HISTORIC HEARTS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 329, 14 April 1928, Page 12

HISTORIC HEARTS

FORMER FAMOUS BURIALS The burial of Thomas Hardy’s heart at Stinsford (the “Mellstock” of his novels), while his ashes lay in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey, has drawn attention to what was once quite a common practice in the case, of royal and famous people: and in the history of heart-burial no country has more romantic cases of two graves beihg assigned to one person than Scotland. Nothing in this connection can exceed in interest the story of the burial of the heart of Robert Bruce. He wished it to be laid to rest in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem: and on his death it was extracted, embalmed, and in accordance with his desire entrusted to Sir James Douglas to be conveyed by him to Palestine. Douglas, however, with the heart of Bruce enclosed in a silver casket hanging round his neck, was killed while fighting against the Moors in Spain, and the sacred relic was brought to Scotland and buried in Melrose Abbey. Bruce’s body, as is well known, was interred in the Abbey Church of Dunfermline, his bones being discovered in 1818, when the foundations of the building were being cleared for the erection of a third church on the site. Wherever the heart of James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, rests, it is in some place apart from his body, which was buried by the roadside outside Edinburgh, and from which the heart was taken, being enclosed in a steel box and sent to the Duke of Montrose, then in exile. It was lost on the journey, but years later it was discovered in a curiosity shop in Flanders. From thence it was taken to India by a member of the Montrose family. Here it was stolen as an amulet by a native chief. Once more it was recovered, only to be finally lost in France during the Revolution. Another son of Scotland whose last remains rest in two different places was a Marquis of Bute, whose widow in accordance with his last wishes, had his heart conveyed to Palestine for burial in 1900. And last, but by no means least, is the case of David Livingstone, whose body, indeed, after being carried 1,500 miles to the coast by. faithful native servants, was brought to England to receive an Abbey burial, but whose heart was interred in the soil of his beloved Africa, where the remains of his devoted wife had been laid to rest some years before.