WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BODY OF JAMES IV?
ACCORDING TO A PROSE AND VERSE TRACT OF 1575, JAMES IV’S BODY was brought through the streets of London after the Battle of Flodden slung over a horse, just as Richard III’s had been brought to Leicester after Bosworth.1 Katherine of Aragon received it at the Carthusian monastery at Sheen, but it could not be buried until the Pope granted his permission to lay the excommunicant in sacred ground. Henry duly asked the Pope, stating his intention to bury the king eventually at St Paul’s, and it is often assumed that is where he was buried. In fact, although Pope Leo gave Henry his permission, the body was left at Sheen, unburied.2
The Elizabethan antiquarian Stow later saw James’ body, where it lay cast ‘into an old waste room, amongst old timber, stone, lead, and other rubble’, as it had since the monastery at Sheen was dissolved. After that, some Elizabethan workmen cut off James’ head ‘for their foolish pleasure’. It still had James’ red hair and beard. Another Londoner later rescued it, keeping it for a while in his house, saying it smelled nice, until eventually he paid for it to be buried at St Michael’s Church, Wood Street, in the City of London.3 The church burned down in the Great Fire of London. There is a pub on the site today.
James’ English wife did not fare much better. The remains of Margaret Tudor disappeared after her tomb was destroyed by a Protestant mob in May 1559. They had attacked the Carthusian priory in Perth where she was buried, killing one of the monks before desecrating her remains.