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It
is quite amazing how many parts of the body belonging to famous
people in history, somehow become separated from the body itself and
turn up again, many years or even centuries later.
Let
me give you some examples...
Queen
Anne Boleyn (1507 - 1536) After
Queen
Anne Boleyn was beheaded in 1536 on the orders of her husband,
King Henry VIII, her heart was stolen and secretly hidden in a
church near Thetford, Suffolk. Her heart was re-discovered in
1836 and re-buried under the church organ where it remains still. Sir
Thomas More (1478 - 1535)
 Sir
Thomas was beheaded in 1535. He had enraged Henry
VIII by refusing to acknowledge that the king's marriage to Anne
Boleyn was legal. More's head was taken from the scaffold and
parboiled, stuck on a pole and exhibited on London Bridge. His
devoted daughter, Margaret Roper, bribed the bridge-keeper to knock
it down and she smuggled it home. She preserved the head in
spices but was betrayed by spies and imprisoned, but was soon
released. Margaret died in 1544 and Sir Thomas' head was
buried with her. In 1824 her vault was opened and More's head
was put on public view in St. Dunstan's Church in Canterbury for
many years. The
Duke of Suffolk Henry
Grey, the Duke of Suffolk was the father of
Lady Jane Grey ( 1537 - 1554) who became known as the Nine Day
Queen. He was beheaded in 1554 and his mummified head can
still be seen in a glass-topped box in the vestry of St. Botolph
Aldgate in London. Oliver
Cromwell (1599 - 1658)
 Oliver
Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England, died in 1658, was
embalmed and buried in Westminster Abbey after a lavish
funeral. After the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, his
body was disinterred and taken to Tyburn where it was gibbeted*
until sundown. The Public Executioner cut down the body and
cut off the head which was then impaled on a 25 foot pole on the
roof of Westminster Hall. It remained there for over 24 years until
1685 when it was dislodged during a gale. A soldier found the head
and hid it in his chimney. On his deathbed, he bequeathed the
relic to his daughter. In 1710 the head appeared in a 'Freak Show',
described as 'The Monster's Head'! For many years the head
passed through numerous hands, the value increasing with each
transaction until a Dr. Wilkinson bought it. The
head was offered by the Wilkinson family to Sydney Sussex College in
1960, as this was where Oliver Cromwell had studied. It was
given a dignified burial in a secret place in the college grounds.  King
Charles I (1600 - 1649)
King
Charles I was beheaded in 1649 and buried at Windsor Castle in
the same vault as Henry VIII. The coffin was opened in 1813
and Sir Henry Halford, the royal surgeon, performed an autopsy on
the body. He secretly stole Charles' fourth cervical vertebra
and for the next 30 years he loved to shock his friends at dinner
parties by using the vertebra as a salt-holder. Queen
Victoria, hearing of this, demanded that the bone was returned to
Charles' coffin immediately. It was! Louis
XIV of France ( 1638- 1715) During
the French Revolution the tomb of the French king was wrecked and
plundered. His heart was stolen and sold to Lord Harcourt who
later sold it to the Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend William
Buckland. One night at dinner, the Dean, who liked to
experiment with food, ate the embalmed heart! Sir
Walter Raleigh (1552 - 1618) Sir
Walter's body was buried after his execution but his embalmed head
was kept by his wife Elizabeth Throgmorton. She kept it in a
red leather bag, by her side, for the last 29 years of her life.
Their son Carew took care of it until his death in 1666. Carew
was buried in his father's grave with the head, but in 1680 Carew
was exhumed and re-buried, with his father's head, in West Horsley,
Surrey. Ben
Johnson ( 1573 - 1637) Ben
Johnson, the English dramatist, was buried standing up in
Westminster Abbey, but in 1849 his grave was disturbed during a
later internment. The Dean of Westminster, William Buckland (
see Louis XIV above), stole Johnson's heel-bone but it later
disappeared and was not found again until 1938 when the bone
reappeared in an old furniture shop! ©
E.P.C *gibbeting:
the practice of showing off the bodies of executed criminals in
chains at public places, in order to deter others. Gibbets
ceased to be used towards the end of the 18th century and gibbeting
was formally abolished in 1834. |