One of the most memorable visits I made during research for the exhibition was to see a distinctly dilapidated object at Westminster Abbey. Shortly after his death – probably from typhoid fever, at the age of 18 – an effigy of the prince was made to be carried on his coffin in his funeral procession in December 1612. It had originally consisted of a carved wooden body, padded out probably with straw inside a fabric ‘skin’, which was dressed in the robes he had worn when he was created Prince of Wales. The face and hands were probably made of wax, and the whole thing was regarded as so life-like that its first arrival at the Abbey elicited a huge outbreak of weeping among the mourners.…
By
Catharine MacLeod, Senior Curator, 17th Century Collections
25 October 2012
