Richard III and the Car Park of Doom

[jacey]

So they've proved by DNA testing that it was Richard III's skeleton in the car park in Leicester. I await the inevitable TV documentary with interest. Now it's just a question of Leicester and York fighting over who gets to bury the remains. Personally I think York Minster would be a fitting place.

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

As far as I'm aware, Leicester Cathedral will have the honour of Richard's presence. Apparently there are rules about the re-internment of bodies. They are supposed to be re-buried in the nearest consecrated ground to where they were dug up from.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

That, I didn't know. But Richard was definitely a Catholic... How does that affect things.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

It's not a rule - more a guideline, really.
:-)

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I suppose at the time he died he was a Catholic because there was no alternative and every church was a Catholic Church. No one's ever suggested re-interring the earlier monarchs who were buried as Catholics. If Richard stated he wanted to be buried at York (which someone suggested was the case) then why not? It's not as if Richard made a conscious choice between being a Catholic or an Anglican.

Isn't Mary Tudor buried in Westminster Abbey? Now she definitely _was_ a Catholic by choice.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

Richard was Church of England. It's just that the "church of England" was Roman Catholic :-)

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Good point (and put so much better than I managed).
:-)

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

BBC World News said Leicester, this evening.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I gather Leicester thinks it's in the bag but York is still lobbying.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

What about Gloucester? What about Middleham? Shouldn't it be a Catholic church?

Oh, I am having so much fun watching the Richard III Society ignoring the implications of the twisted spine.

By the way, I'm waiting for the peer review and proper scientific publication on the DNA before I'll actually accept the word 'proof'. (I have too strong memories of Cold Fusion...)

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Twisted spine, but no withered arm.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I suspect Tudor politics dictated much of the story . . .

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, I'm sure.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

My kingdom for a horse!

A little late, I guess.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

...my large kingdom for a little grave,
A little little grave, an obscure grave;
Or I'll be buried in the king's highway,
Some way of common trade, where subjects' feet
May hourly trample on their sovereign's head.

Wrong Richard, I know.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

We Kentings still have the august company of King Stephen but he's where he wanted to be in Faversham in what was once the Abbey church of All Saints, his own foundation and he got to die in his bed, years of civil war or no.

A thought strikes me!

Was it a long stay car park?

(Ducks and runs away :o)