In consideration of the £5000 retained of the niggard's money, the physicians allowed his statue to remain, but they erased the inscription from beneath it.
The Royal College of Surgeons in London was not incorporated till the year 1800—more than half a century after the final disruption of the surgeons from the barbers—and the college in Lincoln's Inn Fields was not erected till 1835. Its noble museum, based on the Hunterian Collection, which the nation purchased for £15,000, contains, amongst its treasures, a few preparations that are valuable for their historical associations or sheer eccentricity, rather than for any worth from a strictly scientific point of view. Amongst them are Martin Van Buchell's first wife, whose embalmment by William Hunter has already been mentioned; the intestines of Napoleon, showing the progress of the disease which was eventually fatal to him; and the fore-arms (preserved in spirits) of Thomas Beaufort, third son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.
The writer had recently submitted to his notice, by Dr. Diamond of Twickenham, a very interesting and beautifully penned manuscript, relating to these remains, of which the following is a copy:—
"Bury St Edmunds.
"Joseph Pater scripsit, when thirteen years of age.
"On the 20th of February, 1772, some labourers, employed in breaking up part of the old abbey church, discovered a leaden coffin, which contained an embalmed body, as perfect and entire as at the time of its death; the features and lineaments of the face were perfect, which were covered with a mask of embalming materials. The very colour of the eyes distinguishable; the hairs of the head a brown, intermixed with some few gray ones; the nails fast upon the fingers and toes as when living; stature of the body about six feet tall, and genteelly formed. The labourers, for the sake of the lead (which they sold to Mr Faye, a plummer, in this town, for about 15s), stript the body of its coffin, and threw it promiscuously amongst the rubbish. From the place of its interment it was soon found to be the remains of Thomas Beaufort, third son of John de Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, by his third duchess, Lady Catherine Swineford, relict of Sir Otho de Swineford, of Lincolnshire. He took the name of Beaufort from the place of his birth, a castle of the duke's, in France. He was half-brother to King Henry IV., created Duke of Exeter and Knight of the Garter; in 1410, Lord Chancellor of England; in 1412, High Admiral of England, and Captain of Calais; he commanded the Rear-Guard of his nephew King Henry the Fifth's army at the battle of Agincourt, on the 25th of October, 1415; and in 1422, upon the death of King Henry the Fifth, 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.
The fore-arms, now in the custody of the College of Surgeons, were for a time separated. One of them was retained by Mr. Cullum, and the other, becoming the property of some mute inglorious Barnum, was taken about to all the fairs and wakes of the county, and exhibited as a raree-show at a penny a peep. The vagrant member, however, came back after a while to Mr. Cullum, and he presented both of the mutilated pertions to their present possessors.