Ancient Ruins Give Us A Fascinating Window Into The Past..

Paul Grabwinkler - The Precipice of Death

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The Death and Burial of Henry VIII

On January 28, 1547, Henry VIII died at his palace of Whitehall.

Though it had been obvious to his servants for a few days that the king was dying, no one was brave enough to tell the king because of the laws Henry had passed making it treason to “imagine” the king’s death. It was Sir Anthony Denny who finally plucked up the courage to approach the king and tell him that “in man’s judgement, he was unlikely to live.”

Henry took it well, and instead of ordering Denny’s arrest said he believed God would forgive his sins. Archbishop Cranmer was summoned, but by the time he had arrived, Henry was beyond speech. He signaled his faith in Christ by squeezing the archbishop’s hand. He died at around 2 am.

The death was not immediately announced while the courtiers were getting all of their ducks in a row for the succession of the prince, and ensuring their own places within the new regime. Meals were even brought to Henry’s chambers as usual to continue the ruse that the king still lived. On the morning of the 31st, Chancellor Wriothesley announced through streaming tears that the king was dead.

Henry’s body was embalmed, removing the internal organs and stuffing the body cavity with herbs and spices, before wrapping the corpse with waxed cloth and sheets of lead. The bundle was then placed in a wood coffin. But the two-day delay in admitting the king was dead meant that decomposition had already had time to set in before the embalmers started to work and would end up having some spectacularly gruesome repercussions during the month-long funeral.

A chronicler of Henry’s funeral claimed the coffin had leaked and dripped fluids on the floor below:

[T]he pavement of the church was wetted with Henry’s blood. In the morning came plumbers to solder the coffin under whose feet was suddenly seen a dog creeping and licking up the king’s blood. If you ask me how I know this, I answer William Grenville, who could scarcely drive away the dog told me and so did the plumber also.

The body lay in its chamber of estate for almost two weeks before being transported to Windsor to be interred in what would end up being its final place of rest - though that was not the original intention.

Anne Boleyn lies buried beneath the chapel floor of St. Peter ad Vincula. Her husband, Henry VIII, did not even provide a coffin for her. Nothing was provided beyond a length of white cerecloth for a shroud. So busy was he in planning his wedding to her successor, Jane Seymour, it’s likely he didn’t give her final resting place much thought. Her grave wasn’t even marked until the restoration of the chapel in the Victorian era. It was an ignominious end, meant to erase Anne’s memory. Fate, it seems, has a sense of irony.

Henry planned a magnificent show for his own resting place. He had begun planning his tomb in 1518, during his marriage to Katharine of Aragon. His ego is writ large in every word of the plans. It was intended to outshine the resting place of every monarch in Europe. In 1527, a commission to work on Henry’s tomb was offered to an Italian sculptor to the tune of 75,000 ducats, which is the modern equivalent of six million, ninety thousand pounds today. The total weight of the bronze needed to complete it would have been 35,000 pounds. The tomb was to be built of black and white marble, the exterior covered with semi-precious “oriental stones.” Atop each of its ten soaring marble pillars was supposed to be the life-sized figure of an apostle, and in the center, above its canopy, a life-sized figure of the king mounted on a large horse. Gold-covered brass figures of the saints were supposed to surround the recumbent effigies of the king and queen. Massive nine foot candlesticks, each held by the figure of a child, stood between the pillars. A grand altar in a side chantry chapel was planned, where masses for Henry’s soul would be said for “as long as the world shall endure.” You can see some recreations of the plans here.

Perhaps the gargantuan cost of the tomb was enough to make even Henry flinch, which is why completion was delayed. There also seems to have been a problem with the plans because the weight of the canopy could not be borne by the supports.

Sporadic work was done over the years, based on the expenses recorded in the king’s papers. When Wolsey fell, the king seized the materials of the tomb Wolsey was building for himself, including his black marble sarcophagus, and incorporated them into a new design for Henry’s own tomb. The disgraced Wolsey ended up in a churchyard, beneath a slab that begs for a little earth for charity’s sake.

Despite the three queens that came after her, Henry decided he wanted to be buried next to Jane Seymour. In his mind, she had been his best queen, the one who gave him a son - like she was supposed to - and she had been polite enough to die before he could get tired of her. The perfect woman. After her death, Jane’s coffin was stored in a vault beneath the floor of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor until the tomb could be completed and she could be interred next to where her husband would rest.

But Henry died with relatively little of the work on the tomb having been completed. After his own funeral, Henry’s coffin was stored next to Jane Seymour’s in the underground vault in St. George’s chapel. 

It seems his son, Edward VI, obediently had some work done on the tomb during his short reign, though his Protestant upbringing made him decide against having the masses said for his father’s soul. Young Edward died before much progress could be made on the tomb, and he didn’t end up getting a tomb, either. Instead, he was buried beneath the altar of the Lady Chapel built by Henry VII. The grave was unmarked until 1966, when a tiny slab was put in place to mark the spot.

Work on Henry’s tomb came a halt during the reign of Mary. Mary decided she didn’t want to memorialize the man who had shattered England’s relationship with the Catholic church, and the fact England was broke probably had a lot to do with her coming to that particular conclusion.

In 1556, after Elizabeth came to the throne, she had her treasurer draw up a report about what it would take to finish her father’s tomb. She had all of the completed materials transported from their workshops to the side chapel known as Wolsey’s “tomb house.” But she nitpicked on the details and hem-hawed in that “answer-answerless” way of hers and just never quite got around to completing the tomb. She didn’t build one for Mary, either - her sister ended up buried with her in Elizabeth’s own tomb. (Which ended up being built by James, because Elizabeth didn’t want people thinking too much about her death.)

The “tomb house” at Windsor was in a sort of curious limbo. Its upkeep and repairs were not the responsibility of the church to which it was attached, but instead was the responsibility of the crown. After the reign of James II, it fell into a state of neglect. The vault where Henry and Jane’s remains were stored was hastily opened in 1648 to inter the remains of Charles I after his execution by the Commonwealth. A year later, the Commonwealth government, in need of funds, decided to sell off the brass parts meant for Henry’s tomb.

A couple of the candlesticks survive in a chapel in Ghent, Belgium. The black marble sarcophagus survived as well, and was eventually used to bury Lord Nelson.

The location of Henry’s little vault was forgotten by the time of the reign of Charles II. (Perhaps they didn’t look too hard, because it meant that Charles II could keep the money Parliament gave him for the erection of a tomb to commemorate his executed father.) By 1749, the “tomb house” was a ruined mess, with no windows, used for storing building materials.

It wasn’t until 1813 that Henry’s vault was re-discovered. Sir Henry Halford wrote an account of the discovery, which is described as an accident caused by excavating under the “tomb house” in order to prepare a mausoleum there for the current king.

They opened the coffin with the lead plate identifying it as that of Charles I, removed the king’s head to confirm it was really him and not an imposter’s body as some rumors had it, and took some souvenirs. The people of that age were always so delightfully ghoulish. In 1888, the vault was opened again to return the relics and a sketch was made of the interior.

They noted that Henry’s coffin had been broken open and peeked inside. Inside was a skeleton, still bearing traces of a beard, which belie the old rumors that Mary had her father exhumed and burned as a heretic during her reign.

The outer coffin of wood was badly decayed and all that remained was the lead wrapped around the body. They thought the damage looked like it had been caused by an explosion from within, which matches up with one of the old stories of Henry’s coffin bursting during the funeral rites and fluid leaking out. However, some of the damage could have occurred when Charles’ coffin was shoved into the vault.  Jane’s coffin was ignored and left undisturbed. The prince, who was in attendance, didn’t think their mild curiosity was enough to justify disturbing her remains. They also discovered a tiny coffin resting on top of Charles’, containing an unnamed infant child of Queen Anne (1665 – 1714).

The “tomb house” was eventually used by Queen Victoria to memorialize her beloved husband, Albert. Other kings and queens were laid to rest around Henry - most of the kings and queens since George III have been interred there in the Royal Vault, fittingly memorialized. Henry’s grave remained unmarked until 1837, when William IV took pity on the two kings who had no memorial whatsoever and had an inscribed slab installed on the floor to mark the spot.

In the end, Henry’s resting place was no more grand than the resting spot of the queen whose memory he had sought to erase. He, too, lies beneath the floor of a chapel with no edifice erected above to memorialize him - only a slab in the pavement that bears his name.

On this day in the History of British Queens, 4th October

• 1160 - Margaret of France (wife of Henry the Young King)’s mother, Constance of Castile, dies giving birth to Margaret’s sister, Alys of France, Countess of Vexin. Constance was buried in the Basilica of Saint Denis. In addition to being Margaret’s mother, she was also the aunt of Berengaria of Navarre, who was another queen consort of England as the wife of Richard I. • 1289 - Margaret of France (wife of Edward I)’s nephew, Louis X of France, is born in Paris. He was the son of Margaret’s half-brother, Philip IV of France, and Joan I of Navarre, and was therefore the older brother of Isabella of France. • 1497 - Catherine of Aragon’s older brother, Juan, Prince of Asturias, dies aged 19 in Salamanca. • 1539 - Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves’ marriage treaty is signed. • 1638 - Henrietta Maria of France’s nephew, Francis Hyacinth, Duke of Savoy, dies aged 6 at the Castello del Valentino in Turin. Her other nephew then succeeded him as Charles Emmanuel II.

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The Gargoyle of Notre Dame overlooking Paris, 1910

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Neil Simone