Osprey - General Military - Knight - The Warrior and ... - Brego-weard

odies sometimes being preserved for the journey. Occasionally the heart and other
organs would be removed first. This helped with preservation; when Bertrand du
Guesclin died in the summer of 1380 his body was embalmed, then, when it was
perceived (or perhaps smelt) that the embalming had not been adequate, flensed, the
flesh boiled from the bones. At each point on the journey his entrails and then his flesh
were interred in a local church. His bones were carried to join the royal tombs at
St Denis and his heart to Brittany, his home. Certainly for the royalty and the highest
nobility there was a fashion for burial in more than one church. Richard the
Lionheart's brain was buried in Poitou, his heart in Rouen and the body near to his
father in Anjou. In part this reflected the favourite places of the deceased and those
that were very much a part of his life when alive, but it also ensured that a larger
number of Masses were said for his soul, reducing his time in Purgatory, and was a
means of spreading the donations that went with the burials amongst a greater number
of churches.
The burial of a knight was his last opportunity for him to display his status, worth
and prowess, and they were often dramatic affairs, loaded with symbolism. The wills
of knights could contain highly detailed instructions for their funerals. The Black
Prince instructed that:
... at that hour our body shall be brought into the town of Canterbury as far as the
priory, that two coursers covered with our arms and in our helmets shall go
before our said body; that is to say, the one for war with our arms quartered, and the
other for peace with our badges of ostrich feathers, with four banners of the same; and
every one of these who bear said banners shall have a chapeau of our arms; and that he
who shall be armed for war, shall have a man armed bearing after him a black pennon
with ostrich feathers.
Lesser knights might not be able to afford anything quite so grand, but they could still
aspire to similar displays. The knight Sir Brian Stapleton instructed that there be
'a man armed with my arms, with my helm on his head, and that he be well mounted
and a man of good looks of whatever condition he is...' The idea that the knight should
take his final journey arrayed as a warrior with all of the trappings of his calling and
displaying the heraldic achievement that identified him and his km was very powerful.
The knight's tomb reflected this martial status even after the knight was long
buried. In effigy or brass the knight could have himself depicted as a knight in armour
and above his head might be suspended his helmet and his shield, as with the Black
Prince. Whilst the effigies have survived in large numbers, although often without the
paintwork necessary to identify them, and deeply incised with the graffiti of centuries,