Centuries later, Richard III is laid to rest again. This time, it’s with honor.
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Version 0 of 1. LEICESTER, England — The Queen wrote a note. A Hollywood A-lister read a poem. And with nearly all the pomp, circumstance and solemn ritual that this ceremony-obsessed nation can muster, Britain on Thursday laid to rest one of history’s most reviled monarchs. It was the second time Richard III has been buried, the events separated by 40 yards and 530 years. The first time, soon after Richard’s dramatic battlefield death at the hands of his rivals in 1485, his body was stuffed into a shallow grave — and soon forgotten. But after the remains were discovered beneath a parking lot three years ago in one of the most consequential archeological finds in British history, the nation decided to give Richard a send-off more befitting of the king he was. So on a drizzly day in this charming city in the British Midlands, Richard was laid to rest once again — this time with the nation raptly observing the final chapter in a story that spans a half-millennium but that has captured the modern imagination. For those watching, either in person or on live television, it was a service marked by soaring music and oratory, by military precision, and by pious testaments to the worth of every life, even that of a long-dead despot. "From car park to cathedral,” the Right Rev. Tim Stevens, bishop of Leicester, intoned from a grand pulpit across the street from Richard’s original inglorious resting place, “today we come to give this king and these mortal remains the dignity and honor denied to them in death.” The service, attended by royals, other VIPs and lucky Brits who won seats in a lottery, was not necessarily intended to venerate Richard, Stevens noted. Generations of British schoolchildren, reared on Shakespeare’s dark depiction of a hunchbacked, child-murdering villain, have been taught to detest the last of the Plantagenet line. The deadly blows he sustained at age 32 in nearby Bosworth Field, they learn, heralded the end of the War of the Roses and the dawn of a more enlightened Tudor era. Yet, as the elegant wooden coffin bearing Richard’s skeleton was lowered into its new home by a military honor guard Thursday, there was an unmistakable air of rehabilitation. During Richard’s brief reign — just two years — he made major advances in the realm of legal equity, endured the death of his son and his queen, and struggled mightily against scoliosis, Gordon Campbell, a professor at the University of Leicester, said. Richard’s posthumous reputation may be “less than glorious,” Campbell acknowledged in the service’s eulogy. But he “has the greatest following of all England’s monarchs, apart from our queen.” That following was in ample evidence Thursday, as were the centuries-old divisions that linger to this day. “I was brought up to believe he was this crooked monster who killed two children,” said Michael Snow, a 62-year-old Welsh retiree who attended Thursday’s service sporting the white rose of Richard loyalists. “But he’s my hero. He was a young man with a disability. His wife was dead. His child was dead. At that last moment at Bosworth, he feared betrayal. But he rode on into battle to live or to die.” Riding alongside him was one of James Babington Smith’s ancestors, a knight who also perished but whose remains have never been found. For Smith, Thursday was a chance to honor both Richard and his ancestor — while helping to set the historical record straight. “The Tudors did a very good job of rubbishing Richard,” Smith said. Historians have long regarded Richard as cunning and cutthroat, willing to lock potential rivals — his two young nephews — in the Tower of London, and perhaps to order their executions. That legacy is one reason the current royal family has held Richard at arm’s length. Queen Elizabeth II, who might never have reigned had it not been for the chain of events set off by Richard’s death, stayed clear of Leicester on Thursday. Instead, she sent a polite but hardly effusive note describing him as a “King who lived through turbulent times.” Even with the queen’s absence, the ceremony at Leicester’s soaring yet intimate cathedral did not lack for star power. The Archbishop of Canterbury presided, and the actor Benedict Cumberbatch read a poem commissioned for the occasion. Cumberbatch has at least two connections to Richard. The actor will play the king in a BBC television series, and he happens to be a relative, though not an especially close one: third cousin, 16 times removed. Cumberbatch was one of many attendees Thursday who can claim blood ties to the last English king to die in battle. But in keeping with a theme of reconciliation that was emphasized throughout the service, the descendants of Richard’s enemies were on hand, too. Among them was Simon Rees-Jones, 59, who said his ancestors had fought alongside Henry Tudor, Richard’s nemesis and, following Richard’s death, successor. In the nearby village that Rees-Jones calls home, thousands turned out Sunday to watch as knights in shining armor escorted Richard’s remains through the streets — and back to the city where he has been buried twice, once in haste and now with honor. “Whichever side you support, he was badly treated 530 years ago,” Rees-Jones said. “But as of today, we’ve put it right.” Read more England prepares a funeral fit for a king King Richard III, killed in 1485, makes journey to final resting place Benedict Cumberbatch, just as lovely as you think he is Karla Adam contributed to this report from London. |