[6] In 1459, his father and the Yorkists were forced to flee England, whereupon Richard and his older brother George were placed in the custody of their aunt Anne Neville, Duchess of Buckingham, and possibly of Cardinal Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury.

[26] John Paston's letter of 17 February 1472 makes it clear that George was not happy about the marriage but grudgingly accepted it on the basis that "he may well have my Lady his sister-in-law, but they shall part no livelihood".

[42] Richard was granted the Dukedom of Gloucester on 1 November 1461,[43] and on 12 August the next year was awarded large estates in northern England, including the lordships of Richmond in Yorkshire, and Pembroke in Wales.

[note 3] During the latter part of Edward IV's reign, Richard demonstrated his loyalty to the king,[49] in contrast to their brother George who had allied himself with the Earl of Warwick when the latter rebelled towards the end of the 1460s.

[52] It was said that, having left England in such haste as to possess almost nothing, Edward was forced to pay their passage with his fur cloak; certainly, Richard borrowed three pounds from Zeeland's town bailiff.

[57] Warwick's arrest of local sympathisers prevented them from landing in Yorkist East Anglia and on 14 March, after being separated in a storm, their ships ran ashore at Holderness.

Although it is debatable whether the English victory was due more to internal Scottish divisions rather than any outstanding military prowess by Richard,[89] it was the last time that the Royal Burgh of Berwick changed hands between the two realms.

[91] On 29 April, as previously agreed, Richard and his cousin, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, met Queen Elizabeth's brother, with Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, at Northampton.

"[96] In Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, he accounts that "little by little all folke withdrew from the Tower, and drew unto Crosbies in Bishops gates Street, where the Protector kept his houshold.

[118][note 5] Davies has suggested that it was "only the subsequent parliamentary attainder that placed Buckingham at the centre of events", to blame a disaffected magnate motivated by greed, rather than "the embarrassing truth" that those opposing Richard were actually "overwhelmingly Edwardian loyalists".

[152] According to a discredited tradition, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, his body was thrown into the River Soar,[154][155] although other evidence suggests that a memorial stone was visible in 1612, in a garden built on the site of Greyfriars.

[159] It officially became part of the royal council machinery under the presidency of John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln in April 1484, based at Sandal Castle in Wakefield.

[161][162] He founded the College of Arms in 1484,[114][115] he banned restrictions on the printing and sale of books,[163] and he ordered the translation of the written Laws and Statutes from the traditional French into English.

[173] The last legitimate male Plantagenet, Richard's nephew Edward, Earl of Warwick (son of his brother George, Duke of Clarence), was executed by Henry VII in 1499.

John Stow talked to old men who, remembering him, said "that he was of bodily shape comely enough, only of low stature"[187][incomplete short citation] and a German traveller, Nicolas von Poppelau, who spent ten days in Richard's household in May 1484, describes him as "three fingers taller than himself...much more lean, with delicate arms and legs and also a great heart.

[202] In 1525, Cardinal Wolsey upbraided the aldermen and Mayor of London for relying on a statute of Richard to avoid paying an extorted tax (benevolence) but received the reply "although he did evil, yet in his time were many good acts made.

[206] Hume acknowledged that some historians have argued "that he was well qualified for government, had he legally obtained it; and that he committed no crimes but such as were necessary to procure him possession of the crown", but he dismissed this view on the grounds that Richard's exercise of arbitrary power encouraged instability.

In the words of Charles Ross, "the later fifteenth century in England is now seen as a ruthless and violent age as concerns the upper ranks of society, full of private feuds, intimidation, land-hunger, and litigiousness, and consideration of Richard's life and career against this background has tended to remove him from the lonely pinnacle of Villainy Incarnate on which Shakespeare had placed him.

[223] Neither of the two plays places any emphasis on Richard's physical appearance, though the True Tragedy briefly mentions that he is "A man ill shaped, crooked backed, lame armed" and "valiantly minded, but tyrannous in authority".

[247][248] By comparing fixed points between maps, the church was found, where Richard's body had been hastily buried without pomp in 1485, its foundations identifiable beneath a modern city centre car park.

[249] In 1975 Audrey Strange of the Richard III Society predicted that the lost grave lay beneath one of the three car parks that partly cover the site of the former Grey Friars Priory.

[250] In the mid-1980s, academic David Baldwin, a medieval historian formerly of Leicester University, concluded that the burial site lay further to the east, beneath the northern (St Martin's) end of Grey Friars Street, or the buildings that face it on either side.

The angle of the blow on the pelvis suggests that one of those present stabbed Richard's right buttock with substantial force, as the cut extends from the back to the front of the pelvic bone, an action intended to humiliate.

[259][260][261] British historian John Ashdown-Hill had used genealogical research in 2004 to trace matrilineal descendants of Anne of York, Duchess of Exeter, Richard's elder sister.

[262][263][264][265] A British-born woman who emigrated to Canada after the Second World War, Joy Ibsen (née Brown), was found to be a 16th-generation great-niece of the king in the same direct maternal line.

This conclusion was based on mitochondrial DNA evidence,[274] soil analysis, and dental tests (there were some molars missing as a result of caries), as well as physical characteristics of the skeleton which are highly consistent with contemporary accounts of Richard's appearance.

[279] On 11 February 2014 the University of Leicester announced the project to sequence the entire genome of Richard III and one of his living relatives, Michael Ibsen, whose mitochondrial DNA confirmed the identification of the excavated remains.

[284] Those who challenged the decision included fifteen "collateral [non-direct] descendants of Richard III",[285] represented by the Plantagenet Alliance, who believed that the body should be reburied in York, as they claim the king wished.

It sits on a low plinth made of dark Kilkenny marble, incised with Richard's name, dates and motto (Loyaulte me lie – loyalty binds me).

During his reign, Richard was styled Dei Gratia Rex Angliae et Franciae et Dominus Hiberniae (by the Grace of God, King of England and France and Lord of Ireland).