So much for the architectural details of the Trinity Chapel. To the ordinary visitor its interest lies rather in the fact that it contained Becket’s shrine, and that we here see the curious old windows portraying the sainted Archbishop’s miracles, and what is, perhaps, most important of all to many, the tomb of Edward the Black Prince. This monument is the first feature that we notice as we enter by the south-west gate of the chapel; it stands between the two first pillars, and by the side of the site of the shrine. By the Prince’s will he had left directions that he should be buried in the crypt, where he had already founded a chantry, at the time of his marriage with the “Fair Maid of Kent” in 1363. But for some unknown reason, probably in order that the dead hero’s bones might be placed in the most sacred spot possible—he was laid to rest by the side of the martyr, then in the zenith of his sanctity. One of the most romantic figures in English history is that of Edward the Black Prince, who “fought the French” as no Briton, except perhaps Nelson, has fought them since; he was sixteen years old when he commanded the English army in person at the battle of Cressy, and was wounded in the thickest of that most sanguinary fray: ten years later, facing an army of 60,000 men with a mere 8,000 behind him, he inflicted a still more severe defeat on the French at Poitiers, and captured their king, whom he took with him to Canterbury on his triumphant return to London. In all our list of national heroes there is not one who upheld the prowess of the English arms more gallantly than this mighty warrior who was cut off while still in the flower of his years, leaving England to the miseries of sedition and civil war. His tomb is one of the most impressive of such monuments. The gilding and bright colours have almost entirely disappeared, but the striking effect of the effigy is probably only enhanced by the solemn sombreness of its present appearance. It is a figure clad in full armour, spurred and helmeted, as the Prince had ordained by his will. The head rests on the helmet and the hands are joined in the attitude of prayer. The face, which is undoubtedly a portrait, is stern and masterful. “There you can see his fine face with the Plantagenet features, the flat cheeks, and the well-chiselled nose, to be traced, perhaps, in the effigy of his father in Westminster Abbey, and his grandfather in Gloucester Cathedral.” The tomb itself is worthy to support the figure and guard the ashes of the Black Prince. Carved on its side clearly, that all might read it, is the inscription which he had himself chosen; it is in Norman French, which was still the language spoken by the English Court, and in the same spirit which moved the designer of Archbishop Chichele’s tomb to portray the living man and the mouldering skeleton, this epitaph contrasts the glories of the Prince’s life—his wealth, beauty, and power—with the decay and corruption of the grave. It is distinctly pagan in thought, and reminds one strongly of the laments of the dead Homeric heroes as they wail for the joys of life and strength and lordship. Stanley states that it is “borrowed, with a few variations, from the anonymous French translation of the ‘Clericalis Disciplina’ of Petrus Alphonsus composed between the years 1106 and 1110.” But it is strangely un-Christian in sentiment as a few lines will show—
“Tiel come tu es, je autiel fu, tu seras tiel come je su,
De la mort ne pensay je mie, tant come j’avoy la vie.
En terre avoy grand richesse, dont je y fys grand noblesse,
Terre, mesons, et grand tresor, draps, chivalx, argent et or.
Mesore su je povres et cheitifs, perfond en la terre gys,
Ma grand beaute est tout alee, ma char est tout gastee
Moult est estroite ma meson, en moy ne si verite non,
Et si ore me veissez, je ne quide pas que vous deeisez
Que j’eusse onges hom este, si su je ore de tout changee.”
Below this inscription are ranged coats-of-arms, bearing the ostrich feathers and the motto Ich Diene (“I serve”), which, according to time-honoured but unauthenticated tradition, the prince won from the blind King of Bohemia, who was led into the thick of the fighting at Cressy, and died on the field. Welsh archæologists, however, maintain that these words are Celtic, and mean “behold the man;” their theory suggests that this was the phrase used by Edward I. when he presented his firstborn son to the Welsh people as their prince, and that the words thus became the motto of the princes of Wales. This is a rather far-fetched piece of reasoning, and one would certainly prefer to accept the more picturesque tradition which connects the phrase with the glories of Cressy. The other word found on these escutcheons—Houmont—is still more puzzling. We know that the Black Prince was wont to sign himself Houmont, Ich Diene. Stanley explains the combination gracefully, but not very convincingly. “If, as seems most likely, they are German words, they exactly express what we have seen so often in his life, the union of ‘Hoch muth,’ that is high spirit, with ‘Ich Dien,’ I serve. They bring before us the very scene itself after the battle of Poitiers, where, after having vanquished the whole French nation, he stood behind the captive king, and served him like an attendant.”
The tomb is surmounted by a canopy on which is painted an interesting representation of the Trinity. The work is a good deal faded, but still worthy of notice; the absence of the figure of the dove is curious, but is not unparalleled in such designs. At the corners are symbols of the four evangelists. The Holy Trinity—on whose feast-day he died—was held in peculiar veneration by the Black Prince. The ordinance of the chantry founded by him in the crypt contains the phrase, Ad honorem Sancte Trinitatis quam peculiari devocione semper colimus. A curious metal badge, preserved in the British Museum, is stamped with the figure of the prince kneeling before the Almighty and our Saviour, whose representation is almost identical with the design on the canopy over the tomb; here also the figure of the dove is absent. Round the canopy and in the pillars we can still see the hooks which upheld the black tapestry, bordered with crimson and embroidered with cygnes avec têtes de dames, which was hung, as ordained by his will, round the prince’s tomb and Becket’s shrine.
Lastly, above the canopy, on a cross-beam between two pillars, are suspended the brazen gauntlets, the helmet, the wooden shield with its moulded leather covering, the velvet coat emblazoned with the arms of England and France, and the empty sheath. The gauntlets were once embellished with little figures of lions on the knuckles; these have been detached by “collectors,” vandals almost as ruthless as Blue Dick and his troopers, and without their excuse of mistaken religious zeal. The helmet still has its original lining of leather, showing that it was actually worn. The sword which fitted the now empty sheath is said to have been taken away by Oliver Cromwell; it appeared in Manchester at the beginning of this century under circumstances so curious, that we may be excused for quoting the following letter from Canon Wray, given in Stanley’s Appendix on the Black Prince’s will. “The sword, or supposed sword, of the Black Prince, which Oliver Cromwell is said to have carried away, I have seen and many times have had in my hands. There lived in Manchester, when I first came here, a Mr. Thomas Barritt, a saddler by trade; he was a great antiquarian, and had collected together helmets, coats of mail, horns, etc., and many coins. But what he valued most of all was a sword: the blade about two feet long, and on the blade was let in, in letters of gold, ‘Edwardus Wallie Princeps’.... He was in possession of this sword a.d. 1794. He told me he purchased many of the ancient relics of a pedlar, who travelled through the country selling earthenware, and I think he said he got this sword from this pedlar. When Barritt died, in 1820, his curiosities were sold by his widow at a raffle, but I believe this sword was not amongst the articles so disposed of. It had probably been disposed of beforehand, but to whom I never knew; yet I think it not unlikely that it is still in the neighbourhood. The sword was a little curved, scimitar-like, rather thick, broad blade, and had every appearance of being the Black Prince’s sword.” Truly a most remarkable story. This historic blade, which may have hewn down the French ranks at Poitiers, is disposed of by an itinerant crockery vender to an antiquarian saddler; on his death is, or is not, “sold at a raffle” and—vanishes!