the mother of four sons, of whom only one (Edward II.) survived her, and of nine daughters, of whom only four married. "To our nation,' says Walsingham, 'she was a loving mother, the column and pillar of the whole realm, She was a godly, modest, and merciful princess. . . . The sorrow-stricken she consoled as became her dignity, and she made them friends that were at discord.' She was taken ill at Hardby, near Grantham, while Edward was absent on his Scottish wars, and died before he could reach her. His passionate grief expended itself in a line of nine crosses, erected at the towns where her body rested on its progress to London. Every Abbot of Westminster, as he entered on his office, was bound by oath to see that a hundred wax lights were burning round her grave on St. Andrew's Eve, the anniversary of her death. Her heart was given to the convent of Blackfriars.

The queen's tomb, of Petworth marble, is by Richard of Crundale, who erected her cross at Charing; the railing is by Thomas, a smith of Leighton Beaudesert (Buzzard); the exquisite figure is by the Englishman William Torel, who built the furnace in which the statue was cast in St. Margaret's Churchyard. The effigy of Eleanor is the earliest portrait-statue we possess of an English sovereign. The beautiful features of the dead queen are expressed in the most serene quietude; her long hair waves from beneath the circlet on her brow. One can see the character which was always able to curb the wild temper of her husband-the wife, as he wrote to the Abbot of Cluny, whom 'living he loved, and dead he should never cease to love.' In the decorations of the tomb, the arms of Castile and Leon, and of Ponthieu, hang upon vines and oak branches. When Abbot Feckenham placed an inscription on the tomb of Edward I., he inscribed on that of Eleanor: 'Regina Alionora consors Edwardi Primi fuit haec. Alionora, 1290. Disce mori.'

Edward I. himself (1307) lies on the same side of the chapel, near the screen. He died at Burgh on Solway Firth, after a reign of thirty-four years, was buried for a time at Waltham, and then removed hither to a position between his father's tomb and that of his brother Edmund. His body was embalmed like a mummy, bound in cerecloth, and robed in cloth of gold, with a crown on his head, a sceptre in one hand, and the rod with the dove in the other. Thus he was seen when the tomb was opened in 1771. A wooden canopy once overshadowed the tomb, but this was broken down in a tumult at the funeral of Pulteney, Earl of Bath. Now the tomb of the greatest of the Plantagenets, the loving son and husband who erected such magnificent monuments to father and wife, is one of the plainest in the Abbey. Five slabs of grey marble compose it, and it bears the inscription (placed here by Abbot Feckenham in the time of Mary I.), Edvardus Primus Scottorvm malleus hic est. 1308. Pactum serva.'

'Is the unfinished tomb a fulfilment of that famous "pact," which the dying king required of his son, that his flesh should be boiled, his bones carried at the head of the English army till Scotland was subdued, and his heart sent to the Holy Land, which he had vainly tried in his youth to redeem from the Saracens ?

It is true that with the death of the king all thought of the conquest of Scotland ceased. But it may possibly have been "to keep the pact" that the tomb was left in this rude state, which would enable his successors at any moment to take out the corpse and carry off the heart;-and it may have been with a view to this that a singular provision was left and enforced. Once every two years this tomb was to be opened, and the wax of the king's cerecloth renewed. This renewal constantly took place as long as his dynasty lasted, perhaps with a lingering hope that the time would come when a victorious English army would once more sweep through Scotland with the conqueror's skeleton, or another crusade embark for Palestine with that true English heart. The hour never came, and when the dynasty changed with the fall of Richard II., the renewal of the cerement ceased.'-Dean Stanley.

At Edward's death he left his second wife, Marguerite of France, a widow of twenty-six. She kept a chronicler, John o' London, to record the valiant deeds of her husband; and when Edward died the people of England were edified by her breaking forth, through his pen, into a lamentation like that for Saul and Jonathan-'At the foot of Edward's monument with my little sons, I weep and call upon him. When Edward died all men died to me,' &c.1

Near the tomb of Edward was preserved in a gold vase the heart of his cousin Henry d'Almayne, nephew of Henry III., whose murder (1271) by Guy de Montfort in the cathedral of Viterbo is commemorated by Dante. On the other side of the shrine lie some children of another cousin, Aylmer de Valence.

The next tomb in point of date is that of Queen Philippa (1369), daughter of William, Earl of Hainault, and wife of Edward III., by whom she was the mother of fourteen children. In this she only fulfilled expectations, for we learn from Hardyng that when the king was sending to choose one of the Earl's daughters, an English bishop advised him to choose the lady of largest frame, as promising the most numerous progeny.2 She was the foundress of Queen's College at Oxford. The figure which lies upon her tomb, executed by Hawkin of Liège, a Flemish artist, is remarkable for its cushioned head-dress, and is evidently an attempt at a portrait. Around the tomb were placed the figures of thirty royal persons to whom she was related. 'The open-work of the niches over the head of the effigy itself has been filled in with blue glass. The magnificence of the entire work may be imagined when it is known that it contained, when perfect, more than seventy statues and statuettes (by John Orchard of London), besides several brass figures on the surrounding railing.' 3

'When the good queen perceived her end approaching, she called to the king, and extending her right hand from under the bedclothes, put it into the right hand of the king, who was very sorrowful at heart, and thus spoke: "We have enjoyed our union in happiness, peace, and prosperity; I entreat, therefore, of you, that on our separation you will grant me three requests." The king, with sighs and tears, replied, "Lady, ask: whatever you request shall be granted." "My lord, I beg you will acquit me of whatever engagements I may have entered into formerly with merchants for their wares, as well on this as on the

1 See Strickland's Life of Marguerite of France.

2 See Hardyng, cap. 178.

3 Sir G. Scott's Gleanings.

other side of the sea. I beseech you to fulfil whatever gifts or legacies I may have made. Thirdly, I entreat that, when it shall please God to call you hence, you will not choose any other sepulchre than mine, and that you will lie beside me in the cloister of Westminster." The king, in tears, replied, “Lady, I grant them." Soon after, the good lady made the sign of the cross on her breast, and having recommended to God the king and her youngest son, Thomas, who was present, gave up her spirit, which, I firmly believe, was caught by the holy angels, and carried to the glory of heaven: for she had never done anything, by thought or deed, that could endanger her losing it.'--Froissart.

Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, the son who was present at Philippa's death-bed, is the only one buried beside her. At five years old he had been left guardian of the kingdom while his parents were absent in French wars, and had represented his father by sitting on the throne before Parliaments. He married the Bohun co-heiress, whose splendid brass remains in St. Edmund's Chapel, and was a great patron of literature, especially of Gower the poet. He was smothered at Calais in 1397, by order of his nephew, Richard II., and rests, in front of his mother's tomb, under a large stone which once bore a brass. Gower, in his 'Vox Clamantis,' has a Latin poem on the Duke of Gloucester, in which the following lines record his death :

'Heu quam tortorum quidam de sorte malorum,
Sic Ducis electi plumarum pondere lecti,

Corporis quassatum jugulantque necant jugulatum.'

In accordance with the promise made to the dying Philippa, the next tomb on the south is that of King Edward III., 1377—

'The honourable tomb

That stands upon your royal grandsire's bones,'

Edward died at Sheen,

mentioned in Shakspeare's Richard II. was carried, with face uncovered, through the streets of London, followed by his many children, and was laid in Philippa's grave. The features of the effigy which lies upon the tomb are believed to have been cast from the king's face as he lay in death, and 'the head is almost ideal in its beauty.'1

'Corpore fuit elegans, statura quae nec justum excederet nec nimis depressioni succumberet, vultum habens humana mortalitate, magis venerabilem, similem angelo, in quo relucebat tam mirifica gratia ut si quis in ejus faciem palam respexisset vel nocte de illo somniasset eo proculdubio die sperabat sibi jocunda solatia proventura.'-Walsingham.

In the words of his epitaph, he was 'flos regum preteritorum, forma futurorum.' All his children were represented around the tomb in brass: six only remain-Edward the Black Prince, who was only eighteen years younger than his father, Joan of the Tower, Lionel Duke of Clarence, Edmund Duke of York, Mary of Brittany, and William of Hatfield. We have seen two other children in the Chapel of St. Edmund.2

1 Lord Lindsay, Christian Art, iii.

2 Professor Westmacott, in his lecture on the 'Sculpture of Westminster Abbey,' remarks on the shoes of Edward III.'s effigy being 'left and right,' erroneously supposed to be a modern fashion of shoemaking.

'Mighty victor! mighty lord,

Low on his funeral couch he lies;
No pitying heart, no eye, afford

A tear to grace his obsequies.

Is the sable warrior fled?

Thy son is gone: he rests among the dead!

The swarm that in thy noontide beam were born
Gone to salute the rising morn.'-Gray.

'With its stiff drapery, broad expressionless face, long hair and beard, and the almost painful symmetry with which the hands hold the sceptres of his two kingdoms, the figure is more like that of a hermit than a king.'-Lübke,

The Black Prince was buried at Canterbury, but Richard II., his son by the Fair Maid of Kent, who succeeded Edward III. in his eleventh year, and who had been baptized, married, and crowned in the Abbey, removed the Bohun grandchildren of Edward I. that he might lie near his grandfather, and on the death of his beloved first wife, Queen Anne of Bohemia (1394), sister of the Emperor Wenceslaus (by whom the use of pins and side-saddles was first introduced into England), in the twelfth year of her married life, he erected her tomb in its place. The tomb cost £10,000 of our money. It was designed by Henry Yelverley, the architect of Westminster Hall, and Stephen Lote. On it Nicholas Broker and Godfrey Prest, citizens and coppersmiths of London, were ordered to represent her effigy with his own, their right hands tenderly clasped together, so that they might always bear witness to his devotion to the wife whom he lamented with such extravagant grief that he caused the palace of Shene to be razed to the ground, because it had been the scene of her death. The effigies are partly of brass and partly of copper. That of the king

'That small model of the barren earth,

Which serves as paste and cover to our bones,'

is attired like an ecclesiastic, his hair curls, and he has a pointed beard, but not much trace of the 'surpassing beauty for which he was celebrated.' The king's robe is decorated with the broomcods of the Plantagenets, and 'the sun rising through the dark clouds of Crecy.' The arms of the loving couple have been stolen, with the pillows which supported the royal heads, the two lions which lay at Richard's feet, and the eagle and leopard which supported those of the queen. The canopy is decorated within with half-obliterated paintings of the Almighty and of the Virgin with the Saviour, on a diapered ground like that of the portrait of Richard II. Here also, when the feeble London light allows, may be seen the arms of Queen Anne-the two-headed eagle of the empire, and the lion rampant of Bohemia. After the death (probably the murder) of King Richard II. in Pontefract Castle in 1399, his body was brought to London by order of Henry IV., and exposed in St. Paul's 'his visage left opyn, that men myght see and knowe his personne,'—and was then interred in the church of the Preaching Friars at Langley in Hertfordshire. There it lay till the accession of Henry V., who, soon after his coronation (already aspiring to the hand of Katherine, sister of Richard's widow Isabella,

D

afterwards Duchesse d'Orleans), exhumed it, seated it in a chair of state, and, with his whole court, followed in the strange procession which bore it to Westminster, and laid it in the grave of Queen Anne. The king's epitaph is very curious, as bearing witness to the commencement of the struggle with the early Reformers-

'Corpore procerus, animo prudens ut Homerus,
Obruit haereticos, et eorum stravit amicos.'

The epitaph begins on the north side: the first letter contains a feather with a scroll, the badge of Edward III.1

By especial desire of Richard II., his favourite, John of Waltham (1395), Bishop of Salisbury, Keeper of the Great Seal and Lord High Treasurer, whom Richard 'loved entirely,' was buried here amongst the kings, and lies under a large stone in front of the tomb of Edward I.

We must now turn to the eastern end of the chapel, where the grand tomb of Henry V. (1422), 'Henry of Monmouth,' the hero of Agincourt, the greatest king England had known till that time, rises in a position which encroaches terribly on the tombs of Eleanor and Philippa. His body was brought to England, though Paris and Rouen offered large sums of money to retain it, and even the sacred relics collected by the Confessor were removed to make room for his monument, and placed in a chest between the shrine and the tomb of Henry III.

Henry V. died at Vincennes in his thirty-fourth year, and his funeral procession from thence to Calais, and from Dover to London, was the most magnificent ever known. Katherine de Valois, his widow, followed the corpse, with James I. of Scotland, as chief mourner. On reaching London, the funeral rites were celebrated first at St. Paul's and then at the Abbey. Here the king's three chargers were led up to the altar behind the effigy of the king, it being the first case in which such an effigy was so used. All England mourned.

'Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long!

England ne'er lost a king of so much worth.'

'Les plus mécontents ne pouvaient nier que cet Anglais ne fût une noble figure de roi, et vraiment royale. Il avait la mine haute, l'air froidement orgueilleux, mais il se contraignait assez pour parler honnêtement à chacun, selon sa condition, surtout aux gens d'Eglise. Il était surtout beau à voir, quand on lui apportait de mauvaises nouvelles, il ne sourcillait pas, c'était la plus superbe égalité d'âme.'-Michelet, 'Hist. de France.'

The tomb of Henry 'towers above the Plantagenet graves beneath, as his empire towered above their kingdom. As ruthlessly as any improvement of modern times, it devoured half the beautiful monuments of Eleanor and Philippa. Its structure is formed out of the first letter of his name-H. Its statues represent not only the glories of Westminster, in the persons of its two founders, but the glories of the two kingdoms which he had united-St. George, the patron of England; St. Denys, the patron of France. The sculptures round the Chapel break out into a vein altogether new in the Abbey. They describe the personal peculiarities of the man and his history-the scenes of his coronation, with all the grandees of his court around him, and his battles in France. Amongst the

1 Londiniana, vol. i.