REMINISCENCES OF THE TOWER OF LONDON.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 310, 21 April 1877, Page 4

REMINISCENCES OF THE TOWER OF LONDON.

"At th» present moment," -writes the .J&mif News of December 14* 1876, " Hie office of works is engaged in clearing out and xwioring the chapel within the pre-teCttS-of the Tower of London, known as St. TW<tt r a ad vmcukt. It was here that fkt state prisoners who- died in the Tower, or Dfare beheaded on the adjoining hill, were gtnerally interred, according to the custom, in plain deal coffins, often with qtaicMtme to destroy them more rapidly, axul Always without plates by which their bodies might be subsequently identified. Luckily at this time the secretary to the office of works is a gentleman who by his writings as well as by such portions of his collections as have passed into the possession of the South Kensington Museum, •hows tumself to be both a student and an artiatj. and it is owing to his reverent care that wtt clearing out the vanlts of the Tower Chapel the dead have given np some of fcfustr secrets. The Tower records have been cart; fully searched, and the information has been applied to each c>tlln as it was brought to fight. First almost amongst them was *>iw lying far (town tic naro coniaitdng bones wide' 1 , according to the opinion of the surgeon, were those of a wonian of j*t least K~> or 70 years* of age. The records s' ow that in some such spots was interred the? b< >dy of Margaret Pole, C-'Utktess of Salisbury, whom Henry VffJL caused to be heUeaded tn 1541. Near tiie altar, ' in a common elm-1 rue chest mad : to put arrows lit/ were the remains 0.,' another woman, young and delicately made, whosy 4 lyt-tet tiH.-k T would give the headsman little trouble tn ■ever. These ace almost certainty those of Anne Bo ley n. far nil' the diggers came upon the remains of what must have been a man of nu>re than ordinary stature ; and on comparing contemporary chronicles with the official records, these were identified as the remains of Puttley, Duke of Northumberland. <-f hr» daughter, the unhappy Lady Jane Grey, no' trace has yet been discover, d, and it is (eared that in her os.-, as probably in that of many others, the tat«r com-rs liave disturbed the resting-places of th* original occupants, arid as in no (Me was there even the j rite nee of honor or respect shown to the remains of state criminals, it, is not probable that Lady Jane Grey and her eotfitt may have long since been ground to powder. Amongst the other persons- buried in the chapel may be mentioned Sir John Eliot, the Duke of Monmouth, Robert Deverettx, Earl of Erses, and the Lords Balmerino, Kilmarnock, and Lovafc. implicated in the Scottish Rebellion of 1745."