Necropolis: London & it's Dead (6 page)

Anne met an ignominious fate, laid to rest in the furtive manner of a political prisoner. Almost seventy years later, her daughter, ‘Gloriana’, was buried in one of the most elaborate examples of the heraldic funeral London had ever seen.

The heraldic funeral derived its name from the College of Heralds, part of the Royal Household. The original role of heralds had been to organize tournaments. The knights who fought in tournaments were recognized by the arms on their shields and the crests on their helmets, which were hereditary. As a result, the College of Heralds became experts in family coats of arms, and genealogy. Part of their remit soon came to include organizing funerals, derived from the elaborate funerals of the French court in the thirteenth century. The Earl Marshall (always the Duke of Norfolk) ran the College of Heralds, and it was his role to order the Court into mourning, and specify the funeral arrangements.

Elizabeth I died in Richmond on 24 March 1603, ‘mildly like a lamb, easily like a ripe apple from the tree’, according to her physician, Dr John Manningham. The Queen’s body, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting, was taken from Richmond to Whitehall on a barge draped with black. The coffin then lay in state at Westminster in a room ‘hung with mourning’, decked from ceiling to floor with great swags of heavy black fabric, which had remained the traditional colour of mourning since Roman times. Only Mary Queen of Scots challenged the prevailing orthodoxy when she wore white to mourn the death of Lord Darnley in 1567, earning the title of ‘The White Queen’.

On previous occasions, displays of mourning had been reckoned so extravagant as to threaten the monarch’s authority. Over 900 black gowns were distributed at the funeral of the Earl of Oxford, who had been heavily fined by Henry VII for excessive display of power and wealth. However, not everyone who was entitled to an elaborate funeral received one. When Jane Seymour died in 1537, a fortnight after the birth of Edward VI, Henry VIII made strenuous attempts to restrict extravagant mourning. A big state funeral was deemed inadvisable for political reasons. The Lords decided: ‘that the wearing of doole [from the Latin,
doleo,
to grieve] and such outward demonstration of mourning…did not profit the dead…Private men should reserve their private sorrows to their own houses, and not diminish the presence of their Prince with doleful tokens.’
¹¹

Although Elizabeth had a horror of being embalmed and directed her remains to be wrapped up in cerecloth (waxed linen), sources suggest she probably
was
embalmed, as this was standard practice for royalty at the time. As heraldic funerals inevitably took time to organize, a rudimentary form of embalming had to be carried out, so that the body could be paraded through the streets at the head of the procession.

According to the historian Dr Julian Litten, the procedure consisted of eviscerating the corpse, with internal organs buried elsewhere or placed in a pot. The inner cavities were then sluiced out and disinfected with aromatic oils, and then sewn up. The exterior was preserved by rubbing it with spices. Finally it was wrapped in cerecloth, and the seams sealed with beeswax to keep it airtight. Then it was placed in a lead coffin. Commoners’ bones may have been dug up again and slung into a charnel house: for royalty, burial was for ever.

Another embalming technique, especially if the person had died abroad, was the
mos teutonicus
method. This involved chopping up the body, boiling it in wine or vinegar until it became skeletalized (the flesh falling from the bones), then shipping the remains home
for burial. When Henry V died in France in 1422, his remains were subjected to
mos teutonicus
, so that he could be brought back to England, but the operation was not a success, and the body was in no condition for display. As an alternative, an effigy of the King was constructed from leather and dressed in his clothes; a wax death mask served as a face. The effigy headed the procession and was later displayed in Westminster Abbey.

Heraldic funerals impressed through sheer weight of numbers. The more elevated the status of the deceased, the bigger the funeral. Part of the impact of the heraldic funeral was the amount of time it took the serried ranks of mourners, clad in their ‘blackes’, to parade through the streets of London. Unlike the swift removal of Anne Boleyn’s remains, the funeral procession of her illustrious daughter took many hours. On the morning of 28 April 1603, no less than 1,600 people followed the funeral procession of The Right High and Mightie Princesse Elizabeth Queene of England, France and Ireland from the Palace of Whitehall to Westminster Abbey. This spectacular funeral brought together three key elements of life and death in Tudor London: the pageantry of the heraldic funeral; the civic pride of the big London funeral; and the dramatic spectacle of the royal funeral.

According to Dekker: ‘Never did the English nation behold so much black worn as there was at her funeral. Her hearse seemed to be an island swimming in water, for round about it there rained showers of tears.’
¹²
In
Englandes Mourning Garment
, Henry Chettle invokes Shakespeare’s
Rape of Lucretia
, comparing Elizabeth’s death with a form of
danse macabre
:

Death now hath ceaz’d her in his ycie armes,

That sometime was the Sun of our delight:

And pittilesse of any after-harmes,

Hath veyld her glory in the cloude of night
…

Shepheard remember our Elizabeth,

And sing her Rape, done by that Tarquin, Death.
¹³

In an eyewitness account, Chettle describes how Elizabeth’s funeral followed the traditional heraldic format. Every member of the Royal Household attended, from the most exalted to the most obscure, with those of highest status closest to the coffin. The procession was led by ‘the Knight Marshals man, to make way’. Then came 240 poor women, followed by servants of gentlemen, esquires and knights. After two porters, there were four trumpeters. Music was a vital part of funeral processions and trumpets were associated with royalty. Behind the Standard of the Dragon, symbolizing Elizabeth’s Welsh roots, came the Children of the Woodyard; the Children of the Skullery; and groups simply described by Chettle as ‘The Skalding House’, ‘The Larder’, ‘Maker of Spice-bags’, ‘Kitchin’.

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From further up the social scale came the noblemen, and the French and Venetian Ambassadors, followed by four more trumpeters and the Standard of the Lion. Behind these could be glimpsed the banners of Cornwall, and Ireland, the Lord Mayor of
London, Sir Robert Cecil (Secretary of State and Elizabeth’s spin doctor), and the members of the aristocracy–the Barons, Bishops, Earls and Viscounts, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. At the centre of the procession, hemmed in like a queen bee, beneath a canopy held up by four noblemen, was Elizabeth herself:

Covered with velvet, borne in a chariot, drawn by foure horses trapt in black velvet. About it sixe Banner Rolls [wide banners, bearing symbols associated with Elizabeth’s ancestors] on each side: Gentlemen pensioners with their Axes downeward.

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Behind the chariot marched the women of the Royal Household. The Lady Marchioness of Northampton was the chief mourner, her train supported by a vice-Chamberlaine attended by Viscountesses, and the daughters of Earls and Barons. Under Elizabeth’s modernizing influence, they were permitted to wear farthingales, the wide hooped skirts
made fashionable by the Spanish Court, instead of the traditional mediaeval mourning robes. Finally, the Captain of the Guard, ‘with all the Guard following’, brought up the rear, ‘their halberds downeward’.

The most extraordinary aspect of this procession was the life-size effigy of the Queen lying on top of the coffin. Carved from wood, with a wax death mask for a face, the effigy had flaming red hair and staring blue eyes, and was dressed in a crimson gown trimmed with ermine, beneath the Parliamentary robes. On its head was the crown, and, in each hand, the orb and sceptre.

This creation was so lifelike that it caused consternation. According to John Stow:

They beheld her statue and picture lying upon the coffin set forth in Royall Robes…there was such a generall signing and groning, and weeping, and the like hath not beene seene or knowne in the memorie of man. At the sight thereof, divers of the beholders fell a weeping.

Although Thomas Dekker wrote at about the same time that: ‘The report of her death, like a thunderclap was able to kill thousands, it took away hearts from millions,’ we should resist the temptation to take these outpourings of national grief at face value. By 1603, Elizabeth I had become unpopular. Many of her citizens were eager for James I to succeed to the throne, considering it an indignity to be ruled by a woman; after all, there had been two Queens in a row. At Court, Elizabeth was frequently lampooned as a bad-tempered old woman, much given to stamping her foot and swearing at people, and forgetting to change her clothes. Crop failures over three successive years had resulted in famine, with food prices soaring and people starving to death. But if, as Dekker concluded, the whole kingdom seemed a wilderness, and the people in it transformed into wild men, Elizabeth’s funeral constituted a final show of strength: the heraldic funeral as social control. A big state funeral served to calm and reassure the public and reinforce the power of the
monarchy. Elizabeth’s funeral was a political gesture and a dramatic spectacle, conducted during a period of intense theatricality. Jennifer Woodward, in her excellent book of the same name, refers to this phenomenon as ‘The Theatre of Death’. Elizabeth Tudor was dead, but the monarchy, symbolized by her effigy, remained.

James I, who was to be crowned in July 1603, was not permitted to attend the funeral. He was not even admitted to the capital until it was over. Elizabeth’s dead body was a mere cadaver; her effigy represented the body politic. ‘Display of Elizabeth’s effigy in the funeral procession, by perpetuating the public ruler image of the dead Queen, filled the ceremonial gap, demonstrating a continuity of rulership until the arrival of the new King.’
¹⁴

In its pomp and pageantry, Elizabeth’s funeral was the dramatic embodiment of the
danse macabre.
Its function was to confirm that, ‘the Queen is dead–long live the Queen!’

Although London was to see many lavish funerals over the following centuries, Elizabeth’s was, to a certain extent, the last of the great heraldic funerals. The sheer expense, which involved payment to the College of Heralds and a nominal fee for participants such as the children of Christ’s Hospital, militated against these events. They took weeks to plan, and the processions clogged the streets of an already bustling metropolis.

The Puritan ethic, during the Commonwealth, condemned elaborate funerals and ostentatious displays of mourning. Although Oliver Cromwell’s funeral in 1658 was lavish, as befitted a Head of State, costing a total of £60,000 with a £4,000 hearse, the Lord Protector did not rest in peace. ‘Tried’ for regicide after his death and the Restoration of Charles II, in 1661 Cromwell’s remains were disinterred from Westminster Abbey and left to swing from a gibbet. Cromwell’s skull was placed on a pole outside Westminster Hall, where it remained for twenty years before being dislodged. The skull subsequently passed through many pairs of hands, displayed in local pubs for the benefit of the curious. One rumour circulated that Cromwell’s ghost haunted the Wig and Pen Club in
Fleet Street, where the skull was exhibited. Eventually, after forensic tests proved it to be genuine, Cromwell’s skull was offered to his old Cambridge college, and is buried at an unmarked spot in Sidney Sussex.

However lavish the state funerals of the great and good, the majority of Londoners were interred without ceremony in overcrowded churchyards. St Paul’s continued to be used for burials after the Reformation but, however robust Elizabethan attitudes, its condition was giving cause for concern. During an outbreak of the plague in 1552, Bishop Latimer had preached:

The citizens of Naim had their burying places without the city, which, no doubt, is a laudable thing; and I do marvel that London, being so great a city, hath not a burial-place without: for no doubt it is an unwholesome thing to bury within the city, especially at such a time, when there be great sicknesses, and many die together. I think verily that many a man taketh his death in St Paul’s Churchyard, and this I speak of experience; for I myself, when I have been there on some morning to hear the sermons, have felt such an ill-savoured, unwholesome savour, that I was the worse for it a great while after, and I think no less–but it is the occasion of great sickness and disease.
¹⁵

Following another outbreak in 1563, the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London realized that they faced a lack of sufficient burial space, particularly if there were to be further epidemics. This factor, and the poor state of St Paul’s burial ground, led to the creation of a new site at Moorfields, on land owned by Bethlem Hospital. Walled in at the expense of the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Rowe, the burial ground was known as the New Churchyard, and was used by parishes which had run out of space.

Another burial ground was already in the making: following the demolition of the Pardon Chapel at St Paul’s in 1549, 1,000 cartloads of bones from the vault and the charnel house were reinterred in
Finsbury Fields, ‘with great respect and care, decently piled together’. A century later, this site would become Bunhill Fields, one of London’s most celebrated cemeteries.

The condition of its churchyard was but one symptom of a malaise which afflicted St Paul’s. Long before it was destroyed by fire, the building had begun to fall into decay. Struck by lightning during the reign of Elizabeth I, repair work had been abandoned and the scaffolding dismantled. By 1645, the Cathedral was being used as ‘horse quarters’ for soldiers. For Cromwell’s followers, St Paul’s had become a symbol of oppression. Staunch Parliamentarian Robert Greville, Lord Brooke, passing by upon the Thames on 13 March 1640, told his fellow passengers that he hoped they would live to see ‘no one stone left upon another of that building’.