We Brits have a thing about our kings being found in car parks. Richard III was found under one in Leicester, while theories are currently being discussed that King Alfred currently lies under another one in Winchester. In Reading, talk is all about King Henry I, the youngest son of William the Conqueror, who was buried in the town’s abbey in 1136. The abbey has since fallen into ruin and Henry’s remains have never been found, despite academics, press and others attempting to pinpoint its possible location. However in the early nineteenth century workers claimed to have found the royal sarcophagus, right where it was thought to have been buried. 

Reading Abbey was founded in 1121, with construction taking many years. It was a huge network of buildings and private chambers, but was dissolved by Henry’s descendant, Henry VIII in the mid-1500s. The building fell into disrepair, parts of it were used to build structures elsewhere and locals ransacked what was left for their own homes. The later Tudors and early Stuarts enjoyed what was left of the abbey lodgings as a royal palace and convenient stabling when they were visiting the town. There was more chaos on the site however when the abbey was turned into a battlefield when Reading was under attack in the seventeenth-century Civil War. By 1800, there were no floors, tiles, stained windows or structurally complete walls and the building had been left open to the elements for more than three hundred years.

Remains of Reading Abbey's Church

With all these disturbances, it seemed that Henry I’s grave, which had been solemnly interred under the tiles of the abbey’s church altar in 1136, was lost forever, along with those of other medieval royals buried there. But on 24 November 1816 workmen dug into the earth to make a footpath through the site and hit a slab of stone. The panel, they recorded, was ‘not three feet below the surface’, and formed the shape of a coffin, or sarcophagus. It was broken into two large pieces, with only the bottom of it surviving. What struck the men was the elaborate carving and depiction of columns on the panel, leading them to believe that the sarcophagus had been used for the burial of someone very significant. The stone slab was seven feet long and seven and a half inches thick. Iron rings had been attached, that would have once helped to lower a body into the ground. 

The devastating news was, that no other fragments of the coffin were ever found, nor were there any remains of the person who had been buried within. The discovery of the object so near to Henry’s burial place – the choir of the abbey church – raised hopes, but they were soon dashed. It may have held a royal body, but they were not the first to discover it.  In fact the evidence points to the sarcophagus being abandoned after having been dug up in a previous century. The workmen noted the shallow amount of soil found over the stone, suggesting that it had been left at ground level with earth gradually covering it over the centuries. There was obviously evidence of movement at the site, likely historical raids on wealthy burials for any grave goods they might contain. A lead coffin had previously been found in 1785, but there was never any evidence that this was Henry’s. 

We can imagine the excitement as workmen unearthed this exciting find, and immediately hoped they’d found the long-lost tomb of Henry I. The jury's out as to whether the king's remains are still in the soil of the abbey grounds somewhere. Due to the significant building that has been carried out on the site (a school, church and Reading Gaol occupy parts of Reading Abbey's ground), Henry's tomb may still lie buried. However it's equally likely that the tomb was ransacked by post-Reformation residents looking for grave goods, the broken sarcophagus discarded on the ground afterwards. A mystery that the Georgians thought they’d solved minutes after their metal shovel pinged into barely covered stone is still a mystery today. Did the Georgians find Henry’s tomb? Maybe a bit of it, but as far as we know the abbey ruins haven’t given up all of their secrets yet. 

You might also like: Don't Be Fooled, Reading Abbey is a Big Deal, Reading's Lost King: Henry I,  and Meet the Residents of Fifteenth Century Reading.

Interested in the Wars of the Roses? My first book explores the roles of women from all sectors of fifteenth century society and the impact they had on the Wars of the Roses conflict. Reading is mentioned, as is Elizabeth Clerk. Order your copy here. 

My second book, Power Couples of the Tudor Era, published by Pen and Sword Books, explores the contributions sixteenth century couples made to their own times as well as how they influenced our own. Order your copy here. 

Find out more about the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries in my book Power Couples of the Renaissance. It features relationship dynamics that went against accepted norms of the period and power-hungry couples who ruled, fought and spread the patronage of art, science and culture across the globe during one of the most tumultuous periods of history. Find it on the Pen and Sword Books website. 

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Source:

Archaeologia, Society of Antiquaries, London, Volume 18

Katherine Parr was Henry VIII’s sixth queen, and was famously the one who survived him. The king died in January 1547, and Katherine quickly remarried, to Sir Thomas Seymour. Thomas was brother of Edward Seymour, the new Lord Protector of the realm for his nephew Edward VI. There is evidence that Edward and his wife Anne found the hasty marriage, which was carried out secretly, to be too soon considering Henry’s death. Katherine lived with Thomas at Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, where she prepared, in the late summer of 1548, to give birth to their child. However, Katherine suffered an illness shortly after the birth, and died. She was buried in the chapel at Sudeley, where her monument exists today, however the effigy of the queen that we see today is not contemporary, but was erected in the nineteenth century.

St Mary's church, Sudeley: monument to Katherine Parr by Mike Searle, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A member of the College of Heralds, York Herald J.C. Brooke, wrote eagerly to the Society of Antiquaries in April 1777 to make them aware of a previously unprinted document he had found there. Kept in the Cotton Library, it is a surviving herald’s account of the Dowager Queen’s funeral, giving intimate details of where Katherine’s body was kept, intimate details of Katherine’s service along with the procession and burial.

Katherine died between 2-3am on Wednesday 5 September 1548. In the days after her death, she was covered with a shroud and placed inside a lead coffin which was kept in her privy chamber while arrangements for her funeral were made. 

The chapel was draped in black cloth ‘garnishid with Schoocheons of maryagys’, identifying her marriages to Henry VIII and the Lord Admiral Sir Thomas Seymour. Her own arms appeared alongside Henry’s, ‘in payle under the Crown’, while Thomas’ arms were displayed ‘in pale without Crowne’. Mourners sat behind rails covered with black cloth, on stools fitted out with cushions. Two tapers were lit, and flickered on Katherine’s coffin during the service. 

The document also details the procession which accompanied the Dowager Queen’s body to the chapel, with two ‘conductors in blacke with blacke staves’ leading. Gentlemen, esquires, knights and officers of the household walked solemnly to the altar, while gentlemen ushers followed slowly behind. The Somerset Herald was in attendance, wearing the arms of Edward VI. Six men wearing black gowns carried the coffin, ‘with theire Hodes on theire Heades’, while yeomen bore eleven lit torches ‘rounde aboute the Corps’. Knights, also wearing their hoods, placed themselves at each corner of the coffin ‘for assistance’. 

Katherine’s chief mourner was Lady Jane Grey, daughter of Henry Grey Marquis of Dorset. She wore a long gown, and the record states that her train was ‘borne uppe by a yonge Ladye’. Jane would later become tangled up in the succession crisis of 1552 on the death of her cousin Edward VI. Edward altered the succession so that Jane would inherit the crown instead of Mary, an act that would cause Jane’s downfall and execution when Mary seized power. Six female mourners followed Jane, walking in pairs side by side, followed by the remaining men and women in attendance, again in pairs. Others followed to the quire of the chapel.

Once the coffin was set down, a series of prayers were sung, which would have echoed around the walls. Three ‘lessons’ were given, and on the third, the signal was given for the mourners to offer alms. Katherine’s almoner, Doctor Coverdale, then preached a sermon ‘whiche was verie good and godlie’. He reminded those present that the offerings were not ‘done anything to profit the dead, but for the poor only’. After he made a ‘godlye prayer; th’ole Churche answerid and praied the same with hym in th’ende’. 

Finally, Katherine’s body was buried, to the sound of a choir singing ‘Te Deum’ in English. The mourners retired to a dinner and went home. The funeral was probably conducted fairly early, as the herald noted that ‘all which aforesaid was don in a mornynge’. 

There is some evidence that no monument was erected to Katherine’s memory, or that it was missing by the eighteenth century, as in 1768 the antiquary Rev. Huggett wrote a letter to George Pitt in Westminster stating that no one knew its exact location. Huggett related that a recent historian ‘cannot acquaint his readers with any thing relative to her death or burial’.  In summer 1782 the queen’s tomb was discovered, and her coffin was found. 

Illustration of the opening of Katherine Parr's coffin in 1782. From the Annals of Winchcombe & Sudeley by Emma Dent, published 1877

A drawing of the coffin made at the time of its opening shows that it was shaped around Katherine’s body, including the head, rather than a rectangular coffin we might think of today. It had been buried around two feet deep and had the inscription ‘K.P. VIth and last wife of King Hen. the VIIIth, 1548’. The inquisitive Georgians decided to open the lead, and ripped open the metal above her face and torso. Expecting to find skeleton, they were surprised to find ‘the whole body wrapped in 6 or 7 seer cloths of linen entire and uncorrupted’. Investigating further, they found the queen’s body intact. Sadly, to satisfy others’ curiosity, Katherine’s coffin was reopened in 1783, 1784, 1786 and 1792. It was also recorded that the site of the burial was used, by 1787, ‘for the keeping of rabbits, which made holes, and scratched very indecently about the Royal Tomb’. The queen’s remains were securely buried in 1817. 

Katherine’s burial site was neglected over the centuries, and exposed purely to satisfy the curiosity of eighteenth-century antiquaries. The treatment of her remains was brutal, shocking and unnecessary. However, there may be some small comfort in knowing that her contemporaries in the mid-sixteenth century buried her gently, with dignity, poise and all the honours of a Dowager Queen.

My book, Forgotten Women of the Wars of the Roses is published by Pen and Sword Books and discusses many woman of the fifteenth century conflict that played parts we don't often hear about today. You can Order your copy here.

Interested in Tudor history? You might also like my second book, Power Couples of the Tudor Era, published by Pen and Sword Books, which explores the contributions couples made to their own times as well as how they influenced our own. Order your copy here. 

Sources:

Letter from J.C. Brooke, Herald’s College, 29 April 1777, In: Archaeologia, Or, Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, Volume 5, Society of Antiquaries. 1779. 

Emma Dent, Annals of Winchcombe and Sudeley, London. 1877. Pages 314-316

With so many fast food places and restaurant chains around Paddington Station it's tempting to grab a kebab, a Pret or a Maccy's. But why would you do that when you can have lunch in a beautiful historic setting, like this one? 

My book, Forgotten Women of the Wars of the Roses is published by Pen and Sword Books and discusses many woman of the fifteenth century conflict that played parts we don't often hear about to day. You can Order your copy here.

Interested in Tudor history? You might also like my second book, Power Couples of the Tudor Era, published by Pen and Sword Books, which explores the contributions couples made to their own times as well as how they influenced our own. Order your copy here. 

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