REMINISCENCES OF THE TOWER OF LONDON.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 65, 16 March 1877, Page 4

REMINISCENCES OF THE TOWER OF LONDON.

, "At the present moment," writes the Daily News of December 15^ 1876, " the office of works is engaged ia clearing out add restoring the, chapel . within the precincts of the Tower of London, known as St. Peter's advineula. It ia here that the state prisoners^ who died in the Tower, or were beheaded on the adjoining hill, were generally interred, according to the custom, ia plain deal coffins, often with quicklime to destroy them more rapidly, and always without plates by which their bodies might be subsequently identified. Luckily :.at. this .time the secretajry {9 the office of works is a gentleman who, by his writings as well-as by such portions of his collections -be^aver passed into the possession of the South Kensington Museum, shows r himself to be both a student and an artist, and it is owing to bis reverent oare that in clearing out the vaults of the Tower Chapel the dead have given up some of their secrets. The Tower records have been oarefully searched, and the information has been applied to each coffin as it was brought to tight. First almoet among them was one lying far down the. nave containing bones which, according to the opinion of the surgeon, were those of a woman of at least; 65 or 70 years of age. The records show that in some such spot was interred the \body of, : Margaret Pole; Countess 'ot Salisbury,, whom Henry VIII. caused to be beheaded in 1541. Near the altar, " in a common elm-tree chest made to put arrows in,' were the remains of (mother woman, young and delicately made, and . whose , •• '* ly ttel neck' would ''give the headsman -.so 1 : little trouble to sever. These arc-al-most certainly those ofj Anne Boleyn. Not far off the diggers cause upon the remains of what must have been a man of more than ordinary statute; and on' comparing contemporary chronicles with trie ' official records* these were ; identified as the remains of Dad ley ; Duke :of Northumberlana. 01 hia daughter, the unhappy. Lady Jane Grey no (race has as yet been discovered, apd,. it is feared that in bar case, as probably' in that of many others, the later comers have disturbed the resting-places 'of the : original occupants, and as in 00 case' was there even, the pretence of honor or respect ahowa to the remains of state criminals, \t is hot improbable that Lady Jane Grey and her coffin may long since have been ground to powder. Amongst tbe other • persons buried in the cha~peV may be mentioned Sir John Elfoti, the Duke o,f JMfonmoi)th r Robert Da vereu v, Earl <■ oi ; -'Eases, j 1 and. the Lords Ralraerinp, Kilmarnock, and Lovat, implicated in the Scottish reI bellidn of 1745."