British Royal Tombs

British Royal Tombs Aidan Dodson

Plaster model of the skull of Robert I the Bruce, made by William Scoular during the investigation of the tomb in 1819. The ‘coffin plate’ on the podium proved to be a forgery, produced at the time of the exhumation (see pp. 170-72)

Contents

Preface to first edition 9

Preface to second edition 15

Introduction 23

part one

The early English kingdoms 49

England 77

Scotland 157

United Kingdom 185

part two

The known tombs of the royal consorts 199

The Stuarts in exile 211

Foreign monarchs buried in Great Britain 215

part three

Gazetteer of the principal chapels, churches and mausolea that contain royal tombs 217

Chronology of the rulers of Great Britain 268

Summary genealogies of the rulers of Great Britain 278

General bibliography and list of works cited 285

Bibliography of individual royal burials 299

Sources of illustrations 305

Index 307

Iona, the burial place of many Scottish kings towards the end of the nineteenth century

Preface to first edition

The visitor to the royal chapels at Westminster, Windsor, and elsewhere, sees many tombs and memorial tablets to the deceased kings and queens of Great Britain, but is left to imagine the manner in which their bodies lie below. The general impression is that they are situated ‘in the vault’, but in fact there are a variety of installations. Some are indeed in what is popularly envisaged as a ‘vault’ – a large chamber with shelves to hold the coffins along the walls. However, some simply lie in small cavities below the floor, others in stone sarcophagi that stand in full view of the public.

Within their sarcophagi, vault or grave, royal bodies have undergone various treatments before burial. In more recent times, the closure of the lead-lined coffin has been preceded by, if anything, no more than an injection of formaldehyde, but in earlier years, other treatments took place. At one extreme, the flesh of Henry V was boiled off the bones. More generally, the internal organs were removed and the flesh treated with spices in a process akin to the Ancient Egyptian practice of mummification. As in Egypt, the removed organs were placed in a separate chest or urn that was laid at the feet of the coffin – a coffin which, down to Stuart times, would be shaped like a wrapped human being. Having been interred, the royal dead were not necessarily left in peace, being exhumed for religious, political or other reasons, or disturbed when the building in which they lay was rebuilt or demolished. Also, throughout the ages, antiquarians or the curious have opened a number of the tombs to examine or verify their contents. It is from these researches that much of what we know of the structure of many of the earlier graves is known. This book aims to provide a concise digest of all that has been learned from these various activities, as well as other avenues of

Opposite: Skull and glove of Richard II, drawn by George Scharf on the occasion of the tomb’s investigation in 1871

‘A curious wish their fancies tickled/To know how Royal folk were pickled’. These antiquaries satirized by Rowlandson in 1816 are opening the coffin of Edward I at Westminster (see pp. 104-5)

research to provide a rounded account of all the tombs for which details can be traced.

In spite of the apparently perennial popular fascination with royalty, published data are decidedly spotty. A comprehensive, although rather summary and occasionally inaccurate, list of royal tombs in England is given in Greenwood 1990: 19-64. Mediæval tombs are treated in some detail in Steane 1993: 41-70, and in Duffy’s superb 2003 volume, but earlier and later examples are omitted, and quite a lot of archæological material is passed over. Bland 1986 covers royal burials since Elizabeth I, but more from their social/historical and ceremonial perspectives, and contains a number of errors concerning the tombs themselves; a similar ‘socio-political’ discussion is found for the late Saxon kings in Marafioti 2014. Some additional material is included in Litten 1991, but this covers royal material only in passing. All the foregoing effectively ignore Scottish interments. A number of nineteenth century works exist, the most complete being Wall 1891. While containing a considerable amount of material not easily accessible elsewhere, it suffers from a number of inaccuracies, over-credibility when dealing with traditional sources and lacks any kind of bibliography or useable indication of sources. We also have Stanley 1882, which gives a fairly

comprehensive account of the author’s researches amongst the royal tombs in the Abbey, albeit written (as is Wall’s book) in the worst kind of flowery Victorian prose that does much to obscure necessary detail. Otherwise we seem to have only widely scattered nineteenth century and earlier accounts of disinterments and examinations, together with a handful of modern works on particular sites, of which John Crook’s works on Winchester are models of their kind.

Thus, much leg-work far from the library has been necessary, and a range of institutions and individuals deserve my thanks for their contributions to my research: The Most Reverend Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh; John Burton (Surveyor of the Fabric, Westminster Abbey); Sister Margaret Connor (St Margaret’s Convent, Edinburgh); John Crook (Winchester); Martin R. Davies; Frank Davies (Chairman, Kings Langley Local History & Museum Society); Enid Davies, (Assistant Archivist, St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle); Don and Edna Dodson (for reading the manuscript); Mark A. Hall (Perth Museum and Art Gallery); Sheila Hilton; Bob Partridge; Elinor C. Murphy (Librarian, Shaftesbury Abbey & Museum Preservation Trust); His late Grace the 17th Duke of Norfolk; José-Ramon Pérez-Accino for translations from the Spanish; Ken Qualmann (Winchester Museums Service); the Library of the Society of Antiquaries of London for access to the Doyne Bell MSS, which contain many useful notes and offprints relating to British royal tombs; the Rev. Mark Tanner (Vicar of St Mary’s, Wheatley); the Dean and Chapter of Westminster for access to the material housed in Abbey’s Library and Muniment Room; the Dean and Canons of Windsor.

Finally, my special thanks go to my wife, Dyan, for proof reading and our many days in and around the royal cemeteries of England, Scotland, Germany and France, in weather fair and (frequently) foul, and also to my dear friend, Dr Salima Ikram, whose casual enquiry of me in St George’s Chapel well over a decade ago started this whole chain of research. Salima: this is your answer!

Department of Archæology & Anthropology

University of Bristol

The Prince Regent visiting the recently discovered vault with the coffins of Charles I and Henry VIII, on 1 April 1813. Sir Henry Halford, physician to the king, holds up the body of Henry VIII. The Regent later gave him relics of Charles I removed from the coffin – the fourth cervical vertebra, with axe marks, a tooth and a fragment of his beard,

all returned by descendants laters in the century. Behind the Regent stands his Irish private secretary John McMahon, who was not in fact present at the scene, and the Devil rises from below. Caricature by George Cruikshank, May 1813.

Preface to second edition

It is now over a decade since the first edition of this book was published, and a number of years since it fell out of print and second-hand copies began to be made available at silly prices. Accordingly, I am delighted to have been given the opportunity to produce this second edition. In doing so, I have both been able to cover new archæological discoveries, in particular the rediscovery of the body of Richard III, the latest fruits of archival research and to correct, expand or update various other points from the original version; I have also expanded the bibliography. In doing so, I am most indebted to Tim Tatton-Brown for sharing his own research and pointing me at sources that might otherwise have eluded me. My thanks also go to an anonymous correspondent from Leicester for pointing out other slips that I have taken the opportunity of this second edition to correct, and also David Palliser for pointing out a number of errors and new interpretations that I would otherwise have missed.

I dedicate this edition additionally to my late father, Don Dodson, who first took me to Windsor Castle and its royal tombs as a child and who died shortly after the first edition was published, having read it in draft but not, sadly, in its final form.

Department of Anthropology & Archæology University of Bristol

Opposite: No monuments were provided for any royal tombs subsequent to those of Mary and Elizabeth I. However, designs were prepared in a number of cases, and this drawing by Grinling Gibbons shows a proposed memorial to William III and Mary II, to be placed close to the Stuart vault in Westminster Abbey. It includes a baroque triumphal arch with statues of the couple on a pedestal behind a sarcophagus, with Corinthian columns and, in front, figures symbolizing Hope, Justice, Truth and Charity.

The funerary mound at Sutton Hoo that housed the burial of a late pagan king, most probably Rædwald

The quire of Winchester Cathedral, where the bones of many of England’s earliest kings lie in funerary chests above the screen

A service in the Confessor’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey. Behind the tomb of Edward the Confessor is the entrance to Henry V’s Chantry; in the foreground are the tombs of Henry III and Edward I

Introduction

Roman rule in Great Britain ended around the beginning of the fifth century AD, and it was during the latter part of that century that the first of the dozen or so Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms came into existence. Knowledge of the posthumous fate of their kings only begins to come into focus in the seventh century. The pagan tradition is embodied in the East Anglian necropolis of Sutton Hoo, with its great mounds concealing ship burials of a type also to be seen across the North Sea. That of emerging Christianity can be seen in the churches erected by newly converted monarchs, many of which would become dynastic cemeteries. Perhaps the best example of the latter is to be seen at Winchester, where the church built by Cenewalh was the first of a series on roughly the same site that would provide the principal burial place of the kings of Wessex, and later England, for four centuries.

In Scotland, the holy isle of Iona is reputed to have received almost every one of the Scots kings down to the eleventh century, although explicit chronicles only survive in certain cases. The English kingdoms generally had one or two favoured burial places, although certain kings, for the better repose of their souls, endowed anew a monastery and church to hold their bodies. The same pattern continued following the English unification, and from the eleventh century in Scotland. Thus, while the largest proportion of interments took place respectively at Westminster and Dunfermline, many others took place in abbeys and cathedrals around the realms, some of which only ever received a single kingly burial.

After the accession of James VI of Scotland as James I of England, however, the pattern greatly simplified, with Westminster becoming, until the nineteenth century, the almost universal

Opposite: Westminster Abbey: one end of the Confessor’s Chapel, with part of his tomb on the right. To the left is the entrance to the Chantry of Henry V, (left) lying above his tomb, which is behind the grille

Henry VI prays at the tomb of St Edmund King and Martyr in Bury St Edmunds. This was one of the richest religious institutions in the land, and a prime target during the Dissolution of the Monasteries; virtually nothing remains of the buildings, and the magnificent shrine and other treasures are all completely lost.

burial place of the monarchs of the united kingdoms. Even Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell was interred there However, from George III onwards, the royal family’s ‘home town’ of Windsor took over the role, and it is there that the most recent kingly burials, those of George VI and the former Edward VIII, have taken place.

However, while the broad facts of the last resting places of Britain’s monarchs are clear, when one delves deeper into the detail of the story of the British royal tomb the unevenness of the evidence rapidly becomes apparent. In some cases, a king’s bones can be traced over a period of some one-and-a-half millennia; in others, they are lost to sight after only a generation or two. The ‘fault line’ governing the survival of many royal interments comes in the sixteenth century, when the upheavals of the Reformation resulted in the destruction of many monastic establishments and,

incidentally, the royal tombs housed within. Ironically, it was those monarchs who had founded new religious houses to aid the eternal repose that suffered worst from the politically-inspired depredations of Henry VIII and the religiously-driven ones of the Scottish Presbyterians. Thus, their sepulchral abbeys were stripped of their riches and either demolished or allowed to fall into ruin, the royal monuments going the same way as the rest of their furnishings.

What is most striking about this destruction is that it occurred while the descendants of the desecrated were still ruling in England and Scotland – indeed, in the latter case being of the same dynasty as the victims. In contrast, the treatment of the royal tombs during the Commonwealth was remarkably mild. Some of the mortuary chests in Winchester Cathedral were pulled down and their contents thrown around, while the tomb of Æthelred II in St Paul’s was broken open, but the executed Charles I was allowed honourable burial and the tombs of Westminster and Windsor left unmolested.

Such magnanimity was not, however, shown by Charles II to Oliver Cromwell, whose body, together with those of other Commonwealth worthies buried in Westminster Abbey, was exhumed at the Restoration. Cromwell’s corpse was one of three taken to the gallows at Tyburn, hanged and then decapitated.

Retribution visited upon the regicides: a composite image showing the exhumation, decapitation and exposure of the corpses on Tyburn Tree. The heads of Cromwell, Ireton and Bradshaw can just be seen on pikes above the Banqueting House in the background. This early 18th century Dutch image shows how the episode continued to fascinate

A 19th century view of the ruins of Holyrood Abbey, the burial place of many Scots kings, also pillaged at various times for nominally religious reasons

The skull of Richard III, with evidence of the fatal injuries sustained at the Battle of Bosworth, and of the violence done to his corpse

were thrown in the River Soar and that Richard’s coffin became a cattle trough. On the other hand, a squat pillar inscribed as marking Richard’s burial place was in 1612 to be seen in the house of Robert Herrick, Mayor of Leicester. This lay on the former site of the Grey Friars Abbey, which was firmly identified by excavations in 2012. These also uncovered in the quire the skeleton of a man who had suffered from severe scoliosis (curvature of the spine), which would have made the right shoulder appear visibly higher than the left. It had suffered perimortem trauma including to the back of the skull consistent with a wound caused by a bladed implement. Subsequent analysis showed the remains possessed mitochondrial DNA identical with that of a living descendant of Richard’s sister, Anne of York, confirming the identification of the remains with the king.

The remains were stored at the University of Leicester while a judicial review ruled on their place of re-interment, a dispute having arisen between the original intent of burial in Leicester Cathedral and a proposal that York Minster would be more appropriate to the king’s career. The review ruled on 23 May 2014 in favour of the former burial place, and the skeleton was accordingly interred there on 26 March 2015.

Detail of effigy of Henry VII (from cast)

House of Tudor

HENRY VII (1457-1509; r. 1483-1509)

The great-great-great-grandson of Edward III, Henry held himself to be the Lancastrian heir following the death of Henry VI and successfully usurped the throne from Richard III in 1483. His marriage with Elizabeth of York united the two lines of the royal family, thus ending the ‘Wars of the Roses’. Henry died at Richmond Palace, Surrey, on 21 April 1509.

Interment and Tomb

Henry VII’s original plan was to be interred at Windsor, alongside his Lancastrian ‘predecessor’, Henry VI. Work began on rebuilding Henry III’s chapel to the east of Edward IV’s chapel as a ‘tomb-house’, but was never completed, Henry VI’s body now being due for translation to Westminster, Henry VII intended

to follow. A number of payments were made from 1501 towards the actual monument, but in 1502/3 the material was then moved to Westminster; these seem to have been parts of the screen that was to surround the tomb.

At Westminster, the old Lady Chapel was demolished and replaced by a new structure, initially intended to hold the translated corpse of Henry VI at its eastern end, with Henry VII’s tomb in the centre of the chapel, before the altar and opposite the tomb of his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, in the south aisle. Ultimately, however, Henry VII’s tomb was placed in the eastern position by Henry VIII, possibly to make room for his own tomb to the west. Made by Pietro Torrigiano of Florence, at a total cost of £1,500, Henry VII’s monument comprised a black marble tomb-chest, ornamented with copper-gilt, and surmounted by the bronze-gilt recumbent

Opposite, top: Windsor, the Albert Chapel, begun by Henry VII as a Lady Chapel to house his own tomb and that of Henry VI, abandoned in favour of Westminster but then adapted – though ultimately never employed – as the mausoleum of Henry VIII. It was decorated as a Roman Catholic chapel by James II & VII, stripped out when the George III Vault was built below and finally completed and decorated as a memorial to Albert, Prince Consort, nearly five centuries after it had been begun

Opposite, bottom: The Henry VII Chapel, Westminster Abbey, in 1896. Begun in 1503, it shows Henry VII’s determination to create a mausoleum of unprecedented magnificence and modernity. Seen here at the same angle as the Albert Chapel above, the basic structure can be seen to be similar, though almost overwhelmed by the richness of the decoration. The ceiling inside was as innovatory, and extravagant.

Tomb of Henry VII seen from the foot. It was designed and cast by the Florentine sculptor, Pietro Torrigiano, also known for having broken Michelangelo’s nose when they were apprentices together. The angels supporting the coats of arms originally carried pennants in their other hands. The grille is by Thomas Ducheman, originally gilt like the tomb figures, and on special occasions was crowned by nine-foot high candles

figures of the king and queen. The whole, finished on 5 January 1518-19, was surrounded by a massive brass screen. Henry and Elizabeth’s coffins were placed (hers after initial burial elsewhere in the Abbey) in a vault below the monument, 2.7 metres long, 1.5 wide and 1.4 high. Their anthropoid leaden coffins were both adorned with Maltese crosses, his also bearing a coffin-plate.

Post-interment history

The vault was opened in 1625 for the burial of James VI & I, during which the wooden outer coffins of both Henry and Elizabeth were stripped off to make room for the additional interment, leaving just the leaden inner cases. It is possible that their visceral urns were moved to the nearby vault of General Monck. The tomb was opened and examined by Dean Stanley in February 1869.

The entrance to the vault of Henry VII, as revealed in February 1869

Plan of Winchester Cathedral, showing the two earlier minsters

W I N C HESTER

‘Old Minster’

The history of the great churches of Winchester is a complex one. The city was the original capital of Wessex and so England, many kings from the first conversion to Christianity being buried there. What later came to be called the ‘Old Minster’ was begun in the seventh century, just west of the royal palace, being dedicated by King Cenwalh who was buried in the vicinity of its High Altar in 674.

The tenth century saw the enclosure of the grave of Swithun, who had been Bishop from 852 865 and would soon be canonised, and other by major alterations to the structure of the church. It continued to be the burial place of many of the kings of Wessex and England, their bodies being concentrated around the High Altar and, perhaps, after the translation of St Swithun’s bones into a shrine in 971, around his former grave in the outer part of the church as well. It is possible that earlier royal burials were actually moved to this latter area. The Old Minster achieved its final form around 993-94.

Following the Conquest, an entirely new church, the present Cathedral, was begun in 1079; it lay directly adjacent to the older structure, whose site it ultimately partly overbuilt. In 1093, the monks and the shrine of St Swithun moved into the first phase of new structure, and the demolition of the Old Minster was initiated.

New Minster

A second major church was founded directly north of the Old Minster by King Edward the Elder; the first documented grants date from 901, although it has been suggested that it may have been originally planned by his father Ælfred. It was completed around 903, Ælfred being reburied there from his original grave in the Old Minster; it also became the sepulchre of Edward the Elder and his family.

The church was short-lived, losing its importance after the building of the Cathedral and the enlargement of the nearby royal palace. Finally, Henry I ordered the transfer of the whole

establishment to Hyde, a kilometre north of its old site; the New Minster was then demolished after 1110.

Hyde Abbey

The new abbey was occupied from 1110; the royal tombs were also moved and installed in front of the high altar in 1112. Parts were rebuilt in the late twelfth/early thirteenth century, but the whole structure was destroyed following the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539. The eastern end of the church is now marked by the Hyde Abbey Garden, opened in June 2003, with the architectural elements marked by paving and plants, with three inscribed ledger stones marking the locations of the royal tombs.

Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity

A brand-new church was begun in 1079 consecrated in 1093, with the nave completed somewhat later. The tower – below which William II was buried in 1100 – collapsed in 1107, but was subsequently rebuilt. Following a reconstruction and extension of the eastern part of the church around 1200-35, major reconstruction of the western part of the cathedral took place during the second half of the fourteenth century.

The platform over the ‘Holy Hole’ at Winchester. The niches which currently hold a series of icons formerly contained statuettes of individuals, including a number who were at one time buried above

It is uncertain exactly when the royal burials in the Old Minster were moved into the new building; they may have lain for over a half-century in an open-air ‘memorial court’ in what had been the western part of the demolished Old Minster, around the former grave of St Swithun, just to the left of the new Cathedral’s façade, or may have been temporarily placed in the crypt. However, under Bishop Henry of Blois (1129-1171), a raised platform was built behind the High Altar of the Cathedral, with a tunnel underneath known as the ‘Holy Hole’. The latter seems to have allowed pilgrims to crawl under the shrine of St Swithun, which lay on the platform until 1476. In 1158, the royal bodies (and those of certain bishops) that had formerly been in the Old Minster were placed around the saint’s platform in lead cases, the individuals also being commemorated in texts on the eastern retaining wall of the platform. It appears, however, that precise identifications of individuals were not possible, and that the remains were mixed up in their coffers. At least some of the aforementioned lead cases were provided with (replacement?)