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 Alençon'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.
ANCIENT CANOPY OF THE TOMB OF JOHN OF ELTHAM.