CHAPTER IV

THE PLANTAGENETS OF THE DIRECT LINE FROM HENRY III TO RICHARD II, 1216–1399

“_This England never did, nor never shall, Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, But when it first did help to wound itself. Now these her princes are come home again, Come the three corners of the world in arms And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue If England to itself do rest but true._” SHAKSPEARE (_King John_).

A little more than two hundred years passed between the burial of the Confessor in the Abbey and the burial of the next English King who rests there, namely, Henry III. William the Conqueror is buried in the church which he founded at Caen, in Normandy, and William Rufus, the “Red King,” lies at Winchester, close to the New Forest, where he was shot by Walter Tyrrell. Henry I was buried at Reading, and King Stephen at Faversham. Henry II, the first King of the Plantagenet line, was buried in the great Abbey of Fontevrault in Anjou, the ancestral home of the Plantagenets. His eldest son, Henry, “the young King,” who rebelled against him, is buried at Rouen, where the heart of Richard Cœur-de-Lion also rests. Richard’s body is buried at Fontevrault, at his father’s feet. The heart of King John was taken to Fontevrault in a golden cup, but his body lies in Worcester Cathedral, between two Saxon saints, Wulfstan and Oswald.

And now we come to the Plantagenets who are buried in the Abbey.

Henry III, as we have already seen, had a great love and reverence for the memory of Edward the Confessor, and began the rebuilding of the Abbey Church in his honour. It was no wonder, then, that he wished his tomb to be close to the Confessor’s shrine.

Only three of our Kings have been married in the Abbey, and of these Henry III was the first. He married Eleanor of Provence, one of four sisters who all made remarkable marriages. Eleanor’s sister Margaret married King Louis IX of France; her sister Sancha married Richard Earl of Cornwall, and her sister Beatrice married Charles of Anjou, brother of Louis IX of France, and afterwards King of Naples and Sicily. We are reminded of this close connection between the royal houses of France and England when we see on the Abbey walls the shield of Eleanor’s father, Raymond Berengar, Count of Provence. When Henry III died in 1272 he was buried, not where his tomb now is, but in front of the high altar, in the grave where the Confessor’s body had first rested. The beautiful tomb in the Confessor’s Chapel was not finished until 1291, Edward I having brought from France the precious marbles and porphyry slabs for its decoration. The tomb, like the Confessor’s, is of Italian design, but the fine effigy is the work of an Englishman, William Torel.

When Henry’s body was at last placed there, his heart, according to an old promise, was given in a golden cup to the Abbess of Fontevrault, who was present at the ceremony. Like the heart of his father, King John, it was to be taken back to the old Plantagenet home.

Thus began the circle of stately tombs which stand round the Confessor’s shrine in that tall, silent, shadowy chapel, now often called the Chapel of the Kings.

One thing to be remembered about the tombs of the Plantagenets is that they actually hold the body of the sovereign, and are not just monuments over a grave. In later days it became the fashion to bury in vaults.

Some years before Henry III’s death his beautiful little dumb daughter, Katherine, was buried in a small tomb in the South Ambulatory, close to St. Edmund’s Chapel. With her are buried two of her brothers who died young, and four young children of King Edward I.

We have already heard about the heart of another Plantagenet, Prince Henry d’Almayne, whose body, like that of his father, Richard Earl of Cornwall, is buried at Hayles, in Gloucestershire.

On either side of Henry III are buried Edward I, and his wife, Eleanor of Castile, daughter of Ferdinand III, King of Castile and Leon. Every one remembers how Queen Eleanor went out with her husband to the Crusades, and how she is said to have saved his life by sucking the poison from his wound. Eleanor, the “Queen of good memory,” died in Lincolnshire in 1290, and of the famous crosses which were put up at each place where her body rested, three still remain, at Northampton, Geddington, and Waltham. Queen Eleanor’s tomb is very beautiful, and so is her effigy, which was made by the same English artist who made the effigy of her father-in-law, King Henry III. The lower part of the tomb is decorated with shields, and one of them is the shield of Castile and Leon, with the castle and the lion upon it.

Edward I, the greatest soldier and lawgiver of all the Plantagenet kings, died in 1307 at the little village of Burgh-on-the-Sands, on the coast of Cumberland, when he was on his way to Scotland to try and crush the rising of the Scots under Robert Bruce.

He is buried in a very plain, rough-looking tomb, and it is thought that the tomb may have been left in an almost unfinished state in order that it might be easily opened, for, as we know, Edward I wished his bones to be carried at the head of the English army until Scotland was quite conquered. He also desired that his heart should be sent to Holy Land, where he had fought when he was young. But Edward II did not keep any of the promises he made to his father, and was very unworthy of his great name.

On Edward I’s tomb are some Latin words which mean, “Hammer of the Scots,” and “Keep troth.”

The tomb was opened in the year 1771, and an inner coffin of Purbeck marble was found, in which the King’s body lay. He must have been a very tall man, as, after all those centuries, he still measured 6 feet 2 inches. It is thus quite easy to understand why he was called “Longshanks.” The body was dressed in a red dalmatic, and over it a royal mantle of rich crimson satin, fastened with a splendid fibula or clasp. On the head was a gilt crown; in the right hand was the sceptre with the cross; in the left, the sceptre with the dove.

The coffin was afterwards securely closed, and has never been disturbed again.

Next to the tomb of Edward I, and just beyond the screen which separates the Chapel of the Kings from the Sacrarium, is the beautiful and highly decorated tomb of his brother, Edmund Crouchback, first Earl of Lancaster. He was the fourth son of Henry III, who named him after the Anglo-Saxon martyr-King, St. Edmund of East Anglia. There is a chapel dedicated to St. Edmund in the Abbey, and it was looked upon as coming next in honour after the Chapel of the Confessor.

Edmund Crouchback was a crusader, like his brother, King Edward I, and the cross or “crouch” he wore was probably the origin of his name, although some people have thought that he was perhaps hump-backed. Edmund and his first wife, the beautiful Aveline of Lancaster, were the first bride and bridegroom to be married in Henry III’s new church. They were married in 1269, but Aveline did not live very long. Her tomb is quite near her husband’s, and is considered to be one of the finest in the Abbey. Aveline was not only a great beauty, but also a great heiress, and her wealth descended to the House of Lancaster. After Aveline’s death, Edmund married Blanche, Queen of Navarre, a French princess. She was a widow when Edmund married her, and her daughter Joan afterwards married King Philip the Fair of France. Edmund and his second wife lived for some time at Provins, in Champagne, and from that town they brought to England the famous red roses which became the badge of the House of Lancaster. These roses were said to have been brought from the East by Crusaders. They still grow at Provins, and have a very sweet scent.

Edmund Crouchback died at Bayonne in 1296, while he was fighting for the English possessions in Gascony.

When Edmund was only eight years old, Pope Innocent II had given him the title of King of Sicily and Apulia, but this was only an empty honour, and meant that the English had to be heavily taxed in order to support Edmund’s claim and satisfy the Pope. All these exactions of Henry III’s helped to make the English more and more determined not to be taxed without their consent, and had a great deal to do with the beginning of the House of Commons in Simon de Montfort’s time.

Before passing on to the later descendants of Henry III, we must speak of two very interesting tombs which recall some important things in English history. These are, first, the tomb of William de Valence, in St. Edmund’s Chapel; and secondly, the tomb of his son Aymer, which stands in the Sacrarium, between the tombs of Edmund and Aveline of Lancaster.

It will be remembered that Henry III’s mother, Isabella of Angoulême, married again after King John’s death. She married the Count of La Marche and Poitiers, who belonged to the Lusignan family,—a family which was very well known in Europe, some of them being Kings of Cyprus and Jerusalem. The children of Isabella and the Count de la Marche came over to England, and the English people greatly disliked their insolence and greediness, complaining that Henry III gave too many titles and too much money to his French relations. William de Valence was the fourth son of the Count de la Marche, and was the most disliked of all Henry’s half-brothers. He was created Earl of Pembroke. He took an active part in the Barons’ War, and was finally sent on the expedition into Gascony with his nephew, Edmund Crouchback. Like Edmund, he died at Bayonne in 1296. His tomb is of French workmanship, and there are still some remains of the famous Limoges enamel which decorated it.

Aymer de Valence, William’s son, succeeded his father as Earl of Pembroke. He fought bravely in the Scottish wars, and was at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. He was much blamed for his cruelty in having Nigel Bruce hanged at the Castle of Kentire. Aymer died in France in 1324, very suddenly, and many people thought it was a punishment for taking part in the condemnation and death of Thomas Earl of Lancaster, son of Edmund Crouchback, who was revered as a saint. Aymer’s tomb is celebrated for its beauty. It is very like Edmund Crouchback’s, with its pinnacled canopy and niches for statues. Aymer is represented on the canopy in full armour and riding his war-horse.

The three tombs of Edmund Crouchback, Aymer de Valence, and Aveline of Lancaster are among the most beautiful in the Abbey, and are thought by some people to be all three the work of one artist.

King Edward II, Edward of Carnarvon, as he was called from his birthplace in Wales, is not buried in the Abbey, but at Gloucester, that town being near Berkeley Castle, where he was murdered.

We are specially reminded of King Edward III in the Abbey, for not only is he buried there, but the great sword and shield of state which were carried before him during his wars with France are placed in the Confessor’s Chapel, close to the Coronation Chair. This sword and shield make us think of those famous Battles of Crécy and Poitiers, where Edward III and the Black Prince fought.

Edward III is buried in a beautiful tomb just opposite to Henry III, and his good Queen, Philippa of Hainault, is buried next to him, according to her own wish. Her tomb was made by a Flemish artist, and was also a very fine one, but, like many others in the Abbey, it has been sadly destroyed. Queen Philippa is, of course, always remembered for having begged for the lives of the brave citizens of Calais when the King had ordered them to be hanged.

Close to Philippa lies her son, Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, murdered, it is to be feared, by order of his nephew, Richard II.

Eleanor de Bohun, widow of Thomas Duke of Gloucester, is buried in St. Edmund’s Chapel, and the memorial brass on her tomb is the most beautiful now left in the Abbey.

In St. Edmund’s Chapel is the tomb of another Plantagenet, Prince John of Eltham, Earl of Cornwall, brother of Edward III. He took his name from the old palace at Eltham, where he was born. Prince John died quite young, but he had already shown great promise as a soldier, and was three times Regent of the kingdom when Edward III was away in France and Scotland. He bears a shield with the lions of England and lilies of France upon it. His mother was a French princess, daughter of King Philip the Fair, and it was through her that Edward III thought he could claim the throne of France. Close to the tomb of Prince John of Eltham is the tiny tomb of two young children of Edward III, called, from their birthplaces, William of Windsor and Blanche of the Tower.

Two grandchildren of Edward I, Hugh and Mary de Bohun, are buried in the Chapel of St. Nicholas, another of the circle of chapels which crowns the eastern end, or apse, of the Abbey. (St. Nicholas is the patron saint of children.)

The Black Prince is buried in Canterbury Cathedral, close to where the shrine of Thomas à Becket once stood, but his son, the unhappy Richard II, had a great love for the Abbey, where he had not only been crowned, but also married to his beloved first wife, Anne of Bohemia, who was a descendant of the “Good King Wenceslas,” about whom we sing in the carol for St. Stephen’s Day.

Richard II is buried in the Abbey, and the great tomb in which he and Anne rest was made for her. Anne died in 1394, and her funeral was a very splendid ceremony, hundreds of wax candles having been brought over from Flanders to be lighted at the service. The tomb itself is very magnificent; the gilt-bronze decorations and the robes of the effigies are engraved with the leopards of England, the broomcods of the Plantagenets, the ostrich feathers and lions of Bohemia, and the sun rising through the clouds of Crécy. The ostrich feathers should remind us of the crest and motto of the Prince of Wales.

Richard himself was not placed in this tomb until fourteen years after his supposed murder, when his body was brought back from Friars’ Langley by Henry V, in obedience to the wish of Henry IV. In the Sacrarium is a beautiful portrait of Richard II, painted in his lifetime, and therefore the oldest painting of any British sovereign. This portrait was very carefully restored some years ago, and represents Richard in his crown and royal robes, sitting in the Chair of State, very probably as he used to appear in the Abbey on high festivals. Richard’s well-known badge of the White Hart was painted on more than one part of the Abbey, and it is interesting to see that, in old pictures of Richard, he and his followers wear the badge of the White Hart. Many inns in England are still called by this name.

With Richard II the direct Plantagenet line ends, and his is the last tomb in the circle round the Confessor’s shrine.

Before speaking of the Plantagenet Houses of Lancaster and York we must mention some of the chief men of this time who are buried in the Abbey. First and foremost of these is the great poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, author of the famous _Canterbury Tales_, and the father of English poetry.

He was born in 1328, the year after Edward III came to the throne, and died in 1400, a year after Richard II. Chaucer lived in a house close to the old Lady Chapel built by Henry III, and his house was one of those pulled down in later days to make room for the larger Chapel of Henry VII. Chaucer is buried in Poet’s Corner, and is the first of its glorious circle of poets. His monument, which is quite near his grave, was not put up until about 150 years after his death. Just above the monument is a modern stained-glass window in Chaucer’s memory, representing scenes from his life, and from the _Canterbury Tales_.

The only person not of royal blood who is buried in the Chapel of the Kings is Richard’s great friend, John of Waltham, Bishop of Salisbury, who was Lord Treasurer, Keeper of the Great Seal, and Master of the Rolls. He was the first statesman to be buried in the Abbey. In St. Edmund’s Chapel are buried Ralph Waldeby, Archbishop of York, a friend of the Black Prince and tutor to Richard II, and Sir Bernard Brocas, who was renowned for his fighting in the Moorish wars. He died in 1400. His son-in-law, Sir John Golofre, another great friend of Richard II, was buried in the South Ambulatory in 1396. He was Richard’s ambassador in France, and was buried in the Abbey by his master’s express command.

Our next chapter must be about those younger branches of the Plantagenet family, the Houses of Lancaster and York, who also hold a place in the Abbey.