THE author who discovered the skeleton of King Richard III under a council car park is spearheading a campaign to ensure he receives religious rites while being prepared to be laid to rest.
Philippa Langley, a mother-of-two from Edinburgh and leader of the Looking for Richard Project, is involved in raising a petition to ensure a Catholic coffining which has already attracted thousands of supporters.
The remains of the last Plantagenet are being held by Leicester University who are understood to be restricted by the terms of the exhumation licence.
The earliest results from a petition of the concerned campaigners will be handed over to Cardinal Vincent Nichols at Westminster Cathedral in London.
The organisers are still receiving signatures on their petition for the pre-Reformation king, who was an active member of the Catholic Church, to be prepared for his reburial at Leicester Cathedral.
His Eminence Cardinal Nichols has agreed to receive the petition which has so far raised 3,000 signatures over the last six weeks.
He is being urged to consider an intervention on the issue ahead of the king's ceremonial reinterment in Leicester's Anglican Cathedral in March.
After arriving at Leicester Cathedral, Richard's remains will lie in repose for three days before being reinterred.
His skeleton was discovered under a Leicester council car park in 2012 after a search sparked by Mrs Langley.
Mrs Langley, who gave up an earlier advertising career due to illness before writing about and researching the king whose infamy was compounded by Shakespeare, made the discovery after a search of more than seven years.
She said: "If King Richard were a Jew or a Muslim the appropriate rites and ceremonies would be observed without question.
"But it seems this former king and head of state is to be treated as a scientific specimen right up to and including the point at which he is laid in his coffin."
A group claiming to be distant relatives of the king was granted a judicial review into the licence that gave Leicester the right to reinter his remains, but this was dismissed.
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