King John of England was buried in Worcester Cathedral in 1216. On this day 229 years ago — July 17, 1797 — people opened his coffin and took a look at him for the final time that we know of. It was shut again the following day.
Shortly thereafter, the engraver and antiquarian Valentine Green published a short description, based on the testimony of several people who’d been there, of the king’s status at the end of the eighteenth century — the “displacing of the jaws, the loss of the bones of the hands,” the “vast quantity of the dry skins of maggots,” et cetera. Since I couldn’t find the full thing in raw text, I transcribed it below, along with the footnotes, based on a PDF from the website of the Wellcome Collection.
Among the various circumstances which eventually produced the discovery of the body of King John to have been deposited in the tomb in the choir of the cathedral church of Worcester, the following, as the most prominent, are conceived necessary to be stated.
In the course of my researches into the History of that Cathedral, and a minute examination of its fabric and monumental remains, for the purpose of forming a part of my new edition of “the History and Antiquities of the City and Suburbs of Worcester” published in two volumes, quarto, 1796, I was led to adopt the opinions of the most eminent and learned of our antiquaries who appeared to have joined in a conclusion, that although the original interment of King John had taken place in the Lady’s chapel of that cathedral between the sepulchres of the Saints Oswald and Wulstan, before the altar of the blessed Virgin, yet that the effigy of the king, at the time of the reformation was removed from his grave, and laid upon the tomb which had been newly erected in the choir to receive it, and that this was done without removing the body, which was conjectured to have been left in its original state of sepulture in the Lady’s chapel.
These conclusions deduced from the accounts and authorities of Leland, Abingdon, Dr. Stukely, Brown Willis, Mr. Garbet, Mr. Gough, Dr. Nash, and others, had been opposed by Dr. Thomas, and Mr. Dougharty;1 the first affirming the interment of King John to have been in the choir, in the place on which the tomb now stands; and the last that the royal body remained within the tomb. After weighing those opposite opinions with the most scrupulous attention, and proving by actual measurement the assertion of Dr. Thomas “that graves could be made there” to be erroneous;2 and that Mr. Dougharty had asserted that which it would seem he had not actually examined; and also that what he advanced was invalidated by another respectable authority, which states from what must have been imagined the result of careful inspection, “that no bones were found in the sepulchre.”
Thus warranted by ancient and modern testimony, and strongly fortified by personal investigation; together with a modern altar tomb before me of the precise form and stile of embellishment of that of Prince Arthur in the adjacent chapel, and probably the work of the same artists, it was felt that without better proof to the contrary, it would have been a presumption savouring too much of pertinacity, to have asserted that the remains of King John were first deposited there, or that any other sign of him was to be expected out of his grave in the Virgin’s chapel, than the effigy of his person cumbent on the cenotaph in the choir.
The principle of those opinions had been adopted by me so early as 1764, and then made public in the first edition of the Survey of Worcester (see p. 40) and in 1788 personally discussed with the Honourable and Reverend Dr. St. Andrew St. John, late Dean of Worcester, who was induced from what then passed on the subject, to adopt the resolution of opening the tomb to ascertain the fact; but his death which happened previous to the publication of the second edition of the History of Worcester, preventing the intended search, those conjectures, with much auxiliary and concurrent support, were again avowed, and have again been published.
In the present revised and enlarged form those conjectures are now presented, they have fallen under the notice of the Reverend Dr. Arthur Onslow, the present worthy Dean of Worcester, to whom, in a conversation on the general repair of the interior of the cathedral, which his judicious taste had already planned for the improvement and beautifying of it, I again ventured to suggest the opening of the royal tomb; and if, upon examination, no vestige of the sepulture should appear, its removal from thence to the Lady’s chapel, and there erecting it over the ancient grave in which King John’s remains were supposed to lie, would be a measure fully sanctioned by propriety in respect of its appropriate designation, and in which portion of the cathedral it would also prove a befitting and dignifying object. As a measure of expediency, its removal had long been the wish of many, thereby to restore the orderly conduct of the devotional services of the church, subjected to much annoyance by the present position of the tomb, especially in the approach to the altar.
The caprices of modern reformation having no share in the projected arrangement, much less the unnecessary and indecent disturbance of royal inhumation: useful accommodation and the attainment of decorous order suitable to the solemn purposes of the place being the ultimate objects in view, on Monday the 17th of July 1797, the taking down of the tomb of King John was proceeded upon in the following order.
On the removal of the royal effigy, and the stone slab on which it had been laid, and which had been broken in two in some former operation about the tomb, the objects first presented to view within it, were two partition walls of brick, raised to assist in the support of the superincumbent covering and figure of the king, and to take an equal bearing of their weight with the side and end pannels of the tomb. The spaces between those walls, and between them and the ends of the tomb were filled up with the rubbish of bricks and mortar. On taking down the pannel at the head, and one on each side, and clearing out the rubbish, two strong elm boards originally joined by a batten nailed at each end of them, but which had dropped off and left the boards loose, were next discovered, and upon their removal, the stone coffin, of which they had formed the covering, containing the entire remains of King John became visible!
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