This was done during the night between the 31st March and
1st April. Mr. Archibald Blacklock, surgeon, drew up the following
description:
"The cranial bones were perfect in every respect, if we except a
little erosion of their external table, and firmly held together by
their sutures, &c., &c. Having completed our intention [i.e., of
taking a plaster cast of the skull, washed from every particle of
sand, &c.], the skull, securely closed in a leaden case, was again
committed to the earth, precisely where we found it.--Archd.
Blacklock.'"
The last example I shall adduce is that of Ben Jonson's skull. On
this Lieut.-Colonel Cunningham thus writes:
"In my boyhood I was familiar with the Abbey, and well remember the
'pavement square of blew marble, 14 inches square, with O Rare Ben
Jonson,' which marked the poet's grave. When Buckland was Dean, the
spot had to be disturbed for the coffin of Sir Robert Wilson, and
the Dean sent his son Frank, now so well known as an agreeable
writer on Natural History, to see whether he could observe anything
to confirm, or otherwise, the tradition about Jonson being buried in
a standing posture. The workmen, he tells us, 'found a coffin very
much decayed, which from the appearance of the remains must have
originally been placed in the upright position. The skull found
among these remains, Spice, the gravedigger, gave me as that of Ben
Jonson, and I took it at once into the Dean's study.
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