Public Parade For Richard III's Skeleton

The remains of King Richard III have been paraded through Leicestershire, more than 500 years after his death in battle.

A number of services and a procession have taken place ahead of the reinterment at Leicester Cathedral on Thursday.

The cortege, which started at Leicester University, transported the former monarch in a specially designed coffin.

It visited key locations associated with the King's last few days before his death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.

Public ceremonies and services were held in Dadlington, Sutton Cheney, Bosworth Battlefield and Market Bosworth before the coffin returned back to Leicester.

More than 600 people gathered along the university exit earlier today, with some bearing flags depicting Richard's royal standard.

As the cortege made its way through country lanes nearing the field of Bosworth, people stopped by the roadside to take pictures.

The remains later arrived back in Leicester at its old medieval boundary of Bow Bridge, before being taken around the city centre and onto the cathedral on top of a horse-drawn carriage.

The man who designed the coffin is a descendant of Richard III who helped identify his remains through DNA testing.

Michael Ibsen said: "It's such a distant connection, 17 generations, that it's difficult to feel a personal element of grief or sadness.

"But I think there will be a quiet sense of rest because he will be at rest in a place that he deserves to be rather than buried under a car park."

Sunday marks the start of a week to commemorate the dead king with his coffin on display until the reburial on Thursday.

The Dean of Leicester Cathedral, the Very Reverend David Monteith, said a lot of planning and thought had gone into the ceremony.

"As people first see the King's coffin it will have huge solemnity as it is carried into this building and we receive it with music from the medieval period.

"It will be very evocative and very moving and something that I will never ever forget."

The skeleton, with severe trauma to the skull, was unearthed on the first day of a three-week dig at the site of an old Franciscan Friary underneath a council car park in 2012.

The remains were found in good condition with the feet missing at a depth of 68cm.

The hands were crossed over the front of the pelvis, and there was no evidence of a coffin or shroud.

Despite a legal battle to rebury the remains in York by a group claiming descent from the King's wider family, a judicial review ordered him to be reinterred in Leicester.

Richard III was the last Plantagenet King of England, a Yorkist defeated by Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII.

He was portrayed by Shakespeare as a hunchback villain but some modern historians argue he was the victim of Tudor propaganda.