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way the husband of a French wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. To him we owe
the present beautiful church, and not even the memory of the money ground
out of the oppressed Jews, or gathered in the form of unjust taxes from
his wretched subjects, can damp our enthusiastic gratitude. The slabs of
porphyry and jasper upon both sides were brought by Henry's son, Edward
I., from Italy or France, when he returned across the Continent from the
Crusades a year after {76} his father's death. The coffin itself is,
like that of the Confessor, in the upper part of the tomb, and, unlike
those of Edward himself and Richard II., has never been tampered with;
there is no doubt that the embalmed body of the King still rests here,
untouched by the ravages of eight centuries. As we look upon the lovely
face of Henry's daughter-in-law, who lies at his feet, we forget that
this is no portrait but a conventional and ideal queen. We think only of
the young Spanish princess in the early days of her married life, before
the birth of thirteen children in quick succession, the loss of many of
these little ones, and the privations she suffered in the Holy Land had
marred her beauty. Vainly did the old King try to keep Eleanor at home
when his son, Prince Edward, went off to the Crusade. She continued to
urge her wifely duty in answer to his fatherly solicitations, and to
repeat that the way to heaven is as near from Palestine as from England.
By the time she returned her kind father-in-law was dead, and her
restless warlike husband was henceforth rarely by her side. Years
afterwards when the Queen died, Edward seems to have remembered her
wifely devotion with remorse, for never did any former English
queen-consort have so magnificent a burial {77} nor so costly a tomb.
Two other monuments (which no longer exist), containing her viscera and
her heart, were put up at Lincoln and Blackfriars. At every stage where
the funeral procession rested between Lincolnshire and Westminster the
King raised a memorial cross in his wife's honour. All have been
destroyed save three, but the last was at one time a conspicuous object
in Charing village, and a modern copy of it has been placed in the
station-yard at "Charing Cross." Eleanor herself bequeathed money
towards the expenses of her funeral, and Edward gave large sums to the
three convents, chiefly to Westminster, in order to provide for
anniversary services at his wife's tombs, where wax tapers were alw