600 Years in the Grave

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 42, 19 February 1938, Page 6

600 Years in the Grave

Exhumation in Westminster Abbey ROYAL GRANDCHILDREN United Press Association—By rU“ctrlr Telegraph.—Copyright. Received Friday, 8 p.m. LONDON, Feb. 18. An exhumation secretly carried out in Westminster Abbey has verified beyound doubt that the bodies of Edward the First’s two four-year-old grandchildren—Mary Bohun (1300-1304) and Humphrey Bohun (1301-1305) lie in a tomb in the north wall of St. John the Baptist Chapel. The Daily Mail points out that it has been doubtod for many years whether the children lay *n this part of the Abbey, as tradition held. When the marble tomb was opened the bodies were found in an oaken coffin, still I'uJly wrapped, after 600 years, in their funeral shrouds. The children lay one at the foot of the other.

The remains apparently were perfectly preserved, says the Mail, and Sir Frederick Kenyon and others were able to satisfy themselves as to identity. Exhumations in the abbey are extremely rare, this being only the second 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.