In 1981 an excavation at St Bees Priory, on the Cumbrian coast, opened a medieval vault and found a body that should have been bones. The man inside had skin, fingernails and the contents of his stomach. Some accounts go further and say that his blood was still liquid. He has been called St Bees Man ever since, and he is one of the best-preserved medieval bodies found in Britain.
The Horror
The dig was run by the University of Leicester in the ruined chancel aisle at the west end of the priory church. The aisle was built around 1300 and is thought to have collapsed before the priory was dissolved in 1539. Beneath it lay a vault, and in the vault a wooden coffin. A woman’s skeleton lay beside it, her soft tissue long gone.
The man in the coffin had been wrapped in lead sheet and two shrouds. The lead was damaged at the foot end. It is generally explained that the lead kept out moisture and a pitch coating on the shroud kept out air, so that decay slowed to a near stop. His nails, skin and stomach contents were described as in near-perfect condition, and one account reports pink skin and visible irises when the lead was opened. That description is a report, not something that can now be checked.
The body was examined forensically within days. The autopsy found a violent end: cracked ribs, a broken jaw and a punctured lung. Wikipedia gives the cause of death as most likely a haemothorax, blood in the chest from a heavy blow to the torso. One account puts his age at about 40, give or take five years. Another source says his blood was preserved as a liquid, and adds that his last meal was porridge and raisins. Both claims come from a single local-history page and are unconfirmed.
Who he was took nearly thirty years to settle. A 2010 study of the skeleton of the woman buried beside him pointed to the Lucy family, and the man is now almost certainly Anthony de Lucy, 3rd Baron Lucy. He is thought to have been born around 1332 or 1333 and to have died in 1368, probably fighting beside the Teutonic Knights against the Lithuanians in the Northern Crusades. One account says three Englishmen were killed in an attack on a fort at Kaunas, probably on 16 September 1368, and that Anthony was one of them. The woman is thought to be his sister Maud de Lucy, who died in 1398. Her identification is less certain than his.
The Legend
Popular retellings describe a young lord carried home in a sealed coffin and left untouched by time. The first part is only partly right. The skeleton-based estimate puts him at about forty, and the possible birth year makes him around thirty-five. The suggestion of a sealed, loving burial is plausible but unrecorded. The detail of liquid blood is the one most often repeated and the least well supported.
The Modern Relic
After study, the body was reburied in the churchyard at St Bees. There is no corpse to see. The priory itself, a Benedictine foundation of before 1120, survived the 1539 dissolution as the parish church and still serves that purpose. Britain Express reports a display inside showing the shroud, which carries the imprint of a face, along with effigies of the knight and his sister. Opening hours are unconfirmed.
