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• 1 2020-07-30T16:46:54+00:00 Plates 3.7-3.9: Vault and Body of Edward IV in St. George’s Chapel 19 Scholarly Commentary with DZI View for Vetusta Monumenta, Plates 3.7-3.9. Commentary by Freya Gowrley. plain 2025-04-19T23:04:44+00:00 Plates: This plate set was engraved by James Basire Sr. (1730-1802) after drawings made by Henry Emlyn (1728/9-1815) soon after the vault of Edward IV was rediscovered and opened on 13 March 1789. The Society of Antiquaries of London ordered Basire to engrave the drawings on 19 March 1790 (SAL Council Minutes III.114), and the prints were published together with an explanatory account later that year. The king’s remains appear in the central portion of Plate 3.7, above an elevation showing the vault and the surrounding masonry that was removed to expose it (Plate 3.7, Fig. 1). Inset figures surrounding the remains, and largely concealing the detailed view of the arch over the vault, show enlargements of several inscriptions found within it (Fig. 2). Plate 3.8 is based on a scale drawing of the king’s new monument created near this vault in 1789, featuring his crown and arms held by a pair of putti above the name EDWARD IV. Beneath this large image is a smaller scaled depiction of a new grave marker for Henry VI and featuring his seal, located on the pavement nearby. Plate 3.9 depicts the plan and elevation of the rood loft in St George’s Chapel at Windsor, where the vault and the monument are located. The rood loft was demolished on 5 February 1789 and Emlyn made this drawing earlier.
  
  Objects: The vault and body of King Edward IV was rediscovered in the process of renovations at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. As a result, the stones that closed the vault loosened and provided new access to the coffin and body of the King. The vault measured nine feet long, four feet seven inches wide, and six feet six inches high. In this vault, the lead coffin had decayed and compressed, revealing the King’s skeleton. A second body, unidentified, was also found surmounting the King’s coffin. Surrounding the coffin are inscriptions, names, and characters likely created by funeral attendants or workmen. As noted in the explanatory account, the monument depicted in Plate 3.8 was created on the order of George III but incorporates some “antient materials” (Carliol 1790, 4). These are labelled “a” on the print. The sixteenth-century rood loft featured in Plate 3.9 was demolished as part of the same renovation program that exposed the remains of Edward IV.
  
  Transcription:
  
  Plate 3.7:
  Top right of plate:
  Vol. III. Pl. VII.
  
  Top left of top panel:
  Engrav’d on the Arch of the Vault.
  
  Middle left panel caption:
  Engrav’d on the arch of the Vault.
  
  Center, below top panel:
  Written with Chalk on the East end of the Vault. Drawn to half the size
  
  Inscribed on center panel:
  Engrav’d on the South side of the Vault
  Fig. 2.
  
  Inscribed on bottom panel:
  Just beneath the arch: Split off in the Year 1788.
  Endeavouring to find entrance into the Vault.
  On the coffin: Fig. 1.
  
  Bottom of plate:
  H Emlyn del.
  Sumptibus Soc. Antiquar. Londini.
  Publish’d according to Act of Parliament 19 June 1790.
  
  
  Plate 3.8:
  Top right:
  Vol. III. Pl. VIII.
  
  Caption:
  Monument of King EDWARD IV. In ST. GEORGE’S Chapel at WINDSOR.
  
  Bottom of plate:
  H Emlyn del.
  Sumptibus Soc. Antiquar. Londini.
  Publish’d according to Act of Parliament 19 June 1790.
  
  
  Plate 3.9:
  Top right:
  Vol. III. Pl. IX.
  
  Title:
  Plan and Elevation of the Rood Loft in ST. GEORGE’S Chapel, at WINDSOR, taken down Feb. 5. 1789.
  
  Arms, center left:
  Remains of the Badge in the opposite side.
  The other half was cut off to make the entrance into the Organ loft.
  
  Arms, center right:
  The Badge on the opposite side.
  
  Bottom left:
  Pillar of the Cross
  
  Bottom center:
  A. projection on this side of the cornice as in this plan, which was a kind of canopy in the centre.
  
  Bottom right:
  Pillar of the Cross
  
  Bottom of plate:
  H Emlyn del.
  Sumptibus Soc. Antiquar. Londini.
  Publish’d according to Act of Parliament 19 June 1790.
  
  Original Explanatory Account: Click here to read the original explanatory account for Plates 3.7-3.9.
  
  Commentary by Freya Gowrley: 13 March 1789 witnessed the opening of the burial vault of Edward IV (1442-1483; r. 1461-1483) in St George’s Chapel at Windsor. The King’s resting place was rediscovered in the course of renovations being undertaken at the chapel at this time, including the laying of a new pavement in the north aisle. As a result of this work, the stones that closed the vault loosened, providing new access to the coffin and thereby to the body of the dead King. The resulting exploration and experimentation are recorded in the original explanatory account originally published with the plates and later included in the third volume of Vetusta Monumenta. Alongside three prints, the account comprises eyewitness testimony from Henry Emlyn, superintendent of the building works, and an analysis conducted by the physician Dr. James Lind.
  
  Emlyn describes opening the vault (which measured nine feet long, four feet seven inches wide, and six feet six inches from ceiling level to its floor) and finding a space filled with detritus and rotting wood, with the bones of another, then unknown, person surmounting the King’s coffin. Made of lead, the coffin had also decayed and compressed, and upon opening, it revealed the intact skeleton of the King, along with some brown “liquor,” the subject of Dr. Lind’s analysis, as discussed further below. Simultaneous views of the vault and its contents form the basis of Plate 3.7.
  
  The final part of the account is signed by J.Carliol (1790), who compiled the observations of Emlyn and Lind and submitted them to the Society of Antiquaries of London (SAL).¹ This addendum (3-4) speculates upon the identity of the additional corpse present in the vault. Suggestions included Edward’s fifth daughter Mary, who died in 1482 and was supposed to have been buried at Windsor, and Elizabeth Wodeville, Edward’s widow. This section of the account also notes that there had been some initial confusion as to where the vaults of Edward IV and Henry VI were located, thanks to a mistake in the earlier histories of the building. This lack of clarity as to the precise location of the vaults was nothing compared to the question of whether the vaults would even contain their associated bodies. As the account records, Henry VII had supposedly acquired a papal bull decreeing that the body of Henry VI should be moved to Westminster for a more appropriate burial. With that said, Henry VIII’s last will and testament declared his desire “that the tombes and altars of Henry VI. and also of Edward IV. be made more princely in the place they now be, and at our charge,” suggesting that this earlier work had not been undertaken (Carliol 1790, 4). It was thus deemed that earlier assumptions around the body’s removal had been misinformed and given that further damage to the body of Henry VI could not be guaranteed to be avoided, a decision was taken to preserve this vault, at least, in its current state.
  
  Edward IV’s body, on the other hand, would be moved. As James Hakewill’s The History of Windsor, and its Neighbourhood, published in 1813, states, by the early nineteenth century “the remains of Edward IV” were deposited in a tomb at the east end of the north aisle, “with blue marble over which is erected a beautiful monument of steel representing a pair of gates between two towers of curious workmanship.” The famous monument referenced by Hakewill here was originally placed on the north side of the Edward IV’s vault, facing the aisle. Executed in a “gothic” style, it had once been ornamented with pearls, rubies, and gold, before being plundered during the English Civil War (Hakewill 1813, 134; Windsor Guide 1815, 96). In the third volume of his Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain, John Britton identifies the monument as the work of “Quintin Matsis, the blacksmith painter of Antwerp” (Britton 1812, 43). The space left by the displaced monument was filled by a newly erected replacement, the subject of Plate 3.8. This design featured the crown and arms of Edward IV, held aloft by a pair of putti, which appeared above the name EDWARD IV inlaid in brass. As the original account intimates, this part of the new monument was made “of antient materials” redeployed (Carliol 1790, 4). Indeed, the anonymous author of the 1815 Windsor Guide goes further, describing the replacement monument as “chiefly composed of fragments collected from the other parts of the chapel” (Windsor Guide 1815, 96), suggesting a more encompassing program of reuse here. The older elements identified by the account are labelled a on the plate, reflecting a particular interest in the original features that was to be expected of Vetusta Monumenta readers. The final plate of the series, Plate 3.9, depicts the rood-loft which dated to the time of Henry VIII, but which had been demolished the year prior, in 1789. Reflecting the Society’s commitment to preserving architectural heritage in print, if not in fabric, the volume published a drawing made by Emlyn prior to its destruction, alongside the other two images. It records the architectural fabric of the rood loft, including the remnants of heraldic imagery that had already been largely removed by the time that Emlyn made his preservatory sketch; a detail testament to the shifting material landscape of the building throughout this period.
  
  Alongside his drawing of this feature, along with renderings of the monument and the contents of the vault, were produced by Emlyn for the SAL. The Society's council minutes of 19 March 1790 record an order that Emlyn’s drawings be engraved by the Society’s engraver, James Basire, at a cost of 26 guineas (SAL Council Minutes III.114). These were approved by mid-June of the same year, and copies were presented, along with letters of thanks, to the three individuals who had contributed to the explanatory account (the “Duke of Carlisle” [presumably meaning Carliol], Dr. Lind, and Mr. Emlyn), the printing of which cost a further £2 (121).
  
  Investment in the printed image versus the decaying or destroyed edifice was a point of contention at the time. Joan Evans’ History of the Society of Antiquaries cites a letter submitted to The Gentleman’s Magazine from August 1788, which mounted the following complaint:

  the art of engraving, which helps to make ancient buildings known, and preserves their form to a certain degree, contributes, I fear, to their demolition. ‘Is such a thing engraved?’ – ‘O, yes’– ‘Then it is preserved to posterity’…. ‘The Corporation intend to blow up the castle; but is it engraved! No matter if the engraving be inaccurate or exhibiting only partial view-…when the engraving is made, farewell to the thing engraved!... (Evans 1956, 191)

  As Evans neatly summarizes, while the heavily engraved project of Vetusta Monumenta flourished, “the monuments of medieval England fell into decay” (192) or were removed, as in the case of the Rood-Loft depicted here.
  
  Such questions of preservation were particularly vexed in the case of the remains of dead kings, whose bodies were not simply physical remnants of an earlier age but were, in theory, vital materials that reflected the political import that their owner once had in life. Crystal B. Lake (2020) has discussed the political ramifications of the four royal exhumations of king’s graves that occurred around this time at length. Artifacts were a particularly potent matter at this time, she argues, with the potential to “vindicate or undercut a range of political claims, from those that asserted a sovereign’s divine right to those that pleaded for radical democracy” (Lake 2020, 5). The bodies of Edward I, Edward IV, John, and Charles I were all exhumed between 1774 and 1813, a period undeniably marked by questions around royal authority and divine right, and by the democratic transformation of long-established political systems. The revelation of an enduring vitality encapsulated in the physical body of a long-dead king would have had significant implications against this tumultuous backdrop.
  
  As Lake notes, the public eagerly sought “signs that the sovereign’s body was still vital” (2020, 15), that is, something more significant than simple dead matter. Yet the original explanatory account, and particularly the assessment of Dr. Lind, present the body as highly ordinary in nature; subject to the same processes of putrefaction that each of us eventually succumb to. As John Milner writes in his History of Winchester (1798-1801), the liquid that half immersed Edward’s leg bones was simply the “matter into which the human muscles were dissolved” (107). Although Lind’s experiments on the “liquor” (Carliol 1790, 1) found in the coffin had been extensive, they yielded no spectacular revelations. Described unceremoniously as reminiscent of “walnut pickle” with a thick consistency, the liquor was filtered and evaporated, tasted and tested in the course of Lind’s trials. All of this simply for Lind to conclude that the liquor “was not any kind of pickle put into the [coffin for] the purpose of presenting the body, but that it was produced by the dissolution of the body itself,” thickened with the rotten remnants of a wooden plank that the body had once lain upon (Carliol 1790, 3). The comparisons deployed in the course of Lind’s summary highlight the routine processes that informed these conclusions. By labeling the liquor as the residue of the body, Lind relates the King’s decomposition to that of an animal (“since sixteen parts of animal flesh yield above thirteen parts of pure aqueous fluid”), and to the aging of wine (“which, after a long period of years, become in great measure, if not entirely, tasteless and inodorous”), comparisons which seem hardly fitting for the discussion of the exalted sovereign body. These anticlimactic results are summarized neatly by Lake: “in Lind’s sepulchral laboratory, we get little more than pickle juice” (Lake 2020, 174).
  
  Yet traces of the sanctity of the King’s body are restored in the description of the exhumation included in the 1815 Windsor Guide. While Emlyn plainly recounts the state of the body in the following terms—“the entire skeleton was found…some long brown hair lay near the skull; and some of the same colour, but shorter, was on the neck of the skeleton” (Carliol 1790, 1)—the Guide transformed it into a site of almost religious devotion. After incorrectly reporting the liquor as embalming fluid, the Guide went on to describe how “as soon as the laborers had communicated this discovery the public eagerly flocked to the chapel many of them found ways and means to gratify their curiosity” (Windsor Guide 1815, 93). This crowd were so desperate for relics of the body that such visits were eventually prohibited, lest “the whole of the remains would soon have been dispersed over various parts of the earth one secreting some hair a second a tooth a third a finger &c. &c. who now boast their plundered relics of this magnanimous Prince” (Windsor Guide 1815, 94). The latter part of this statement suggests a substantial revision in Edward IV’s reputation, moving from the longstanding villainy portrayed by Shakespeare in Henry VI, Part 3 into a figure of a more benevolent ruler, although the desire to acquire goods associated with the King’s grave was, of course, not necessarily driven by virtuous and acclamatory motivations. Examples of such acquisitions were donated to the SAL. Lind’s original analysis was accompanied by a phial filled with the coffin liquor. “A paper, in which you will find some of king Edward’s hair, and a few bits of the queen’s wooden coffin” were also presented to the then President of the SAL, the Earl of Leicester (Carliol 1790, 1). A surviving lock of hair, measuring just six centimeters in length, remains in the Society’s collections to this day.
  
  The letter dedicating these fragmented specimens of the royal body to the president identifies them as a gift from one of the workmen in attendance at the vault following its accidental discovery. The contribution of these individuals to the material history of this space provides a suggestive echo of those involved in the original erection of this part of the building, namely through a number of names written on the vault. These inscriptions are referenced only in passing in the explanatory account, which notes that “an exact copy (to half the size) of what was written in chalk is given in the drawing; and the characters cut on the stones drawn to the full size” (Carliol 1790, 2). More information on this is provided by the Windsor Guide, which labels the names as follows:

  On the inside of the vault were inscribed several names and characters but which probably were done by the attendants at the funeral or the workmen employed in the erection of the vault many of them being written in chalk and as none of them immediately appertain to the King except the name Edward. (Windsor Guide 1815, 97).

  While the short shrift given to the names in the account suggests that they are merely a cursory detail to the findings, these curious inscriptions nevertheless dominate the first plate of the series, Plate 3.7. Appearing to surround Edward IV’s skeletal remains, this evocative and almost inscrutable arrangement collapses the space of vault into several simultaneous and overlapping viewpoints and elements. An illustrative example of the visual complexity of the plate is the section at the middle, to the right-hand side of Edward’s body. Here, we see what appear to be the exterior architectonic features surrounding the vault, which are cut away to reveal the tomb, but which are simultaneously bisected by a piece of parchment that bears the name “Edward IIII.” The final, elongated numerical symbol of this chalk inscription accordingly becomes column-like in nature, echoing the lines of the surrounding decorative architecture, and once again reducing the visual space into a whole that is, at times, difficult to parse. In addition to the chalk writing, other names are depicted that were engraved on the arch of the vault. These are presented as though they are papers tacked to a wall, with several illusionistically peeling away from this imagined backing, and others curling back into the scroll-forms that they once occupied.
  
  Although this trompe l’oeil presentation is an easy fix for representing multiple perspectives within a single page, there are nonetheless significant precedents for this mode of representation. Indeed, within the volumes of Vetusta Monumenta itself, several plates adopt this stylistic device, suggesting its specific utility as a way of preserving antiquarian knowledge, so often formed from surviving fragments. For example, Plate 1.36 is a composite image comprising three architectural drawings of Colchester Castle undertaken by George Vertue, presented here as if unrolled upon a tabletop. Likewise, another composite rendering is included in a set of three plates depicting Magdalen Hospital at Windsor (Plates 3.1-3.3) in the third volume of Vetusta Monumenta. The elaborate nature of these prints has been identified by Martin Myrone as typical of a broader shift in antiquarian imagery around this time (Myrone 2007, 119).
  
  Beyond this relationship with other antiquarian renderings, Plate 3.7 is also reminiscent of the role of the collagic and the assembled in recording and creating information at this time. Evoking the metaphorical collection as a mode and method for accumulating, storing, and processing knowledge, Plate 3.7 utilizes the dynamic representational strategies afforded by collage-like juxtaposition. In visual culture, the related genres of the still life, the trompe l’oeil image, and the medley print reflected the intensified regimes of production and consumption to which the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries bore witness, particularly the establishment of the periodical press and a vibrant (and increasingly cheap) print market. In his discussion of the painter Evert Collier’s works, Dror Wahrman calls this market “print 2.0,” a “media revolution” involving “the circulation of much more information much faster and farther than ever before” and characterized by the dual “explosion of cheap mass print together with the proliferation of newspapers” (Wahrman 2012, 18-20). Although not comprised of literal fragments, such objects assume the visual and material languages of assemblage, deploying this mode to reflexively reference the proliferation of ephemeral print media and the knowledge production associated with it.
  
  A surviving double-sided leaf from a roughly contemporaneous scrapbook apparently dedicated to the cathedrals of England showcases how the print culture of the era could be assembled with a specifically antiquarian agenda in mind. Each side documents a specific cathedral, here Wells and Chichester, which are recorded through a series of pasted paper scraps. These include representations of the buildings’ interiors and exteriors, portraits of their Bishops, buildings associated with the cathedrals (such as their respective Bishop’s Palaces), and hand-colored arms of the episcopal see. On the page dedicated to Chichester (Fig. 1), a telling inclusion links this record-keeping to a form of antiquarianism. Carefully cut out, a “Watch-Paper for Antiquaries” from 1809 features a representation of the multi-headed keystone at Chichester, presented as a roundel ready for mounting in the pocket-watch cases of those with antiquarian interests. The surrounding text notes that the keystone was drawn by the drawing master of Chichester, from whom further prints of the historical paintings in the Cathedral could be acquired.
  
  
  
  Read against these modes, the representation of the King’s tomb fits within a broader transitional model that characterizes shifts between the production and consumption of antiquarian knowledge that took place between the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. Whereas earlier antiquarian print culture had been dedicated to questions of scholarly documentation, that is, an illustration and affirmation of factual information, in both the plates and related printed texts we see a move toward a form that is simultaneously more popular and nostalgic in nature. That the revised approach to the tomb occurred at the time of both renovations at Windsor and the production and dedication of a new monument to the King’s legacy is evidently significant, but such changes also accord with a more general rise in the popularity of antiquarianism. So, just as the passages of the Windsor Guide revitalized the King’s body as a site of material veneration, they also speak to newly vibrant interest in the antiquarian more generally, in which the factual, the personal, and even the emotional were intermingled. Between questions of the visual presentation of knowledge at a moment characterized by a profusion of antiquarian print, and the connection with deeper political questions about the nature of royal lineage, the account and plates dedicated to Edward IV relate to a number of contemporary issues, despite their documentation of a long-deceased King.
  
  Notes:
  
  [1]: This portion is attributed to the Duke of Carlisle in the Council Minutes (SAL Council Minutes III.121), but this seems likely to be a scribal error.
  
  Works Cited:
  
  Britton, John. 1812. The Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain Represented and Illustrated in a Series of Views. Vol. III. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown.
  
  Carliol, J. 1790. “Plates VII. VIII. THE VAULT, BODY, AND MONUMENT, OF EDWARD IV. IN ST. [GEORGE’S] CHAPEL AT WINDSOR. Plate IX. THE ROOD-LOFT IN THE SAME CHAPEL.” In Vetusta Monumenta, Vol. 3.
  
  Evans, Joan. 1956. A History of the Society of Antiquaries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  
  Hakewill, James. 1813. The History of Windsor, and its Neighbourhood. London: Edmund Lloyd.
  
  Lake, Crystal B. 2020. Artifacts: How We Think and Write about Found Objects. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  
  Milner, John. 1798–1801. The history civil and ecclesiastical, & survey of the antiquities, of Winchester. London: Cadell and Davies; Robson.
  
  Myrone, Martin. 2007. "The Society of Antiquaries and the Graphic Arts: George Vertue and His Legacy." In Visions of Antiquity, edited by Susan Pearce, 98-121. London: The Society of Antiquaries.
  
  Society of Antiquaries of London. 1718-. Minutes of the Society’s Proceedings.
  
  -----. 1754-. Minutes of the Council of the Society of Antiquaries.
  
  The Windsor Guide containing a Description of the Town and Castle the Present State of the Paintings and Curiosities. 1815. Windsor: Knight & Son.
  
  Wahrman, Dror. 2012. Mr Collier’s Letter Racks: A Tale of Art and Illusion at the Threshold of the Modern Information Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press.