THE REMAINS OF THE PRINCES. 211 one of the oldest parts of the fortress. As the workmen were removing some stairs which led from the Royal lodgings to S. John's Chapel, they came upon a wooden chest, which proved to contain the remains of two children, exactly corresponding in age and state of decay with the date of the murder of Edward V. and his brother Richard Duke of York in 1573. The place also corresponded in every respect with the traditions respecting the murder:1 it was said to have been done in the Bloody Tower-the spot where the bones were found is but seventy yards distant; they were always said to have been buried in consecrated. ground by the Priest of the Tower-the place where the remains were was just within S. John's Chapel. The discovery caused considerable interest, and was fully represented to the King, who desired that the bones should be laid, under the Surveyor's directions, in Henry VII.'s Chapel in Westminster Abbey in a white marble coffin with a suitable monument. Wren designed a pedestal and urn of white marble surmounted by twin crowns and palms. No doubt the monument accords better with the taste of the age in which it was erected than with that of the building in which it is placed, but it has an interest of its own. By the King's wish a mulberry-tree was planted on the spot where the bones were discovered, but subsequent buildings at the Tower destroyed the tree, and even its stump has perished. 1 For an interesting account of these see The Tower of London, by Lord de Ros, p. 417. CHAPTER IX. 1677-1682. EMMANUEL COLLEGE-GREENWICH OBSERVATORY-BIRTH OF JANE AND WILLIAM WREN-S. BARTHOLOMEW'S-PORTLAND QUARRIES— DR. AND MRS. HOLDER-DEATH OF JANE, LADY WREN-POPISH PLOT-PAPIN'S DIGESTER-SIR J. HOSKYNS- ALLHALLOWS, BREAD STREET-PALACE AT WINCHESTER. CHAPTER IX. GREAT as was the pressure of Wren's London work, he did not confine himself to that city alone, but in 1677, we find him at Cambridge, busied with buildings there. The beautiful chapel of Emmanuel College, which still stands unaltered as he left it, was Sir Christopher's work in that year. More than thirty years before, Bishop Wren, when Bishop of Ely, had instanced amongst the irregularities to be amended at Cambridge the absence of a chapel at Emmanuel College,1 and it well became his nephew to supply this lack. Sancroft had first set the plan on foot, and when he was removed in 1665 to S. Paul's-a removal so costly that, little knowing, he consoled himself by thinking the next would be to his grave-his successor, Dr. Breton, continued his work. A picturesque cloister runs north and south across 1 It was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay, a great supporter of the Puritans. In Bishop Corbet's poem, The Distracted Puritan, the hero says :— 'In the house of pure Emmanuel I had my education, Where my friends surmise I dazel'd my eyes With the sight of Revelation.' Evelyn, who visited it in September 1655, says: 'That zealous house the Chapel (it was but a room) is reformed ab origine, built N. and S. as is the Librarie.' |