and only the stone-chest wherein he was laid (a drinking-trough now for horses in a common inn), retaineth the memory of that great Monarch's Funeral." The whole of the passage quoted above from Speed's "History" was repeated almost verbatim by Sir Richard Baker in 1643, and was quoted by Nichols from Baker's Chronicle.[1] But Throsby added some embellishments of his own. "At the dissolution of the religious houses in the succeeding reign," he wrote, "about 50 years after his (Richard's) death, it (the monument), was ruinated with the church, the grave ransacked, and his bones taken in triumph through the streets, and at last thrown over the bridge over which he rode to the fatal battle of Bosworth."
In the year 1846 a stone coffin was found, in laying the foundations of a house in Halford Street, which contained some remains. James Thompson conjectured that they were those of Richard the Third, who, he thought, had been hastily re-interred in an old Norman coffin by the Warden and brethren of the Grey Friars, before the dissolution of their Priory. It is, however, very difficult to accept this hypothesis, which is based on the assumption that Richard's body was removed from its resting-place at the Grey Friars. But this, in all probability, is a mere legend.
The destruction of the Grey Friars' monastery took place in the lifetime of Robert Herrick, who was born in 1540; and the events connected with it must have been fresh in the recollection of his contemporaries; yet, in 1612, he does not appear to have been aware of the tradition which had been published for the first time by Speed in the previous year, or, if so, he had evidently no faith in it. We cannot do better than follow his example.
- ↑ Some writers seem to have thought that this quotation came originally from Holinshed. Thus James Thompson repeated the passage in the Midland Counties Historical Collector for December 1st, 1858, and stated that it came from "Holinshed (quoted by Nichols), writing in the reign of Elizabeth (1577)." And, when the new Bow Bridge was being built, those who wished to place near it a tablet, commemorating King Richard's death, adduced, in a local newspaper, the authority of Holinshed. But I have not been able to trace the tradition to an earlier source than Speed, who does not mention where he obtained it. A reference to Holinshed in the margin of his book applies only to the preceding account of the King's burial.
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