During the nineteenth century, when workmen were busy preparing a place of sepulture for the family of George III in the vaults of Windsor, they lighted upon a stone coffin buried fifteen feet below the surface.
It contained the remains of Queen Elizabeth Woodville. Bermondsey has yet another memory in connection with this unfortunate queen's persecutor, Henry VII., and one that illustrates another remarkable trait of his character - his superstitious piety.
His masterly policy was not often a very upright and honourable policy; so he commissioned the erection of a chapel, which would hold masses to be said for evermore for his soul, to give himself a tolerably fair reckoning in the great account book of his conscience.
He is not the only monarch who has endeavoured to keep an "even mind" by the adoption of a similar kind of offset. It appears that an indenture was executed between the king, the City of London, and the Abbots of Westminster and Bermondsey, sometime after the death of his queen, the daughter of Queen Elizabeth Woodville.
The indenture decreed that the Abbot and monks of Westminster were to pay £3 6s. 8d. annually to those of Bermondsey, to hold an anniversary in the church on the 6th of February in every year, to pray for the good and prosperous estate of the king during his life, the prosperity of his kingdom, for the souls of his late queen and their children, for his father the Earl of Richmond, for his progenitors, and for his mother the Countess of Richmond after her decease.
Full instructions on the nature of performing the ceremony are contained in the indenture. The following extract gives a glimpse:
"The Abbot and Convent of St. Saviour of Bermondsey shall provide at every such anniversary a hearse, to be set in the midst of the high chancel of the said monastery, before the high altar, covered and apparelled with the best and most honourable stuff in the same monastery convenient for the same. And also four tapers of wax, each of them weighing eight pounds, to be set upon the same hearse, that is to say, on either side thereof one taper, and at either end of the same hearse another taper, and all the same four tapers to be lighted and burning continually during all the time of every such Placebo, Dirige, with nine lessons, lauds, and mass of Requiem, with the prayers and obeisances above rehearsed."
At the Dissolution, the Abbot of Bermondsey had no scruples about conscience or principle, like so many of his brethren, and instead arranged everything in the best possible manner for the King; and he had his reward.