Richard III

[liadnan]

Permission granted for the judicial review of the decision re the reburial of King Richard III. Much to my surprise, to be honest.

Comments

[chickenfeet]

I want to know which skeletons they are exchanging...

[mme_hardy]

Wow. The University appears to have been trying to pull a fast one.

[tree_and_leaf]

I don't think they were, reburial in the nearest consecrated earth (in this case Leicester) is a standard condition of exhumation orders, as I understand it.

[mme_hardy]

They made initial promises that there would be public consultation, and then they didn't follow through.

[tree_and_leaf]

Actually, having read what legionseagle posted, it's even worse than that. Sorry!

[legionseagle]

This bit of evidence seems to have carried a great deal of weight:

In an e-mail dated 25th September 2012, the Head of University of Leicester Archaeological Services (Mr Richard Buckley) wrote inter alios [sic, and God alone knows why] to the Head of Leicester Arts and Museums Services (Ms Sarah Levitt) [and] another member of the University (Mr Richard Taylor) stating:“I accept that there are conflicting views of where the reburial should be and that these need to be taken into account.”

Mr Taylor replied: “We should work together to make sure that we retain as much control as possible. I think that the question is ‘Leicester is the plan, are there reasons why not?’ rather than ‘Where should he be reinterred?’.

The Claimant has not (yet) been provided with a copy of Ms Levitt’s reply. Further, an undated press release prepared by the University of Leicester (which has come into the possession of the Claimant) states under the heading “What about alternative locations to Leicester?” as follows:“If and when the identity of the remains are confirmed, there will be an opportunity for the public to comment on the plan.” This sentence does not appear in the press release as published on 14th January 2013. It is not clear why.

[legionseagle]

It may be standard but it doesn't seem to be what the Licence said:

such remains no later than 31st August 2014 “to be deposited at the Jewry Wall Museum or else be reinterred at St Martins Cathedral or in a burial ground in which interments may legally take place”

The suggestion that the skeleton could be put in a museum is not merely inherently shocking but completely contrary to the public statements made by the University about what they were constrained from doing.

[liadnan]

I was slightly taken aback - as someone who had taken an interest both as a devout Ricardian and a lawyer whose expertise does at least touch on this area - by the discrepancy between what I had understood to be the position and what now emerges. Still torn between my personal preference for a York burial and my professional doubt there's much of a case here.

[legionseagle]

That's the thing that hit me on reading the judgement: "Stoney Stratford, Batman, they tried to hijack a King?"

[legionseagle]

On straight legal principles I might be inclined to agree with you, but given Barbara Hewson has just opined that the case "brings the law into disrepute" I suddenly find in myself a passionate desire to die in the last ditch shoulder-to-shoulder with the Plantagenet Alliance...

[liadnan]

Quite.
Always have found her mildly irritating (we know each other by sight) but since her eruption onto twitter... (Ironically the view has semi-seriously been expressed that she ought to be up before the Bastards Board on a charge of bringing the profession into disrepute re her observations on child sex cases.)

[legionseagle]

Although I think her views do, in fact, bring the profession into disrepute (in that were she not a barrister, lay people would find it easier to write her off as either a barking loon or an in-person troll in the David Starkey, Richard Dawkins mode rather than assume she isn't talking out of her wig) I think that would be a terrible idea. "Don't create avoidable martyrs" is my view on that.

[tree_and_leaf]

I take it back, then - I'm rather shocked to learn that.

[legionseagle]

I'm horrified that whoever granted the licence was clearly sufficiently insensitive to the general issues regarding human remains in museums to consider allowing it, let alone once you took into account all the other circumstances.

[tree_and_leaf]

Well, quite so. Why it was allowed, and why the university thought they could get away with asking for it, baffles me.

I never feel comfortable seeing human remains in museums, in any case, though it can be justified sometimes.

*

And then there's the fact that the university were so disingenuous about the terms of the licence they'd applied for; I'm afraid I believed what was being said about reburial in the cathedral being required by the licence, because that is standard practice, and it seemed plausible. I don't know what they were thinking.

[legionseagle]

I particularly liked

18.
Counsel for the Plantagenet Alliance submit
that the law of England is not simply based on “finders keepers”, particularly where the remains of a former King of
England are concerned. There is obvious force in this submission.