Note 143a — Chapter VII · THE FIELD OF THE BATTLE OF TEWKESBURY. [131a]

It will be recollected that the Duke of Clarence was put to death in 1477–78, in the Tower of London. He was interred at Tewkesbury. See Stow’s Annals, p. 431; the Catalogue of Nobility, &c. by Ralph Brooke, p. 52; Additions to Camden’s Britannia, by Gough, edition of 1789, vol. i. p. 269; Sandford, p. 413; Rapin, vol. i. (in Notis, p. 624). Those accounts appear to be corroborated by the circumstance, that the Duke’s wife Isabel was interred in a stone arched vault, near the high altar, in the Abbey Church there. Leland, in his Itinerary, vol. vi. fo. 92 [p. 81], states that she died at the Castle of Warwick, on the 22nd of December, 1476, and was buried at Tewkesbury, of which she was the patroness. The entrance to the vault is covered by a large blue stone, under which is a flight of eight steps, which lead to the vault, which was opened and examined in 1826, on the occasion of some repairs, when the skulls and some bones of a man and a woman were discovered in it; besides which there were also six large stones at the south end of it, which apparently had been placed there, in order to support two coffins abreast; which adds not a little to the supposition that he was buried in the same tomb with the Duchess. Sandford expressly states that the Duke was buried at Tewkesbury, near the body of his Duchess. It was evident that the vault had been long previously entered, probably at the time of the dissolution of abbeys, or of the parliamentarian wars, and rifled of every thing worth taking away. The floor of the vault was paved; and extending nearly the length and breadth of it, was the representation of a cross, formed by the insertion of bricks, some of which contained the arms of England, of the Clares, &c.; and others contained representations of fleurs-de-lis, birds, ornamented letters, &c. Under the belief that the mortal remains so discovered, were those of the ill-fated Duke of Clarence, and of Isabel his wife, the skulls and bones were collected, placed in an ancient stone coffin, and the vault again closed up. It furnishes us with an impressive moral, and appears like an awful and just retribution, that so soon after the Duke had assisted in, or at least countenanced, the murder of Prince Edward, after the battle of Tewkesbury, his own death by violence, by the tyrannical orders of his brother, Edward IV., should have occurred, and his corpse should have been deposited in the Abbey Church, within sight of which the murder was committed.