Bones held in mortuary chests in Winchester Cathedral could include those of an early English Queen, researchers have found.
The contents of six chests have been analysed and radiocarbon-dated.
University of Bristol biological anthropologists found they contained the remains of at least 23 individuals - several more than originally thought.
One is believed to be that of Queen Emma who was married to kings of England, Ethelred and Cnut.
Although the chests, originally placed near the high altar, had inscriptions stating who was supposed to be within them, it was known the names bore no relation to the actual contents.
The contents had become mixed when the cathedral was ransacked and the bones were scattered by Roundhead soldiers during the English Civil War in 1642.
They were repacked by locals so it was not known whose remains were replaced, or if they were the same bones.
Queen Emma
Born in the 980s, the daughter of Richard I, Duke of Normandy
Married two kings - Æthelred the Unready (reigned 1002-1016) and Cnut the Great (reigned 1017-1035)
Had children including two kings - King Harthacnut (reigned 1040-1042) and Edward the Confessor (reigned 1042-1066)
A key political figure in her own right, she gave the dukes of Normandy a hereditary claim to the English throne, leading to the Norman Conquest in 1066
Described in a Latin inscription on a mortuary chest as the "mother and wife of the kings of the English"
A research project began in 2012 and has dated the contents of the chests to late Anglo-Saxon and early Norman periods.
More than 1,300 bones were reassembled and analysing the sex, age and physical characteristics led researchers to conclude that a mature female's remains could be those of Emma of Normandy. Her bones were found dispersed in several of the chests.
Further DNA analysis is being carried out to confirm the royal identity.
It had originally been thought that the remains of between 12 and 15 high status individuals were held in the chests, however, the research revealed the partial remains of at least 23 people.
There was also an unexpected find of the skeletons of two boys aged between 10 and 15.
Prof Kate Robson Brown said they were "almost certainly of royal blood".
"We cannot be certain of the identity of each individual yet, but we are certain that this is a very special assemblage of bones," she said.
Pic--Emma Day was murdered by her former partner, who had waited outside the school gates for her/bbc
Crime reporter(wp/bbc):::
The family of a woman killed by her ex have criticised the "blasé" attitude of the child maintenance service after she had told it of his violent threats.
A review into her death said the management of her case was "inadequate" and found wider "systemic issues".
Her sister, Lorna McNamara, now wants a full inquest into Ms Day's death.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said it would consider the report's recommendations.
Ms Day and Morris had a child together during their eight-year "on-off" relationship before separating in March 2016.
While making a child maintenance claim in November 2016, Ms Day disclosed a history of domestic violence, which had been reported to the police, a domestic homicide review said.
Two days later she rang the service again to cancel the claim after Morris met her outside her work at King's College Hospital, followed her on to the bus and made violent threats.
Mrs McNamara said: "They [child maintenance] didn't really do anything - they just went 'OK we'll cancel your claim', even though Emma told them why she did so. They were just very blasé about it."
The service then informed him of the cancellation and the pair are believed to have had no contact through the festive period.
Ms Day made a further incomplete claim in January 2017, and when asked by the service on 16 May why it had not been finished, she told them Morris threatened her.
Nine days after that call Morris waited for Ms Day with a knife outside the gates of their child's school in West Norwood before stabbing her to death after they argued over payments.
He was jailed for life after admitting murder at the Old Bailey, when the court was told he had repeatedly threatened to kill Ms Day if she did not cancel the £2,000-a-year child maintenance claim, texting her: "I'll go to prison before you get a penny from me."
As a result of its findings, the report's authors asked the DWP to urgently commission an independent review into the child maintenance service's policy around domestic violence.
It also asked the service to set up a "robust domestic violence training programme".
Mrs McNamara has begun a crowdfunding campaign for an inquest, because "I don't want this to happen to another family".
A DWP spokeswoman said: "Our thoughts are with Ms Day's friends and family.
"The child maintenance service takes the safety of its clients seriously and we will consider the recommendations of this report.
"There are processes and training in place to mitigate risks to people in cases of domestic violence, and we continually review and improve these processes."
Britain’s biggest domestic lender Lloyds Banking Group said on Thursday it would pay dividends quarterly from the first quarter of 2020, in a move aimed at distributing income to its 2.4 million shareholders more regularly and efficiently.
The new approach will see the lender adopt three equal interim ordinary dividend payments for first three quarters of year followed by, subject to performance, a larger final dividend in the fourth quarter, the bank said in a statement. It currently pays out dividends twice a year.
Lloyds is one of Britain’s biggest dividend payers and distributed around 4 billion pounds to investors in 2018.
It paid a total ordinary dividend of 3.21 pence per share in 2018, up 5% on the payout for 2017 and intends to return 1.75 billion pounds to shareholders through a share buy-back this year.
The changes to its dividend policy will not impact the current buyback programme or any future decisions to buyback shares, Lloyds said.
Just 11 firms in the FTSE 100 paid quarterly dividends in 2018, including HSBC, Unilever, BP, GlaxoSmithKline, British American Tobacco, Imperial Brands, Land Securities and British Land.
The supervision of all offenders on probation in England and Wales is being put back in the public sector after a series of failings with the part-privatisation of the system.
It reverses changes made in 2014 by then Justice Secretary Chris Grayling.
All offenders will be monitored by the National Probation Service from December 2020.
It had previously been managing just those posing the highest threat, with low and medium risk offenders monitored by community rehabilitation companies.
Chief probation inspector Dame Glenys Stacey said she was "delighted" about the decision because the model of part-privatisation was "irredeemably flawed", and people would be safer under a system delivered by the public sector.
The National Audit Office - Parliament's spending watchdog - also said that the numbers returning to prison for breaching their licence conditions had "skyrocketed" under part-privatisation.
Justice Secretary David Gauke told the BBC he recognised that "the system isn't working" and renationalisation was the best way to reduce reoffending and rehabilitate people.
But he said there was still a role to be played by private companies, as well as charities.
Under the new system, released prisoners and those serving community sentences will be monitored by staff from the National Probation Service based in eleven new regions.
Each area will have a dedicated private or voluntary sector partner, responsible for unpaid work schemes, drug misuse programmes and training courses.
Payment by results - a key element of Mr Grayling's model - will not be used. The community rehabilitation companies' contracts are not being renewed.
The House of Commons justice committee also expressed "considerable concern" at the time, that companies supervising low and medium risk offenders would not be required to have professionally qualified staff - although Mr Grayling promised employees would have the right skills to manage offenders.
A former prisoner with experience of the system before and after Mr Grayling's reforms spoke to BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"I've now been on probation five, six months and I've seen my probation officer five times. I don't blame the staff because they're just overworked. It's become more about hitting targets, and with that you end up with less time with your probation officer.
"The thing is with me, I've come to a point where I've had enough and I want to do something with my life. And none of that support has come through probation.
"They used to have a work phone number and they used to say, 'if you need to phone me or if there's a problem come up, then you call the probation officers'. They'd ring you back and say, 'is everything alright?', because they'd saved all of our numbers within that phone.
"It felt like there was somebody there for you.
"At the moment, if I want to speak to my probation officer, I have to phone a call centre, who then tries to find my probation officer, so I've gone through two or three people, for basically an email."
Mr Gauke told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We've run into difficulties for complex reasons", including that "the case loads have not been what was anticipated", with more higher-risk cases needing to be dealt with and fewer in the lower-risk categories.
He said there was still a "really important role" to be played by both the private and voluntary sectors, for example in terms of drug rehabilitation and unpaid work.
But when it comes to offender management, "it would be better done if that was a unified model and we bring it under one organisation", he told BBC Breakfast. He added that "the reoffending rate has fallen by a couple of points since 2014".
The MoJ said the reforms announced on Thursday were designed to build on the "successful elements" of the existing system, which led to 40,000 additional offenders being supervised every year.
A former prisoner with experience of the system before and after Mr Grayling's reforms spoke to BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"I've now been on probation five, six months and I've seen my probation officer five times. I don't blame the staff because they're just overworked. It's become more about hitting targets, and with that you end up with less time with your probation officer.
"The thing is with me, I've come to a point where I've had enough and I want to do something with my life. And none of that support has come through probation.
"They used to have a work phone number and they used to say, 'if you need to phone me or if there's a problem come up, then you call the probation officers'. They'd ring you back and say, 'is everything alright?', because they'd saved all of our numbers within that phone.
"It felt like there was somebody there for you.
"At the moment, if I want to speak to my probation officer, I have to phone a call centre, who then tries to find my probation officer, so I've gone through two or three people, for basically an email."
Mr Gauke told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We've run into difficulties for complex reasons", including that "the case loads have not been what was anticipated", with more higher-risk cases needing to be dealt with and fewer in the lower-risk categories.
He said there was still a "really important role" to be played by both the private and voluntary sectors, for example in terms of drug rehabilitation and unpaid work.
But when it comes to offender management, "it would be better done if that was a unified model and we bring it under one organisation", he told BBC Breakfast. He added that "the reoffending rate has fallen by a couple of points since 2014".
The MoJ said the reforms announced on Thursday were designed to build on the "successful elements" of the existing system, which led to 40,000 additional offenders being supervised every year.
Prime Minister Theresa May will come under renewed pressure from senior members of her Conservative Party on Thursday to set out a clear timetable for her departure.
May’s Brexit deal has been rejected three times by parliament and weeks of talks with the opposition Labour Party, the idea of which were deeply unpopular with many Conservatives, have failed to find a consensus on the way forward.
Mired in Brexit deadlock and forced to delay Britain’s March 29 exit from the EU, May’s Conservatives suffered major losses in local elections this month and is trailing in opinion polls before the May 23 European Parliament elections.
The British leader plans to put her deal to a fourth vote in parliament in early June. While she has promised to step down after her agreement is approved by lawmakers, many in her party want her to make clear when she will quit if it isn’t.
“It’s now beyond time for the prime minister to accept that the game is up. Her premiership has failed, and her authority is shot,” Nick Timothy, her former chief of staff, wrote in the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
“Every day wasted from here makes life harder for whoever leads Britain into the future. We need to end this national humiliation, deliver Brexit, and save the Tories (Conservatives). The prime minister, I am sorry to say, must do her duty and stand aside.”
May is due to meet with the executive of her party’s influential 1922 Committee at around 1030 GMT on Thursday. The committee has demanded she set out a clear timetable for her departure in the event her deal is rejected again.
If she refuses, some want to change the rules over when she can be ousted. May survived a no confidence vote in December, and under current party rules cannot be challenged again for a year.
