The Head of Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk?
Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk and father of Lady Jane Grey, was executed by beheading on 23 February 1554 as punishment for his participation in a series of rebellions collectively known today as Wyatt’s Rebellion. The public execution took place on Tower Hill, a small promontory outside and immediately adjacent to the northwest corner of the Tower of London’s moat. Tradition holds that Grey was then buried beneath the floor of the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula within the Tower, and that his grave lies between those of his daughter Jane and Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk. No documentation survives to support that tradition, however, and no sixteenth-century source refers to his burial.
A competing tradition emerged in the nineteenth century when a mummified head (below, left) was discovered in the crypt of the Church of Holy Trinity Minories (below, right), a former monastic community that lay approximately 500 yards north of the Tower. The head was reportedly found in a small vault under the south side of the altar during a clearing out in 1851. At the time of discovery, the head was encrusted with sawdust, specifically oak sawdust, and encased in an oakwood box.[1] Oak wood and its sawdust contain tannins, an acidic compound often used in processing leather, thus the terms “tanning” and “tanned leather.” Likely as a result of the direct contact with the oak sawdust, the head was remarkably well preserved or “mummified.”[2] The condition of the head indicated that it had been severed from the body by a blade, perhaps an executioner’s blade.[3] No body was found to accompany the head.
Dr. Frederick J. Mouat, a surgeon by training and an Inspector for the UK Local Government Board, examined the head on 17 March 1877 together with Doyne C. Bell, Secretary to Her Majesty’s Privy Purse, Algernon B. Mitford, Secretary to Her Majesty’s Office of Works, and Sir George Scharf, Keeper of the National Portrait Gallery. The group were at that time engaged in overseeing a restoration of the Tower chapel, which had led to the incidental discovery of several sets of remains, but notably not those of Jane or Henry Grey.[4] Scharf, in his capacity as an art historian, opined that the facial features of the head found over two decades earlier at the Church of Holy Trinity Minories bore resemblances to a portrait thought in 1877 to depict Henry Grey.[5] And so a tradition was born, and the mummified head soon became known as ‘the head of Henry Grey.’
The examiners’ opinion was supported by a documented association between Henry Grey and the church. It had been part of a larger monastic community founded in the thirteen century by Blanche of Artois, a sister-in-law of King Edward I, as an abbey of the Order of St Clare, known as ‘Sorores Minores’ or ‘Minoresses’.[6] The abbey was dissolved in 1538 during Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries, and receivers assessed the value of the estate at £318 16s 5d, a significant sum at that time.[7] Henry VIII initially awarded the property to the Bishop of Bath and Wells, probably for use as a London residence, but his successor Edward VI transferred it to Henry Grey in a series of grants made between 1548 and January 1553.[8] Grey is thought to have occupied the great house or ‘palace’ of The Minories thereafter and on the occasions when he was in London. But upon acquiring the more prestigious Sheen Priory in Richmond in 1552, Grey sold The Minories to his younger brothers John and Thomas Grey, his brother-in-law George Medley, and John Harrington of Kelston as joint owners for the sum of £400.[9] At the time of Henry Grey’s execution on 23 February 1554, his brothers and brother-in-law still retained legal possession of The Minories estate, including its associated Church of Holy Trinity Minories.[10]
The severed heads of traitors executed on Tower Hill were customarily exhibited atop poles on London Bridge until they decayed, as a warning and deterrent to others. On occasion, however, that did not happen. During the restoration of the chapel within the Tower in 1876-7, workers found a body and severed head that the supervising officials identified as those of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland.[11] Queen Mary had already shown compassion toward Dudley’s widow in the summer of 1553 by allowing her to retain possession of the Dudley estate at Chelsea.[12] It is therefore possible that she again acted compassionately toward the widow by allowing Dudley’s head to be buried with his body rather than being exhibited publicly. It must also be noted that the head of Guildford Dudley was wrapped in a cloth and taken into the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula to await eventual burial rather than being publicly exhibited, again suggesting royal consideration for his mother the Duchess of Northumberland. It is also documented that Mary extended numerous similar courtesies to Frances Grey as well, including allowing Frances to retain several family properties. Additionally, the queen was Frances Grey’s godmother, and the two had reportedly been on good terms prior to the events of 1553. It is therefore possible that the queen intervened on Frances’ behalf to prevent Henry Grey’s head from being exhibited publicly.
It is entirely conceivable that Henry Grey’s head, and perhaps even his entire body, were secreted in the Church of Holy Trinity Minories since that church was owned at the time of Henry’s death by the Grey family. Henry Grey and his brothers employed dozens of people in The Minories, and other members of the extended Grey family employed dozens more nearby. Henry Grey’s niece, Margaret Audley, Duchess of Norfolk after 1558, possessed in 1554 the Audley family’s London residence of Christchurch, a literal stone’s throw from The Minories, for example. Executions on Tower Hill were public spectacles during the Tudor period, and large crowds often attended. We can only speculate, but it is possible that members of the extended Grey family and/or some of their many servants and retainers living and working in the area immediately north of the Tower were amongst the crowd. Perhaps one or more of them somehow managed to obtain the head (and maybe even the body as well) following the execution, packed it in sawdust, and removed it to the Grey’s property at The Minories, where it remained until the end of nineteenth century.
The Church of Holy Trinity Minories closed in 1899, but the mummified head enjoyed a brief moment of fame two decades prior to the closure, and that fame likely ensured its longterm survival. James Claude Webster, a London attorney, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and Secretary to the Athenaeum Club wrote to the editor of The Times of London in October 1879 to express concern for the preservation of the head. He noted that it was at that time held in a plain metal box and that the rector of the church allowed the curious to handle it, potentially damaging it. Webster entreated “the aid of the Government in taking the needful steps for the suitable care of this unique and mournful relic.”[13] The incumbent vicar of Holy Trinity Minories, Edward Murray Tomlinson, responded promptly and with some indignation to assure The Times that the head
… is perfectly secure and is kept under lock and key. I confess I have never
felt satisfied with the custom that has allowed the clerk to take the head out of
the box to show it to visitors, and I have for some time felt the advisability of
endeavouring to arrange that it might be placed in a properly-closed glass case,
where it might readily be seen without its being touched.[14]
Later photos indicate that Tomlinson’s wish was eventually fulfilled, and a glass box was made to secure the head from human touch.
The Parish of Holy Trinity Minories was merged in 1899 with that of St. Botolph Without Aldgate immediately adjacent, and the head was transferred to the care of the rector of the Church of St. Botolph. It remains there to this day, in the custody of the rector and in a location known only to the rector and one or two others.[15] As for the Church of Holy Trinity Minories, it was destroyed during the London Blitz early in World War II. The site is now occupied by Hammelworth House, No. 9 St. Clare Street, EC3N.
Whether the head is that of Henry Grey remains an open question.[16] It must be noted that none of the men examining the head in March 1877 possessed any training in archaeology, forensic archaeology, or forensic anthropology. Scharf’s methodology of comparing the head, disfigured as it was through the desiccation process, to a sixteenth-century painted portrait would not pass muster today. Indeed, the portrait in question is now known to depict Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester in the mid 1570s.[17] Only a modern forensic examination of the head can potentially confirm the identity of the head. But there is ample circumstantial evidence to put toward a tentative identification.
Executions of prisoners convicted of capital crimes were relatively well documented in and after the Tudor period, so the list of potential candidates that can be associated with the head is finite. The customary method of execution for most crimes was hanging by the neck until dead at Tyburn Hill, leaving an intact body. But the punishment for treason and certain other crimes entailed hanging, drawing, and quartering for men and burning at the stake for women, either at Tyburn Hill or Tower Hill. And as noted above, the severed heads of the men executed by the latter method were exhibited atop poles on London Bridge until they decayed. The body parts were ordinarily distributed to other locales for similar public exhibition as a warning and a deterrent to others. There were thus no bodies to be buried.
The Crown held the power to commute the punishment to beheading for persons of high status, however, affording the condemned some mercy and a measure of dignity in dying. Most, if not all, of the persons executed by beheading during the Tudor period are known to us today. The list of men executed at the Tower of London during the Tudor period and who were of sufficiently high status to merit beheading numbers just over three dozen. Documentation survives to confirm that the heads of several of those men were exhibited on London Bridge in accordance with custom, eliminating them from this enquiry.[18] Similar documentation indicates that the heads of a few men, usually members of the titled nobility, were immediately buried with the body without public exhibition.[19] The burial locations of several others are similarly documented, allowing us to eliminate them since it is unlikely that any head avoiding public exhibition would have been interred in a location separate from the body.[20] We therefore have a short list of about two dozen men executed by beheading at the Tower during the entirety Tudor period (1845-1603) and to whom the head may belong.
An examination of the head using modern forensic techniques is needed. Radiocarbon dating by accelerator mass spectrometry can potentially provide a window of as little as fifty years for dating the head, thereby confirming whether it dates to the Tudor period. Assuming a positive result, DNA testing could potentially reveal a match to a lineal descendant, confirming the identity of the head, as seen with the Looking For Richard III Project in 2012. And reconstruction of the facial appearance by a specialist anthropologist may provide us with a reasonably indication of Henry Grey’s appearance in life. I have begun making enquiries in the hope of stimulating interest from the appropriate scientists and will post updates as they become available.
J. Stephan Edwards, PhD, FSA
Palm Springs, California
20 October 2024
Addendum, 23 October 2024:
In the words of Alice in Wonderland, “Curiouser and curiouser!”
Colin Setchfield, Parish Administrator for St Botolph Without Aldgate and Holy Trinity Minories provides additional information on the head. Writing in Skyline, the magazine of the Friends of the City Churches, in February 2020, Mr. Setchfield stated that the head was interred “beneath the steps at the front of the church” of St Botolph sometime prior to 1974. It remained there until 1984, when it was found during refurbishment works and reburied elsewhere. Mr. Setchfield offered another theory related to the head:
It is more likely that, in reality, the head was simply minus its body as a result of some botched macabre carpentry. An incident is recorded in September 1786, when the beadle was caught sawing up the coffins in the vault to use the wood. The accounts tell of a shocking sight: ‘a nearer resemblance to a slaughter-house than a vault for the interment of our dearest friends.’[21]
Edward Murray Tomlinson mentions the bizarre incident in his history of Holy Trinity Minories, citing a letter dated 19 September 1786 and written by an anonymous inhabitant of the parish. The writer describes the shocking discovery by a neighbor of a Mr Smallcole, the parish beadle, “dividing into Lengths with a Saw, some of the late Inhabitants undecayed,” apparently with the intention of selling the wood of the coffins for use as firewood.[22]
Mr. Setchfield opined in his article of 2020 that it was “more likely that, in reality, the head was simply minus its body as a result of some botched macabre carpentry.”
The Reverend Dr. Malcolm Johnson was the rector at St Botolph when the head was rediscovered in the 1980s. In his Diary of a Gay Priest: The Tightrope Walker, Rev. Johnson’s entry for 12 December 1986 relates that workmen laboring in the crypt
have found a biscuit tin with a human head inside in the vault beneath the front steps. The word went round that it was the unfortunate Duke of Suffolk … but a surgeon from the nearby London Hospital pointed out that it had not been cleanly cut by an axe but hacked from the body probably with a small knife.[23]
Rev. Johnson relates elsewhere that the head was reburied under the floor of the West Crypt.[24]
In the summer of 1990, the London Diocesan Fund sponsored excavations of the crypt at the south end of the church in preparation for converting the space to offices. Workers rediscovered the head “and the parish reinterred it in the churchyard.”[25]
Further complicating the mystery, an alternative identification for the head emerges from the shortlist of persons executed during the Tudor period. Edmund de la Pole, 3rd Duke of Suffolk, was buried at Holy Trinity Minories following his execution by beheading in the spring of 1513, his daughter Elizabeth being one of the Minoresses there.[26] Assuming the head came from a person executed by beheading rather than from a body dismembered long after death, Edmund de la Pole must be scientifically excluded from consideration if the head is to be identified as that of Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk.
As noted previously, scientific investigation conducted by qualified forensic archaeologists and forensic genealogists is needed to differentiate between myth, legend, tradition, and fact. Several questions remain unanswered:
- Is the head from the Tudor period, or is it instead from some other era?
- Was the head severed from the body at the time of death, or was it removed from the body after death?
- Was the head separated from the body by a large blade, such as an executioner’s axe, or was it carved from the body by a smaller blade?
- To whom does the head belong? Henry Grey? Edmund de la Pole? A member of the Legge family? Or some other unknown person?
NOTES:
- William Quekett to the Editor, The Times of London, 14 October 1879.
- Walter George Bell, Unknown London, 3rd edition (London: John Lane, 1920), 7. See also Doyne C. Bell, Notices of The Historic Persons Buried in The Chapel of St. Peter Ad Vincula in The Tower of London (London: John Murray, 1877), 184.
- Thomas Hill, The History of the Parish of Holy Trinity Minories (London: J&W Rider, 1851), 16.
- See John Stephan Edwards, “The Final Resting Place of Lady Jane Grey,” Notes and Queries (forthcoming).
- Bell, Notices, 184-185.
- Hill, History, 3-4.
- Hill, History, 10. Income to the estate from rents was valued at £25 1s.
- The National Archives (TNA), ‘Letters patent granting Henry, Duke of Suffolk, capital house called le Mynery house’, E 328/400.
- TNA, ‘Letters patent granting licence to Henry, Duke of Suffolk, to alienate capital messuage called le Mynery howse’, E328/399. See also Tomlinson, A History of the Minories, 112-113; Anthony Paul House, The City of London and the Problem of the Liberties, c1540 – c1640, Unpublished PhD Diss (Christ Church, Oxford, 2006), 74-75. John Harington was the father of the eponymous Elizabethan author and courtier Sir John Harrington, best known for his English translation of Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, for his own work The Metamorphosis of Ajax, and for having invented a flushing toilet that Queen Elizabeth I had installed in one of her palaces. See J. Stephan Edwards, “A New Portrait of Mary Rogers, Lady Harrington.”
- Though convicted of treason in February 1554, Thomas Grey did not suffer execution until 24 April, and the attainder against him that allowed seizure of his property did not formally pass through parliament until January 1555 (see 1 Philip & 2 Mary c.20). John Grey and George Medley were likewise convicted of treason, but both received a pardon from Queen Mary and thus survived. They sold The Minories to William Paulet, Marquess of Winchester, in 1562. See House, City of London, 75.
- Bell, Notices, 24.
- David Loades, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland 1504–1553 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 308.
- James Claude Webster to The Editor, The Times of London, dated 8 October 1879, published 10 October 1879. See also The The London Dead: ‘So Full of Beauty, So Empty of Brains,’ by David Bingham.
- Edward Murray Tomlinson to The Editor, The Times of London, dated 11 October 1879. Tomlinson later published A History of the Minories, London (London: Smith, Elder, and Company, 1907).
- Electronic communication, Gary Caughey, Church Warden, St Botolph’s-without-Aldgate, London, 17 May 2008.
- Another identification has been proposed, but it does not bear up to scrutiny. The Legge family buried their dead in the Church of Holy Trinity Minories throughout the late seventeenth century and into the eighteenth century. William Legge, 4th Earl of Dartmouth, examined the head in 1851 and determined that it belonged to one of his ancestors. He likely meant George Legge, 1st Baron Dartmouth, who was imprisoned in the Tower in 1691 for his support of the deposed King James II. George Legge was never tried, however, instead dying from illness on 25 October 1691 with his head intact. See William Quekett to The Editor, The Times of London, 14 October 1879.
- See Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, by unknown English workshop, oil on panel, ca.1575, 38 in. x 27 in., NPG 247. Other contemporary versions are known, and Scharf noted an identical version in the collection of the Marquesses of Salisbury at Hatfield House that was engraved in 1825 by Samuel Freeman and widely published in 18by Edmund Lodge in highly popular twelve-volume series Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain (London: Harding and Lepard, 1823-34).
- These include Thomas Darcy, 1st Baron Darcy de Darcy (1537), Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex (1540), and Sir Thomas Wyatt (1554).
- Those men include Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick (1499), John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland (1554), and Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk (1572).
- The body of Thomas Darcy (see previous note) was buried at the Church of the Crutched Friars (1537). The body of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, was buried at the Church of All Hallows (1547), as was the body of Henry Grey’s brother Lord Thomas Grey (1554). The bodies of Sir Thomas Arundell of Wardour Castle and Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset were both buried in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula within the Tower (1552). Both the body and the head of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland were apparently buried in St Peter ad Vincula (1553), as was the body of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk (1572).
- Colin Setchfield, “Heads Up at St Botolph Aldgate,” Skyline, February 2020, 5.
- Edward Murray Tomlinson, A History of the Minories, London (1907), 301-304. The incident caused unrest within the parish, but when a committee met to determine the punishment for the offender, they determined only to extract from the beadle a promise never again to commit the same offense.
- Malcolm Johnson, Diary of a Gay Priest: The Tightrope Walker (Winchester: Christian Alternative, 2013), 111.
- Malcolm Johnson, Crypts of London (Cheltenham: The History Press, 2013), 120.
- Joyce Filer, “Excavation Round-up 1990: Part 1, City of London,” London Archaeologist 6:10 (Spring 1991), 276.
- British Library Lansdowne MSS 205, f.21-22. The manuscript is a list of noble persons buried in the Church of Holy Trinity Minories, seemingly transcribed from a burial registry. It dates to no later than 1534, two decades before the death of Henry Grey.