Digging up the grave secrets of Lord Howard’s remains
Last updated 05:37, Friday, 12 September 2008
Writing on the subject of church bells in 1889, the Rev Henry Whitehead, of Brampton, raised an interesting problem which at first appeared to have nothing to do with his subject.
“It was long unknown where Lord William Howard, Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Belted Will’, was buried.”
As he lived at Naworth Castle, said the Rev Whitehead, it was taken for granted that he died there, but his tomb could not be found.
However, with the publication of Lord William’s household books in 1878, Henry Whitehead noticed that the editor, George Ornsby, referred to the entry on October 8, 1640 when five men were paid two shillings “for ringing the bells in Greystoke Church at my Lord’s burial”.
There was no doubt said Ornsby “at Greystoke Castle he died and in Greystoke Church he found a grave”.
What Whitehead omitted was another entry, for eight men “taking up a marble stone and making a grave there for my Lord”.
But a search for Lord William’s grave proved fruitless. One reason he could not be found at Greystoke was the fact that the noble lord was probably no longer there – something of which the Rev Whitehead was completely unaware.
In the Carlisle Patriot in March 1819 was an account of the “exhumation of the reliques of Lord William Howard in the chancel of Greystoke Church”.
All was above board, at the request of the Earl of Carlisle and Henry Howard of Corby, who gave orders “to search for remains of their celebrated ancestor”.
The process of search was superintended by Mr Wilkinson, the steward of Molyneux Howard of Greystoke Castle, Mr Sharkey, the under-steward and Robert Carlyle, the artist, who attended to take drawings and copies of any inscription. The whole was done by permission of the Rev H Askew, rector of Greystoke.
They knew where to look, the newspaper said, “it having been ascertained by an old account book that he was buried under the large blue stone in the chancel of Greystoke Church”.
The large stone in question, said the Patriot, had previously “been erected over the grave of William, called the good Baron of Greystoke, who had died in 1359” and the French inscription on a brass tablet was still intact, though it is lost today.
At a depth of about five feet from the surface, the skeleton was discovered “nearly entire”: “It measured about six feet and showed the remains of a person of strong and athletic make: the teeth were all perfect in the under jaw and the shape of the skull exactly corresponded with the original portrait of Lord William in the possession of Mr Howard of Corby.”
There seemed to have been “little delay between his death and funeral,” because his interment was “without leaden coffin or without a vault or brass inscription”. This, it was alleged, was because Lord William died of the plague.
All that was found at the foot of the grave was a square casket of lead, “found to contain a kind of substance resembling dried moss”.
This was thought to have been a container for a heart “of him or his wife”, who had died a year earlier.
It was known, said the Patriot, that “Lord William lived to age of 80 and died in 1640”, but without modern scientific analysis it would be impossible to determine who had been found in the grave.
It was sufficient evidence at the time for Lord Carlisle to intend “to have the remains of his ancestor translated to the beautiful mausoleum at his Lordship’s seat at Castle Howard, Yorkshire.”
Whether this was ever done was not stated in 1819.
“Fearing the incursions of the Scottish army,” states the Dictionary of National Biography entry for Lord William, he fled Naworth, “borne away in a horse-litter and conveyed to Corby Castle on September 22 1640”.
There he rested overnight and “on the day following he was carried to Greystoke, and there, on or about October 7 he breathed his last”, his accounts making payment that day for “a coffin for my Lord” at a cost of 13s 4d.
Ornsby disposed of the idea he died of plague: “He sank from natural decay, accelerated, as we may well believe, by his hasty departure from Naworth and the turmoil and unwonted bustle by which he must have been surrounded.”
That no entry appears in the parish register for the burial of Sir William at Greystoke was explained by the rector in 1911: “Some pages appear to have been scorched by fire and in consequence have been difficult to decipher, while others are missing altogether.”
Having succeeded in their quest in 1819, the directors and workmen did not stop and “in digging in other parts of the chancel various reliquaries were found, probably of the former Barons of Greystoke and a vault which contained three coffins, one of Catharine, the sister of the late Duke of Norfolk, who died in 1753 aged 11”.
Such desecration was made possible by the condition of Greystoke Church.
In 1794 William Hutchinson had said: “The inside is so much out of repair and the parishioners are certainly very reprehensible for suffering their church to be in such a miserable state of decay.”
It was not until “1817 and 1818 that the body of the church underwent considerable repair”, said William Whellan, but work was still in progress in March 1821 and the repairs were not fully completed until 1848.
