I have taken the following information and references from this article, so I do not claim the hard work for myself!
The corpse of Isabel, Duchess of Clarence (†1476) was brought to Tewkesbury Abbey in Gloucestershire.[1] A monastic chronicle describes how it arrived there on 4 January 1477 and remained in the middle of the abbey choir for thirty-five days, during which period daily prayers were said for the Duchess’ soul.[2]
Although her body would not have been exposed to view (the chronicle states it was ‘subtus le herse’, under the hearse),[3] it would not have gone unnoticed by the monks, who needed only to look to another monument in the middle of choir, the cadaver effigy of Isabella’s grandmother, Isabel Countess of Warwick (†1439), for a vivid depiction of the decomposition of the Duchess’ concealed corpse.[4]
I must confess that I’m a little squeamish for these medieval ideas. John of Gaunt instructed in his will that his body was to remain unburied for forty days:-
“ . . . And wherever I die I will and devise that after my passing my body remain above ground uninterred for forty days, and I charge my executors that within those forty days no interment [Lincoln MS: embalming] of my body shall be done nor feigned, privately nor publicly . . . ”
[1] Another close parallel is the will of Joan Beauchamp, Baroness Bergavenny (†1435), which stipulates that ‘my body be kept unburyed in þe place where it happeneth me to dye unto the tyme my maigne be clethed in blak, my hers, my chare and other convenable purviaunce made and þanne to be caried unto þe place of my buryeng’. Quoted in King, ‘Contexts of the Cadaver Tomb’, vol. 1, p. 229.
[2] ‘The Founder’s Book of Tewkesbury Abbey’, in William Dugdale (ed.), Monasticon Anglicanum, rev. edn, vol. 2 (London, 1819), p. 64. See also Julian Luxford, ‘The Founder’s Book’, in Richard K. Morris and Ron Shoesmith (eds), Tewkesbury Abbey. History, Art, Architecture (Logaston, Heref.: Logaston Press, 2003), p. 60.
[3] ‘Founder’s Book’, p. 64.
[4] The cadaver tomb has not survived, but is described in Isabel’s will. The Fifty Earliest English Wills in the Court of Probate, London, ed. Fredrick J. Furnivall (London, 1882), pp. 116-17. See also Phillip Lindley, ‘The Later Medieval Monuments and Chantry Chapels’, in Morris and Shoesmith, Tewkesbury Abbey, p. 176; Julian Luxford, The Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries, 1300–1540: A Patronage History (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), p. 173.
For a lot of pictures of the tombs of Tewkesbury Abbey, go to http://www.churchmonumentsgazetteer.co.uk/Gloucester-Tewkesbury.html from which I have taken the illustration above of the Clarence Vault entrance, where both Isabel and George of Clarence are now without grand tombs, but lie beneath the floor behind the altar. The picture below comes from the same site.
I’m sorry, but my feeble modern self finds this just a little too much. 35-40 days before you’re buried? OK, but not without embalming or fridges? Sorry. I think I’ll stay in 21st-century England after all . . .
murreyandblue 
In earlier centuries, there was considerable concern that one might seem to have died — be deeply unconscious, but still living. Decomposition ensured that at least everyone could be sure one wasn’t buried alive.
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Poisoning was the fear of most of them. Yes right sleeping sickness of that time was common and no one wanted to be buried alive or have a huge needle shoved into you.Mind you would have woken one up rather fast if so.
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Perhaps it was to make sure they were dead? I think that’s where the phrase ‘saved by the bell’ came from…… bells on strings put in coffins in case the body woke up!
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Poor Isobel. So young. I doubt if there would have been much if any smell at all as their bodies would have been placed in lead coffins which were then soldered shut before being placed in wood ones. Of course there would also have been the heavy scent of incense too.
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Worse still, Isabel had been dead a while before she even reached Tewkesbury Abbey. Here is a translation I prepared earlier, Blue Peter style, from the Patrones’ Book of Tewkesbury Abbey (ff. 39v-40r):
“And, on the 12th day of November in the foresaid year of Our Lord, the foresaid George withdrew from our monastery to Warwick with his sick wife Isabel. And our patroness the Lady Isabel, Duchess of Clarence, died at Warwick Castle on the 22nd day of December in the year 1476, around the hour of eleven before midnight.
And her body was carried to our monastery of Tewkesbury on the 4th day of January. Lord John Strensham, Abbot of Tewkesbury, with diverse abbots dressed ‘in pontificalibus’ (in full robes), and the whole convent welcomed her body into the middle of our choir. And her exequies were immediately performed by the Lord Abbot, the other abbots and the whole convent, with 9 lessons; and afterwards by the suffragans of the Bishop of Worcester and the bishop of Lincoln. And the exequies were conducted by the dean and clerks of the Lord Duke’s chapel. And the vigils were kept all night long by the said duke’s household.
On the morrow, that is the eve of the Epiphany, there was the first mass of St Mary, which the suffragan of the Bishop of Lincoln celebrated in St Mary’s Chapel.
The second mass was of the Trinity, which the Lord Abbot celebrated at the great altar.
The suffragan of the Bishop of Worcester (who was a doctor of sacred theology of Oxford, of the Minors of Worcester, named Peter Webbe) celebrated the third mass, of eternal rest, in which he delivered a sermon to the prelates and others in the choir.
And when Mass was finished, the corpse of the said duchess was left in the middle of the choir, under the hearse there, until the 35th day, and for all the same time solemn exequies were performed daily in the convent for the foresaid soul of the said Ysabel, that is to say, up to the octave of the Purification of the Blessed Mary on which day, when Mass was over, her body was carried into the tomb under the vault ingeniously made behind the great altar before the chapel of St Mary of the abovesaid convent church. And the door of the tomb was positioned opposite the door of the chapel of St Edmund the Martyr.”
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Thank you maryeflowre for such a comprehensive response.
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You are most welcome dear Lady
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