham, Richard III and his early historians 1483-1535, Oxford, 1975
Rosemary Horrox and P W Hammond eds, British Library Harleian Manuscript 433, vols 1 & 2
William Hutton, The Battle of Bosworth Field, Gloucester reprint, 1991
Nikoluas Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Leicestershire and Rutland, London, 2001
Records of the Borough of Nottingham 1399-1485, vol 2, London, 1883, and vol 3 1485-1547, London, 1885.
Audrey Strange, ‘The Grey Friars, Leicester’, in Richard III, Crown and People
Anne Sutton, ‘The Making of a Minor London Chronicle in the Household of Sir Thomas Frowyck (died 1485)’, The Ricardian, vol. X, no. 126, September 1994, pp. 86-103.
VCH Leicestershire vols. 2 & 4
Ballad of Bosworth Fielde and Fabyan’s chronicle both taken from American branch website www.r3.org