Archaeologists searching for the grave of King Richard III say they have found bones that are consistent with the 15th century monarch’s physical abnormality and of a man who died in battle.
A team from the University of Leicester said on Wednesday the bones were beneath the site of the Grey Friars church in Leicester, central England, where contemporary accounts say Richard was buried following his death in the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.
Richard Buckley, co-director of the university’s Archaeological Services, said the bones are a “prime candidate” to be Richard’s. The remains are now being examined and the team hopes that DNA can be recovered to aid identification.
“We are not saying today that we have found King Richard III,” Richard Taylor, the university’s director of corporate affairs, told a news conference. “[But] this skeleton certainly has characteristics that warrant extensive, further detailed examination.”
William Shakespeare, writing more than a century after Richard’s death, described the king as “deform’d, unfinished,” a monster with a deformed conscience who murdered his nephews in the Tower of London in order to gain the throne.
The murder charge is a matter of historical dispute. The official royal website says the young princes “disappeared” while under Richard’s protection.