The proud Cardinal Beaufort, founder of the "Almshouse of Noble Poverty" at St. Cross, is represented by Shakespeare as dying in despair:
"Lord Cardinal, if thou think'st on Heaven's bliss
Hold up thy hand: make signal of thy hope.
He dies, and makes no sign!"
Dean Kitchin writes: "One cannot look at his effigy, as it lies in his stately chantry, without noting the powerful and selfish characteristics of his face, and especially the nose, large, curved, and money-loving. The sums Beaufort had at his disposal were so large that he was the Rothschild of his day. More than once he lent his royal masters enough money to carry them through their expeditions."
The mortuary chests are certainly among the most interesting things possessed by any English cathedral. They are supposed to contain the bones of Kings Eadulph, Kinegils, Kenulf, Egbert, Canute, Rufus, Edmund, Edred, Queen Emma, and Bishops Wina and Alwyn. They no doubt got much mixed up when removed from the crypt by Henry de Blois, and again when the chests were broken open by the Parliamentarians, so that a detailed identification has been made impossible. It is now generally acknowledged that the bones of Rufus are in one of these chests, and that the so-called Rufus tomb in the retro-choir is the burial place of some great ecclesiastic. Such at any rate is the opinion of Dean Kitchin, who has done so much to elucidate the past history of the city and its Cathedral.
When one of these boxes was taken recently out of its enclosing chest and examined, it was found to have a roof something like a low gable, which was decorated with painting about a century later than the time of de Blois. On the outside appeared the words in Latin: "Here are together the bones of King Kinegils and of Ethelwolf". Four of the Italian chests that held the inner boxes were the gift of Bishop Fox. The other chests have revealed five complete sets of human bones, and among the remains in another were the bones of a female, possibly those of Queen Emma.
