e thought would render his guardianship
less unmeet for Esclairmonde.

She had not shunned to send him a kind greeting on hearing of his wound,
and by way of token a fresh leaf of vellum with a few more of those
meditations from Zwoll--meditations that he spelled over from Latin into
English, and dwelt upon in great tranquillity and soothing of spirit
during the days that he was confined to his bed.

These were not many. He was on his feet by the time the funeral
cavalcade was in readiness to move from Vincennes to convey Henry of
Monmouth to his last resting-place in Westminster Abbey. Bedford could
not be spared to return to England, and was only to go as far as Calais;
and James of Scotland was therefore to act as chief mourner, attended by
his own small personal suite.

Sir Patrick Drummond--though, shrugging his shoulders, he muttered that
he should as soon have thought of becoming mourner at the foul fiend's
funeral as at the King of England's--could not object to swell the
retinue of his sovereign by his knighthood; and though neither he nor
Malcolm were in condition for a campaign, both could ride at the slow
pace of the mournful procession.

The coffin was laid on a great car, drawn by four black horses, and
surmounted by Henry's effigy, made in boiled leather and coloured to the
life, robed in purple and ermine, crown on head, sceptre and orb in
either hand. The great knights and nobles rode on each side, carrying
the banners of the Saints; and close behind came James and Bedford, each
with his immediate attendants; then the household officers of the King,
Fitzhugh his chamberlain, Montagu his cup-bearer, Ralf Percy and his
other squires, and all the rest. Four hundred men-at-arms in black
armour, with lances pointed downwards, formed the guard behind; and the
vanguard was of clergy, robed in white, bearing banners and wax lights,
and chanting psalms. At the border of every parish, all the
ecclesiastics thereto appertaining, parochial, chantry, and monastic,
turned out to meet the procession with their tapers; escorted it to the
principal church; performed Mass there, if it were in the forenoon; and
then accompanied the coffin to the other limit of their ground, and
consigned it to the clerks of the next parish. At night, the royal
remains always rested in a church, guarded by alternate watches of the
English men-at-arms, and sung over by the local clergy, while the escort
were quartered in the town,