Richard III of England the Battle of Bosworth Field in Leicestershire. Richard was slain in the conflict, making him the last English king to die in battle. Henry Tudor then ascended the throne as Henry VII. After the battle, Richard's corpse was taken to Leicester and buried without pomp. His original tomb monument is believed to have been removed during the English Reformation, and his remains were lost for more than five centuries, believed to have been thrown into the River Soar. In 2012, an archaeological excavation was commissioned by the Richard III Society on a city council car park on the site once
Ricardian (Richard III) was originally a small group of interested amateur historians whose aim was to bring about a re-assessment of the reputation of Richard III. The society became moribund during the Second World War. In 1951 Josephine Tey published her detective novel "The Daughter of Time", in which Richard’s guilt is examined and doubted. In 1955, Laurence Olivier released his film of Shakespeare's "Richard III", which at the beginning admitted that the play was based on legend, and a sympathetic, detailed biography of Richard was published by Paul Murray Kendall, all of which went some way towards re-invigorating the society. The Fellowship