Our Big Move To France

I’ve been on a fun quest today while it’s raining chats et chiens.

While reading ever more on the Plantagenet kings and queens of England, I ran across a reference that said Henry the Third decreed that he would be buried at his beloved Westminster Cathedral, but his heart was to be interred with his grandmother Eleanor, grandfather Henry II, mother Isabella of Angoulême and uncle, Richard Lionheart at Fontevraud Abbey. (See the previous post for details about the abbey) His father, King John died and was buried in England but had his heart interred in the Rouen Cathedral.

However, we found absolutely no mention of the story of his heart at the abbey when we went there. 🤔

I posted on a FB group I belong to called Medieval England and no one had heard of this either. So a bunch of us began to search the interwebs.

We were able to find many references that after the French Revolution Napoleon decreed all members of the royalty be dug up and their bodies thrown into the river, or mass graves or scattered to the winds. The graves were looted for gold, gems or other precious metals, if indeed there was any left from previous lootings.

A member of the group found an article in the publication of the Scotland Society of Antiquities, from 1916 that said his heart was in Edinburgh, having been offered up after by Napoleon III. Another suggested I email David Carpenter, a British scholar who has written a several important books on Henry III… so I did. And he answered!

So it’s been lots of fun sleuthing it out, and people are still coming up with new information.

It sounds gross, but it was actually a very common practice for the body to lie in one location, the heart be sent to another and the entrails to another. And think about all the supposed relics of saints scattered among various churches and cathedrals. When we went to Spain, in the cathedral at Santiago de Compostella, we touched the purported finger bone of Saint James.

So here is some of the things we found today, along with the email from Mr. Campbell and a page from his book.

I get so excited about stuff like this!

According to https://www.unofficialroyalty.com/royal-burial-sites/british-royal-burial-sites/british-royal-burial-sites-house-of-angevin/ raided by Huguenots in 1562 but it was after the revolution when the tombs were emptied, as others have noted. One legend is that they were thrown into the river or perhaps the monks (nuns?) buried them in a secret location. This is the first reference I’ve seen to the fate of the 4 effigies themselves. They claim that they were tossed into a crypt until rediscovered in 1816, taken to Versailles but returned to Fontevraud in 1849. Napoleon offered them to Queen Victoria, but legal issues prevented the transfer. There is no mention of the heart.