Patricia Lovett MBE

Calligraphy | Illumination | Design

Tag Archives: King John

King John’s Tomb

King John really hasn’t got a good press, especially compared with his older brother, Richard the Lionheart of Robin Hood fame, John just doesn’t have that same star quality, despite him being the favourite of his father, Henry II. As the youngest son of Henry and Eleanor of Aquitaine, he wasn’t expected to either inherit significant lands – leading to his nickname ‘John Lackland (Jean sans Terre) – nor to become king as he did in 1199.

There are reasons for his unpopularity of course, John lost much of the land ruled by the English in France and raised heavy taxes for military campaigns to try to get it back. And then there is the famous Magna Carta, sealed, not signed, at Runnymead, forced on John by his nobles.

John died of dysentery while on a campaign in eastern England and died in Newark on the night of 18–19 October 1216. His wish was that he should be buried at Worcester Cathedral so that he could be near the shrines of the Anglo-Saxon saints St Oswald and St Wulfstan, and small effigies of the saints appear next to him on the top of his tomb – one of them is just visible by to his head. His complete tomb, looking back down the nave is above.

John’s funeral is depicted here in a later British Library manuscript (Egerton MS 3028, f.6r) where the text also states that John was buried between his two favoured saints. The image, though, doesn’t show the many mounted knights in armour who accompanied John’s coffin to its final resting place.

When John’s tomb was opened they found that some of the textiles had amazingly survived. These fragments are of the fine hose in which he was buried. The fabric is so fine that it’s difficult to know whether they were made from woven material or knitted.

Another piece of fabric is this beautiful embroidered cloth, it shows a lion (the lion of England?), in raised stitches, with gold and silver thread on the head; this was wrapped round John’s body.

And this is the sole of one of his shoes; it’s made of leather and there are clear indications that not only has it been worn – it looks quite rough and the stitching shows wear and tear – but there is even an indentation as the shoe moulded round his feet!

The glorious tiled pavement looks mediæval with its terracotta background and yellow pattern, but they are in fact Victorian and designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott and made by the firm Godwin of Lugwardine, the design being copied from the surviving historical tiles. It does give John’s rather sombre chest tomb a colourful background.

It does seem quite amazing that this historical tomb has survived since 1216 and so, too, the artefacts found within it.

All photographs © Patricia Lovett 2026

This entry was posted in Blog, Historical building and buildings, Interesting stuff, Manuscripts and tagged Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II, John Lackland, King John, Philip II, Richard the Lionheart, Worcester Cathedral on 11 April 2026 by Patricia.

The Dering Roll

The Dering Roll is the oldest roll of English coats of arms and dates from 1270–1280. In the seventeenth century it was acquired by Sir Edward Dering (1598–1644) (right), from Dering in Kent, who is described as a knight and a baronet. He bought it in the seventeenth century, and although it seems dreadful to us now, he ‘modified’ the roll to include a fictitious ancestor of his own. While Dering was lieutenant of Dover Castle, he removed entry number 61 on the roll, the coat of arms of Nicholas de Croill, and put in his own arms with the false name of Richard fitz Dering in its place. This was to prove the ancestry of his family.

It is thought that the roll was commissioned by the Constable of Kent, Stephen of Penchester, which would explain why there are more coats of arms from Kent and Surrey than from elsewhere.

The roll itself starts with the two illegitimate children of King John (1166–1216, king from 1199 to 1216) who were Richard Fitz Roy (fitz = son, roy = king) and William de Say, although their coats of arms at the top are difficult to discern because of the condition of the roll.

Made from four strips of 8 inch wide parchment pasted together, and stretching to almost three yards in length, it is a huge piece of work, and it’s remarkable that it has survived so well. The shields are arranged six to a row and there are 54 rows, making 324 shields in all. All but five of them have the individual names of the knights written above them. These names have either been removed or were never written in in the first place. The background to the colourful shields is painted green.

In the twentieth century it was bought by Sir Anthony Wagner (right) who became Garter King of Arms at the College of Arms in London. It was sold at Sotheby’s in 2007 for £192,000 and was due to be exported from the country. A stay of execution meant that the British Library were able to raise the sum of £194,184 to ensure that it stayed in the country. The importance of this heraldic roll is summed up by the Head of Mediæval and Earlier Manuscripts, Claire Breay, who said of the purchase, ‘the acquisition of the Dering Roll provides an extremely rare chance to add a manuscript of enormous local and national significance’.