When Richard Rawlinson died in April 1755, he left instructions in his will that his heart ‘be taken out, enclosed in a silver cup with spirits and put into a black marble urn’. Then, after the rest of his body was laid to rest in St Giles Church in Oxford, this once beating organ was to be taken across the road to be stored separately at his old university college, St John’s.
And 270 years later, here it still is. Set into a stone recess on the north wall of a tiny offshoot of the main chapel. The urn is less ornate than many of the other memorials here, busts of important college alumni, lengthy epitaphs engraved in gold, Richard Baylie, twice President of the college in the 17th century and the man who built this side-chapel gets a full-on reclining figure, looking confidently upwards as he stretches out on his cold stone bolster. Rawlinson’s urn is much simpler by comparison, one that if I didn’t know better might hold cremation ashes. Let’s hope his heart is still sealed inside. For the inscription underneath reads ‘Ubi thesaurus ibi cor’, which translates as ‘where your treasure is, there will your heart be also’ (from Mathew V1.21).
This was his idea of a love letter, if rather a bloody one.
Rawlinson’s heart in a jar wasn’t the first heart burial I had come across on my Oxford Sausage rambles. Richard Plantagenet, Earl of Cornwall and brother to Henry III chose to have his body buried in Hailes Abbey in Gloucestershire next to his second wife, but his heart interred under a pyramid in the choir of the church at Greyfriars Friary in 13th century Oxford, next to his third wife Beatrice of Falkenstein. Then a thriving religious house, the church once stood somewhere near where Sainsbury’s in the Westgate Shopping Centre is today.
Lady Dervorguilla of Galloway, the co-founder along with her husband John de Balliol of the Oxford college that took his name, was so distressed after her husband died in 1268, that she had his heart removed, preserved and then placed in an ivory casket, which she carried with her everywhere. It had its own special pillow on which to sleep beside her at night. She even insisted a place was laid for it at the supper table, the uneaten food then distributed to the poor. When she died it was buried with her at the priory she charmingly named ‘Sweetheart Abbey’ in memory of their affection.
And then there’s the extraordinary story of the heart of Louis XIV, the Sun King himself. Embalmed and then interred at the royal tomb of Saint-Dennis near Paris in 1715, the royal burial ground was desecrated during the French Revolution and bits and pieces of what was found there picked up by collectors from around the world. The mummified heart of the French King, ended up in the hands of the Nuneham family, custodians of the Nuneham Courtenay estate just outside Oxford. It was bought out on special occasions to show as a curiosity. One evening in 1844 Lord Harcourt had invited the eccentric Oxford geologist and palaeontologist William Buckland as a dinner guest. Celebrated amongst other things for being the first to describe the fossilised bones of a giant reptile found in an Oxfordshire slate quarry just over 200 years ago, which he called Megalosaurus, he had also set himself the task of tasting ‘every animal on earth’. From porpoise to porcupine, bluebottle to brown bear, hyena to hedgehog, Buckland had tried them all, his favourite apparently mice on toast. And so when he was presented with the walnut sized shrivelled heart of a king, staring up at him from the silver locket in which it sat, he couldn’t resist. He popped it in his mouth and swallowed it down. He’d have won ‘I’m a Celebrity…’ hands down.
Cutting hearts from corpses had its heyday in the 12th and 13th centuries, when bringing bodies back from faraway lands during the Crusades was not practical. So it was, they decided on sending just the heart home, preserved in a lead or ivory casket with spices to stop it smelling. The idea caught on. Maybe it suited kings and nobility to have the chance to be remembered in multiple locations at once. The Hertzgruft (German for Heart Crypt) in Vienna holds 54 urns containing the hearts of members of the House of Hapsburg, their bodies buried elsewhere.
But in truth it was the embodiment of emotion that the heart represented that captured the romantic imagination and ensured the survival of this macabre practice.
When the poet Percy Shelley was drowned off the coast of Italy, and his cadaver immediately cremated according to local laws, his friend Edward Trelawny thrust his hand into the burning ribcage to extract the heart, later giving it to Shelley’s wife Mary who kept it beside her wrapped in a silk purse until she died. But things could go gorily wrong. On the death of Thomas Hardy, it was decided (not according to his wishes) that his cremated body would be taken to lie in Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey as befitted the famous writer, while his heart would be sliced out by a surgeon (cooks were also used for this gruesome task) and taken to Dorset to be buried alongside his family (his chosen resting place). However, legend has it that his heart never made it. Stored overnight in a biscuit tin, it was discovered by a local cat, eaten for breakfast and a hasty substitute had to be found.
Back to Richard Rawlinson, and as I study the urn carrying the morbid memento he left to his old college in the quiet of the chapel I feel strangely moved. Rawlinson never married. He spent a lot of time later on in life bailing his rather feckless family out of debt. But his great passion was collecting books and antiquities. And to this end he kept rooms in St John’s until the day he died, a place with Jacobite leanings like himself, a base from which to make forays into Oxford to use the facilities of the University libraries. He clearly loved the place. Which is why he bequeathed a large property portfolio to St John’s that helped to make it one of the richest in the University, and a road in North Oxford is named after him.
And why he also left his heart.
The memorial to Richard Baylie, twice President of St John’s College and after which the small chapel in which Rawlinson’s heart is kept is named. St John’s College is open and free for visitors every afternoon.
A 16th century drawing of a heart shaped vessel from the Wellcome Library.
William Buckland giving a lecture at old The Ashmolean Museum in Broad Street from the Wellcome Library.
The memorial to Richard I (died 1199) in Rouen Cathedral in France where is heart is buried. His body is in Fontevraud Abbey, 350 kilometres away. Known as Richard the Lionheart (for his bravery probably though some believe he was given the name after he devoured a lion’s heart in front of his court) was born in Beaumont Palace in Oxford.
©Yohann Deslandes
His embalmed heart was kept in a lead box and has recently been analysed by scientists revealing some of the secrets behind medieval preservation techniques. They found traces of frankincense, myrtle, daisy, mint, lime and a little mercury to stop the heart decaying and to ensure it smelled sweetly, before wrapping it in linen.
When the embalmed body of 17th century noblewoman Lady Brefeillac was disovered recently in a lead coffin in Toulouse, it was found that her heart had been removed. It was assumed that the small heart shaped locket she was clasping in her hands containing the remains of a human heart were those of her own, but the inscription suggested otherwise. The name was that of her husband, Toussaint de Perrien. How very romantic.
The heart of Thomas Hardy was buried in St Michael’s Churchyard in Stinsford Dorset. Crowds gathered to watch the ceremony. Let’s hope it is his!