Note 145a — Chapter VII · THE FIELD OF THE BATTLE OF TEWKESBURY. [131a]

It is said that human bones were found there; but it is unfortunate that no full and detailed account seems to have been preserved of the examination of the grave, or what kind of human bones, whether male or female, old or young, were discovered, for they might have done much to throw light upon the subject. I could not obtain any further information relative to it, from the person who showed me through the Abbey Church. The practice of interring corpses in stone coffins continued a considerable time after the date of the battle of Tewkesbury. The corpse of Richard III. was interred, after the battle of Bosworth, in 1485, in a stone coffin, in the Grey Friars Church at Leicester. His remains were, at the time of the destruction of religious houses, disturbed, and the stone coffin was converted into a watering-trough, at the White Horse Inn, in Gallow Tree Gate, and was so used until it was broken to pieces.—Hutton’s Battle of Bosworth, pp. 142, 143. See also Sandford’s Genealogical History, p. 410, where he mentions that the stone coffin was made a drinking-trough for horses at a common inn.