Edward the Confessor.
Other kings than Charlemagne have had their slumbers broken. Since the coffin of Edward the Confessor was placed, on January 6, 1066, before the high altar of Westminster Abbey it has been opened for one purpose or another three times. Venerated as the last lineal descendant of Cedric, Edward was buried in his full regalia, the crown on his head, the gold crucifix in his hand, and the pilgrim’s ring, said to have belonged to St. John, on his finger.
It was thus that the body was found when Bishop Gundulf opened the coffin thirty years later and plucked a hair from the dead king’s long white beard. The coffin was opened again when Edward was canonized in 1163, and the body of the saint was then found to be in complete preservation.
Abbot Laurence, however, was harder to satisfy than Gundulf. From the dead man’s finger he took the ring of St. John, depositing it in the abbey treasury as a relic, and the vestments in which the corpse was wrapped were made into three magnificent copes. Another century passed and then Henry III had the coffin opened, when he removed it to the east of the high altar, where it has since remained.