Georgian Books, An Account of King Johns Tomb

An Account of the Discovery Of The Body Or King John.

Among the various circumstances which eventually produced the discovery of the body of King John to have been deposited in the tomb in the choir of the cathedral church of Worcester, the following, as the most prominent, are conceived necessary to be stated.

In the course of my researches into the History of that Cathedral, and a minute examination of its fabric and monumental remains, for the purpose of forming a part of my new edition of the History and Antiquities of the City and Suburbs of Worcester published in two volumes, quarto, 1796, I was led to adopt the opinions of the most eminent and learned of our antiquaries who appeared to have Joined in a conclusion, that although the original interment of King John had taken place in the Lady's chapel of that cathedral between the sepulchres of the Saints Oswald and Wulstan, before the altar of the blessed Virgin, yet that the effigy of the king, at the time of the reformation was removed from his grave, and laid upon the tomb which had been newly erected in the choir to receive it, and that this was done without removing the body, which was conjectured to have been left in its original state of sepulture in the Lady's chapel.

These conclusions deduced from the accounts and authorities of Leland, Abingdon, Dr. Stukely, Brown Willis, Mr. Garbet, Mr. Gough, Dr. Nash, and others, had been opposed by Dr. Thomas, and Mr. Dougharty;¹ the first affirming. the interment of King John to have been in the choir, in the place on which the tomb now stands ; and the last that the royal body remained within the tomb. After weighing those opposite opinions with the most scrupulous attention, and proving by actual measurement the assertion of Dr. Thomas "that graves could be made there" to be erroneous;² and that Mr. Dougharty had asserted that which it would seem he had not actually examined; and also that what he advanced was invalidated by another respectable authoirty, which states from what must have been imagined the result of careful inspection, "that no bones were found in the sepulchre."

Note 1. See Vol. I. Sect, IV. p. 68, and Sect. VII. p. 156, Hist, and Antiq, of Worcester.

Note 2. This has been confirmed by the late-discovery. The stone coffin in which King John's remains are contained is laid upon, and not buried in or under the pavement of the choir. The depth of ground between that flooring and the crowns of the arches of the crypt beneath it, being not more than twelve inches, would not possibly admit of an interment: and the royal tomb stands precisely. upon the centre of the arch at the extreme vast end of the crypt. See the Plan of the Cathedral, fig, A. Vol. I. Sect. VII. Hist. and Antiq. of Worcester.

The Body

was found to have been adjusted in the stone coffin precisely in the same form as the figure on the tomb. The skull, instead of being placed with the face in the usual situation, presented the foramen magnum, the opening through which the spinal marrow passes down the vertebre, turned upwards. The lower part of the os frontis was so much perished, as to have become nearly of an even surface with the bottoms of the fockets of the eyes. The whole of the upper jaw was displaced from the skull, and found near the right elbow: it contained four teeth in very good preservation, and free from caries, two of them were dentes molares, and two bicuspides. The lower jaw was also separated from the skull, the coronoid processes were very perfect, as well as the condyles:- there were no teeth in this jaw. Some grey hairs were discernable under the covering of the head. The ulna of the left arm which had been folded on the body was found detached from it, and lying obliquely on the breast; the ulna of the right arm lay nearly in its proper place, but the radius of neither arm, nor the bones of either hand were visible. Those of the ribs, pelvis, &c, were so much covered with dust, and the foldings of the decayed robe as not to be clearly distinguishable. Part of the tibia of the right leg, in nearly its proper position, was exposed. The knee of this limb appeared to have been contracted, not lying so strait down as the left: occasioned probably by other bones or fragments having fallen under it. The bones of the toes were in good preservation, more particularly those of the right foot, on two or three of which the nails were till visible. The rest of the bones, more especially of the lower extremites were nearly perfect, and on the whole, appeared to have lain as they might naturally have done in their quiescent progress through. the various stages of decay and dissolution. Some large pieces of mortar were found on and below the abdomen; and a vast quantity of the dry skins of maggots were dispersed over the body; these are supposed to have been produced by fome part of it having gone into putrefaction (a circumstance imagined sometimes to have happened notwithstanding the precaution of embalming)¹ previous to its removal, and the maggots having remained undisturbed, were upon the present discovery seen in such great numbers. Or, that some parts of the dress being of leather, they might have been produced by the natural putrefaction of that animal substance. The body measured five feet, six inches and a half.

Note 1. The bowels and heart of King John were buried at Croxton Abbey, in Staffordshire; the Abbat of which had been his Physician, and performed the operation of embalming him, See Holingshed, p. 606. M. Paris, p. 288.

Measure

Depth of the cavity of the stone coffin in which the body is contained 0' 9"

Ditto, -of the circular part, containing the head 0' 6½"

Ditto, of the outside of the coffin 1'

Thickness of the sides, ends, and bottom 0' 3"

Length inside 5' 7"

Extreme length, outside 6'

Breadth at head 2' 2"

Breadth at feet 1' 0"

Length of the original cover, or lid of the stone coffin 6' 4"

Breath at the head 2' 5"

Breadth at the feet 1' 2" ¹

Note 1. See Hist. and Antiq, of Worcester, Vol. I, Sect. IV, p. 68, Note.

Remarks and Illustrations

It hath already been said, that the foregoing discovery of the remains of King John, had resulted from the strong assumptions of conjecture, founded on the opinions of former antiquaries of established character, and supported by those of others of the present times; asserting that the original sepulture and interment of the royal body was in the Lady's chapel of this cathedral; nor has the least circumstance from the recent disclosure of it in the tomb in the choir, arisen to invalidate those opinions and conjectures.

To give farther support to the proofs already adduced, that the ancient graves of the canonized saints, Oswald and Wulstan, are in the Lady's chapel, and that the body of the king first received interment between them, would amount only to a waste of words; to point out the similarity of the construction of this ancient series of royal and ecclestastical sepulchres, may however be somewhat satisfactory to those who have never seen them, or their actual position.

Let then the reader form in his imagination the stone coffin, in which the remains of the king now repose, to be let into the floor of the Lady's chapel, between the figures of the two bishops already laid there, and so deep as to have its top level with the pavement; and let him also fuppose the sculptured figure of the King, now lying on the tomb, placed on the coffin as its covering, and which would apparently seem laid on the floor, he will then have the entire ancient sepulchre of King John, as originally constructed in that chapel, fully before his "minds eye."

Those of the two prelates are precisely of the same fashion, laid the same depth in the earth, and in nothing different but the sculptures and the kind of stone of which they are formed.¹

Note 1. It is here necessary to observe, that the stone coffins of the two bishops are laid on the sites of the ancient graves of St. Oswald and St. Wulstan; that to the south containing the remains of Bishop Sylvester, who performed the ceremony of interring King John in this cathedral, and died himself 16: July, 1219, in the same year he had displaced the remains of St. Wulstan from his grave, and put them in a new shrine, in which operation he sawed some of his bones in sunder with his own hands. The remains of St. Oswald had been first enshrined by Bishop Adulph his successor, A. D. 1002, and again by Bishop Wulstan in 1089, at the opening of the present cathedral. The grave of St. Wulstan to the north, which the auther examined in 1796, is occupied by the stone coffin and remains of William de Blois, successor to Bishop Sylvester; he died August the 18th, 1238. See: History and: Antiquities of Worcester, Vol. I. Section IV. p. 73, 74; Section VII. p. 186, and plan of the Cathedral, Ref. 2, 2, 3. It appears therefore that the three coffins, of the fashion of that period, were all made. and placed there in the course of only twenty three years. Other instances of the same mode of interment in tha same sort of coffins occur in this cathedral, of which that af William de Harcourt, temp, King John, in the Dean's chapel, is one.

It is presumed from the abundant evidences apparent on the view ef the royal body and its appendages that they have unquestionably undergone a translation since the time of their original interment in this cathedral. The change in the position of the skull, the displacing of the jaws; the loss of the bones of the hands, and the radii of both arms; the mutilations of the sword and ita scabbard, and the broken fragments of the mortar upon and below the abdomen; the large fracture, supposed to be entirely through the stone coffin, and lastly, the tomb itself of modern construction, paired indeed, but not matched with the ancient; form together a testimonial phalanx of evidence, much too strong to be resisted with a view to proving, that the place in which the body is now found deposited, was that of its first burial. And thus, while a less dignified tenant may have been admitted to the possession of the royal grave, the king himself is proved literally to remain above ground, intombed indeed, but unburied.

In the course of this curious and interesting investigation, we have witnessed a no less curious result.—Speculative opinions, in which the researches. into the transactions of past ages, must more or less subject the antiquarian and historian to enter into, having in this instance elevated into an assumed fact, an event of ancient date of which no record had been made in the archives of the cathedral, a reliance on those opinions, and a consequent resort being had to the only practical means of establishing or destroying them, that effectual ordeal is seen in its operation to have secured a valuable recompence to posterity, in the destrucrion it has wrought on ingenious speculation, founded an specious possibilities, out of the ruins of which hath been raised a positive truth, that has far ever closed the lips of conjecture, and happily placed an ancient fact, beyond thereach of future doubt.

Had the fugitive memorandum: made by Mr. Dougharty, dated July the 24th, 1754, and inserted as a MS. note in p. 35, in his copy of. Dr. Thomas's Survey of the Cathedral, and now in the possession of Sir Charles Trubshaw Withers, Knight,¹ been fortunately entered in its. proper place, in the Archives of the Dean and Chapter, it would then have borne the indubitable stamp of official authenticity upon the face of it, and could have been cited as such. It is however satisfactory that even in its present form, discovered by mere chance, its veracity hath been fully proved. But the description of the tomb having been opened at that period, being liable to more than a right reading from its ambiguity, andstanding isolated from other support, became too suspicious for decided adoption, especially when it was to be opposed to such odds of direct contrary opinion, and thence it hath remained to the present time, like the prophecies of Cassandra, discredited but true.

Note 1. See History and Antiquities of Worcester, Vol I, Sect. IV. p. 70.