For Want of a Horse (and perhaps a Conscience) Richard III Lay Lost

The bones of Richard III have been positively identified as those found under a parking lot in Leicester 20 miles from Bosworth Field, where he died. His death effectively ended the War of Roses. This is William Hutton's depiction of the treatment of his body eftsoons the battle (from the Richard III Society):

The body of King Richard being found among the slain, covered with wounds, dust, and blood, after suffering many shameful indignities, was hung over a horse, like a calf, behind a pursuivant at arms, named Blanch Sanglier, or White-boar, the name of his office, he wearing a silver boar upon his coat, the cognizance of Richard, and was carried to Leicester in triumph, that afternoon. The corpse was perfectly naked, the feet hung on one side, the hands on the other, and the head lately adorned with a crown, dangling like a thrum-mop. No King ever made so degraded a spectacle; humanity and decency ought not to have suffered it. Carte says they tied a rope about his neck, which is very probable, and perhaps about his feet, or he could not well have been fastened to the horse. This was meant as a disgrace to Richard, but it reflected more upon Henry, or his followers; for to insult weakness is highly blamable, but more to insult the dead.

The corpse was exposed two days to public view, in the town hall; this was Henry's policy, to prevent a future impostor, and his pride to shew himself a conqueror, and then interred without ceremony, in the Gray-friers' church. Here Richard rested about fifty years, with a scrubby alabaster monument erected over him by Henry. At the destruction of religious houses, his remains were turned out of their little tenement by the town's people, and lost, and his coffin of stone, was converted into a watering trough at the White-Horse, in Gallow-tree-gate. Thus all the grandeur for which Richard exerted uncommon talents, ended in a stile below a beggar.

Perhaps, though, we should take Shakespeare's word of Richard III's current office?

Conscience is but a word that cowards   use,
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe:
Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law!
March on, join bravely, let us to it pell-mell,
If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.

(Richard III to the Duke of Norfolk in Act V, Scene III of Shakespeare's Richard III.) Shakespeare wrote for the victors -- the Red Rosed Red Rosed Tudor, Queen Elizabeth -- and victors almost always assert their enemies took to hell. We should not take the victor's word for it.

Yet referring to Shakespeare does ease my conscience about using "eftsoons."