Which disproved the legend that Cromwell had given instructions to have his own corpse secretly interred in Charles’s tomb to keep it out of the hands of the Royalists.
James’s funeral was a rather chaotically managed affair - IIRC the corpse exploded from the build-up of gases resulting from the long delay in the funeral.
I thought that was William the Conquerer.
They sprayed him with Febreze every few decades.
I have several questions on this (I assume “translated” means “transferred,” above).
– How detailed is the current ground-penetrating radar? Is it good enough to replace actually opening these graves unless physical samples are needed, such as DNA? Are the images 3D on a computer enhancement? Does radar have the quality of x-ray, i.e., can it define broken bones, bad teeth, and the like?
– Of those who lost their heads by execution (at least Charles I and Mary Queen of Scots) were the heads then interred with them? What was the etiquette–and was it always followed?
– OT a bit: Cromwell’s head. What’s the true story on it? I’ve heard a legend that it’s hidden at Oxford, and has been since it blew down from a spike in a storm and disappeared to history. I assume the rest of Cromwell is long ago unrecoverable as it was dug up to procure his head. (Didn’t the restored monarchy ritually hang, draw, and quarter his body?)
I note that the well-preserved head of French King Henry IV was just discovered in someone’s attic in France and is to be reinterred in its original resting place in a cathedral. I assume that the rest of him disappeared to history forever during the French Revolution.
Charles’s head was interred with him (see above).
Cromwell’s was buried somewhere in the grounds of Sidney Sussex College, in the 1960s. The rest of him, if none of the rumours about his remains being spirited away after they were gibbeted at Tyburn, still lies in the pit at the junction of Connaught Place and Connaught Square which marks the spot (not Marble Arch as is commonly supposed)
‘Translation’ being the formal term used for the movement of a saint’s body from one location to another.
Pretty much all it could show was that there are voids beneath the floor, but their sizes, shapes and locations mean that there has been general agreement that they are royal graves. As they are adjacent to the tombs of the Plantagent kings, the assumption is that they are mostly lesser royal relatives whose graves in the Abbey are otherwise untraced and, on that basis, there has been some reasonably plausible speculation as to who they might be.
On the radar: Yes, that’s about what I thought but I decided to ask in case the technology has improved since the last time I read something about it (several years).
I’ve been to Westminster Abbey, and I wondered at the time if the situation below ground was as neat and orderly as it appeared above. It’s an interesting problem whether to sort it out definitively for posterity while you still might, wait for better non-intrusive technology (perhaps), or just take it as an ancient graveyard and leave it alone.
Thanks for the information!
Beneath the floor? For example, in this pic of the tomb of Edward I : http://mhusnowcrash.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/lon9.jpg
Is he not inside that box? Or is he buried in the ground underneath the floor and that big box just marks the spot?
The voids beneath the floor are those unmarked graves which were only discovered by the ground-penetrating radar. But some of the other individuals who have above-ground tombs, such as Edward I, are buried in those tombs. In other cases, such as most of those in the Henry VII Chapel, the bodies are actually buried in vaults below the visible monuments.
The one grave discovered by the ground-penetrating radar which would be different would be that which it has been speculated is that of Edward the Confessor, as he does have a very visible (albeit much mucked about) shrine. That said, there is however some evidence that he was instead buried within that shrine.
