Identifying Dead Kings.
Equally troubled has been the repose of Edward I, “The Hammer of the Scots.” When the old warrior died in 1307, he ordered that his flesh should be boiled and his bones carried at the head of an English army until Scotland should be conquered. Though this wish was calmly disregarded, one custom which antiquarians have been at a loss to explain, may be in some way connected with it. Until the overthrow of Richard III on Bosworth Field ended the Plantagenet rule, the tomb of Edward I was opened every two years and the cerecloth renewed. With the Tudors this strange rite fell into disuse.
For three hundred years the body of Edward was left in the tomb in peace. Then the Society of Antiquarians opened the coffin in 1771. The king was lying in his royal robes, the “long shanks” from which he derived his nickname, covered with a cloth of gold. Six feet two inches was the dead man’s height. Lean and straight as he was, Edward I must have been an imposing figure.
Only two other kings of England—James I and Charles I—have been exhumed. Their coffins were opened for the purpose of identification. James had the body of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, taken from Fotheringay to Westminster but, on the whole, the royal family of England has been little disturbed.