| 1 |
This is a passage of some interest in relation to a matter which has been enveloped in
considerable obscurity. Even some doubt has been entertained with regard to the place
of Buckingham's execution, owing to the chronicler Grafton having stated that it was at
Shrewsbury, and having been followed in that statement by Holinshed, Echard, and
Rapin. This, however, has been entirely set at rest by Mr. Blakeway the historian of that
town, and by Mr. Hatcher the historian of Salisbury, who agree that Salisbury was the
place. Then, as to the duke's interment, Mr. Hatcher, perhaps encouraged by the
triumph of having vindicated this historical incident in favour of his own town, proceeds
so far as to say (History of Salisbury, folio, 1843, p. 207): "If the fact of Buckingham's
execution at Salisbury be considered as indisputably established, we shall not be guilty of
too great a stretch of imagination, in supposing that these were his mutilated remains
interred clandestinely, or at least without ceremony, near the spot where he suffered"—
referring to the discovery of a headless skeleton beneath the floor of an outhouse near the
stone on which Buckingham was traditionally said to have suffered. From a quarter
less authoritative than an historian in folio, such a conjecture might, perhaps, be disregarded. It is obvious that during the many generations which have passed since the
execution of Buckingham, there might have been many opportunities of concealing in the
out-buildings of an inn the remains of some way-laid traveller, or the victim of some alehouse brawl. But, an undue importance having been given to the notion that the
skeleton was that of the princely Buckingham, the present passage comes in aid to correct
the facility with which Mr. Hatcher yielded to an hypothesis so fanciful. It shows
that the duke's body received that attention which the religious orders were always ready
to bestow on such occasions, and that it was interred in the church of the Grey Friars
at Salisbury. A MS. in the library of the Society of Antiquaries, No. 99, also states
the same fact. Another misapprehension has been entertained in connection with this
subject, namely, that a monument still existing in the church of Britford, near Salisbury,
and engraved in Sir Richard C. Hoare's Hundred of Cawden, was that of the duke of
Buckingham. It is unnecessary to repeat here the considerations which decidedly
negative that appropriation; but they will be found in the Gentleman's Magazine for
June 1836, and in Sir R. C. Hoare's History of Modern Wiltshire, Addenda, p. 61. |