Volume 2

Portraits and lives of remarkable and eccentric characters.

Date:
[1819?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Portraits and lives of remarkable and eccentric characters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    in this, to the peculiarity of ever other known cell in Britain. Not the invention of one skeleton, but of two, would have appeared suspicious and un¬ common. 4£ But it seems another skeleton has been discovered by some labourer, which was full as confidently averred to be Clarke’s as this. My lord, must some of the living, if it promotes some interest, be made an¬ swerable for all the bones earth has concealed, and chance exposed ! and might not a place where bones lay be mentioned by a person by chance, as well as found by a labourer by chance 1 or is it more crimi¬ nal, accidentally, to name where bones lie, than acci¬ dentally to find where they lie 1 (( Here, too, is a human skull produced, which is fractured; but was this the cause, or was it the con¬ sequence of death 1 was it owing to violence, or was it the effect of natural decay I if it was violence, was that violence before or after death ? My lord, in May, 1732, the remains of William, lord archbishop of this province, were taken up, by permission, in this cathedral, and the bones of the skull were found broken; yet certainly he died by no violence offered to him alive, that could occasion that fracture there. “ Let it be considered, my lord, that, upon the^ dis¬ solution of religious houses, and the commencement of the reformation, the ravages of those times affected both the living and the dead. In search after imagi¬ nary treasures, coffins were b roken up, graves and