Hi history lovers and welcome or welcome back to the channel, where I bring you new videos
every week on all aspects of the past. Today on History Calling I have another gruesome
dead body story for you as those always seem to go down well with my viewers. In this case,
we’ll be looking at the death and burial of Henry I, a man whose apparent cause of death
is one of the stranger ones you’ll ever hear and whose body actually managed to kill a guy.
If you want to find out how though, you’ll have to keep watching. So put down any food
you’re eating cause this is gonna be more gross than the video I did on Henry VIII’s
exploding body and let’s head back to the 12th century and to Henry I’s killer corpse.
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In November 1135, Henry I, King of England and son of William the Conqueror was about 66 or 67 years
old (we aren’t sure of his date of birth) and had been on the throne for 35 years. He wasn’t at home
in London though. Instead he was in Normandy (which is unsurprising because at this time
the Kings of England also had lands in France) and specifically at his lodge at Lyons-la-Foret,
where he had gone in order to go hunting. On 25 November however he suddenly fell seriously ill.
There is a famous legend that this illness was caused by eating a ‘surfeit of lampreys’,
which is a type of fish as you see here, but when we go back to the primary sources we discover that
this detail has been somewhat embellished by later writers. The contemporary monk and chronicler
William of Malmesbury reports only that ‘engaged in hunting at Liuns, he was suddenly taken ill’
and that this ‘malady’ as he called it then increased over the ensuing days. Orderic Vitalis,
an English monk and historian born in Shrewsbury in 1075 but who spent most of his life living in
the Norman monastery of St Evroult said that the King had been planning to go hunting the following
day when he suddenly fell ill in the night. He mentions no cause of this illness however.
Another writer, William of Newburgh, wrote very simply that when his life and reign were complete,
Henry ‘slept with his fathers’. Newburgh was only born at around the time that Henry died though and
so wasn’t truly contemporary, though he likely had access to people who were adults in 1135 and
to documents now long lost to history. Only one writer actually mentions lampreys as the King’s
cause of death and that is the chronicler, Henry of Huntingdon. Huntingdon lived between about 1088
and 1157 and was archdeacon of Huntingdonshire and Hertfordshire. He was therefore alive and fully
grown at the time King Henry died and well placed, given his job, to receive information about the
lives and deaths of the English aristocracy and royal family. His writings make it clear that
he met many of the leading figures of the day (who could therefore have acted as sources of
information for him) and though we don’t know precisely when he wrote the section of his work
which deals with the monarch’s death, it obviously had to be before his own demise 22 years later and
might well have been much closer to the time of King Henry’s death. One reason to be cautious of
his chronicle though is its moralising tone and his tendency to make up details to give the text
a bit more punch such as the invented speeches he pretended famous figures had given at crucial
moments of history. With that caveat in mind, here is what he had to say about the King’s death:
returning from hunting at St Denys in the ‘Wood of Lions’, he partook of some lampreys,
of which he was fond, though they always disagreed with him; and though his physician
recommended him to abstain, the king would not submit to his salutary advice; according to what
is written: - “Men strive ‘gainst rules, and seek forbidden things.” This repast bringing
on ill humours, and violently exciting similar symptoms, caused a sudden and extreme disturbance,
under which his aged frame sunk into a deathly torpor; in the reaction against which, Nature
in her struggles produced an acute fever, while endeavouring to throw off the oppressive load.
But when all power of resistance failed, this great king died on the first day of December.
So what I take from this is that the King was told not to eat lampreys at all by his doctor
because they always disagreed with him, but went ahead and became ill shortly afterwards
with symptoms including a fever. There is no mention of a surfeit, meaning that there’s
no reason to think he ate any more than usual, but it is certainly interesting that it seems to
have been known that he didn’t tolerate the fish very well, even though he obviously liked them.
I’m no medical doctor, so I can’t tell you what the problem was, but possibly some sort
of allergy or maybe even a delicate stomach caused by something like an ulcer might have
been the reason that the fish didn’t agree with him. I tend to think an allergy unlikely as that
would have been a longstanding, maybe even a lifelong problem and I can’t see him continually
eating lampreys if they always made him sick, so something like an ulcer, which only became
a problem in later years, seems more likely, with the King being unwilling to give up on a delicacy
he’d always enjoyed. I’m sure I must have some doctors amongst my viewers though, so perhaps
they can offer some additional insights into a possible cause of death in the comments below.
It could be of course that Henry’s diet had nothing to do with it. Maybe he caught a chill
whilst out on the hunt. It was November after all. There is also another factor to consider;
the entire lamprey story may have been invented by Huntingdon. I told you he liked to give a
moralising bent to his writings and we see that in the account just given, when he says that the
King’s refusal to desist from eating them was a classic case of men seeking forbidden things.
He may just have taken the King’s unexpected death and tried to turn it into a fable about
the need to practice moderation and not be a rule breaker. On the other hand, perhaps he was just
better informed than his fellow writers about the King’s final days and that is why he provides this
detail when others do not. Now we come to the icky part of the video, as we learn how our medieval
ancestors prepared bodies for burial and more specifically what they did when the body could not
be buried right away, for Henry was destined to be interred in England, or rather, most of him was.
Some sources are more detailed about what happened next than others. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says
only that ‘king Henry’s sons and his friends took his body, and brought it to England, and buried
it at Reading’. Orderic Vitalis however, took the time to explain the choice of burial spot
for the King by saying that Henry himself had asked to be buried there because it was there
that he had ‘founded a monastery for two hundred monks’. He also notes that the great lords who
were with the King when he died ‘were entreated by Hugh the archbishop, and Ouen, bishop of Evreux,
not to forsake their master’s corpse unless by common ascent, but to conduct it to the sea side,
all together, in an honourable escort.’ He then gives us some idea of how the body was treated
and of the long journey it went through from the time of the King’s death to his eventual burial.
Henry had died on a Sunday and the following day 20,000 men accompanied his corpse to Rouen
where it ‘was received with great pomp in the cathedral church of St Mary’.
Orderic then provides a somewhat unpleasant, but still fairly detached and clinical account
of the way in which the body was embalmed. It is at least less vivid shall we say, than some of the
other descriptions I’ll be reading in a minute. He tells us that ‘During the night the body,
which was very fat, was opened by a skilful surgeon, and embalmed with sweet spices. The
entrails were carried in an urn to Emendreville and deposited in the church of St Mary-du-pre,
which his mother began and he finished’. Some of the King’s knights and household staff then
travelled with the body to Caen. At that point though, Orderic tells us everything stopped, for:
they were detained there for nearly four weeks, waiting a favourable wind to put to sea.
During this time the corpse of the king was kept in the choir of the church of St Stephen,
the protomartyr; until, after Christmas, it was embarked on board ship by monks,
employed in that duty, and carried over to England:
it was then buried with great honours by the successor to the throne [that’s his nephew,
King Stephen] and the bishops and great men of the realm, in the abbey-church at Reading.
Other sources follow broadly the same sequence of events. Robert de Monte for instance wrote that:
His body was conveyed into the city of Rouen by the archbishop, and the bishops, and the barons,
of whom there was a large assembly: and it was opened in the church of St. Mary, and the heart,
and the tongue, and the bowels were buried before the altar of the monastery Des Pres,
while the remainder of his body (after having been sprinkled with salt) was wrapped up in hides and
removed to Caen, and there placed in the monastery of St. Stephen, near the tomb of his father, until
those who had the charge of his funeral found a favourable wind for the removal of the corpse
over into England. So within twelve days of our Lord’s nativity it was buried within the monastery
of St Mary of Reading, which he had erected from the foundations, and had enriched with ornaments
and possessions. Stephen, the nephew of the late King, (and then himself King) was present at his
funeral, as was also William, the archbishop of Canterbury, and many of the nobles of the realm.
William of Malmesbury meanwhile said that he got his information about the death of
Henry from the archbishop of Roeun (which, if true, was certainly an excellent source) and
it is from him that we get our first hints that all was not well with the body. He wrote that:
The body, royally attended, and borne by the nobility in turn, was brought to Rouen,
where, in a certain retired part of the principal church, it was disembowelled,
lest, becoming putrid, it should offend the senses of whose who approached it.
The intestines were buried in the monastery of St Mary des Prees, near the city, which,
as I hear, he had honoured with no mean presents, as it had been begun by his mother.
His body was kept at Caen till the season, which was then very boisterous,
became more tranquil [this is a reference to the poor weather noted by other sources].
If we were still in any doubts that the body had quickly deteriorated after death,
the chronicle of William of Newburgh would soon disabuse us of that notion, for according to him:
His body, after the extraction of the brains and intestines, was embalmed,
sewed up in skins, and brought from Normandy to England, where it was interred at Reading,
a monastery of which he had been the pious founder and munificent benefactor. The man,
indeed, who had been hired, at great expense to extract the brain, became infected, as it is said,
from the intolerable stench, and died; and thus, as the body of the departed Elisha reanimated the
dead [this is a reference to a Biblical figure], so Henry’s dead body gave death to the living.
Now you heard me say earlier that William of Newburgh was not a contemporary source
as he was only born in around 1135 or 1136, which is close to when Henry died.
If he was the only writer who mentioned this killer corpse story I would be more
suspicious of this detail than I am. However Henry of Huntingdon, who we’ve established
was a contemporary and in a position to get good information about major events,
also relates this anecdote and may even have been Newburgh’s source. Where most others made some
attempt to be delicate in their descriptions of the increasingly poor state of the corpse however,
Huntingdon didn’t hold back. This is what he had to say about Henry’s remains.
His corpse was carried to Rouen, where his bowels, with his brain and eyes, were deposited. The body
being slashed by knives, and copiously sprinkled with salt, was sown up in ox hides to prevent the
ill effluvia [which means a horrible smell], which so tainted the air as to be pestilential to the
bystanders. Even the man who was hired by a large reward to sever the head with an axe and extract
the brain, which was very offensive, died in consequence, although he wore a thick linen veil;
so that his wages were dearly earned. [He was the last of that great multitude King Henry slew.] The
corpse being then carried to Caen, was deposited in the church where his father was interred;
but notwithstanding the quantity of salt which had been used, and the folds of skins in which it was
wrapped, so much foul matter continually exuded, that it was caught in vessels placed underneath
the bier [this is a frame on which a coffin was placed], in emptying which the attendants
were affected with horror and faintings. Observe then reader, how the corpse of this mighty king,
whose head was crowned with a diadem of precious jewels, sparkling with a brightness almost divine,
who held glittering sceptres in both his hands, the rest of whose body was robed in cloth of gold,
whose palate was gratified by such delicious and exquisite viands, whom all men bowed down to,
all men feared, congratulated, and admired; observe, I say, what horrible decay, to what a
loathsome state, his body was reduced! … At last, the royal remains were brought over to England,
and interred, within twelve days of Christmas, in the abbey at Reading,
which King Henry had founded and richly endowed. There, King Stephen, after holding his court at
London during Christmas, came to meet the body of his uncle, and William archbishop of Canterbury,
with many earls and great men, buried King Henry with the honours due to so great a prince.
There are a few points I’d like to focus on here.
First the level of detail makes me suspect that Huntingdon did indeed get his information from
someone who was in Normandy with King Henry and witnessed the aftermath of his death.
Some of it though, seems unlikely at best. Again, I’m not a medical doctor or an embalmer, but I
don’t think you’d decapitate a corpse with an axe in the way described in order to remove the brain
as it simply wouldn’t be immediately accessible if you did that. I wonder if what Huntingdon instead
means is that the crown of the head had to be removed, as might be done in a modern autopsy?
Also, regarding the story that the man who did this died from the stench of the body,
I find this to be an unlikely cause of death. You might be horrified and faint from what’s in front
of you just as he described and even throw up, but a bad smell alone wouldn’t kill anyone, otherwise
we’d hear about forensic detectives and morticians dying all the time. I imagine the man concerned
died from some other medical event (perhaps a stroke or a heart attack) and contemporaries just
assumed that it had something to do with the body as they didn’t know any better. Finally, I think
we have an excellent example here of why keeping bodies unburied for a month (because it was 3
January before Henry was finally laid to rest) was an ill-advised and deeply unpleasant thing to do,
especially without a sealed lead coffin. Though Orderic said that the surgeon who attended the
body was skilled, he was either mistaken, lying, or else the preservation techniques employed, from
evisceration to being salted and wrapped in hides, simply weren’t sophisticated enough to do the job.
We can only imagine that it was with great relief that Henry’s family and friends were
finally able to complete their gruesome task and put his decomposed body in its grave.
Most sources as you’ve seen provide quite scant information about his actual funeral,
but the English monk, John of Worcester, tells us that King Stephen and many of
the nobles met the body as soon as it arrived in England and that the King was one of those
who carried the bier which held his uncle on his shoulders on its way to Reading (which
is different to Huntingdon’s account by the way that they met up with it at the abbey).
Let’s all take a moment to think about how horrific that must have been if the body was
still leaking through the hides, because remember there’s no mention anywhere of it being coffined.
Once at the church, Worcester says ‘masses were sung, many rich offerings made, alms distributed
to multitudes of the poor, and the obsequies having been duly solemnised, and his effigy [so
not the actual body] exposed to view on a hearse, the royal corpse was deposited, with the highest
honours, in a tomb constructed, according to custom, before the altar in the principal church’.
And so Henry I was finally buried, with bits of him resting in France,
but most of him in the abbey at Reading, which was at that time, brand new, having only been founded
by the now deceased King in 1121. As with so many royal burials though, that’s not the end of the
story and Henry’s mortal remains would not get to rest in peace as he must have hoped they would.
Fast forward 400 years to the reign of Henry VIII and a monastery was suddenly
not the safe haven for royal remains it had once been. As the Tudor King dissolved
these religious houses and plundered their wealth as part of the English Reformation,
the buildings themselves were heavily damaged, no matter whose bones they could claim to house.
By the 1550s, the abbey at Reading was derelict and the tombs had been vandalised. According to
Reading Museum’s website, ‘Today the area of the High Altar and Henry's tomb are now occupied by
the buildings of the old St James's school and the car park of the former prison.’ So
just like Richard III, we might have another King in a carpark! It's sad of course that Henry I’s
remains are long-since lost, but a plaque at the modern site does at least commemorate the
fact that he was once buried there which I guess is more than most people in history get to have.
I hope you’ve found this study of what happened to Henry I’s body interesting and that I haven’t
put you off your food. A big thank you as always to my wonderful patrons and to those
of you who give donations to the channel using the thanks button underneath videos.
Let me know in the comments below if you believe too many lampreys were the cause of Henry’s death
and if you’d like to learn more about his life and the dramatic effect his demise had on English
politics (it literally caused a civil war), try one of these videos next, which look at the death
of his only legitimate son and the attempt by his daughter, Empress Matilda, to inherit the throne.
I’ll be back next week with a new offering and until then, keep learning.