The danger of premature interment : $b Proved from many remarkable instances of people who have recovered after being laid out for dead, and of others entombed alive, for want of being properly examined prior to intermentTaylor, Joseph
History
The danger of premature interment : $b Proved from many remarkable instances of people who have recovered after being laid out for dead, and of others entombed alive, for want of being properly examined prior to interment
Taylor, Joseph
Burial, Premature; Funeral rites and ceremonies
[2] Note.--Mr. Addison seems to have borrowed this story from the one
related by Dr. Parsons. Vide p. 121.
* * * * *
In the tenth year of Henry II. at the digging of a new foundation in
the church of St. Mary-Hill, in London, there was found and taken up
the body of Alice Hackney, she had been buried in that church a hundred
and seventy-five years before, yet was she there found whole of skin,
and the joints of her arms pliable; her corpse was kept above ground
four days without any inconvenience, exposed to the view of as many as
would behold it, and then re-committed to the earth.
_Baker’s Chronicle._
* * * * *
In the reign of King James, at Astley in Warwickshire, upon the fall of
the church, there was taken up the corpse of Thomas Grey, Marquis of
Dorset, who was there buried the 10th of October, 1530, in the twenty
second year of King Henry VIII, and although it had been lain seventy
eight years, in this bed of corruption, yet his eyes, hair, flesh,
nails, and joints, remained as if he had been but newly buried.
* * * * *
In the year 1554, there was found in Rome a coffin of marble, eight
feet long, and in it a robe, embroidered with Goldsmith’s work, which
yielded six and thirty pounds weight of gold; besides forty rings, a
cluster of emeralds, a little mouse, made of another precious stone,
and amongst all these precious magnificences, two leg bones of a dead
corpse, known by the inscription of the tomb to be the bones of the
Empress Mary, daughter of Stilicoe, and wife of the Emperor Honorius.
* * * * *
Robert Braybrook, born at a village in Northamptonshire, was
consecrated Bishop of London, January, 5th, 1381. He was after that
Chancellor of England for six months. He died, anno. 1404, and
was buried under a marble stone, in the chapel of St. Mary, in the
Cathedral of St. Paul’s, London. Yet was the body of this Bishop lately
taken up, and found firm, as to skin, hair, joints, nails, &c. For upon
that fierce and fatal fire in London, September, 2nd, 1666, which burnt
so much of St. Paul’s church, when part of the floor fell into St.
Faith’s, this dead person was shaken out of his dormitory, where he had
lain no less than two hundred and sixty two years. His body was exposed
to the view of all sorts of people for divers days; and some thousands
did behold and poise it in their arms, till by special order it was
re-interred.
_Fuller’s Worthies._
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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