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ARTICLE · 03 SEPTEMBER 2013

Do Let's Avoid An Unseemly Legal Tussle Over Royal Remains

Borden Ladner Gervais LLP
Borden Ladner Gervais LLP
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Richard III's distant relatives seek judicial review on the Secretary of State's decision regarding the burial.

CanadaGovernment, Public Sector

Human remains were discovered underneath a municipal car park in Leicester in 2012. DNA testing confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that the excavated skeleton was that of King Richard III, the last monarch of the house of Plantagenet (defeated and killed at the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, the culmination of the War of the Roses between the Yorkist and Lancastrian lines of the dynasty). The University of Leicester, which had conducted the dig, applied to the Secretary of State for a licence to re-inter the remains of the crouchback king (the skeleton showed signs of scoliosis) in Leicester cathedral in accordance with the Burial Act 1857. All well and good, one would have thought, until the Plantagenet Alliance Ltd challenged the granting of the licence. The Alliance, composed of collateral descendants of the king, want the royal body to be buried in York, Richard III having been the last of the Yorkists.

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