Ongoing Access to Richard's Remains - Rumor or Fact?

religious house. They will stay at the university where they will be prepared for reburial by being preserved in an ossuary box which may enable future exhumation and further scientific examination."

Discussion on the Leicester Cathedral Facebook page also indicated that it was only "very unlikely" that the remains would be exhumed at a future date - no outright denial.

The consultation of the scientific and archaeological community in the best way to preserve the remains - in a "conservation grade container" - suggests that keeping the remains sterile and potentially accessible for further study is an integral part of the actual process and circumstances of the burial.

Consultation with APABE in March 2013 yielded this advice -

"Due to the potential significance suggested by recent media presentation of preliminary scientific results, APABE believes it is in the national interest that decisions about the future deposition of these remains should await completion and peer review of the scientific results.
C If the probability of a positive identification is confirmed, APABE advises that the research potential represented by the remains should be safeguarded and that re-interment of the remains should be arranged in such a way that the possibility of fully justified and properly planned future research in the light of new information and developing scientific techniques is not excluded or compromised."

Dean Monteith denied in a radio interview in June that the remains would be exhumed at any further point but then stated, "It's about treating his remains with the most profound respect. If you just lay him out anatomically in a coffin then of course when he's buried we have no idea what will happen to those remains underground over time, and it would seem a very irresponsible thing to bury him in such a way that would deliberately result in the degradation of those remains. We need to take on-board what the historical conservationists and the archaeologists say in creating an ossuary that will potentially take those bones with the maximum amount of care.

The remains, it seems, are required to not degrade in any way - which does go against the principles of general Christian burial and remains being allowed to be at permanent rest.

All of this and more suggests the remains will be held in a lead-sealed ossuary with the precise intent of keeping them in a state which enables potential re-examination, and allows for the very real possibility of future exhumation for purposes of further scientific study and exploration.

(Other folk have collated some of the quotes above - credit to them)

Two more from the Leicester side - firstly the Cathedral's Rev Alison Adams' talk "Caring for the spirit" from May 2014 (transcript on the KRiL site, also on You Tube) - particularly the passage concerning the journey from the custody of the University (and the remains being "primarily an object of scientific study") to the Cathedral ("their symbolic reinstatement as the mortal remains of a king"). Subject to further details of the reception of the remains into the Cathedral on Sunday March 22nd, this ceremony will include "saying farewell as a major [scientific] chapter in the Richard saga closes."

Secondly, the more temporal Dr Richard Buckley, quoted on the BBC report "Richard III - Why the rows are likely to rumble on" (May 23rd 2014), - "The intention is for the studying of the remains to be of a limited time and for the reinterment to be final. He will not be put on a tray to be pulled out whenever someone asks."

Added to Dean David's statement from June 2014 quoted upthread, that's the custodian, the spiritual and the scientist all saying no to further study of the remains.