"He was buried unceremoniously beneath the Greyfriars Church in Leicester, and a monument was eventually placed above his grave. When Henry VIII ordered such houses of worship shut down forty years later, Greyfriars was among the institutions demolished."
"Everyone eventually came to believe that, amid this destruction, Richard's body had been exhumed and tossed off the Bow Bridge. Only in the early two-thousands did a search for his corpse commence in earnest, spearheaded by the Richard III Society."
Shakespeare's Richard III dramatizes the historical king's downfall at the Battle of Bosworth Field, where he is defeated and killed by the Earl of Richmond, who becomes Henry VII. Richard was buried unceremoniously beneath Greyfriars Church in Leicester, with a monument eventually placed above his grave. When Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of monasteries forty years later, Greyfriars was demolished. For centuries, people believed Richard's body had been exhumed and thrown off the Bow Bridge during this destruction. The Richard III Society began a serious search for his remains in the early 2000s, eventually determining the Bow Bridge story was fabricated and working to locate the former site of Greyfriars Church.
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