In 1475 Edward IV made a will before he headed to Calais to begin a war effort with France. As it turned out, negotiations with the French were concluded peacefully, but Edward wasn't to know if he would be back. He left wishes for a tomb to be made, the king 'buried low in the ground, and upon the same a stone to be laid and wrought with the figure of Death with escutcheons of our arms and writings convenient about the borders of the same remembering the day and year of our decease, and that in the same place or near to it an altar be made meetly for the room as hereafter we shall devise and declare'.
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| St George's Chapel, Windsor, burial place of Edward IV |
Edward's longed-for tomb doesn't survive today. Instead, there is an arch with a plain memorial to the king, a slab in the floor alongside it marking the burial of his widow, Elizabeth Woodville, in front. In 1789 repaving work was being carried out in the chapel, and the workers saw for themselves the coffin of Edward IV. The coffin was cut open and examined, a report being submitted to the Society of Antiquaries. Once sealed back up, a new monument was put up, with the simple acknowledgement tin brass lettering that it belongs to 'Edward IIII'.
I've seen various reports online saying that Edward's magnificent tomb was finished, jewelled and stood for almost two hundred years before it was dismantled and destroyed by Cromwell's soldiers during the Civil War. The only thing is, I can't find any evidence that the effigy and rest of the tomb was ever completed. The twentieth century historian W.H. Hope produced accounts for 1481-2 and 1482-3, which note the purchase of 'thirty-three casks of touchstone, bought for the use of the chapel and for making the King's tomb', along with other references to 'the making f an altar within the King's enclosure there'. Temporary accommodation seems to have been set up for the workers on the tomb, for 'the making of a house for the masons working upon the tomb of our lord the King'. Hope concluded that it seems that the tomb was never finished, although admitted that how far completed it was before the 1780s is 'impossible to say'.
There are references to a pre-1789 tomb with metal gates, separation Edward's burial site from the aisle of the chapel, but not of Edward's finished tomb itself. If this is the case, and the tomb was never completed, it may have been that Richard III, his eventual successor, had other things on his mind like trying to maintain his hold on power. Or remaining funds weren't released due to internal conflict and readjusting after the Wars of the Roses, which started in the 1450s.
What do you think? Maybe you have evidence the tomb was finished? Or know why it wasn't (or even agree that it wasn't). Let me know in the comments below.
Source: W.H. Hope, Windsor: An Architectural History. 1913.
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