ROYAL GRAVES

Westminster Abbey underwent extensive reshaping as the result of King Henry III s (1207-1272) desire that the remains of King St Edward the Confessor (c.1003-1066), the last of the Anglo-Saxon kings should have a resting place that was commensurate with the canonised status that had been conferred upon him in 1161.¹ From 1269 until 1760 royalty were buried in Westminster Abbey.

The Chapel of Henry VII was started by the Tudor king to commemorate his Lancastrian predecessor King Henry VI (1421-1471).² This had been meant to be a way of underlining the new dynasty's legitimate succession to the House of Plantagenet as the Kings of England. The work on the Chapel was not finished at the time of Henry VII's death. When the structure was completed during the reign of King Henry VIII, the son chose to dedicate it to his father.

Website: www.westminster-abbey.org/about-the-abbey/history/royal-tombs

¹. On St Edward's Day (13^th October), Roman Catholic pilgrims visit the shrine of St Edward the Confessor.

². In large part, it was King Henry VI's political incompetence that had allowed the Wars of the Roses, an extremely bloody, 30-year-long succession of civil wars, to start in 1455. However, it was universally acknowledged that he had been very pious.

Royal Graves Elsewhere

The kings who were buried in Old St Paul's Cathedral in London included King Aethelred II the Unready (c.966-1016). The bodies of a number of monarchs lie below the choir of Winchester Cathedral.

What was the London Post Office in King Edward Street in the City of London is built over the burial site of the corpses of both Queen Margaret (c.1279-1318), the consort of King Edward I, and Queen Isabella (c.1295-1358), the consort of King Edward II.

The corpses of other royals are buried in France and St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.

D.N.A. and The Leicestershire Dead

King Richard III's was the last English king to die in battle. In 2012 an archaeological dig in Leicester excavated a car park in Leicester. The site was believed to have been the Choir section of the town's Grey Friars Monastery. A slender 1.72m.-long (5ft. 8in.) skeleton was exhumed. It had a metal arrow in its back and its skull displayed evidence of severe trauma. The spine was excessively curved. This scoliotic condition was consistent with contemporary descriptions of Richard's posture. That there was no evidence either of a shroud or of a coffin indicated that the burial had probably been carried out swiftly. The following year a cross-disciplinary group of University of Leicester academics declared that the remains were those of the late monarch. In part, their conclusion was based upon an analysis of D.N.A. that had been extracted from the bones. This material had been compared with samples that had been donated by two known maternal line blood relatives - Michael Ibsen and anonymous - of the monarch.

It is appropriate that the skeleton should have been exhumed in Leicester. The genetic profiling technique that enabled it to be identified as being related to that of Richard's known kindred was devised at the university by Dr Alec Jeffreys. His position there had been financed by a Lister Institute Research Fellowship that had been awarded to him so that he could study another topic. However, in 1984 the scientist saw some data that indicated how within a laboratory technician's family the D.N.A. was evidently similar while also clearly varying from one individual to another. This piqued his curiosity. Working in association with members of the Forensic Science Service, a Home Office agency, he created the restriction fragment length polymorphism (R.F.L.P.) analytical procedure.

Lynda Mann, a fifteen-year-old girl, was murdered in Narborough in Leicestershire in 1983. Three years later Dawn Ashworth, who was then the same age, was strangled on a path between the village and the neighbouring settlement of Enderby. Richard Buckland, a seventeen-year-old, had discovered the latter s corpse. The police concluded that he was probably responsible for the attacks and arrested him. The killer had left biological traces on both bodies. Therefore, it was appreciated that there was scope for employing RFLP to build a watertight case against the suspect. It was the first time that the technique had been used in a forensic context. Dr Jeffreys was able to reveal conclusively both that the two victims had been assaulted by the same person and that the genetic material could not have come from Buckland. The youth was released.

The Leicestershire Constabulary and the Forensic Science Service then organised an operation in which samples of saliva and blood from 5000 local men were analysed. This exercise did not yield the identity of the murderer. Subsequently, the police were contacted by a woman who had heard a conversation in a pub. In this, a man had stated that he had given a blood sample while claiming to be one Colin Pitchfork. The real Mr Pitchfork was promptly arrested. Subsequently, he confessed to having carried out the killings and in 1988 he was convicted of them at Leicester Crown Court.

Location: Leicester Cathedral, 2 Peacock Lane, Leicester, LE1 5PZ. (The Plantagenet Alliance lost a suit for Richard III to be buried in York, which had been his powerbase, rather than Leicester.)

Website: https://le.ac.uk/richard-iii https://leicestercathedral.org/gallery/richard-iii www.richardiii.net www.lister-institute.org.uk

David Backhouse 2024