Page:The religious life of King Henry VI.djvu/107

Rh VI issued his commission of enquiry "into the truth of the facts" of the sanctity of Henry VI and of miracles attributed to his intercession, King Henry VII made petition to the Pope to be allowed to transfer the body of the saintly monarch from Windsor to Westminster Abbey. This the Pope allowed, and in his Bull granting the permission he recites the grounds upon which the royal petition was based. Henry VII had assured him, he says, that the holy King, his uncle, after having been deprived of his kingdom, had been buried away in a remote place like Chertsey and placed in a tomb unworthy of such a monarch. When, "in course of time it pleased Almighty God to manifest the holiness of this King by miracles, and people began to come to his tomb with their offerings, Richard III, who then occupied the throne, and who had pursued the holy man with his hatred whilst alive, and whose brutal nature and malignity had eradicated all feelings of affection and humanity, envying the public veneration of Henry and the concourse of people to his tomb, in order to put a stop to this manifestation of devotion, caused his holy body to be dug up and buried in the