KING Richard III died in the thick of battle after losing his helmet and coming under a hail of blows from vicious medieval weapons, new research has shown.

Detailed scans of the king's bones show that he sustained eleven wounds at or near the time of his death, nine of them to the skull.

The blows to the head were clearly inflicted in battle and suggest that he was not wearing his helmet.

There was another potentially fatal injury to the pelvis that may have been inflicted after death.

Professor Guy Rutty, from the University of Leicester, said: "The most likely injuries to have caused the King's death are the two to the inferior aspect of the skull - a large sharp force trauma possibly from a sword or staff weapon, such as a halberd or bill, and a penetrating injury from the tip of an edged weapon.

"Richard's head injuries are consistent with some near-contemporary accounts of the battle, which suggest he abandoned his horse after it became stuck in a mire and was killed while fighting his enemies."

King Richard III was the last English monarch to die fighting, perishing at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. It was the last significant battle of the Wars of the Roses, the civil war between the Houses of Lancaster and York, and paved the way for the Tudor dynasty.

Scientists have been studying the King's remains since his skeleton was found buried under a car park in Leicester following a search instigated by Edinburgh-based Philippa Langley, secretary of the Scottish Branch of the Richard III Society. An image of his face was later created by experts at Dundee University, led by Caroline Wilkinson, Professor of Craniofacial Identification,

The latest research is published in The Lancet medical journal's online edition.