ANTIQUARIAN CURIOSITY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2574, 1 May 1923, Page 1

ANTIQUARIAN CURIOSITY.

Most people will have learned with satisfaction that it is not intended to exhibit the body of King Tutenkhamun in a museum (says the Guardian). Far too many kings and other famous people have been, so to say, “dug up.” The best known case, perhaps, is that of Charles 1., whose body was found in 1813 in the vault of Hourv VIII. in St. George’s Chapel, in sufficient preservation to be identified from the Vandyek portraits. Sir Henry Harford, the physician, who was present, took away a piece of the vertebrae, which eventually came into the possession of the late King Edward, who had it restored to the coffin. When, in James ll.’s time, the tomb of the Confessor, at Westminister, was opened some saeriligious person took from the body a golden crucifix. He gave it to the King, who lost it in his hurried flight from the dominions, which desired him no more." As recently as 1868, the coffin of William Rufus, at Winchester, was opened, where there were found what were believed to be the remains of the arrow that killed him. In the sixteenth century the body ;of the Conqueror was intact at Caen, but the tomb was afterwards violated in a tumult. Other researches into Royal tombs have shown that Edward Longshanks was Oft. 2in., which would not he thought very remarkable io-da.v; and that a century ago Henry VIII. was still wearing his heard. Happily, public opinion no longer encourages this type of antiquarian curiosity and future Doans of Westminister are unlikely to repeat the spade-work of Dean Stanley.