The New Murrey and Blue blog

While researching my novel on Anne Mowbray, the child bride of Richard of Shrewsbury, younger of the two Princes in the Tower, I found out several things I was previously unaware of. I knew, of course that young Anne’s burial was accidentally discovered in a crypt under a London bombsite that had disappeared. It was a famous and controversial find, and paved the way for modern archaeology to save heritage sites and whatever they contained, rather than letting building companies just plough through them, destroying burials or artefacts without record before obliterating the sites with new structures. (In fact, Anne Mowbray’s coffin almost got sent to a mass ‘pauper’s grave’ in a London cemetery, which was the procedure if old coffins were found but not claimed by a relative within 48 hours.)

What I hadn’t realised or missed somehow was that Anne’s burial in this crypt which was in the now-vanished convent of the Minoresses (known as the Minories, its place name existing today) was not her first burial but her SECOND. Anne, who died aged 9, was first buried in Westminster Abbey in the chapel of St Erasmus, which had only recently been built on the orders of Elizabeth Woodville. It was also recorded that Elizabeth wished to be buried there herself…which is interesting and maybe a little strange, since her husband Edward IV chose to be buried at Windsor.

At any rate, this plan came to nothing. Henry VII seized the throne and upon deciding to make himself and wife Elizabeth of York a huge blingy chapel, he destroyed almost all of the chapel of St Erasmus, which was less than 20 years old at the time. It was during these building works, that Henry’s grandmother Catherine of Valois was dislodged from her tomb–and Henry just left her lying there in a broken coffin. Her body was visited for centuries after and Samuel Pepys even kissed it! Little Anne Mowbray’s grave was also disturbed, and Henry made no re-arrangements for his WIFE’S FORMER SISTER-IN-LAW to be reburied in Westminster Abbey. Instead, her mother Elizabeth Mowbray (nee Talbot, sister to Eleanor Talbot), who was living at the Minories, claimed her and had her coffin reburied by the nuns. And there she stayed till found in 1964–she was eventually reburied once more in Westminster where her first burial took place.

As for Elizabeth Woodville, her earlier wishes were never recognised and upon her death, her body was sent to Windsor with only one mourner and a cheap coffin.

I must mention that some of the noblewomen living at the Minories, who were not nuns but ladies ‘in retirement’ were a very interesting bunch by their family associations–Elizabeth Mowbray, Mary Tyrrell (most likely James Tyrrell’s daughter), and Elizabeth Brackenbury, daughter of Sir Robert Brackenbury. I am sure they had some very interesting conversations about their past and present lives.

Book: Princess in the Police Station. Historical fiction novel on the life, death & discovery of Anne Mowbray, bride to one of the Princes in the Tower. https://mybook.to/annemowbray