by Trixie the Cat
Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code
Tomb Raiders, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu….
….and Laura Croft…
Sorry! Your Cat meant Laura Matthias…
……..have done a magnificent job!
They have managed to persuade the Ecclesiastical Authorities to let them open the Southampton Family Vault….
…..and they presented their findings last night to a packed and excited audience in St. Peter’s Church, Titchfield, Hampshire.
A slide show was part of the presentation, but because of the sensitive nature of the material – many dead bodies – photography was forbidden.
So Your Cat will have to fall back on her descriptive powers….
Now the fact is that most of what The Tomb Raiders discovered is actually in the public domain.
But legend has long shrouded the truth – and the truth really did set us free, last night, in a shocking way.
The tomb was last opened in the 1950s when a Visiting Preacher fell through the floor – and the whole structure of the Church had to be stabilised.
The Vicar of St. Peter’s at the time – Norman Miller – gave an honest account of what he saw in the vault:
Fifteen to twenty great lead coffins, piled one on top of each other, the lower ones being in a poor state of preservation.
This tallies with a description by William Pavey in 1719 – when the vault was still being used….
[The bodies are] in lead coffins or wrapped in lead with inscribed plates indicating their identities and dates of death.
The last internment was made in 1737 and the tomb was sealed. Around 1899 the vault was opened by the Victorians, who had no qualms in taking of the lids of the coffins and reporting that the bodies had been embalmed.
This lead to a journalistic caprice in 1950.
Our Chief Agent, Stewart Trotter, came across a 1950 newspaper article stored in the Winchester Record Office, describing how the lids of the coffins had been taken off – and the bodies found swimming in the purest honey – perfectly preserved.
This story turned into fact – and was included in Church Literature and Guides.
So you can imagine the consternation last night which followed Laura’s photo of the contents of the vault…
….lumpen lead coffins, falling apart, imploding, thrust, higgledy-piggledy and disrespected, into the left corner of the vault.
If the vault had been in this condition when Mary Browne died she wouldn’t have asked to be placed ‘as near as may be’ to her beloved husband: she would have asked to be thrown in his general direction.
And there is evidence that the vault was always a touch chaotic. It seems to have been a general, public vault, commandeered by the Southampton family.
They built their memorial ‘tomb’ away from the East Wall……
– and, under a slab of stone in front of the tomb, built a stairway and brick passsageway which led to the old vault which may or may not have contained bodies from other families.
Rev. Norman Miller bricked up the entry to the old vault and removed the Tudor steps down to the crypt. He must have thought that was that.
But it certainly wasn’t. The Tomb Raiders now want to identify the bodies. They have smashed down Miller’s brick wall and re-built the steps.
But DNA tests have been forbidden by the Authorities, so only two bodies have been ‘confirmed’:
- Elizabeth Vernon….
….who became the wife of Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton….
2. James Wriothesley, Lord Wriothesley, the son of the Third Earl, who died of dysentery at the age of nineteen, five days before his father. They were onn a military campaign in the Lowlands.
The Tomb Raiders have not identified any remains yet of Mary Browne….
……BUT they do have one the ‘inscribed plates’ William Pavey described in 1719 with Mary’s name on it.
So it seems that her son DID respect her dying wish and allowed her into the family vault.
BUT we don’t know if she or her coffin are still there.
So, as Your Cat said at the beginning…..
Mary Browne’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave. And doesn’t.
Just call me Schrodinger’s Cat!
‘Bye, now!