The record of this royal salute on his natal day is very
characteristic. The story told him in Westminster Abbey appears to
have been correct; for Neale informs us ("History of Westminster
Abbey," vol. ii., p. 88) that near the south side of Henry V.'s tomb
there was formerly a wooden chest, or coffin, wherein part of the
skeleton and parched body of Katherine de Valois, his queen (from
the waist upwards), was to be seen. She was interred in January,
1457, in the Chapel of Our Lady, at the east end of this church; but
when that building was pulled down by her grandson, Henry VII., her
coffin was found to be decayed, and her body was taken up, and
placed in a chest, near her first husband's tomb. "There," says
Dart, "it hath ever since continued to be seen, the bones being
firmly united, and thinly clothed with flesh, like scrapings of
tanned leather." This awful spectacle of frail mortality was at
length removed from the public gaze into St. Nicholas's Chapel, and
finally deposited under the monument of Sir George Villiers, when
the vault was made for the remains of Elizabeth Percy, Duchess of
Northumberland, in December, 1776.--B.]

and that this was my birth-day, thirty-six years old, that I did first
kiss a Queen. But here this man, who seems to understand well, tells me
that the saying is not true that says she was never buried, for she was
buried; only, when Henry the Seventh built his chapel, it was taken up
and laid in this wooden coffin; but I did there see that, in it, the
body was buried in a leaden one, which remains under the body to this
day. Thence to the Duke of York's playhouse, and there, finding the play
begun, we homeward to the Glass-House,

[Glass House Alley, Whitefriars and Blackfriars, marked the site for
some years: The Whitefriars Glass Works of Messrs. Powell and Sons
are on the old site, now Temple Street.]

and there shewed my cozens the making of glass, and had several
things made with great content; and, among others, I had one or two
singing-glasses made, which make an echo to the voice, the first that
ever I saw; but so thin, that the very breath broke one or two of them.
So home, and thence to Mr. Batelier's, where we supped, and had a good
supper, and here was Mr. Gumbleton; and after supper some fiddles,
and so to dance; but my eyes were so out of order, that I had little