umque suum
Canutum fatigatus et fugatus, ac tandem Londoni arcta obsidione
conclusus, misere diem obiit Anno Dominicae Incarnationis MXVII.
postquam annis XXXVI. in magna tribulatione regnasset."[2]

Certainly in this latter terrible epitaph, it cannot be said that the
maxim _de mortuis_ was observed. But it speaks the truth.

Of a much later date is a royal monument, not indeed of a king, but of
the son and father of kings, namely, John of Gaunt. He died in 1399,
and his tomb in St. Paul's was as magnificent as those of his
father in the Confessor's Chapel at Westminster, and of his son at
Canterbury. It was indeed a Chantry founded by Henry IV. to the memory
of his father and mother, Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster. She was
Gaunt's first wife (d. 1369), and bore him not only Henry IV., but
Philippa, who became wife of the King of Portugal, and Elizabeth, wife
of John Holland, Earl of Huntingdon. It was through Blanche that Gaunt
got his dukedom of Lancaster. She died of plague in 1369, during his
absence in the French Wars, and was buried here. Before his return
to England he had married (in 1371) Constance, daughter of Pedro
the Cruel, and hereby laid claim to the crown of Castile, as the
inscription on his monument recorded. Their daughter married Henry,
Prince of the Asturias, afterwards King of Castile. Constance died in
1394, and was also buried in St. Paul's, though her effigy was not on
the tomb. In January, 1396, he married Catharine Swynford, who had
already borne him children, afterwards legitimised. One of them was
the great Cardinal Beaufort; another, John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset,
was the grandfather of Margaret Tudor, mother of Henry VII. Gaunt's
third wife (d. 1403) is buried at Lincoln. The long inscription on the
monument closed with the words, "Illustrissimus hic princeps Johannes
cognomento Plantagenet, Rex Castilliae et Legionis, Dux Lancastriae,
Comes Richmondiae, Leicestriae, Lincolniae et Derbiae, locum tenens
Aquitaniae, magnus Seneschallus Angliae, obiit anno XXII. regni regis
Ricardi secundi, annoque Domini MCCCXCIX."

Close by John of Gaunt, between the pillars of the 6th bay of the
Choir, was the tomb of WILLIAM HERBERT (1501-1569), first Earl of
Pembroke of the second creation, a harum-scarum youth, who settled
down into a clever politician, and was high in favour with Henry
VIII., who made him an executor of his will, and nominated him one of
the Council of twelve for Edward VI. He we