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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2012
A tomb, or more strictly speaking a stone coffin with a coped top, which for some centuries past has been described as the tomb of King William Rufus, in Winchester Cathedral, was opened, and its contents ascertained, by direction of the Vice-Dean (the Ven. Archdeacon Jacob) on August 27th 1868. Subsequently to the examination it then underwent, its position within the building was changed on the 15th September following. No previous notice of the transaction having been given, except to a few persons residing in the town of Winchester, I have to regret that it was not in my power to be present either at the opening or the removal. As an interest of no ordinary kind attaches to this monument, I have considered the matter to be of sufficient consequence to collect together a summary of the particulars. The tomb has long been reputed to be the resting-place of the first of the great line of English sovereigns of the present dynasty buried in England; but besides this, the fatality which caused his death, the mystery in which it was shrouded, the superstitious hatred of the man, which believed the wrath of Heaven to have followed him in the Cathedral where he lay, and to have hurled over his grave the ruins of the central tower, all contribute to invest with peculiar associations this venerable memorial; to which I have now to add another point of interest, namely, that an archæological question arises for solution as to the actual identity of the tomb so recently opened, and the remains it contained, with the tomb and the remains of the Red King.
page 314 note a Gale's History of Winchester.
page 316 note a The inscription upon the first tomb of Canute is given thus in Milner (p. 58, quoted from “Trussel”):—
“Moribus inclutus jacet hie Rex nomine Cnutus.”
This is stated to have been over his body when it lay buried before the high altar, the position occupied by the tomb hitherto assigned to Rufus. Canute's name, however, inscribed with others at the back of the choir wall (east), renders it doubtful whether the body lay in front of the altar.
page 319 note a The indications of a date are so faint and so few that I only venture to subjoin them in the form of a note. There is an entire absence of any cross or ornament on the Purbeck. The want of any inscription or cipher, or any such clue to identification, is mentioned by John of Exeter as a mark of tombs earlier than the Conquest. The general character of the coped or covered top is suggestive in shape of tombs of the Roman period, and the slender bands of flat filleting in low relief are rather Saxon than Norman in type. An engraving of a coped Roman tomb will be found in the later edition of Parker's Glossary, under “Tombs.” A good example of a similarly shaped memorial is in the British Museum; a Roman tomb discovered in digging a place for the foundation of a church in the Minories : this is ornamented with sculpture in low relief, with a slender flat fillet (like that on the reputed tomb of Rufus), bounding the outlines of its sides and coped top.
page 320 note a See Proc. Soc. Ant. 2 S. iv. 242.
page 320 note b The ring known as that found in this tomb is not of gold, but of bronze gilt. It is apparently intended for the thumb, very coarsely executed, and has a plain square imitation jewel, which is a very poor copy of a sapphire. A representation of this and other rings from tombs in Winchester Cathedral will be found in a plate at the end of the first volume of Woodward and Wilks' History of Hampshire; London, 1858–69.
