Medicine -- Anecdotes; Physicians -- Great Britain
was jointly with his brother, Henry, Cardinal Bishop of Winchester,
appointed by the Parliament to the government, care, and education of
the royal infant, Henry the Sixth. He married Margaret, daughter of
Sir Thomas Nevil, by whom he had issue only one son, who died young.
He was a great benefactor to this church, died at East Greenwich,
1427, in the 5th year of King Henry ye Sixth, and was interred in this
Abbey, near his duchess (as he had by his will directed), at the
entrance of the Chapel of our Lady, close to the wall. On the 24th of
February following, the mangled remains were enclosed in an oak
coffin, and buried about eight feet deep, close to the north side of
the north-east pillar, which formerly assisted to support the Abbey
belfry. Before its re-interment, the body was mangled and cut with the
most savage barbarity by Thomas Gery Cullum, a young surgeon in this
town, lately appointed Bath King-at-Arms. The skull sawed in pieces,
where the brain appeared it seemed somewhat wasted, but perfectly
contained in its proper membranes; the body ript open from the neck to
the bottom, the cheek cut through by a saw entering at the mouth; his
arms chopped off below the elbows and taken away. One of the arms the
said Cullum confesses to have in spirits. The crucifix, supposed to be
a very valuable one, is missing. It is believed the body of the
duchess was found (within about a foot of the Duke's) on the 24th of
February. If she was buried in lead she was most likely conveyed away
clandestinely the same night. In this church several more of the
antient royal blood were interred, whose remains are daily expected to
share the same fate. Every sensible and humane mind reflects with
horror at the shocking and wanton inhumanity with which the princely
remains of the grandson of the victorious King Edward the Third have
been treated--worse than the body of a common malefactor, and 345
years after his death. The truth of this paragraph having been
artfully suppressed, or very falsely represented in the county
newspapers, and the conveyance of public intelligence rendered
doubtful, no method could be taken to convey a true account to the
public but by this mode of offering it."
The young surgeon whose conduct is here so warmly censured was the
younger son of a Suffolk baronet. On the death of his brother he
succeeded to the family estate and honours, and having no longer any
necessity to exert himself to earn money, relinquished medical
practice. He was born in 1741 and died in 1831. It is from him that
the present baronet, of Hawstead Place and Hardwicke House, in the
county of Suffolk, is descended.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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