“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.