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,
Cultural depictions of Richard I of England Cultural depictions of Richard I of England Richard I of England has been depicted many times in romantic fiction and popular culture. The Scots philosopher and chronicler John Mair was the first to associate Richard with the Robin Hood legends in his "Historia majoris Britannae, tam Angliae quam Scotiae" (1521). In the earliest Robin Hood ballads the only king mentioned is "Edward our comely king", most probably Edward II or Edward III. However, Sir Walter Scott's novel "Ivanhoe" popularised Mair's linking of the Hood legends to Richard's reign, and it was taken up by later novelists and by cinema. Typically