Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Friday 16 September 2016

Another car park, another King


Digging up or looking for English medieval Kings appears to be all the rage amongst archaeologists these days - not that I am objecting to such research being undertaken.

Following upon the recovery of King Richard III at Leicester and a tentative identification of either King Alfred or King Edward tbe Elder at Hyde Abbey in Winchester - well, of one possible bone - and now attention has turned to looking for King Henry I on the site of Reading Abbey.

In the abbey he held pride of place as founder and the abbey received quite a few other royal burials down to the later fourteenth century, when King Richard II ordered the Abbot to restore King Henry's tomb in return for a charter of confirmation of privileges.

No effort appears to have been made to rescue his remains at the dissolution of the Abbey in 1539, and the site became lost of the fragmentation of the monastic site.

The Daily Telegraph has a report about the early stages of the investigation which can be read at

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/13/another-car-park-another-king-henry-is-remains-found-beneath-tar/



Related image

The twentieth century memorial on the site of Reading Abbey

Image:hylbom.com

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