discovery
was made by the workmen employed in forming a cutting for the Lewes and
Brighton Railway, through the ground formerly occupied by the great
Cluniac Priory of St. Pancras, at Lewes. It is well-known that the
original founders, in 1078, were William de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, of
a great Norman family, and his wife Gundred, the daughter of William
the Conqueror and his Queen Matilda; that they pulled down an old
wooden church to replace it by a stone one, and that after their deaths
in 1085 and 1088, they were buried in the chapter-house of their
Priory. So effectual, however, was the destruction of the buildings in
1537 by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners of Henry VIII that the very
site of the church has been uncertain, and there has long been nothing
visible of the ruins but a confused mass of broken walls and arches
half buried under the soil. The bold intrusion of a railway into these
hallowed precincts has thrown light upon this obscurity, and in the
course of their excavations the workmen have found, covered by some
slabs of Caen stone, two leaden chests containing the bones of the
founders, and inscribed with their names. They are not coffins, but
cists or chests, and are both of similar form and dimensions,
ornamented externally by a large net-work of interlaced cords moulded
in the lead. The cist of William de Warenne measures 2 feet 11 inches
long, by 12-1/2 inches broad, and is 8 inches deep, all the angles
being squared, and the flat loose cover lapping an inch over. On the
upper surface at one end is inscribed in very legible characters
'WillelMus.' The cist of the princess his wife is 2 inches shorter and
1 inch deeper, and the word 'Gvndrada' is very distinctly inscribed on
the cover. It is worth remarking that her father, the Conqueror, in his
charter, calls for Gundfreda, and her husband, who survived her, calls
her Gundreda in his charter.

"It is obvious, from the length of these receptacles, that their bones
have been transferred to them from some previous tombs, and it is not
difficult to suppose that, the chapter-house not being built at the
time of their deaths, the founders were buried elsewhere until its
completion, and that the bodies were then found so decayed that their
bones only remained for removal to a more distinguished situation, and
were, on that occasion, placed in these very leaden chests. A
rebuilding of the Priory Church was begun on the anniversary of William
the founder