Thetford Priory Burials

Two Very Different Burials In Thetford Priory

In June 1524, a funeral cortège made its way from Framlingham in Suffolk to Thetford, a distance of some 35 miles. It accompanied the body of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, who had commanded the victorious English army at the Battle of Flodden Field in1513. He had died, aged 81, on 21 May, 1524. Taking part were about 900 lords and gentlemen, Garter King at Arms and three other heralds and as many as three coach-loads of friars. A bishop and three abbots conducted the funeral services. 400 ‘messes’, which was food for one meal, were served to the mourners later and 1900 people were given black liveries to commemorate the duke. Although the cost, about £1300, is estimated to be about half the Duke’s annual income, it would be expected that the mourners and the poor who received alms would forever remember him in their prayers.

Contrast this with the funeral, 12 years later, of Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, in July 1536. Henry was the illegitimate son of Henry VIII and Elizabeth Blount, born in Essex in June 1519. In May 1536, Anne Boleyn had been executed and the King had almost immediately married Jane Seymour in the hope that she would produce a longed for heir. In July of that year, though, it has been suggested that Henry intended to legitimise the 17 year old Fitzroy and name him as heir to the English throne. The boy’s death was a devastating blow, both personally and dynastically. Henry refused to arrange the funeral and left everything to the Duke of Norfolk, Fitzroy’s father in law. It’s not known what he died of, possibly tuberculosis, but it could have been the plague because Henry ordered that the body be sealed in lead and taken for secret interment in a closed cart. This didn’t happen and it was transported in an open cart on a bed of straw. Two mourners followed at a distance and it’s thought that they were the only ones present at the burial. There is no record of arrangements or alms for perpetual prayers to commemorate this Duke’s soul.

Thetford Priory was dissolved on 16 February, 1540, when the last prior and 16 monks surrendered to the King’s commissioners. The then Duke of Norfolk petitioned Henry to keep the church as a family chapel as he had ordered an elaborate tomb for Fitzroy and one for himself. The King refused and the bodies of the Howard family, including that of Henry Fitzroy, were disinterred and reburied at St Michael’s Church in Framlingham. The tombs can still be seen there. Judi Boutle, U3A History Group

Henry Fitzroy’s tomb in St Michael’s Church Framlingham. The tomb monument was originally designed to stand in Thetford Priory by the 3rd Duke of Norfolk Thetford Priory today, Leaping Hare run regular guided walks around the site

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