Behind the shrine the king placed some holy relics, including a tooth of St. Athanasius, and a stone said to show a footprint of our Lord. For fifty years Henry watched his new Abbey growing to completion, and determined it should be the burying-place of himself and the Plantagenet line. He was laid temporarily in the place from which the Confessor's bones had been taken. His son Edward I., returning from the Holy Land, brought home porphyry, slates, and precious marbles to build the tomb to which Henry's body was transferred about twenty years after his death. The Abbess of Fontevrault was then in London, and the late king's heart was delivered into her hands to be deposited in the foreign home of the Plantagenets.
"daisy and dolly." (See [p. 176]).
Henceforward many royal personages were brought to be buried near the Confessor's shrine; but I shall only mention the more prominent. When Queen Eleanor died in 1291, the course of the funeral cortége from Lincoln to London was marked by twelve memorial crosses, and the Abbots of Westminster were bound to have a hundred wax lights burning round her grave for ever on the anniversary of her death. In 1307, after having placed in the Confessor's Chapel the golden crown of the last Welsh Prince, Llewellyn, and the Stone of Fate from Scotland, Edward I. was himself brought here to lie beneath the rough monument, from which it was hoped that, in accordance with his dying wish, his bones might at some time be taken and carried through Scotland at the head of a conquering army.
In 1394, Richard II. buried here his beloved Queen Anne, the friend of the followers of Wickliffe. The palace of Sheen in which she died was destroyed by her sorrowing husband, and immense sums were spent on her funeral. For asking to go away before the ceremony was completed, the Earl of Arundel was struck on the head with a cane by the king, and brought to the ground with his blood flowing on to the Abbey pavement. The affair caused so much delay, that darkness came on before all was over. The tomb that covers her remains was intended by her husband for both, but whether Richard II. sleeps in the tomb that bears his name or not must remain a matter of doubt. Henry IV. brought a corpse from Pontefract to Langley, and Henry V. transferred it to this tomb; but few believed it to be really the body of the murdered king.
England had never seen a grander royal funeral than that of Henry V. He died at Vincennes, and with great pomp his body was brought by Paris to London. At every stage between Dover and London, and again at St. Paul's, and at the Abbey, funeral services were performed. The closing scenes were very impressive, as the funeral car, amidst a blaze of torches borne by hundreds of surpliced priests, and followed by his three favourite chargers, came up the nave to the altar steps. Room for the tomb was made by clearing away the holy relics behind the Confessor's shrine. Here was placed the magnificent piece of workmanship, which we now behold, a tomb below, and above a chantry, in which for a year thirty poor persons were to read the Psalter of the Virgin and special prayers for the repose of Henry's soul. At the back of the chantry hung the king's indented helmet (in all probability the one worn at Agincourt), his shield, and his saddle. In the arch beneath lies the headless effigy of Henry, the silver head having been carried off when Henry VIII. was robbing the churches.
Henry VI. was very fond of the Abbey. He chose a place for his tomb, and even paid the first instalment for its erection, in readiness for his own demise. But the civil wars hindered its completion; and I have already told you how Henry VII. meant to raise a special chapel for him and altered his mind.
We will pass on now into the Chapel of Henry VII., the grand mausoleum of a race of kings, who looked back (as Stanley points out) not to Saxon Edward, but to British Arthur, as their great ancestor. A gloomy porch conducts us into a blaze of splendour. Walls, ceilings, and arches are richly decorated; the "stone seems by the cunning labours of the chisel (says Washington Irving) to have been robbed of its weight and density, suspended aloft as if by magic." Nobody seems to be quite sure who was the architect of this beautiful piece of workmanship. The king lavished vast sums of money on the costly edifice, and left plenty with the abbot for its completion after his death. And in the stalls monks were to sing masses for the repose of his soul, "while the world lasts."
In April, 1509, Henry died, and was placed beside his Queen, Elizabeth of York, in the great vault beneath the chapel floor. His mother, Margaret, Countess of Richmond, was brought here three months afterwards, of whom it was said, "Everyone that knew her loved her, and everything that she said or did became her." She endowed charities, founded colleges, ended the civil wars by marrying her son to Elizabeth of York, and protected Caxton in his early labours.