The coffin was opened, and the duke's body
was discovered to be in a good state of preservation in the coffin,
which is described as being "full of pickle." It is said that at one
time the vergers would, for a due consideration, allow visitors to carry
away the smaller bones when, owing to the body having been removed from
the preserving fluid, nothing but a skeleton was left.
[Illustration: MONUMENT OF HUMPHREY, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER.]
The monument is a handsome one. It was probably erected by
Wheathampstead, who had been on terms of intimacy with the duke, when he
for the second time became Abbot. The canopy over the grave is richly
carved; the antelopes we see on it were the badge of the duke. His
epitaph speaks of him, among other things, as
Fraudis ineptae
Detector, dum ficta notat miracula caeci.
This refers to the story told of him by Sir Thomas More, how he
convicted an impostor who claimed to have been born blind, but to have
received sight at St. Alban's shrine, by asking him the colour of the
garments that the duke himself and others were wearing; all these
questions were correctly answered by the beggar, who forgot for the
moment that one born blind who had only just received his sight, would
not have known the _names_ of the various colours, though he might
distinguish one colour from another.
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