When I had written my previous book, on Royal Wills, in 2017, I thought I would write another one: but on what subject? I narrowed it down to two topics which had always interested me: the Sumptuary Laws and the History of Exhumation. It had to be another niche area. These two topics had always interested me from the standpoint of legal history. On checking, I found that several books and articles had been written on the Sumptuary Laws since 1996, so my search went to Exhumation. Here, nothing major had been written since c. 1934, when Richard Haestier wrote his somewhat remarkable book entitled Dead Men Tell Tales, in the wake of the exhumation of the Princes in the Tower in 1933. Apart from that, there were some books with popular appeal, of which the most notable is Rest in Pieces, a study of the dismemberment of famous bodies, by Bess Lovejoy. Both of these books gave me much information to work from.
Many years ago, when I first considered writing on this topic, I borrowed a book from Southampton Public Library on this arcane subject, written by an American with an extraordinary name (not unusual among Americans), but this book I cannot now trace. I had intended to write an article for a journal to which I often contributed, and even discussed it with the editor, but in the end, nothing came of it. So, it had been more than eighty years since there had been something more major on exhumation, and this is how I came to write it.
There have been many important exhumations since 1934. The most important of them, The Romanovs and Richard III, who together with Tut-an-khamoun and the Princes in the Tower, form the four which most caught the public imagination, I felt at once that I would not trespass on the work of those who had gone before and covered them so well. I had to make an exception for the Princes in the Tower because I had access to the diaries of Laurence Tanner, the archivist of Westminster Abbey, and the light he throws on their exhumation, where he was a leading investigator, is refreshing and different, being a man of much learning and not a little wit and humour.
The idea of writing about exhumation was often there, in the back of my mind: after all, it was an extraordinary thing to do, digging up bodies, opening coffins, examining bones, why would anyone do it, and indeed, should they do it?
It proved to be one of those subjects of the most enduring fascination, for all kinds of reasons. When I was a boy, my Father, who had been a chauffeur-Tour guide for my grandfatherâs business, proved himself to be a mine of information, about things historical, geographical, architectural, social, and cultural, gleaned from this occupation and his own inherent interest. He told me many tales and repeated many myths, inscriptions, and epitaphs from Winchester, Canterbury, Cambridge, Oxford, Greenwich, and beyond. One of these tales stuck in my mind, and it is still there today: how the coffin of William Rufus was opened and inside was the kingâs body or skeleton, still with its red hair, and a dead rat curled up inside his skull. This in a way said it all: identification, confirmation, surprise, and shock. William Rufus anyway had always intrigued me and still does. Why, of all his brothers, was he the only one with red hair? So red, apparently, that together with his ruddy complexion, was called Will le Rous, Rufus, a nickname which has come down the centuries. He was an enigmatic and elusive character, the only adult sovereign of these Isles not ever to marry. He was killed hunting in the New Forest as the eleventh century turned into the twelfth; killed by a stray arrow which glanced off an oak tree and killed him instantly. His companion, Sir Walter Tyrrell, fled to France, fearing he would be blamed and unlikely to get a fair trial. The mystery of the kingâs death remained. His body was found by a charcoal burner, Purkiss, who took it on his cart to Winchester Cathedral, where it was hastily buried. A trail of the kingâs blood on the forest floor had followed the cart. Within three days, his brother Henry had seized the Treasury and begun his thirty-five-year reign. When I was a young man, I had worked with a girl named Wendy Purkiss, who proudly claimed descent from Purkiss, the charcoal burner, his name etched into local history. I had been several times to see the Rufus Stone, originally erected by John, Lord Delaware, in 1745, as he had seen the very oak tree, now no longer there. A century later, the stone had become so worn it was enclosed in metal, with the original inscription, by William Sturgess Bourne, one of the Forest Wardens, in 1841. There it still is, at Canterton, near Cadnam. I was born in the New Forest, at Ashurst, not far away. I rode in the Forest for many years with my brother. Perhaps, this is why I feel a resonance with Rufus, perhaps even sympathy for a king pursued by demons. My Father had taken my brother and myself to see the Rufus Stone. It may have been on one of these occasions that he told us about the exhumation of the Red King.
Henry I was Henry Beauclerk, Henry the educated; so different from the bad boy Rufus, who never listened to anyone, not even the saintly Anselm, unless he was ill. Yet, it is Rufus who fascinates. Cardinal Basil Hume, long the Headmaster of Ampleforth College, said once that he liked the bad boys, and this reminded me of the invocation: May God make all the bad people good, and all the good people interesting!
This is a book which attempts to fill in the background of those who have been exhumed, and why they have been the subjects or victims of this practice, which, initially, would seem to go against all human instinct and sensibility. The coverage is full of surprises and shocks: empty tombs, tombs, or coffins with the wrong bodies in them; more than one body; parts of bodies mixed up with other remains; bodies remarkably well preserved; bodies embalmed; fragrant bodies; bodies with evil odours; relics stolen, taken, surreptitiously secreted. There are bodies of saints, criminals, royal persons of all degrees, those who, like Potemkin, were âparvenus, but in some sense royalâ, as Simon Sebag Montefiore has memorably put it. Where does âroyaltyâ begin, anyway? Was Napoleon royal?
It is in this spirit of inquiry and investigation, of seeking to sift evidence over eleven centuries, that this present work is offered. It could not have been written without the help and encouragement of many people, in Europe and beyond, of which my wife is always in the forefront.