2nd October: Richard III

King Richard III was born on this date in 1452. He's been in the news more recently because his remains were found buried under a car park in Leicester. 10 things you might not know about Richard III:

1. He was only king for two years, from 1483 to 1485.
2. Richard III has a reputation of being treacherous and disfigured, but it's likely he wasn't as bad as he was painted. Some of it may have been propaganda put about by the Tudors to gain support for their own claims to the throne.
3. It's possible he had his nephews (the Princes in the Tower) killed so that he could take the throne, but no-one knows what actually happened to the princes and whether Richard III was responsible for their deaths or not.
4. He did do some good things. He introduced the Court of Requests, a court to which poor people who could not afford legal representation could apply for their grievances to be heard. He also introduced the concept of bail into English law to protect people from being imprisoned and their assets seized before they had been properly tried.
5. He banned restrictions on the printing and sale of books.
6. If not for Richard III legal documents could all be written in Latin and UK court proceedings could still take place in French. Richard III was the one who made English the official language of his courts of law.
7. He was a champion of the North of England and set up a Council of the North to improve conditions there.
8. He did have a deformity of the spine. Studies of his skeleton have found he had idiopathic scoliosis which caused a curvature of the spine. Doctors said it probably didn't cause him major problems and it was likely he could disguise it with clothing.
9. He died on 22nd August 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth. He was the last King of England to be killed in battle. Richard’s body, discovered in 2013, was found to be wounded in 10 places. He had 8 head wounds and part of his skull had been hacked away (probably by a sword blade).
10. His body was famously found under a Leicester car park in 2012. Once the scientific analysis of his remains were done, the argument started over where he should be re-buried. Some said it should be Westminster Abbey, where his wife is buried; others said it should be York Minster because that is what he would have wanted. In the end, the High Court were involved and concluded that his body should remain in Leicester. So from March 2015, he will lie in Leicester Cathedral in a new tomb.