He was the last king of the Plantagenet dynasty and its cadet branch the House of York. This was during the period known as the Wars of the Roses , an era when two branches of the royal family contested the throne; Edward and Richard were Yorkists. He governed northern England during Edward's reign, and played a role in the invasion of Scotland in Before arrangements were complete for Edward V's coronation, scheduled for 22 June , the marriage of his parents was declared bigamous and therefore invalid.
Now officially illegitimate, Edward and his siblings were barred from inheriting the throne. On 25 June, an assembly of lords and commoners endorsed a declaration to this effect, and proclaimed Richard as the rightful king. He was crowned on 6 July There were two major rebellions against Richard during his reign. Then, in August , Henry Tudor and his uncle, Jasper Tudor , landed in Wales with a contingent of French troops, and marched through Pembrokeshire , recruiting soldiers.
Henry's forces defeated Richard's army near the Leicestershire town of Market Bosworth. Richard was slain, making him the last English king to die in battle. Richard's corpse was taken to the nearby town of Leicester and buried without ceremony. His original tomb monument is believed to have been removed during the English Reformation , and his remains were wrongly thought to have been thrown into the River Soar. The University of Leicester identified the human skeleton found at the site as that of Richard III as a result of radiocarbon dating , comparison with contemporary reports of his appearance, identification of trauma sustained at Bosworth and comparison of his mitochondrial DNA with that of two matrilineal descendants of his sister Anne.
He was reburied in Leicester Cathedral in Richard was born on 2 October , at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire , the eleventh of the twelve children of Richard, 3rd Duke of York , and Cecily Neville , and the youngest to survive infancy.
When their father and elder brother Edmund, Earl of Rutland , were killed at the Battle of Wakefield on 30 December , Richard and George were sent by their mother to the Low Countries. Edward appointed him the sole Commissioner of Array for the Western Counties in when he was By the age of 17, he had an independent command.
