QUEEN'S ROOMS IN SOUTH-EAST TOWER, WINDSOR CASTLE.
(By permission of Messrs. Harper & Brothers.)
St. George's Chapel, a beautiful structure of the Perpendicular Gothic, was begun four hundred years ago, and contains the tomb of Edward IV., who built it. In 1789, more than three hundred years after his interment, the leaden coffin of the king was found in laying a new pavement. The skeleton is said to have been seven feet long, and Horace Walpole got a lock of the king's hair. Here also lie Henry VI., Henry VIII., and Charles I. The latter's coffin was opened in 1813, and the king's remains were found in fair preservation. The close companionship of Henry VIII. and Charles in death is thus described by Byron:
"Famed for contemptuous breach of sacred ties,
By headless Charles see heartless Henry lies."
The tradition of "Herne the Hunter," which Shakespeare gives in the Merry Wives of Windsor, is said to be founded on the fact that Herne, a keeper of Windsor Forest, having committed some offence, hanged himself upon an oak tree. His ghost afterwards was to be seen, with horns on its head, walking round about this oak in the neighborhood of the castle.
INTERIOR OF ST. GEORGE'S CHAPEL.
(By permission of Messrs. Harper & Brothers.)