of Robert Bruce. 141 



in it, had been howking, (digging, in old English houghing) 

 very dihgently, all over the body, or nave, of the church. They 

 might as well have been hoinking in Westminster Abbey. 



If his sublime highness Prince Posterity shall wish, some 

 thousand years hence, to see the remains of king Robert Bruce, 

 he will find them as entire as I saw them on the 5th of Novem- 

 ber last. I have taken effectual care of that matter. I sug- 

 gested to the Barons of the Exchequer, (in Scotland,) who took 

 charge of the business, that it would be desirable to preserve 

 his remains from further decay ; and for that purpose, as a 

 cheap, but withal an excellent, substance for embalming, by ex- 

 cluding air and water, and resisting putrefaction, I recommended 

 pitch ; and advised that all vacuities in his grand new leaden 

 coffin should be filled up, by pouring melted pitch into it. This 

 was done : five barrels of pitch, about l,5001bs., being employed 

 for that purpose. The new leaden coffin is very large, almost 

 seven feet long, two feet eight inches broad at the shoulders, 

 and two feet four inches deep. In it lies His Majesty, fairly 

 embedded in pitch, which, by this time, must be as hard as a 

 stone, and (bating only the chance of being softened a little, or 

 perhaps melted, by the heat of the general conflagration,) must 

 remain so for 10,000, or 20,000 years. So if Prince Posterity 

 shall insist upon seeing the remains of King Robert, he will 

 find it very hard work to pick him out of his shell ; and, in the 

 mean time, I have taken care that the present generation shall 

 neither steal his bones, (which there was evidently a strong 

 desire to do,) nor toss them about and make a common shew of 

 them, as, within my memory, was done, in a most indecent 

 manner, with the bones of our Kings and Queens who had been 

 buried in the royal vault in the chapel of Holyrood-house. That 

 kind of misdemeanor, as well as the further decay of his re- 

 mains, I wished to prevent by embalming or enclosing them in 

 pitch. But before that could be done, so alert and zealous 

 were the good people of Dumfermline, that two or three of his 

 teeth, which were very entire, but so loose that they came out 

 in taking a cast (in plaster of Paris,) of his skull, and one, or 

 perhaps more, of his smaller bones, were stolen. 



