been a favourite with Royalist
and Roundhead alike. In the reign of Queen Anne a great General, the
Duke of Marlborough, was temporarily buried in the Cromwell vault, but
after many years the body was removed to his own mausoleum at Blenheim.
Amongst the many soldiers' memorials in the nave and choir aisles will be
found two, those of Creed and Bringfield, which recall Marlborough's
famous victories, Ramillies and Blenheim. The right-hand chapel is
filled up by the heavy monuments of the Richmond and Lennox family, and
here, close to the old Duke's tomb, used to stand the wax figure of
Frances, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox, now removed to the Islip Chapel.
This lady was a noted beauty, and is said to have been the model for the
figure of Britannia on the coins. Her {97} cousin, Charles II., much
admired her, and might even have made her his queen had not "La belle
Stuart" eloped with her other relative, the young Duke. On the opposite
side is the costly monument which was raised by his widowed Duchess over
the body of Charles the First's unpopular favourite, George Villiers,
Duke of Buckingham, who was cut off in his prime by an assassin's knife.
The white marble effigies of the Duke and Duchess, and the group of their
children above, are not without merit. The elder of these chubby boys
succeeded to his father's dukedom and was notorious at the Restoration
Court, while the younger was slain, bravely fighting for his king, in a
skirmish with the Parliamentary troopers at Hampton, and buried below
this tomb. Close by, a later and most unattractive monument records the
name of a patron of poets, a literary man himself, Sheffield, Duke of
Buckinghamshire. He built Buckingham House, where is now the palace, and
there his wife, who was a left-handed descendant of the Stuart king, used
to sit dressed in weeds on the anniversary of Charles the First's
execution, and thus call attention to the royal blot upon her escutcheon.
In the choir aisle another ugly memorial perpetuates her want of taste
and the {98} forgotten fame of her pet doctor, one Chamberlain. Near his
is a tablet to her other medical friend, the really notable royal
physician, Dr. Mead, one of the first inoculators for smallpox.

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[Illustration: The Coronation Chair]

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THE CORONATION CHAIR

This chair, the ancient seat of kings, stands in the royal chapel of St.
Edwar