Glo. But you have done more miracles than I;
You made in a day, my lord, whole towns to fly.

There are a good many market-towns on the 317 miles between St. Albans and Berwick.

The Duke was buried hard by the shrine of St. Alban, where his magnificent chantry tomb, built by Abbot Wheathampstead, still remains, bearing amid its delicate sculptures the antelope, his badge. The leaden coffin of the Duke was opened in 1703, when the body was found “lying in pickle.”

The once well-known phrase, “dining with Duke Humphrey,” is variously explained. It seems to have originated with a visitor to the Abbey in the late sixteenth century having been accidentally locked in the chantry chapel all night. The humour of it spread to London and found a more poignant note in its application to the beggars and insolvent debtors who, with nothing else to do, paced the aisles of Old St. Paul’s. They went dinnerless, without the will to it, and were said to “dine with Duke Humphrey.”

That famous fourteenth-century traveller and writer of travel-lore, Sir John Mandeville, was, according to his own statement, born at St. Albans: a statement which, coming from such an accomplished liar as he who, more than any other before or since, has made “travellers’ tales” a byword, does not necessarily bear the stamp of truth. Indeed, modern commentators are not altogether satisfied that there ever was such a person as this Mandeville, who, if these carping critics be correct, was so incorrigible a fibber that he lied in saying he was ever born at all! Here we begin to flounder in heroics and the immensities; and the further we inquire, the more marvellous and inexplicable grows the mystery. Whether you take him as a real person, or as a myth, it is equally remarkable that an existent, or a non-existent, body should be buried in two places, as is claimed for Mandeville’s.

SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE

What purports to be the grave of the famous traveller is shown in this Abbey of St. Alban, near the west end of the nave. A tablet placed on the pillar above it formerly stated that Sir John Mandeville was born here, and here buried in 1372, having commenced his famous travels in 1322, and continued them through the greater part of the world during thirty-four years. There still remains on the pillar the curious black-letter inscription:—

Lo, in this tomb of travellers do ly

One rich in nothing but memory,