Mr. A. T. Stewart is not the only distinguished man whose remains have
not been suffered to lie undisturbed in the tomb. John Wickliffe's bones
were exhumed and burned, and Oliver Cromwell's body was taken up and
beheaded. That the remains of the great Milton were subjected to such
barbarous sacrilege is not so generally known. From an ancient London
magazine, the Portland _Transcript_ extracts an account of this outrage.
When the old church of St. Giles, Cripplegate (the place of Milton's
grave), was repaired about a hundred years ago, the great poet's coffin
was brought to light and officially identified, with a view to placing a
monument over the remains. In the night a party of men entered and
forcibly opened it, plundering the hair and several of the bones to sell
for relics.
All this seems to have been done without any attempt at concealment, as
to public exhibitions of portions of the body would indicate. The
oft-quoted inscription over Shakespeare's tomb at Stratford-on-Avon
would have been especially appropriate over both that of Milton and of
Stewart:
"Blesse be ye man yt spares thes stones,
And cvrst be he yt moves my bones."
The crime of robbing the dead is one of the most revolting to every
natural feeling. It is a singular fact, having almost a suggestion of
retributive justice in it, that the bones of Nathan Hale, the gallant
patriot spy of the Revolution, lay in the earth that was dug out and
carried away to make room for the foundations of one of Mr. Stewart's
immense New York buildings.
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