Richard III of England of the rear of the skull. Richard III was the last English king to be killed in battle. Polydore Vergil, Henry Tudor's official historian, recorded that "King Richard, alone, was killed fighting manfully in the thickest press of his enemies". Richard's naked body was then carried back to Leicester tied to a horse, and early sources strongly suggest that it was displayed in the collegiate Church of the Annunciation of Our Lady of the Newarke, prior to being buried at Greyfriars Church in Leicester. In 1495, Henry VII paid for a marble and alabaster monument. According to a discredited tradition,
Richard III of England Anne's death, Richard's ambassadors were sent on a formal errand to negotiate a double marriage between Richard and the Portuguese King's sister Joana, of Lancastrian descent, and between Elizabeth of York and Joana's cousin Duke Manuel (later King of Portugal). The most significant of Richard's defenders was Horace Walpole. In "Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third" (1768), Walpole disputed all the alleged murders and argued that Richard may have acted in good faith. He also argued that any physical abnormality was probably no more than a minor distortion of the shoulders. However, he retracted