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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. i. MAR. 4, me.
David Ross, the tragedian, was descended from the Ross-shire Earls of Ross through the Rosses of Balnagowan (not the present Balnagowans, who are Rosses of Hawkhead), and through their younger branch, Ross of Invercharron (extinct about 1780), and their younger branch, Ross of Easter-Fearn, whose representative, Alexander, Eltonred, in 1684, had a younger son, Alexander, of Little Daan. It was he who was W.S. in Edinburgh, &c.; he died in Gray's Inn, March 4, 1753, leaving David, the tragedian, Edward, William, and Elizabeth. David was buried in the churchyard of St. James, Piccadilly. That church may contain the record of his marriage; or it may be found in Mr. F. J. Grant's 'History of Society of Writers to the Signet.' M. R. R. McG. G.
The Effect of Opening a Coffin (11 S. xii. 300, 363, 448, 465; 12 S 1. 91, 113).—I am a little surprised that in the correspondence which has appeared on this subject no reference has been made to the remarkable case of St. Cuthbert. No sooner had he died than, according to the anonymous monk of Lindisfarne, his body was wrapped in a cerecloth and placed in a stone coffin, A.D. 687. Eleven years after his death, in 698, the brethren, thinking that nothing would be found but his bones, proposed to elevate them from the ground and place them in levi area, that they might receive more veneration. But, to their amazement, they found the body whole and uncorrupt, or, as we should say, desiccated. In this state the body was seen again in 1104, as is fully related by an anonymous writer whose account is printed in 'Acta SS. Boll.,' March 20, p. 123, sect. 13, and by Reginald of Durham, cap. xl. Next, at the desecration of the shrine in 1537, the body seems to have been in much the same state. For the king's commissioners found it whole and uncorrupt; the circumstances are minutely related in 'Rites of Durham,' chap. li. Next, when the vault in which it had been placed was opened in 1827, the body seems to have fallen to pieces, and any remains of flesh to have almost entirely perished; for Dr. Raine says that when the vestments had been removed, a skeleton was stretched out at length before the spectators; the bones were all in their proper places, with the exception of the fingers and feet bones, which were in a state of confusion, and this is just what one would expect if the desiccated body had been laid in the grave after exposure to the air for some time previous to burial. Lastly, when the vault was opened in 1899 (see Archæologia, vol. lvii.), the bones were still "mostly in their right places." They presented a different appearance from ordinary dry bones, being "uniformly of a deep brownish tint." Periosteum was still adhering to some of them, and there was much ligamentous material, as well as periosteum, still adherent to the cervical vertebrae and to the skull. Also, a shrivelled eyeball dropped out of one of the orbits, and a portion of "dry, greyish material," probably desiccated brain, fell through the foramen ovale during the examination of the skull. These appearances seemed to leave little or no doubt that the remains described were those of the body that had been venerated as "entire" through the Middle Ages.
But what has been said does not bear upon Mr. Ackermann's original inquiry further than as adding to the many instances recorded of bodies not falling to dust immediately on exposure.
Full accounts of the history of St. Cuthbert's body, with original authorities, may seen in Dr. Raine's 'St. Cuthbert,' or in Monsignor Eyre's 'Life ' of the saint.
Durham.J. T. F.
The following account of the opening of a coffin may be of some interest to your readers; it relates to what occurred at the demolition of the Bolton Parish Church in 1866. The vault of the ancient family of Anderton of Lostock, the members of which were buried during the seventeenth century, was then opened, and the particular coffin question was supposed to be that of Christopher Anderton of Lostock, buried Dec. 14, 1619:—
