Published in Windlesora 31 (2015)
© WLHG
Early in 1813 while workmen were creating a new royal mausoleum in St George’s Chapel, they accidentally broke through to the vault containing the body of Henry VIII, and there discovered the lead coffin of King Charles I — with a scroll on top inscribed ‘King Charles 1648’ (sic – the King was executed in 1649, so this was probably the newspaper’s error). No one had previously known where the King had been interred after his execution when the Cromwellians had forbidden a proper funeral. King Charles II had ordered a search for his father’s resting place, but it had not been found.
When the news of this discovery reached the Prince Regent he was anxious that the coffin be opened in his presence, and attended with Sir Henry Halford, one of the physicians to George III. This investigation was kept secret at the time, but rumours got out and a hand-written note on the newspaper says that it took place on 1st April.
Workmen cut open part of the lead coffin from the head end and found the body wrapped in a cerecloth. Sir Henry wrote a pamphlet describing the findings (reported 2 May 1813), telling how the winding sheet had been impregnated with an ‘unctuous or greasy matter mixed with resin’, to protect the body from decay. It was hard to release it from the head, but when it was done there must have been a sharp intake of breath as the face was revealed, ‘apparently perfect as when he lived’, and not just because it was identifiably the King’s, but because the left eye was ‘open and full’.
The head was lifted up: it had been severed by a single blow from the axe. The onlookers noted a full head of hair and a pointed beard, reddish in colour. This appeared to have been trimmed, perhaps to make the executioner’s job easier or to provide the dead King’s followers with keepsakes. The head was then placed back on the shoulders of the corpse.
Henry VIII’s lead coffin was also opened. It was in a poor state, seemingly ‘beaten in by violence’ (possibly by an explosion caused by the putrefaction of the body). Only a skull, with ‘some hair on the chin’, and the principal limb bones remained. The coffins of Jane Seymour, and a still-born child of Queen Anne were also found, but seem not have been opened.
What Sir Henry’s 1813 report doesn’t reveal is that, not content with just viewing the remains of Charles I, he too wanted souvenirs and took away a piece of the neck bone, a tooth and some hair. These were later given by Halford’s son to the then Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), but in 1888 they were returned in a casket to lie on top of the coffin where they presumably still are. The 1813 investigators had also carelessly left King Charles’s nameplate on Henry VIII’s coffin, so it too was restored to its rightful place.
As a foot-note, the Express on 21 May 1826 recorded the sale for 100 guineas of the prayer book used by Charles I at his execution. One wonders whether it was what it purported, and if so where it is now.
Windsor Local History Group 