JOHN OF ELTHAM.
Just within the gate of St. Edmund's Chapel lies the figure of a young
knight in full armor. His hands, in their jointed gloves, are folded in
prayer. His head, with the front of his helmet open to show the face, is
gracefully turned to one side. His feet are crossed against a lion--a
creature full of life, who looks round watching his young lord's placid
face.
Who is this fair young knight, deemed worthy of a place in what Dean
Stanley loved to call "the half-royal chapel, full of kings' wives and
brothers"?
He is Prince John of Eltham, son of Edward the Second, created Earl of
Cornwall by his brother, Edward the Third, who lies in state on the
other side of the ambulatory.
Prince John was born on Ascension Day, 1315, at Eltham in Kent, "where
our English kings had sometime a seat." The second son of Edward the
Second and his wicked wife Isabella of France, the poor baby came into
the world in sorely troubled times. The year before his birth his weak
and worthless father had been hopelessly defeated by the Scots under
Robert Bruce at Bannockburn. And during the young prince's short life
England was a prey to war without, intrigue and revolution within. The
whole of Edward the Second's reign is a confused record of public and
private strife. A horrible succession of famines laid waste the land. A
fresh campaign against Scotland ended in a humiliating truce for
thirteen years. The Queen, Prince John's mother, on pretence of
concluding a treaty between her husband and her brother, King Charles
the Fourth, carried off Prince Edward, a child twelve years of age, to
France. There she was joined by her vile favorite Mortimer; and neither
threats nor entreaties could persuade her to return until she landed at
Orwell in 1326 with a great following of exiled nobles, and proclaimed
her son Edward "guardian of the realm." Deserted by all, her wretched
husband was at last captured in Wales and carried to Kenilworth, where
he was deposed by the Queen and Parliament in 1327. He died a few months
later, murdered by Mortimer's orders at Berkeley Castle.
[Illustration: EFFIGY OF JOHN OF ELTHAM.]
His downfall was the sign for a new outbreak in Scotland. Bruce broke
the thirteen years' truce; and the boy-king, Edward the Third, marched
against him only to meet with fresh disaster. The tide of fortune
however was turning. Isabella and her favorite were fast becoming
odious to the nation; and in 1330 Edward, the future conqueror of
Cressy, with his own hands arrested Mortimer at Nottingham, whence he
was hurried to execution. The Queen-mother went into lifelong seclusion
at Castle Rising in Norfolk; and the young king assumed the control of
the affairs of the kingdom.
In 1328, the year after his brother Edward's accession to the crown,
John of Eltham was created Earl of Cornwall in a parliament at
Salisbury. The next year Edward journeyed to France to do homage for his
lands there; and Prince John was made "Custos of the kingdom and King's
Lieutenant while he went beyond the seas." It seems an extraordinary
responsibility for a boy of fourteen. But those Plantagenets were a
strong and precocious race. Edward the Third was only eighteen when he
took the reins of government into his own hands in 1330--the year that
his eldest son, the famous Black Prince, was born. And the Black Prince
won his spurs in the glorious fight of Cressy when he was barely
sixteen. So there was nothing very unusual in the young Earl of Cornwall
administering the government of the kingdom during his brother's absence
in France, and again later on while the king was in Scotland.
[Illustration: TOMB OF JOHN OF ELTHAM, ST. EDMUND'S CHAPEL.]
In 1333, when he was seventeen, proposals of marriage were made between
John of Eltham and Joan daughter of Ralph the Count of Eu; and in the
next year with Mary daughter of the Count of Blois: but both
negotiations fell through. Perhaps Prince John, full of the fighting
instinct of his race, preferred to follow his brother to Scotland, where
a fresh war had broken out. In 1334 a third proposal of marriage was
made between the Prince and Mary, daughter of Ferdinand, King of Spain.
The agreement was drawn up and all was settled. The wedding however was
not to be. "For in the month following being in Scotland in St. John's
Town (now Perth) he died in October, 1334, at his nineteenth year of
age."
Prince John's body was brought from Scotland to Westminster, where he
was solemnly interred in the Abbey. The funeral was one of extreme
magnificence; the Westminster monks receiving as much as one hundred
pounds for horses and armor offered as gifts at it. This practice of
offering at funerals armor and horses which sometimes were afterwards
redeemed for money, was by no means unusual in the Middle Ages. At Henry
the Fifth's burial, his three chargers marched up the nave to the altar
steps behind his funeral car. And every one who has been in the Abbey
must remember how the saddle, the shield, and "the very casque that did
affright the air at Agincourt--"[20] the helmet "which twice saved his
life on that eventful day," and still shows the dents of the Duke of
Alencon's ponderous sword--hang in the dusky light above his chantry.
King Edward seems to have been dissatisfied with the first place chosen
for his young brother's tomb. There is a very interesting warrant
written in curious old French among the archives of the Abbey, dated
"Brussels, the twenty-third day of August, in the thirteenth year of our
reign," while Edward was beseiging Tournay in 1340. In it he directs the
abbot and monks to order and suffer, _"que le corps de nostre trescher
frere Johan jadis Counte de Cornewaill peusse estre remuez et translatez
du lieu ou il gist jusques a autre plus covenable place entre les
Roials. Faisant toutesfoitz reserver et garder les places plus
honourables illoeques pour le gisir et la sepulture de nous et de noz
heirs, selonc ce que reson le voudra droitement demander."_[21]
St. Edmund's Chapel was therefore chosen as meeting all requirements. It
lies on the south side of the Abbey, and is only separated from the
Confessor's Shrine and the tombs of the kings by the ambulatory. Of all
the tombs of that period in the Abbey, John of Eltham's is considered
one of the most remarkable. He must have been the very pattern of a
gallant young knight. His effigy of white alabaster impresses you at
first with a sense of profound repose. Then when you look more closely
you begin to see what a striking figure it is; and you picture to
yourself the young Earl of Cornwall riding with his young brother, the
king, at the head of their troops through the bleak north-country, over
the wild wastes of the Border, up to fair Perth lying on the Tay, where
the fishermen draw in nets full of silvery salmon, and the
moors--covered with pink and brown heather and swarming with plump
grouse--roll up to the mountains of the Highlands. We can see the very
clothes he wore, for his effigy as a specimen of military costume is
most interesting and valuable. He is clad in plate armor, and wears the
_cyclas_, a curious garment cut much shorter in front than behind;
"beneath it, the _gambeson_; then the coat of mail; and lastly the
_haqueton_." The Prince's sword-handle, ornamented with lion's heads, is
beautifully sculptured; and the shield has three splendid lions on
it--the English royal arms--bordered with the French fleur-de-lis. Round
his helmet is a coronet, which is remarkable as the first of the kind
known. It is of the ducal form with greater and lesser trefoil leaves
alternately, instead of the usual circlet.
The tomb is surrounded by small, finely executed alabaster statues
representing mourning kings, queens, and relations of the dead prince.
Terribly broken though they now are--some are destroyed altogether, and
all are headless--enough of them remain to show that they were
sculptured with wonderful grace and spirit.
[Illustration: ANCIENT CANOPY OF THE TOMB OF JOHN OF ELTHAM.]
But the worst loss that the monument has sustained is in the exquisite
Gothic canopy of carved stone which once surmounted it. It was highly
colored and gilded, with an angel on a small spire crowning the centre.
In 1776 Elizabeth Percy, first duchess of Northumberland, whose name
will always be remembered as the patroness of literature to whom we owe
the _Percy Reliques_, was buried in the family vault of the Percys in
the Chapel of St. Nicholas. In spite of her repeated desire that the
funeral should be "as private as her rank would permit" a vast crowd
collected, so
that the officiating clergy and choir could scarcely make
their way from the west door to the chapel. Just as the
procession had passed St. Edmund's Chapel, the whole of the
screen, including the canopy of John of Eltham's tomb, came
down with a crash, which brought with it the men and boys
who had clambered to the top of it to see the spectacle,
and severely wounded many of those below. The uproar and
confusion put a stop to the ceremony for two hours. The body
was left in the ruined Chapel, and the Dean did not return
till after midnight, when the funeral was completed, but
still amidst cries of murder, raised by such of the
sufferers as had not been removed.[22]
The broken canopy was never restored. The Dean of that day seems to have
thought it not worth while to take the trouble of mending it; and by his
order it was swept away. The fragments, it is said, found their way to
Strawberry Hill, Walpole's famous villa, where, at some time in the end
of the last century, they were put up for sale, having been used as a
chimney piece. Their subsequent fate I have not been able to ascertain.
It is difficult to believe that such an act of vandalism took place
little more than a hundred years ago. The Deans of Westminster now are a
very different race to the one who swept away John of Eltham's beautiful
canopy. With the beginning of this century a spirit of love and
veneration for Westminster Abbey seemed to revive. Dean Vincent
appealed to Parliament and persuaded the nation to repair Henry the
Seventh's chapel which was falling into decay. Under Dean Ireland free
admission was given to the greater part of the Abbey. And Dean Buckland,
the well-known geologist, carried on the good work by taking down some
hideous screens which shut off the transepts from the choir. He was
succeeded by Dean Trench, the present learned Archbishop of Dublin, who
inaugurated the special services on Sunday evening in the nave--a grand
movement in the right direction. And all this time public interest was
growing more and more keen about the Abbey. New discoveries were being
made by architects and antiquarians each year. But it was not until Dean
Stanley succeeded the Archbishop of Dublin that the Abbey came quite to
life. No one who has ever accompanied the late Dean in those memorable
excursions which he delighted to make over the building can forget the
enthusiasm with which his vivid descriptions inspired his listeners.
Whether he was talking to the Emperor of Brazil, or a score of poor
factory lads from some northern town, the brilliancy and humor of his
speech held them spellbound. To him Westminster owes among many other
things that unrivalled volume of _Memorials_--from which I have so often
had occasion to quote--the most perfect handbook to any cathedral that I
know, save his yet more perfect _Memorials of Canterbury_, written when
he was canon of that cathedral. Dean Stanley's memory which must always
be present in the minds of those who have known him at Westminster, is
specially bound up with my recollections of St. Edmund's Chapel; it was
one of his most favorite spots in the Abbey, and John of Eltham's tomb
one of those he most delighted to show to all his visitors. And this
brings us back from nineteenth century deans to fourteenth century
princes, and to the old tombs in whose histories we can find such
inexhaustible mines of interest.
In 1340, two more young "royals" were buried beside John of Eltham in
St. Edmund's Chapel. These were his nephew and niece who died quite
young--William of Windsor and Blanche de la Tour--children of Edward
the Third. The boy was born at Windsor, which was fast becoming a rival
to Westminster as a royal residence; and little Blanche was born at the
Tower of London. The effigies in white alabaster are very small, only
about twenty inches long: but they are in full costume of the time. The
boy wears the short close-fitting jerkin, with a wide jewelled belt
round the hips, and a flowing cloak fastened with a jewelled clasp falls
to his feet. The little girl has on a full long petticoat with a tightly
fitting bodice, to the square neck of which her mantle is fastened by a
cordon with a rose and two studs. The hideous muffled chins of the last
century had given place to a horned headdress (the horns are broken in
little Blanche's effigy) and a close net of gold, each wide mesh,
through which the hair shows, being fastened at the crossing with pearls
or precious stones. Blanche's feet rest against a little lion: but her
brother's have been broken off obliquely. The tomb altogether has been
cruelly used, and no trace of the children's faces remain. Yet who can
wonder, when we see the way in which John of Eltham's splendid monument
has been mutilated.
[Illustration: TOMB OF WILLIAM OF WINDSOR AND HIS SISTER BLANCHE.]
When these two little children were laid to rest in the Abbey, their
father was just beginning his great wars with France--the wars that
lasted for a hundred years and only ended in Henry the Sixth's reign
with England's final loss of her French possessions. And six years
after, in 1346, Cressy was fought and won by their brother, the Black
Prince. With the battle of Cressy, England entered upon a career of
military glory, which, though for a time it proved fatal to her higher
interests, gave her a life and energy she had never known before, and
laid the foundation of the Englishman's dogged love of fighting that is
not quite dead yet, if we may judge by the way British soldiers and
sailors fought at El Teb.
At Cressy, too, Feudalism received its death blow, when the English
churl struck down the French noble, and the despised yeoman "proved more
than a match in sheer hard fighting for the knight." Though the nobles
rode into battle as of old at the head of their vassals and retainers,
the body of the army consisted no longer of baronial levies, but of
stout Englishmen serving willingly for pay, and armed like Chaucer's
Yeoman on the pilgrimage to Canterbury:--
A sheaf of peacock arrows bright and keen
Under his belt he bare full thriftily.
Well could he dress his tackle yeomanly:
His arrows drooped not with feathers low,
And in his hand he bare a mighty bow.
If you would know how men fought in those days, read for yourselves in
old Froissart's chronicle, and see how he exults in the charge of the
cavalry bearing down the foe on their ponderous Flemish horses--in the
solid ranks of the foot soldiers--in the flights of arrows that fall
like hail from the tough bows of the archers. And when the fight is over
how he glories in the tourneys and jousts--the song of troubadour and
minstrel--the chase with hawk and hound.
In spite of abuses, in spite of all the miseries that these protracted
wars, this lust of conquest and fighting entailed, there still is
something inexpressibly attractive in the nobler aspects of chivalry. To
rescue the captive, to free the oppressed, to journey away
into Walachy
To Prussia and to Tartary,
To Alexandria or Turkey,
doing deeds of valor for the mere reward of a silken scarf from his
lady, or, noblest of all, for the love of right and truth--is there not
something admirable in this? Is not the idea of true knight and
lady--"a race of noblest men and women, trying to make all below them as
noble as themselves"--[23] is not that a fair ideal, worthy of imitation
by all of us?
The earlier phases of Chivalry with its elaborate rules, its laws
written and unwritten, were past long before Cressy. The great mediaeval
companies of knights, which made it one of the greatest powers for good
or evil in Europe, were broken up. The Crusades were over, and knights
could no longer gain fame and honor by fighting against the Paynim under
the banner of the Cross. But still it was in Edward the Third's reign
that Chivalry entered upon a period of unequalled glory and
magnificence. The Garter--the most illustrious order of English
knighthood, was instituted by the king at Windsor; and he and his son
were foremost to set examples of unsurpassed valor in many a deed of
desperate daring. Although Chivalry was far from perfect, let us
remember that Bayard "_sans pure et sans reproche_" was its ideal
knight.--That many a gentle knight and squire was trying to do his best,
to live worthy of his God, his King, and his Lady.--That
all dignity, courtesy, purity, self-restraint,
devotion--such as they were understood in those rough
days--centred themselves round the idea of _the rider_ as
the attributes of the man whose supposed duty, as well as
his supposed right, was to govern his fellow men, by example
as well as by law and force;--attributes which gathered
themselves up into that one word--Chivalry: an idea, which,
perfect or imperfect, God forbid that mankind should ever
forget, till it has become the possession--as it is the
God-given right--of the poorest slave that ever trudged on
foot.[24]
And when we look on young John of Eltham's noble face, let us believe
that had he grown to man's estate, "Mary, daughter of Ferdinand, King of
Spain," might have said to him:
For trust ye well that your estate royal,
Nor vain delight, nor only worthiness
Of you in war or tourney martial,
Nor pomp, array, nobility, riches,
Of these none made me rue on your distress;
_But moral virtue, grounded upon truth,
That was the cause I first had on you ruth._[25]
FOOTNOTES:
[20] Shakespeare _King Henry the Fifth_.
[21] "Memorials of Westminster," p. 599. "That the body of our very dear
brother John late Count of Cornwall should be removed and translated
from the spot where it lies to another and more suitable place among the
Royals. Always reserving and keeping the most honorable places for the
rest and sepulture of us and our heirs, according to that which reason
will justly demand."
[22] _Memorials_, p. 352.
[23] "Ancien Regime." C. Kingsley.
[24] "Ancien Regime." C. Kingsley.
[25] "Chaucer's Troilus and Cressid."