140 



Exhumation and Re-inteiinent 



little of the oak timber, preserved I suppose, by the oxide or 

 carbonate of the iron, sticking to them, I have seen ; and I have 

 card of one piece of it being found, as big as a man's hand. 

 But almost all the coffin, as well as all the softer parts of his 

 body, were mouldered down to a kind of black dust, which co- 

 vered the bottom of his grave. In that dust was found a plate 

 of copper, somewhat corroded at the edges, with small holes 

 at the corners, through which it had been nailed on the lid of 

 the coffin. On the copper-plate was engraved a cross, and on 

 the cross, at the top a crown, and at the bottom, his badge, the 



:x 



same as on the reverse of his coins ; atid on the two principal 

 bars of it the inscription which you see above ; so the evidence 

 that what we saw was the remains of King Robert the Bruce, 

 was complete, even to superfluity. The grave, too, was found 

 accidentally, in the very spot, where, as Fordun, one of our 

 oldest Scotch chronicle writers, mentions, he had been buried; — 

 in medio chori. But the good presbyterians of Dumfermline 

 had forgotten what a choir was, as completely as Sir John Fal- 

 stafFhad done what the inside of a church is made of; and long 

 ago wishing to find King Robert's grave, and to see what was 



