The little lad who was twelve years old, came with these treasures to Westminster; and he offered up Llewellyn's crown and the jewels in the Confessor's Chapel, where "they were all applied to adorn the tomb of the blessed King Edward."[18] We can fancy the boy, dressed after the fashion of those days in chain armour from head to foot with a long flowing cloak, accompanied by a great train of knights and nobles, wending his way up the solemn Abbey with his offerings, and gravely hanging up the crown in the Sanctuary of the English Kings.
There is indeed something to touch one's imagination in this act—the hand of the innocent boy putting the finishing stroke to the great struggle between the British and Anglo-Saxon races. Henceforth they were to be one. The proudest title of the heir to the English throne was to be "Prince of Wales." The Plantagenets were to reign over Arthur's mysterious realm, till two hundred years later Arthur and Llewellyn's descendants, the Tudors, should sit on the throne of England.
But Alfonzo's short life was nearly at an end. Matthew of Westminster goes on to say: "This Alfonzo died this year, being about twelve years of age—dying on the nineteenth of August, on the day of St. Magnus the king, and his body was honorably buried in the Church of Westminster, near the tomb of St. Edward, where it is placed between his brothers and sisters, who were buried before him in the same place."
The exact spot where Alfonzo lies is uncertain. Bur Mr. Burges, writing in Sir Gilbert Scott's Gleanings from Westminster Abbey, makes a happy suggestion, which I like to think is a correct one. When all England was mourning for Henry the Fifth, a chantry where daily masses were said for the repose of his soul, was built over his tomb at the extreme east end of the Confessor's Chapel. The heavy stone step on which his tomb rests was laid upon, and nearly covered, a flat monumental slab in the mosaic pavement. The part of the slab which projects beyond the step is worn down by hard usage into a mere mass of gray stone. But Sir Gilbert Scott thought that if a bit of the superincumbent stone was raised, some portion of the more ancient monument might exist beneath. He therefore cut a square block out of the step, and underneath it, sure enough, found the remains of a fine Purbeck slab. It was inlaid with a brass cross, brass letters ran around the edge, and what heralds call "the field" was filled with glass mosaic. Four letters of the inscription remain on each side—most likely part of the words "pries pur l'ame."[19] This monument is generally said to commemorate the infant son of William de Valence. Mr. Burges however suggests that it is just as likely to be the tomb of Alfonzo; and as it would exactly correspond with the position in which Matthew of Westminster says he was buried, I think we may safely conclude that the young prince lies there.
Near by in the Chapel of St. John the Baptist there is a very beautiful monument to a little nephew and niece of Prince Alfonzo—Hugh and Mary de Bohun. They were children of his sister Elizabeth and of the powerful and resolute Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, who more than once opposed Edward the First in measures which he thought hurtful to the kingdom.
"This gentleman and his sister," as one of the Abbey historians calls the children, died about 1300; and their tomb stood at first in the Confessor's Chapel. It was removed from thence by Richard the Second to make room for his own monument, and placed in the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, where it is half buried in the wall.
Young Alfonzo, the bearer of the trophies of the conquest, sleeps peacefully enough here at our feet, while we tell his part in the growth of England. But what memorial remains in the nineteenth century of the last hero of the Britons—the "Eagle of men"—the "Devastator of England." The Golden Crown that Alfonzo hung up disappeared from the Abbey at the Reformation, when sacrilegious robbers broke in and carried off the silver head from Henry the Fifth's monument, and many another treasure. At Builth a modern house is built over the "Lord of Snowdon's" grave. While at the "Llewellyn Arms," a little inn close to the spot where he fell, some local artist has made a rough copy of the well-known picture of Napoleon crossing the Alps do duty on the signboard as a portrait of Llewellyn ap Gruffyd.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] Edward the First, Hammer of the Scots, is here. Keep the Pact.
[16] "Green's Short History of the English People," p. 155.