A HUMAN HEART.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4932, 29 January 1926, Page 1

A HUMAN HEART.

IN AN ANCIENT CASKET 'A curious discovery has been made during excavations at the church of the Grey Friars, Cardiff, where, in the south wall, five vaults have been found. In one of the vaults an architect found a dressed stone, which proved to be the lid of a receptacle enclosing a lead casket. In this casket was a human heart.. The relic was resting on a female skeleton. Two theories have been advanced for the presence of th heart —either that it was removed from the body and embalmed, or that it was the heart of the husband, who may have been killed in the Crusades or who had died abroad, his heart only being sent home for burial.

A probable explanation is that Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, 1243-1295, who brought the Grey Friary, intended the vaults to be the Friary, intended the valuts to be the burial place of the Lords of Cardiff Castle.

It is also suggested that a male skeleton found in the south-west vault nearest to the altar is that of Gilbert de Clare himself, who died in Monmouth in 1295, and was presumably buried in Tewkesbury; that the female skeleton is that of his wife, the Princess Joan, daughter of Edward 1., who died in 1307; and that the heart in the casket is that of their only son, Gilbert, the last of the de Clare Lords of Cardiff Castle, who was killed in the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.