The tide of January 1547 had turned against the most powerful king Europe had known. Henry VIII, once the embodiment of Renaissance kingship, now lay confined to his bed at Whitehall Palace, unable to walk, his ulcerated leg turned gangrenous, his body so enormous that he required a mechanical hoist to be moved. His physicians could do little. Medicine in Tudor England was primitive, and Henry’s distrust of doctors, whom he often dismissed or punished for failure, made matters worse.
Those close to him feared he was dying, but few dared to say it aloud. Under Tudor custom, it was treasonous to predict the king’s death while he still lived. Sir Anthony Denny, chief gentleman of the privy chamber and one of the few men Henry still trusted, eventually broke the news. On the evening of January 27, Denny told the king that in man’s judgment, he was not like to live long.
Henry responded with calm resignation. When asked whether he should receive the sacrament, he replied that he placed his faith in God through the merits of Christ’s passion. Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was summoned to the bedside in the early hours of January 28. By the time Cranmer arrived, Henry could no longer speak.
The archbishop asked the king to give a sign that he trusted in Christ’s mercy. Henry squeezed his hand. Moments later, at around two in the morning, the king of England was dead at the age of fifty-five. Henry’s death was kept secret for three days.
The Tudor court was dangerous even in times of peace, and the sudden death of a monarch could spark chaos. The privy council needed time to organize the succession. Henry’s only legitimate son, Edward, was just nine years old, and factions within the court were already vying for control. Henry had named a council of regency in his will, but Edward’s uncle, Edward Seymour, wasted no time.
He would soon become Lord Protector and rule as Duke of Somerset. To keep up the illusion that the king still lived, courtiers continued to deliver meals to his chambers until the death was publicly announced on January 31. Henry’s body was embalmed and placed in a lead-lined coffin, but even this could not prevent the rapid decay of his enormous corpse. The remains were first taken to Syon Abbey for a night before the funeral procession continued to Windsor.
According to later accounts, a gruesome incident occurred while the coffin rested at Syon. The coffin leaked fluid through the lead, and dogs were found licking the blood that had seeped onto the floor. Chroniclers such as Gilbert Burnet later saw this as divine retribution for Henry’s dissolution of the monasteries and his brutal treatment of the church. On February 16, 1547, the king was buried at St.
George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, in a vault beneath the choir, next to the coffin of Jane Seymour, his third wife and, by his own admission, his true wife, who had died giving birth to his long-desired son, Edward. Henry had intended a grand tomb for himself, with gilded effigies and angels, but it was never completed. His children never finished its construction, and the great monument was abandoned. His body was left inside the vault at Windsor, marked today only by a simple black marble slab placed there in the nineteenth century.
The vault beneath the choir was never meant to be a permanent resting place. Henry had commissioned a huge monument, with a great amount of stone and an effigy of himself and Jane Seymour, and his body was to be taken to Westminster Abbey to be buried beneath it. But that plan died with him. Over the centuries, the vault was opened several times, each time revealing something disturbing.
A century after Henry’s death, the executed corpse of King Charles I was interred inside the same vault. Parliament, the king’s enemy, decided to bury Charles quietly there after the English Civil War. When the vault was opened, work was needed to make room for Charles’s coffin. Henry’s coffin, which was large, showed signs of damage and cracking.
There were reports that an explosion of gases from within the coffin had caused damage to his body, and those who entered the vault claimed they could see the king’s beard on his face within the coffin. The vault today contains three coffins: Henry’s, Jane Seymour’s, and Charles I’s. The trestle that Henry’s coffin sat on was damaged when the coffin was moved aside. Another burial was carried out when an infant child of Queen Anne was also interred there.
Later, a foot soldier who worked inside Windsor allegedly stole a bone of Henry VIII by drilling a hole into the coffin, intending to craft a knife handle from it. The theft was discovered, and the bone was returned. By the last time the vault was opened, Henry’s remains had decayed to a complete skeleton, the damage to the coffin having left his embalmed remains nothing but bones. Thousands of people each week now walk past the small black marble slab beneath the choir, unaware that two of England’s most infamous kings lie beneath their feet.
Henry’s own story began in 1491, when he was born the second son of Henry VII. He was handsome, educated, and athletic, and he became king in 1509 at the age of seventeen after his father’s death. The early years of his reign were marked by optimism and vitality. He was seen as the embodiment of Renaissance kingship, tall, charismatic, and full of promise.
But decades of personal turmoil, political conflict, and physical injury took their toll. A jousting accident in January 1536, during which his horse fell upon him, left him unconscious for two hours and caused a severe leg wound that never healed properly. Chronic ulcers developed, festering and discharging pus for the rest of his life. The imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys wrote that the stench from Henry’s sores was unbearable.
The leg wound, combined with a sedentary lifestyle and gluttonous appetite, contributed to his rapid physical decline. By the 1540s, he reportedly measured over fifty inches around the waist. The Venetian ambassador noted that the king was scarcely able to walk and was as full of sores as a foul leper. Henry’s declining health intensified his paranoia and cruelty.
His mood swings became legendary, and courtiers and even family members lived in fear of his temper. He executed two of his wives, Anne Boleyn in 1536 and Katherine Howard in 1542, along with countless nobles and former allies, including his trusted minister Thomas Cromwell. By the 1540s, his mind appeared clouded by bitterness and suspicion. He lashed out at both Protestants and Catholics, unsure whom to trust.
Chronic headaches, obesity, and leg ulcers may have been symptoms of type 2 diabetes or Cushing’s syndrome. Some historians even suggest he suffered from McLeod syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that can cause mental deterioration. Despite this, he continued to rule absolutely, his courts indulging his whims, afraid to contradict him. His last wife, Katherine Parr, nursed him devotedly, reading scripture and tending to his wounds.
One of the sons Henry acknowledged, and the only illegitimate child he ever recognized, was Henry FitzRoy, born around mid-June 1519 to Bessie Blount, a lady-in-waiting to Henry’s first wife, Katherine of Aragon. FitzRoy was actually conceived whilst Katherine was awaiting the birth of one of her own children, a fact that speaks to the kind of man Henry was: he was happy to sleep with his wife’s close friends whilst his wife was giving birth. Bessie Blount never returned to court after FitzRoy’s birth. Henry was enamored with having a son, and he proudly showed the boy off.
Cardinal Thomas Wolsey was the godfather and may have christened the child. Thomas Howard, the third Duke of Norfolk, a power-hungry man always seeking advancement, also had a keen role in the boy’s life, one that would later have a significant impact. The child was named Henry after his father, and the name FitzRoy meant son of the king. He was given a royal upbringing in the royal nursery alongside the king’s legitimate children, Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward.
He was referred to as Lord Henry, given a decent education, and raised as if he were a prince of royal blood, not a royal bastard. Henry VIII lacked a male heir, and his only living son looked like an attractive possibility to succeed him. In June 1525, FitzRoy was taken down the River Thames for a huge ceremony in which he was made the Duke of Richmond and Somerset in the presence of his father, given the highest rank of the peerage. He also inherited much of the lands belonging to Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII’s mother, and was granted an annual gift of almost £5,000.
The king was very proud of his son. Katherine of Aragon, however, was not happy about it. It was said that the queen resented the earldom and dukedom conferred on the king’s natural son and remained dissatisfied, and that she had been obliged to submit and have patience after the king dismissed her Spanish ladies, her chief counselors, from court. FitzRoy was made a Knight of the Garter, Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admiral of England, and Lord President of the Council of the North despite being a child.
He was raised at Sheriff Hutton Castle in Yorkshire. Henry VIII searched for a wife for him and even considered marrying his daughter Mary to him, meaning FitzRoy would have married his own half-sister. But the influential Duke of Norfolk made a match between FitzRoy and his own daughter, Lady Mary Howard. FitzRoy was present at the execution of Anne Boleyn as a witness for the king.
But in July 1536, he fell sick and succumbed to his illness very quickly. It is believed he died from tuberculosis or problems with his lungs. He died at the royal palace of St. James’s in London on July 23, 1536.
The king was devastated, but his father-in-law, the Duke of Norfolk, took over the funeral arrangements. Howard arranged for FitzRoy’s body to be embalmed. His internal organs, including his heart, were removed and placed in a separate box shortly after death. The body was wrapped in a thick cerecloth, practically mummifying the young teenager, then wrapped in lead and placed inside a coffin.
Under the cover of darkness, the coffin was taken out of London in a closed cart for a secret burial. The body was placed in a straw-filled wagon, and only two attendants acted as mourners. It is not known why there was so much secrecy, but this is what the king wanted. FitzRoy was buried inside Thetford Priory on the Duke of Norfolk’s lands, in the burial place and mausoleum for members of the Howard family.
But in February 1540, when the dissolution of the priories and monasteries took hold, Thetford was to be shut down. Howard appealed to the king not to close it, as his first wife and FitzRoy were buried there. The king ordered the priory closed anyway, but he also wrote to Howard, expressing anger and upset that FitzRoy had been buried with no pomp and no ceremony. At some point around 1540, FitzRoy’s body was exhumed and taken out of the Howard mausoleum.
The ground was broken, and the coffin was placed on the back of a cart that took it to Framlingham, specifically the church of St. Michael, which became the burial place of the Howards. FitzRoy’s body was interred in a grave within the main church, but this would be only temporary. Thomas Howard had ordered two tombs to be made at Framlingham, one for himself and one for FitzRoy.
But Howard fell from favor and was thrown into the Tower of London, and the building work came to a halt. The tomb was finished around 1555, almost twenty years after FitzRoy’s death. He would then have been exhumed from his grave inside the church and placed inside the tomb, a large chest without any effigies, likely intended to be placed on top, covered in Howard heraldic shields and scenes from the Old Testament. In 1841, excavation work was conducted under the tombs of Thomas Howard and Henry FitzRoy right next to the altar at Framlingham.
Under the floor, a vault was discovered containing two bodies, one presumably FitzRoy and the other his wife Mary Howard, who had died later. FitzRoy’s remains were described as having perfect teeth and being those of a young man. From this, it can be concluded that his body had at some point been disturbed and probably taken out of the cerecloth wrapping, exposed to the air, and decayed. There are examples of royal burials five hundred, six hundred, or even seven hundred years later being remarkably preserved due to embalming.
The fact that FitzRoy’s teeth were perfect and visible means his skeleton was left with only the skin having decayed in the five hundred years after his death. The removal of the protective cerecloth may have been done during the many times his body was moved or disturbed. FitzRoy is buried inside a vault, not the tomb itself, despite the tomb being large enough to house two bodies in coffins. It was traditional during the Tudor period for bodies to be placed in vaults underneath tombs, as Elizabeth I and Mary I were, as were Henry VIII and Elizabeth of York.
The mystery of Henry FitzRoy’s death remains. The boy who could very easily have been king would have been King Henry IX today, still buried under the floor of Framlingham Church inside a vault, his coffin disturbed and his skeletal remains present. The last Tudor monarch, Elizabeth I, faced a very different end. By 1602, Elizabeth was nearing seventy, an exceptional age for a monarch in the early seventeenth century.
Those close to her noticed she was growing frail. The deaths of her trusted friends hit her especially hard, and the passing of Katherine Howard, Countess of Nottingham, in early 1603 was devastating. Elizabeth had loved her dearly, and some accounts say the queen never recovered from this loss. She became withdrawn and melancholy.
She suffered from swelling in her legs, likely dropsy, a condition caused by heart or kidney failure. She grew increasingly weak and struggled to eat, yet she refused medical treatment and bed rest. Proud and politically aware, she knew that any sign of illness could spark instability or plots. By March 1603, it was clear that Elizabeth was dying.
She spent long hours standing or sitting on cushions, staring into space, refusing to sleep. Her court described her as restless, stubborn, and unwilling to lie down. Many historians believe she feared that once she took to her bed, she would never rise again. Her ladies-in-waiting and counselors, including Sir Robert Cecil, begged her to allow physicians to examine her, but she resisted every attempt.
She had always distrusted doctors, and at the end she seemed determined to let nature take its course. As her strength faded, her mind wandered. She spoke little, but she remained politically sharp enough to understand that England needed a clear successor. For decades she had refused to name one.
Now, on her deathbed, she finally broke her silence. When the privy council pressed her, Elizabeth made a gesture that answered the question without speaking. She raised her hands to indicate James VI of Scotland, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots. This symbolic act paved the way for a peaceful transition and the beginning of the Stuart era.
On March 24, 1603, at Richmond Palace, Queen Elizabeth I died quietly in the early hours of the morning. She was sixty-nine years old. No dramatic final words were recorded. Instead, she slipped away surrounded by her women after a long and exhausting struggle.
Her death ended the Tudor dynasty, which had begun with her grandfather Henry VII over a century earlier. She left behind a kingdom stronger, more stable, and more confident than it had been when she inherited it in 1558. Elizabeth’s funeral on April 28, 1603, was one of the grandest ever seen in England. Her coffin, covered in purple velvet, was carried through London from Whitehall to Westminster Abbey.
A life-sized effigy of the queen lay on top, dressed in her robes of state, scepter in hand. Crowds lined the streets to mourn the only monarch many had ever known. She was first interred within the vault of King Henry VII, her grandfather. After her funeral, King James I, her successor, ordered a large tomb to be made for Elizabeth out of respect.
She was then to be interred beneath it. This is Elizabeth I’s final resting place today, but she was exhumed, and her coffin was removed from Henry VII’s vault years later, so her remains may have decayed slightly when this happened. Not many people know that Elizabeth I was a queen actually buried twice. Immediately after her death, Elizabeth’s body was embalmed in a harrowing manner, shockingly traditional for monarchs of the time.
Physicians cut open a large cavity in her chest and cut out her heart, lungs, intestines, and other internal organs in an attempt to prevent decay and preserve her corpse. The body was then washed and wrapped in a cerecloth, a thick wax-coated shroud. The internal organs, including the heart, were placed in a separate lead container and box. These were interred with her body at first, then moved from the first vault to her final resting place.
Elizabeth hated the idea of being embalmed and eviscerated, and she had left specific instructions as to what to do with her remains, but her wishes were ignored. The doctors worked quickly and cut out her internal organs and her heart while she was still inside her bed chamber. Her heart was interred inside the same burial vault as her, as it was not stipulated where it should be buried. Decades after her death, a curious young choir boy at Westminster Abbey named William Taswell found the organ box and opened it.
It was said that a royal vault was opened, containing two urns, one appropriated to Queen Mary, the other to Queen Elizabeth. Taswell dipped his hand into each and took out a kind of glutinous red substance somewhat resembling mortar. What he had done was reach into the urn and touch and remove heart matter of Queen Elizabeth I. When the burial vault was opened again in the nineteenth century, it was discovered that Elizabeth was not buried alone, despite the elaborate tomb above the ground.
Her coffin was found sitting directly on top of the coffin of Queen Mary I, her half-sister, inside the center of the vault. Elizabeth’s coffin was placed on top to symbolize that she was the greater, more historic, and more superior queen to Mary. When the vault was opened, there was no disorder or decay, except for a small bit of the centering wood of Elizabeth’s coffin that had fallen in. The carved Tudor rose and initials Elizabeth Regina were found on the coffin along with the date 1603.
The coffin lid was made of fine oak an inch thick, covered in red silk velvet that remained attached to the wooden coffin. That was the last time anyone documented viewing the vault of Elizabeth I. Another detail many people miss inside Elizabeth’s tomb is a large stone urn placed at the head of the tomb. It is said to contain the bones and remains of possibly the Princes in the Tower, the two sons of King Edward IV who were allegedly murdered inside the Tower of London on the orders of their uncle, King Richard III.
Bones allegedly belonging to two children of the same age as the princes were discovered centuries later. King Charles II was so moved by this that he ordered them placed in a large urn and interred within Queen Elizabeth I’s tomb. The urn was opened at the start of the twentieth century, and it was found that the bones did fit the boys’ ages, but no DNA tests were done, and animal bones were also found inside. Finally, Elizabeth is buried opposite her once-great nemesis, Mary, Queen of Scots, the woman she ordered executed.
Elizabeth lies in a tomb that is actually slightly smaller than Mary’s tomb. This was done intentionally by James I, who wanted to give his mother Mary a dignified burial, but it was also a subtle dig at the Tudor dynasty, as James was a member of the Stuarts. The mother of the Tudor dynasty, Margaret Beaufort, had a very different fate. She was born on May 31, 1443, at Bletsoe Castle in Bedfordshire, the only child of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and Margaret Beauchamp of Bletso.
Through her father, she was a direct descendant of John of Gaunt, the third son of King Edward III, making her a member of the powerful and royal-adjacent Beaufort family, albeit one tainted by the technical illegitimacy of its line. The Beauforts had been legitimized by royal decree but barred from inheriting the throne, a precedent Margaret would later challenge through her son. Her father died when she was an infant, and Margaret became a wealthy heiress, a valuable marriage pawn in a turbulent era. Margaret’s first marriage, at the age of twelve, was to Edmund Tudor, the half-brother of King Henry VI and son of Queen Katherine of Valois by her second husband, Owen Tudor.
The marriage was politically significant, tying Margaret directly to the royal family. Despite her youth, she became pregnant almost immediately. In 1456, at just thirteen years old, she gave birth to her only child, Henry Tudor, at Pembroke Castle in Wales. The birth was traumatic and left Margaret unable to have further children.
Edmund had died of plague in captivity before Henry was born, leaving Margaret a young widow. Though separated from Henry’s care during his youth, she never ceased working for his safety and advancement. The Wars of the Roses tore England apart in a series of dynastic conflicts between the houses of Lancaster and York. Margaret was a staunch Lancastrian and used every means at her disposal, marriage, diplomacy, and political alliances, to protect her son’s claim to the throne.
She married twice more, first to Sir Henry Stafford, a moderate Yorkist, and then to Thomas Stanley, a powerful noble whose eventual betrayal of Richard III would help secure her son’s crown. Though living under the rule of Yorkist kings, especially Edward IV and later Richard III, Margaret maneuvered carefully, maintaining her status while secretly plotting for her son’s return from exile. Through her secret communications and alliance with Elizabeth Woodville, the widow of Edward IV, the idea of uniting the warring houses through marriage was born. Margaret proposed that her son marry Elizabeth of York, Edward IV’s daughter, thus joining Lancaster and York and ending the dynastic bloodshed.
In 1485, Margaret’s son landed in Wales and defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, claiming the throne as Henry VII. Margaret was instrumental in this victory, though she did not fight on the battlefield. Her political negotiations and intelligence network were vital. Upon Henry’s coronation, Margaret styled herself not as queen mother, which would have implied competition with her daughter-in-law, but as “my lady, the king’s mother,” a unique title she insisted upon.
She retained her own household, lands, and influence. In many ways, she acted as a co-ruler with Henry, sitting in on royal councils and managing finances. Margaret was deeply pious and highly educated, a major patron of the church and of education. She funded the founding and endowment of Christ’s College and St.
John’s College at the University of Cambridge and was responsible for the translation and printing of many religious texts. She laid down a strict moral code at court and was a matriarchal figure in her grandchildren’s lives, living to see her grandson Henry VIII become heir to the throne following the death of his elder brother Arthur. Margaret Beaufort’s health took a turn following her son Henry VII’s death, but she remained an active political player until her own death. She was an executor of her son’s will.
In June 1509, she had her final illness while staying in the Abbot’s house at Westminster for the coronation of her grandson Henry VIII. Bishop John Fisher was called to her bedside as she took a turn for the worst. He later claimed of her death that her merciful and liberal hands endured the most painful cramps, so grievously vexing her and compelling her to cry that it pierced the hearts of all her true servants and made them cry. When the sacrament was held before her, with all her heart and soul she raised her body to make an answer, and soon after she departed and yielded up her spirit into the hands of the Lord.
Her body was embalmed, placed inside a large wooden coffin, and laid in candles. The funeral occurred on July 9, 1509, and she was buried inside the south aisle of Henry VII’s Lady Chapel, the large Tudor mausoleum and extension inside Westminster Abbey. She was placed inside a burial vault, one that would become very crowded. On top, a large tomb shows her effigy, made using her death mask, depicting her in old age, a remarkable work of art.
The tomb chest is of black marble, covered in inscriptions. One states: “Margaret of Richmond, mother of Henry VII, grandmother of Henry VIII, who gave a salary to three months of this convent and founded a grammar school in Wimborne, and to a preacher throughout England, and to two interpreters of scripture, one at Oxford, the other at Cambridge, where she likewise founded two colleges, one to Christ and the other to St. John his disciple. ”
Later throughout the centuries, other kings and queens inside Westminster Abbey had their coffins opened and burial vaults broken into, much of it done to search for the first Stuart king, James I.
One of the first places searched was the burial vault next to Margaret’s, a large Stuart vault where Mary, Queen of Scots, and many other members of the Stuart family were interred. Whether Margaret Beaufort’s tomb or vault was ever opened remains unclear. As she was not a queen or a ruler in her own right, the interest probably would not have been there to look at her tomb. This leads to the conclusion that five hundred years after her death, Margaret Beaufort’s body could very much still be tightly wrapped inside her tomb in the thick linen cerecloth dipped in wax.
Her remains could be in a very good state, lifelike in the tomb. If it were ever opened, that is probably what one would see. There is likely no reason to do this now, and perhaps it shows the respect people still hold for her. Today she is considered the mother of the Tudor dynasty, buried very close to the members of her family who ruled: the burial vault of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, two of her great-granddaughters Elizabeth I and Mary I, and Edward VI, buried in the Lady Chapel.
The practice of removing and burying the heart separately was common among Tudor royals and nobles. Throughout many centuries, civilizations have removed parts of the body after death symbolically, but the Tudors cut out the hearts and interred them in different places. The heart of Jane Seymour, the third wife of Henry VIII, was cut out after death and buried under the altar of the Chapel Royal in Hampton Court Palace, while her body was buried at Windsor, where her husband would later be buried beside her. A heart-shaped lead container from the period, held today in the British Museum, once held the heart of Sir Henry Sydney, former Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and adviser and courtier to Queen Elizabeth I.
After Sydney’s death in 1586, he was buried at the family seat of Penshurst in Sussex, but the tomb was never finished. His heart was buried in his daughter Ambrosia’s tomb in Ludlow St. Lawrence’s Church, allegedly as a way of showing Sydney’s devotion to his daughter and loyalty to the town of Ludlow, which he loved. The heart-shaped coffin container is made of lead, with a coat of arms on the lid and Sydney’s name and initials surrounded by a garter.
Heart burial vessels like these are very rare. One from 1562 was found in Yorkshire in 2009, belonging to John Peck. Peck may have served with the Knights Hospitaller, or St. John’s, as his heart container was decorated with their symbols, and he may have sent his heart to Malta to be buried.
Legends also emerged about the hearts of Henry VIII’s wives. Anne Boleyn, the executed second wife, allegedly had her heart removed and buried elsewhere. Her body was interred inside the Tower of London’s chapel after her head was cut off by a French swordsman. A legend in Suffolk claimed that a heart-shaped vessel was discovered inside a small church in the village of Wathill, said to contain Anne Boleyn’s heart.
The heart-shaped tin casket was discovered in a chancel wall and reinterred beneath the organ with a small plaque marking the spot. This is a legend, though Anne Boleyn’s uncle did own the land and the nearby mansion, and she spent many happy days there as a child playing in the gardens around the church, giving a possible thread of believability. Some historians doubt its legitimacy, but the villagers still believe to this day that Anne Boleyn’s heart lies inside that chapel. Anne’s execution itself had disturbing details.
On May 19, 1536, the Queen of England was summoned from her prison cell inside the Tower of London and informed she was about to die. Henry VIII had ordered a French swordsman for the job weeks before even her trial had taken place, showing that it was more murder than judicial execution based on legitimate crimes. She made the short walk from her prison cell to the execution scaffold, built specifically on the side of the White Tower. Her execution was allegedly private, despite the fact hundreds were gathered to see her fate.
As she was led up to the scaffold, she saw the executioner and remained calm, then made a short speech to the crowd: “Good Christian people, I am come hither to die. For according to the law and by the law, I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that, whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you. For a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never.
And to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and sovereign lord. And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all. And I heartily desire you all to pray for me.
O Lord, have mercy on me. To God I commend my soul. ” The French swordsman stood behind her, Anne knelt down, and he struck once. Her head was taken clean off.
Anne’s ladies, crying, collected her body and remains and placed them inside a large oak chest that had previously housed bows or arrow staves. They carried it into the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, next to the scaffold, where a short burial ceremony took place. Her remains were joined by others executed inside the Tower of London and on Tower Hill during the Tudor period.
For around three hundred years they were left undisturbed. In 1848, a historian who visited the Tower and the chapel where Anne had been buried stated his disgust at the state of the royal burial site: “I cannot refrain from expressing my disgust at the barbarous stupidity which has transformed this little interesting church into the likeness of a meeting house in a manufacturing town. In truth, there is no sadder spot on earth than this little cemetery. ” The chapel was in a bad way, and the constable of the Tower agreed that urgent repair work was needed.
Queen Victoria approved significant improvements to the burial site, wanting to protect it as a site of royal burial. One of the biggest issues was that the floor was sinking and heavily damaged. One of the builders stated that on removing the stones of the pavement, it was found, as reference to the burial register abundantly proved, that the resting places of those buried within the walls of the chapel during the troublesome times of the sixteenth century had been repeatedly and it was feared almost universally desecrated. When the Tower ceased to be a residence of the sovereign or a state prison, the chapel came to be regarded as a mere ordinary parish church, where the interment of not only those who had lived in the Tower but even residents of the neighborhood was freely permitted.
The bodies of those who had perished on the scaffold or died as prisoners were buried no doubt intentionally in great obscurity. But even memorial stones did not protect their remains. In the instance of three Scottish lords, Lovat, Balmerino, and Kilmarnock, although their graves were specifically marked, it was found that their bones had been much disturbed, beyond all possible means of identification. It was feared that in some instances coffins had been deliberately broken up and their contents scattered to make room for fresh occupants of the ground.
Mixed into the collection of remains were also the bones of local people who had come for years to the chapel to worship. One of the bodies the builders discovered was analyzed by archaeologists and specialists and confirmed as being the remains of Queen Anne Boleyn. Dr. Frederick Millatt, professor of medicine to Queen Victoria, helped carry out examinations.
He stated that Anne’s body belonged to a female between twenty-five and thirty years of age, of a delicate frame, slender and perfect in proportions. The forehead and lower jaw were small and especially well-formed. The vertebrae were practically small, one joint especially, the atlas, being next to the skull, bearing witness to the queen’s little neck. He stated: “The bones found are certainly those of a female in the prime of life, all perfectly consolidated and symmetrical, and belong to the same person.
The bones of the head indicate a well-formed round skull with an intellectual forehead, straight orbital ridge, large eyes, oval face, and rather square full chin. The remains of the vertebrae and the bones of the lower limb indicate a well-formed woman of middle height with a short and slender neck. The ribs show depth and roundness of chest. The hands and feet bones indicate delicate and well-shaped hands and feet with tapering fingers and a narrow foot.
” He said Anne would have been roughly five feet to five-foot-three when she was alive, and he confirmed that a sharp weapon had been used to take her head from her body. He also claimed she had a small neck, the same small neck that according to contemporary Tudor accounts Anne had. Anne’s remains were taken outside the chapel and stored in the Queen’s House in the corner opposite for a number of months while building work took place. They were then sealed inside a new lead coffin, with copper plates placed on top identifying whose remains they were.
On a cloudy day in April, the bones were reinterred inside the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula. Builders helped with the job, and there was a short service. The men watched as the boxes were reinterred four feet below the surface, and the positions of the burials were carefully noted.
On top of where Anne was buried, a marble decorative tile floor marks the place. She was interred below the communion table, second in from the left on the first full row of burials, between her brother George Boleyn and Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset. No DNA analysis took place on her remains, which would have completely confirmed that the bones belonged to Anne. There have been rumors that some of her remains may have been moved out of the Tower, but still today even the Beefeaters who work inside the Tower of London believe the bones of Anne Boleyn are interred below the altar of the Chapel of St.
Peter ad Vincula.
