Although
currently housed in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, the great bed of Ware,
an impressive canopied place of respite measuring nearly eleven feet long and
wide, was allegedly created by royal carpenter Jonas Fosbrooke for King Edward
IV in 1463 and imbued with a curse that has driven the ghost of its fabricator
to attack any slumbering occupant who does not possess regal lineage. Following the mysterious disappearance
of princes Edward and Richard from the Tower of London in 1483, the bed was
purportedly owned by multiple inns, where Fosbrooke’s sinister entity accosted
guests, including twelve seventeenth-century married couples who shared the
resting place during a local festival. Despite its fabled
history, with references to the famed piece of furniture appearing in William
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (1601) and Ben Jonson’s Epicoene
(1609), the bed was actually manufactured sometime around 1590 by a Ware
innkeeper who crafted the legend to draw visitors.
“The Great Bed of Ware.” Victoria
and Albert Museum. https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/great-bed-of-ware
Jones, Richard. Haunted Britain
and Ireland. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2002.
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