King Richard III was King of England from 1483 until his death in 1485 in the Battle of Bosworth Field, he was 32-years-old. King Richard III was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. He was also the last King of England to die in battle. His defeat at Bosworth Field, the last decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses, marked the end of the Middle Ages in England.

In 1485, the defeated king’s body is said to have been slung naked over a horse and taken to Leicester, where it was put on public display for three days before being crammed into a small plot in the Grey Friars Church. A half-millennia later his body was discovered under a parking lot which overlay the former gravesite.

Leicester, England (CNN)—”God save King Richard!” A cry rings out in the bright spring air as the simple oak coffin of Richard III is carried away from the tower block-filled campus of the University of Leicester for the final time.

The medieval monarch’s skeleton has been kept at the university since its discovery beneath a council car parking lot in the city sparked excitement around the world in August 2012.

But on Sunday the bones — which have been studied by archaeologists and experts from all fields in the years since — ended their tenure as scientific specimens and became, once more, the mortal remains of a king.

Some 35,000 people lined the streets of Leicester and the surrounding towns and villages as the cortege wound its way through the countryside to the site of Richard’s final battle, Bosworth, where he died in 1485, before returning to the city for a commemoration at Leicester Cathedral.

The day began on the freshly-mown lawns in front of the university’s Fielding Johnson Building, where a crowd gathered for a solemn service of farewell, dignitaries dressed in their Sunday best alongside students and local families clad in jeans and waterproof jackets in case of a March shower. (read more with video)