Rickeeeeeeeeeeeee!

[Kel]

It was confirmed yesterday it is up to the University of Leicester to decide where he should be buried as it had been granted permission to exhume the monarch’s body.

Small print indeed. Now that's what I call a quality precedent on the handling of human remains - couldn't get much better unless it was confirmed in a court case. Doesn't directly apply to remains "in limbo" between lifting and reburial, but it has to be good enough for an argument.

[Unitof1]

hopefully somebody will point out that that liecence has very dodgy basis in statute law.

[RedEarth]

Only just managed to watch it. Brilliant, some of these mocumenatries are so well done now you can't tell them from real life. Too many unrealistic characters though, Shakespeare for one, we all know there was no such person.

[kevin wooldridge]

Small print indeed. Now that's what I call a quality precedent on the handling of human remains - couldn't get much better unless it was confirmed in a court case. Doesn't directly apply to remains "in limbo" between lifting and reburial, but it has to be good enough for an argument.

I am not so sure it actually clarifies the law. The original application (available on the MoJ website) states that the remains will be reburied at the Cathedral in the 'unlikely event' that they turned out to be the king and that they would be buried within 4 weeks of exhumation. The licence however gives a period of grace up to 2 years and extends the scope of burial or storage place available to the Museum. Based solely upon the original application this appears to give considerable leeway to the MoJ official to decide on conditions, rather than there being a set or established procedure. I am not saying this is wrong (flexibility is a great thing), but what would have happened if the licence had stuck to the original application and the Uni had only been granted 4 weeks between lifting and reburial. I am guessing the documentary would have been a little different....

[P Prentice]

moj almost always say exactly what the professional organisation asking for the licence wants. there is always a caveat for extension of time before reburial - you just gave to have a paper trail.
all a load of jingoistic little england nonsense really

[Dinosaur]

On the upside, contractors have stopped making Time Team comments, now all they want is their own king.....

[Unitof1]

Just wondering if the dna did not turnout to be a match with anybody who claims that they are a relative decendant of rickee if that would mean that the body could not be rickee and by that I mean somebody who claimed to be rickee when they were alive or who the people thought was rickee when they buried rickee in this hole.
They could have plucked anybody off the battlefield. On the dateing side the fact that they machined down onto the shin bone would suggest that there was no stratergraphical evidence that this burial was not buried yesterday. Theres plenty of evidence that this site was looked for by a bunch of history nutters who were well aware of dna matching. The great big R on the tarmac....

I would almost say that this is a crucial piece of logic for the public understanding of archaeological evidence. I would go as far to accuse anybody who does claim that any match of any form, positive or negative, is, and I dont know how to say this out loud but will just have to, a-historian. [SIZE=2]Yes thats what I said. I would say that anybody who could ever unequivically say that this body belongs to rickee or not is a lier and a historian. As an archaeologist I would particularly take great offence if somebody was to bury this body in a grave marked rickee. In many ways the wording of the exhumation liecence cannot be archaeological: the remains will be reburied at the Cathedral in the 'unlikely event' that they turned out to be the king -as only a historian could ever make the claim but the liecence presumably was to an archaeologist(and thats without going into the obvious problems of presuming possible catholic being buried in prodostant cathedrals..)

yes I could have posted this here http://www.bajrfed.co.uk/showthread.php?...ncis-Pryor[/SIZE]

[kevin wooldridge]

I am not sure that the current religious persuasion of the church is a problem. The Church of England has a history dating back unbroken to the 6th century. Leicester Cathedral was when founded a Church of England building practising the Latin rite, and remains a Church of England building, albeit using the Book of Common Prayer to determine its liturgy...

.....but you are right to state some concern with the DNA test. I think what I would like to have seen is a random control sample, a sample from a claimed but unproven descendant, a sample from a member of one the European royal families and the sample from the carpenter from London. At least then the DNA-ist would have been able to say something about the 'uniqueness' of the genetic connection or otherwise. My rough estimate based on an unbroken genetic progression is that there ought to be at least 18,000 living descendants of Elizabeth of York. Seems a shame that the programme didn't suggest how common the bloodline was....

....not that it makes any difference to those of a 'religious' conviction. I have seen religious relics that suggest St Nicholas may have had at least 3 skulls, and enough fragments of the true cross to fill the New Forest etc etc. If believers believe, they will believe that the remains are Richard III...

[Dinosaur]

....My rough estimate based on an unbroken genetic progression is that there ought to be at least 18,000 living descendants of Elizabeth of York. Seems a shame that the programme didn't suggest how common the bloodline was....

Have seen the same query from genetecists online - also someone has queried how many base-pairs they were working from. Will have to wait for the scientific publication.

By your maths, if there are 18k living decendents of Elisabeth of York after 500 years, then presumably she and R3 were only 2 of 18k decendants of someone living around the Norman Conquest?...any of whom could have been at Bosworth - wonder if the spine condition ran in the family too....

[Unitof1]

?...any of whom could have been at Bosworth

and what the chance that if you found somebody who matched the commonly held description of rickee (this is just a hunch) that you pick the body up and parade it around a bit and then somebody more official pops in it a hole. King for the day. Mean while real king who never had the hump lives out life as a gigalo working mainly the sutton coal field. leicester, nuneaten triangle area.

Its not so much that their was 18k decendants around. more like was it that 2fiths of the population in the sutton coal field. leicester, nuneaten triangle area had the same mum skeleton in the cupboard.