SUPPORT OUR JOURNALISM: Please consider donating to keep our website running and free for all - thank you!

HistoryOther

Dame Judi Dench supports a York burial for Richard III

Richard III

Dame Judi Dench is asking for public support for Richard III’s remains to be returned from the University of Leicester in order to be buried in York. Dench, who was born in York and has also portrayed Queen Victoria and Elizabeth I in film, shares somewhat of a kinship, if you will, with the Royal family.

Over 30,000 people have signed the online petition calling for the Government to bury the York King at York Minster. “Dame Judi has asked me to say she would be very pleased to add her name to your petition to have Richard III’s remains buried at York Minster,” Dench’s spokesman told the Plantagenet Alliance as reported in The Telegraph.

The Plantagenet Alliance was formed after the discovery of Richard III’s remains in the Leicester car park by Stephen Nicolay. Nicolay is the 16th great-nephew of the monarch. There are presently 15 members of the Alliance.

For over 500 years, Richard III lay in a quickly dug grave in Leicester, where he was killed in the Battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485. The alliance contends that York is the King’s ancestral home and indeed where the King selected, upon his death to be buried.

As of 16 August 2013, the battle for Richard III’s remains and final resting place continues. A high court judge in London ruled in August that the Plantagenet Alliance, were to be given the go ahead to file legal action against the Government and University of Leicester.

The University of Leicester had plans in place for the internment of Richard III’s remains along with a resplendent tomb located in Leicester’s Cathedral. Along with the tomb are plans for a visitor centre costing an estimated £4,000,000. The University laid claim to Richard III’s remains and subsequent burial in Leicester based on the original licence issued by the Government. The licence entitled the University to choose where the King’s remains be buried if they were discovered.

No date has yet been set for the hearing between the Plantagenet Alliance and the University of Leicester. “In my views, it would be unseemly, undignified and unedifying to have a legal tussle over these royal remains,” Judge Haddon-Cave stated in the New York Times this past August. The Judge implored both sides of the legal battle to avoid; “a War of the Roses, Part 2.”

photo credit: lisby1 via photopin cc

2 Comments

Comments are closed.