The Discovery of King John in 1797

Since the mortal remains of King John have made the news today, here's the start of my new book...

 

In the summer of 1797 a group of workmen in Worcester Cathedral caused a sensation, locally if not nationally, by discovering the body of King John.

John’s tomb had long stood in the middle of the cathedral’s choir, but the consensus view in 1797 was that it was empty. Although the stone likeness (or effigy) on top dated from not long after the king’s death in 1216, the tomb chest had been created in the sixteenth century in the style of more recent burials (most notably Henry VIII’s older brother, Arthur, who died in 1502). It was known from the testimony of ancient chronicles that John had been buried in the Lady Chapel, and so it was assumed that, although his effigy had been moved in Tudor times, his bones had been left undisturbed in their original resting place.

The tomb of King John in Worcester Cathedral

The cathedral clergy found John’s tomb a cause of ‘much annoyance’, because its central position obstructed the approach to the altar, and their plan was to move it to some more convenient part of the church. And so, on 17 July 1797, the workmen set about dismantling it. They removed the effigy and the cracked stone slab underneath, to discover that the chest had been partitioned by two brick walls, and the sections in between filled with builders’ rubble. But when they removed the sides of the tomb and cleared out the debris, the workmen, ‘to their astonishment’, found a stone coffin. Immediately the dean and chapter of the cathedral were convened, as well as some local worthies with relevant expertise (the antiquarian Mr James Ross, and Mr Sandford, ‘an eminent surgeon of Worcester’).

Inside the coffin they found ‘the entire remains of King John’. His corpse had obviously decomposed somewhat in the course of nearly six centuries. Despite being embalmed, some parts had putrefied, and so ‘a vast quantity of the dry skins of maggots were dispersed over the body’. Parts of the body had also been displaced, presumably when it was moved in the sixteenth century. A section of the left arm was found lying at an angle on the chest; the upper jaw was found near the elbow. But otherwise the king was arranged in exactly the same position as his effigy, and was similarly attired. He was dressed from head to foot in a robe of crimson damask (a rich fabric of wool woven with silk) and in his left hand – as on the effigy – he held a sword, in a scabbard, both badly decayed. Curiously, however, whereas on the effigy John wore a crown, his skull was wearing a coif, which the antiquarians took to be a monk’s cowl, placed on the king’s head after his death to help reduce his time in Purgatory. Measuring the body they found that John had been five foot six-and-a-half inches tall.

The experts might have continued their investigations further, but were prevented from doing so by a large number of people who had crowded into the cathedral to see the dead monarch. ‘It is much to be regretted’, explained the antiquarian Valentine Green in his published account of the exhumation, ‘that the impatience of the multitude to view the royal remains, so unexpectedly found, should have become so ungovernable, as to make it necessary to close up the object of their curiosity.’ He was not exaggerating. In the short time that the tomb was open, several bits of John’s body were removed by souvenir hunters. His thumb bone was later recovered and can now be seen in the cathedral’s own archives, along with some fragments of sandals and stocking, obtained at auction by Edward Elgar. Two of the king’s teeth, stolen by a stationer’s apprentice in 1797, were ‘secretly treasured’ until 1923, when they were handed over to the Worcester County Museum.

John's teeth