How were these personal relics obtained? By rifling his tomb. Shakespeare solemnly cursed anyone who should dare to meddle with his dead body, and his remains are believed to be intact.
‘Good friend, for Jesus’ sake, forbear To dig the dust inclosed here: Blest be the man who spares these stones, And cursed be he who moves my bones.’
But Milton laid no such interdict upon his poor dead body--and it was not very long after his burial, which took place in 1674, that the stone which covered it, and indicated his resting-place, was removed, as Aubrey tells us in his ‘Lives’ (vol. iii, p. 450). ‘His stone is now removed. About two years since (1681) the two steppes to the communion-table were raysed, Ighesse, Jo. Speed,[17] and he lie together.’ And so it came to pass that, in the church of St. Giles’, Cripplegate, where he was buried, there was no memorial of the place where he was laid, nor, indeed, anything to mark the fact of his burial in that church until, in 1793, Samuel Whitbread set up a fine marble bust of the poet, by Bacon, with an inscription giving the dates of his birth and death, and recording the fact that his father was also interred there.
It is probable that Mr. Whitbread was moved thereto by the alleged desecration of Milton’s tomb in 1790, of which there is a good account written by Philip Neve, of Furnival’s Inn, which is entitled, ‘A NARRATIVE of the DISINTERMENT of MILTON’S coffin, in the Parish-Church of ST. GILES, Cripplegate, on Wednesday, August 4th, 1790; and the TREATMENT OF THE CORPSE during that and the following day.’
As this narrative is not long, I propose to give it in its entirety, because to condense it would be to spoil it, and, by giving it _in extenso_, the reader will be better able to judge whether it was really Milton’s body which was exhumed.
Having read in the _Public Advertiser_, on Saturday, the 7th of August, 1790, that _Milton’s_ coffin had been dug up in the parish church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, and was there to be seen, I went immediately to the church, and found the latter part of the information to be untrue; but, from conversations on that day, on Monday, the 9th, and on Tuesday, the 10th of August, with Mr. Thomas _Strong_, Solicitor and F.A.S., Red Cross Street, _Vestry-Clerk_; Mr. John _Cole_, Barbican, Silversmith, _Churchwarden_; Mr. John _Laming_, Barbican, _Pawnbroker_; and Mr. _Fountain_, Beech Lane, Publican, _Overseers_; Mr. _Taylor_, of Stanton, Derbyshire, _Surgeon_; a friend of Mr. _Laming_, and a visitor in his house; Mr. William _Ascough_, Coffin-maker, Fore Street, _Parish Clerk_; Benjamin _Holmes_ and Thomas _Hawkesworth_, journeymen to Mr. Ascough; Mrs. _Hoppey_, Fore Street, _Sexton_; Mr. _Ellis_, No. 9, Lamb’s Chapel, comedian of the Royalty-theatre; and John _Poole_ (son of Rowland Poole), Watch-spring maker, Jacob’s Passage, Barbican, the following facts are established: