Ethelwulf R

Today being grey and rather cold I didn’t go for much of a walk.  In fact I went into town to have lunch with my sis and thought I’d give my annual pass to the Cathedral some exercise instead.  I know I blipped from there not long ago, but my excuse for going back is that the major restorations are at a fairly exciting stage.
 
Last time I blipped a window from the Lady Chapel.  The chapel’s been closed for a couple of years and is now newly opened.  The restorers have had the Mortuary Chests in there to work on, so the whole place was screened off.  The 6 wooden chests have traditionally sat high up near the altar.  Now, fresh and gleaming, they are back there.  This blip shows one of them.
 
The chests hold the bones of various Saxon kings, also Canute’s queen, Emma, and a couple of bishops.  They were chucked about by the Roundheads during the English Civil War so are now all jumbled.  Cue lots of DNA testing to try and sort this out.
 
Henry VII ordered the current chests to be made.  I noticed his logo (the Tudor rose) carved into at least one of them.  Early Medieval chests, beautifully painted, were enclosed inside them.  I don’t know if they still are.
 
I also don’t know why this one reads ‘Adulphus R’ and I don’t understand the date, 857.  I suspect it was a Tudor mistake though, as the King whose bones this probably held was King Ethelwulf, 839-858.  Has Ethelwulf been Latinised as ‘Adulphus’?  And did he die a year later than Henry’s decorators thought?  I’m not enough of a historian to know.
 
So that’s enough wittering on from me.  Have a lovely evening, folks  xx