WESTMINSTER ABBEY TOMB OPENED

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 124, 19 February 1938, Page 9

WESTMINSTER ABBEY TOMB OPENED

Two Grandchildren Of Edward I REMAINS WELL PRESERVED AFTER 600 YEARS By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. (Received February 18, 7.50 p.m.) London, February 18. Exhumation, secretly carried out in Westminster Abbey, has verified beyond doubt that the bodies of Edward I’s two four-year-old grandchildren, Mary Bohun (1300-4) and Humphrey Bohun (1301-5), lie in a tomb in the north wall of St. John the Baptist Chapel. The “Daily Mail” points out that it has been doubted for many years whether the children lay in this part of the Abbey as tradition held. When the marble tomb was opened the bodies were found in an oaken coffin, still fully wrapped, after 600 years,, in funeral shrouds. The children lay one at the foot and the other at the head.

The remains apparently were perfectly preserved, says the “Daily Mail,” and Sir Frederick Kenyon and others who insuected them were able to satisfy themselves as to their identity. Eyhumations in the Abbey are extremely rare, this being only the second in this century. The first was the occasion when the bodies of the two princes murdered in the Tower were secretly disinterred from the Abbey in July. 1923.