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.