Note 64 — HISTORY OF SEPULCHRAL MONUMENTS.

This monument was asserted by Green, in his History of Worcester, to have been a cenotaph, and accordingly the Dean and Chapter had determined on its removal, intending to place it over the supposed remains of the king in the lady chapel. But on opening the tomb on Monday, July the 17th, 1797, the royal remains were found therein in a stone coffin, the internal measure of which from the feet to the top of the excavation hollowed out for the head, was 5 feet 6 inches and a half. The body was doubtless originally placed in the coffin, nearly in the same form, and arrayed in such a robe as the figure on the tomb, with his sword in his left hand, and booted, but it was so much deranged as evidently to shew that it had been disturbed, and that perhaps at its removal from the place of its first interment in the lady chapel, if ever that event had taken place, which seems to have been a controverted point with historians. The most perfect part of the body seemed to be the toes, on some of which the nails were still distinguishable, but of what the dress had originally been composed, could be only matter of conjecture. The influx of people, eager to see the royal remains after an interment of nearly 600 years, was so great as to be the cause of the tomb being closed on the following day.