Mayor, dignitaries and thousands of people turn out to welcome remains of the king back to the city after extraordinary journey

In the long shadows of a golden evening, after an extraordinary day when the cortege of a man who died more than 500 years ago passed through country lanes and suburban streets lined with hundreds of thousands of people, the remains of a king came back to Leicester.

“King Richard, may you rest in peace in Leicester”, the city mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby said, standing on Bow Bridge, which the last Plantagenet crossed as a battered naked corpse in 1485, his crown, his life and his dynasty lost on the battlefield at Bosworth.

On that August day his body was described by Thomas More as “a miserable spectacle”, slung “like a hogge or a calfe, the head and armes hangyng on the one side of the horse and the legs on the other side”.

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This time the mayor and councillors and other dignitaries turned out in their finest to welcome him, at the spot where legend said his bloodied head struck the same stone his spur knocked as he rode out to his last battle. It was a city Richard would no longer recognise from the medieval town he knew, Soulsby said, but it was true to its motto, always steadfast. “We welcome King Richard back to Leicester,” he said, “now greeted by us with honour and dignity.”

For the last short part of his journey, from the bridge to the cathedral where he will be buried on Thursday, the golden oak coffin was transferred to a horse drawn hearse to carry it through the crowded streets.

Every seat for the solemn and moving service of compline in the cathedral was allocated months ago, and it was completely full more than an hour before the start. Living royalty, the Duke of Gloucester who now holds the title that was once Richard’s, joined the congregation to hear the Dean David Monteith, and Bishop of Leicester Tim Stevens, formally receive “our brother Richard”.

The order of service looked as if the tragedy of Bosworth and the regime change it led to, when the crown which fell from Richard’s dying head was placed on that of Henry Tudor, had never happened.

The cover read “for the reception of the Remains of King Richard III by the grace of God King of England and France and Lord of Ireland.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest King Richard III’s coffin inside Leicester cathedral where he will be reburied. Photograph: Richard Vernalls/PA

The sermon was by the Roman Catholic cardinal Vincent Nichols, who said Richard was a child of war, who could have known little peace in his short life, but was also “a man of prayer, a man of anxious devotion”.

The long day began with another service, at the University of Leicester, a leave-taking by the academics and scientists who have studied and cared for the fragile bones since they were excavated in a scruffy council car park in August 2012.

Hundreds of members of the public came, too, for the first sight of the strikingly plain coffin, made by a man with an intimate role in the story. Michael Ibsen, a Canadian now living in London, is also Richard’s 16th great nephew, and sat beside a New Zealander, Wendy Duldig, his rediscovered distant cousin. Both are directly descended from Richard’s sister Anne of York, but since neither has children, the line stops with them: the sciences of DNA and genealogy came together just in time to identify the bones from the car park.

In 1485 Richard was apparently buried naked, in a position of honour near the altar of the long demolished Greyfriars church, but in a roughly dug grave too short even for his slight frame.

This time, inside the inner lead casket, the bones were laid out and packed into position with English wool and linen, and covered with an unbleached linen cloth, hand-embroidered with his white rose and white boar symbols. A potent symbol of his Catholic faith, rosary beads presented by the historian John Ashdown-Hill, whose research led to the search for the king’s body, were placed in the coffin.

However, after discussion with the cathedral authorities, Ashdown-Hill was not allowed to add a relic of the True Cross, and a relic of St Francis which he wanted to keep Richard company. “I dont know why ,” he said, “too Catholic, or too confusing for the next archaeologists who find him in hundreds of years time.”

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The streets were almost deserted when the cortege left the university, with few carrying their newspapers and milk even pausing to glance at as it passed. But once the procession got out into the countryside and the little villages and towns around the battlefield, the crowds gathered steadily.

The first stop was at Fenn Lane farm, where a marshy field was identified by archaeologists as the scene of the last fatal moments of Richard’s last battle. The concrete yard had been scrubbed till it gleamed. In brilliant sunshine, as church bells rang out from Crown Hill where Henry Tudor was crowned with Richard’s crown taken up from the battlefield, the farmer Alf Oliver took a handful of earth from his own field, and added it to soil brought from Fotheringhay where Richard was born, and Middleham in Yorkshire where he met his wife Anne and lived for many years.

The mingled soils, blessed by Rev Hilary Surridge, will go into Richard’s tomb in Leicester and the casket will later go on display at the nearby battlefield centre. Philippa Langley led the prayers for all those from both sides who fell at Bosworth, and for the generations of farmers who have filled the peaceful fields since.

When the cortege left it had become a much more impressive spectacle for the people – adults, children in crowns and princess cloaks, labradors wearing Richard’s colours – now lining the narrow road. The procession was led by two knights herald, in armour almost blindingly bright in the sunshine, towering figures mounted on a black and a white horse, vivid representation of the spectacle their ancestors would have witnessed on the day of battle, at least until the shining army became a bloody rout.

The road led on to tiny Dadlington, usual population fewer than 300, packed with more than 5000 people. Many had walked there as miles of country roads were closed for the procession, and a whole day of activities was organised on the village green – solemn until the cortege passed, slowing to a standstill where it passed the graveyard where hundreds of the battle dead lie buried.

At the battlefield heritage centre so many people from all over the world applied for tickets that the website crashed and thousands of ticket applications were processed by phone. Young army cadets dragged the coffin on a bier – after months of anxious rehearsals – up the slope of Ambion Hill, where the outdoor service ended in a 21-gun salute so loud it set some children crying and dogs barking in the crowd.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The coffin containing the remains of King Richard III is carried in procession. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The crowds along the route continued to swell all afternoon – joined at Sutton Cheney by one of the few signs of the controversy that has marked the plans for the reburial. Shaun Dixon, a taxi driver from Leeds, brought two white roses and a sign reading: “If the king can’t come from Yorkshire, Yorkshire will come to the king.” He should “absolutely” have been buried in Yorkshire, and in a Roman Catholic church, he said.

On the outskirts of Leicester the streets were packed, with showers of white roses thrown onto the hearse, and fences decorated with homemade bunting and flags. People stood on walls, garage roofs and bus shelters for a better view. One man brought a brown cardboard sign reading: “Bury the rest of the monarchy too.”

There has been passionate argument over every detail of the ceremonies, from a legal challenge by distant relatives who insisted he should have been buried in York, to those who found spending £2.5m on remodelling the cathedral and organising the event scandalous at a time of austerity. Others see Richard as such a villainous historical figure that he does not deserve such attention and honour. Paul Lay, editor of History Today magazine, describes Richard as “one of the worst of all English monarchs, a usurper who ordered the killing of children” and finds the fuss extraordinary. “What is being celebrated?” he asked.

Bishop Stevens acknowledged Richard’s “contested reputation’” to the Guardian, but insisted it was a privilege for everyone in Leicester to be part of what he called “the great drama of Richard III’s reinterment … a moment when, as a nation, we can touch a critical moment in our story, recalling the intense conflict of the wars of the Roses and the fundamental shift in the monarchy of the late Middle Ages.”

The coffin will lie in the cathedral, guarded night and day but open to the public to come and pay their respects, until the last solemn service of an extraordinary week, his reinterment on Thursday.