“On the morning of Tuesday, October 28, a most interesting 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’s death in 1243, and from the antique form of the letters G and M the inscriptions cannot be fixed at a later period.  The characters, indeed, more resemble the form used in the twelfth century.  Of the genuine antiquity of these relics there cannot be the slightest doubt.  It is locally notorious that the black marble slab which formerly covered the remains of Gundrada, beautifully carved and bordered with nine Latin verses in her honour cut in the rim and down the middle, was discovered