DISTURBED GREAT ONES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 29, 4 February 1899, Page 5 (Supplement)

DISTURBED GREAT ONES.

PRECEDENTS TO THE DEUCE

DISINTERMEJNTT

If—as seems more than probable— the Druee coffin is opened in Hig-hgate Cemetery, it will only share the fate of many other coffins containing1 far more distinguished bodies.

When Dean Farrar was at Westminster Abbey.a certain vault was opened and the coffin of Katherine, the wife of Henry V., was exposed to view. 'It had,' says the Dean, 'Jong- been in a damp place; and it had no sooner been lifted.out of the dark vault into the chapel above than it fell to pieces, and the body of the Queen of Henry V. lav before us.

'1 say "the body," for there were still some skin and tendons on part of it; but it was mainly a skeleton, a^id its enfolding- cerements had crumbled into dust. Nothing else was in the coffin except some fragments of cerecloth and remains of the silk cushion on w.hieh the head had rested.'

The body of Edward the Confessor has been seen twice since it was buried in 100<5. Nearly a hundred years after the burial Thomas a. Beckett saw the face nnd long white beard of the king.

Two hundred years ai'ter the burial Henry 111. opened the coffin and took from it the Confessor's fa.mons ring, which is said to have belonged to St. John the Evangelist. In 1771 the Society of Antiquaries opened the coffin of Edward I. The gold cloth was still folded round the colossal corpse, and the cast in the eyes was distinctly noticeable. The snow-white hair still remained.

Yet. another king's coffin was opened in 1833.' Henry IV. was buried in 1413 in Canterbury Cathedral. But the coffin was opened in 1832 to set at rest a great doubt. It was said that the body had been thrown into the Thames, and was not in the cathedral at all.

But, Kays Dean Farrar, 'when the coffin was opened there the king's body lay, and for the few seconds before the prominent features collapsed, the few who were present saw "the cankered Bolingbroke" as lie looked in life—-or rather as he looked in death after that memorable scene in the Jerusalem Chamber which Shakespeare has so pathetically described. The face was in complete preservation, and all the teeth but one were perfect.'

There is a story that v bold Westminster boy once crept into a vaultin Westminster Abbey, and through an aperture in the coffin laid his band on the heart of the mighty Tudor Queen, Elizabeth. George IV. and the famous physician Sir Henry Halford, wishing1 to discover where Charles I. was buried, opened a grave which was between those of Henry VIII. and Lady Jane Seymour at Windsor.

When they opened it 'there lay before them the handsome face, just as Vandyke depicted it; though (as always happens in such cases) the nose fell in immediately that the corpse was exposed to the open air. 'Tlien Sir Henry' Half ord took up by the hair the decapitated head and placed it on the palm of his hand, which was covered by his silk handkerchief.' Milton was buried in St. Giles, Crippleg-ate. London, on November 12. 1G74. In 1790 search was made'for the body, and when found the authorities refused to disturb it.

But one nig-ht. a publican, a pawnbroker, a surgeon, and a coffin-maker got into the church and opened the leaden shell. The publican pulled hard at the teeth, and at last got one worked out by a stone! These body suatehers felt strongly inclined to steal the whole lower jaw; and after pawing and handling the hallowed remains, these sacrilegious villains tore out some of the hair and stole some of the bones.

As recently as 1552 a writer in 'Notes and Queries' wrote. 'I have handled one of Milton's ribs.'