Battle over king’s remains provoked legal debate

THE campaign to have the remains of Richard III buried at York Minster has been lost and he will be laid to rest in Leicester Cathedral, judges have ruled. The High Court ruled it is time for the remains “to be given a dignified reburial, and finally laid to rest” in Leicester. Richard’s bones were found under a council car park in Leicester in 2012. In August 1485, Richard, who grew up in Yorkshire, died at the Battle of Bosworth. Three judges rejected an attempt by the Plantagenet Alliance, acting on behalf of the monarch’s distant descendants, to force Justice Secretary Chris Grayling to set up a public consultation exercise to decide where his final resting place should be. Alison Oldfield, a partner at Eversheds, said: “The crux of the legal issue was whether their (the public officials) failure to hold a public consultation or to consult Richard III’s living relatives about those arrangements rendered the decision making process unlawful. That was a high threshold for the Plantagenet Alliance to reach. In the end they did not succeed.”