Many interesting instances of heart burial are to be found in our parish churches. In the church of Horndon-on-the-Hill, Essex, which was once the seat of Sir Thomas Boleyn, a nameless black marble monument is pointed out as that of Anne Boleyn. According to a popular tradition long current in the neighbourhood, this is said to have contained the head, or heart. "It is within a narrow seat," writes Miss Strickland, "and may have contained her head, or her heart, for it is too short to contain a body. The oldest people in the neighbourhood all declare that they have heard the tradition in their youth from a previous generation of aged persons, who all affirm it to be Anne Boleyn's monument." But, it would seem, there has always been a mysterious uncertainty about Anne Boleyn's burial place, and a correspondent of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (October, 1815), speaks of "the headless remains of the departed queen, as deposited in the arrow chest and buried in the Tower Chapel before the high altar. Where that stood, the most sagacious antiquary, after a lapse of more than 300 years, cannot now determine; nor is the circumstance, though related by eminent writers, clearly ascertained. In a cellar, the body of a person of short stature, without a head, not many years since, was found, and supposed to be the reliques of poor Anne, but soon after it was reinterred in the same place and covered with earth."[51]
By her testament, Eleanor, Duchess of Buckingham, wife of Edward, Duke of Buckingham, who was beheaded on May 17th, 1521, appointed her heart to be buried in the church of the Grey Friars, within the City of London; and in the Sackville Vault, in Withyam Church, Sussex, is a curiously shaped leaden box in the form of a heart, on a brass plate attached to which is this inscription: "The heart of Isabella, Countess of Northampton, died on October 14th, 1661." A leaden drum deposited in a vault in the church of Brington is generally supposed to contain the head of Henry Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, who received his death wound at the battle of Newbury; and at Wells Cathedral, in a box of copper, a heart was accidentally discovered, supposed to be that of one of the bishops; and in the family vault of the Hungerfords, at Farley Castle, a heart was one day found in a glazed earthenware pot, covered with white leather. The widow of John Baliol, father of Bruce's rival, showed her affection for her dead lord in a strange way, for she embalmed his heart, placed it in an ivory casket, and during her twenty years of widowhood she never sat down to meals without this silent reminder of happier days. On her death, she left instructions for her husband's heart to be laid on her bosom, and from that day "New Abbey" was known as Sweet Heart Abbey, and "never," it is said, "did abbey walls shelter a sweeter, truer heart than that of the lady of Barnard Castle."