Johan
A Fixture
Question frojm my wife for local experts.
Considering that this was the King of England even if killed in battle, WHO left him there. Good guys to have on your side who probably did well while he was living, one arrow or axe or sword and they dump you and leg it.
Would the victor not have been better to keep the body?
Don
Hello Don,
I'm not sure if his body was really "left there". I think I recall it was dragged back from the battlefield into town, and for a while exposed for all to see - I guess that was not just out of malice but it was important for Henry Tudor that all would-be pretenders our troublemakers would see with their own eyes that Richard was truly dead.
The body was then buried without too much ceremony in a greyfriars monastery, I think with something like a marked stone "here lies King Richard etc etc". So, he wasn't really "left there", on the battlefield. As you know Henry Tudors successor, Henry VIII, abandoned Catholic religion a few decades later, and had all monasteries destroyed; hence also the last resting place of Richard III must have been lost and forgotten, until now.
It seems that Richard III was very much a man of the North and they say he himself wished to be buried in York.