heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

302 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
" wrapped in lead) was ordered to be honourably entombed in the church
" of the Friars Minors, at -Stamford."
In the History of Stamford (published by John Drakard, 1822) we are
informed that this was in accordance with her will, dated August yth, 1385,
in which she desires to be buried in the chapel of their Hospital, near the
grave of Thomas, Earl of Kent, her husband. That will was made, then,
nine years after the death of Edward the Black Prince. Perhaps in the
lonely hours of her second widowhood her mind went back to her first
married home ; or perhaps there is here an indication of the truth of the
story that Thomas Holland had been her first lover, the hero of her childhood's
days, before considerations of rank or earthly prospects enter the
young head, and the boy lover is, for the time, at least, the ideal of
perfection. If so, how natural, when the brightness of a very sunny day
had waned, and shadows of life were gathering, how natural to wish that
the weary body should rest, not under or near the great tomb at
Canterbury,
but once again at his side, and in the quiet stillness of the cloisters
await the resurrection.
This John de Holland, however, eventually made his peace with the
King through the intervention of the Duke of Lancaster, and was received
into favour. In 1397 he was advanced by Richard II. to the Dukedom
of Exeter, made Chamberlain of England and Governor of Calais. In
the first year of Henry IV. he was deposed
from the title of Duke of
Exeter, and beheaded at Pleshy, in Essex (Sandford's Genealogical History],
"upon the third day after the Epiphanie, in the year 1400, for seditious
"conspiracy against the life of King Henry," on the very spot where the
" Duke of Gloucester was arrested by Richard II., which was in the base
" court of the castle of Pleshey, that he might seem to be justly punished
" for the Duke's death, of which he was thought to be the principal
" procurer, and he lyeth buried in the Collegiate Church there."
He married Elizabeth, second daughter of John of Gaunt, sister to
Henry IV. His eldest son, Richard, died without issue, 4 Henry V. His
second son, John, was, in the twenty-second year of Henry VI., restored to
the title, and distinguished himself as
a gallant soldier and able administrator
in the reign of Edward V. and VI. ; but his only son Henry, having
fought bravely for the Lancastrians at Towton and Barnet, escaped to
France, where, after wandering about destitute and bare-legged, begging
his bread for God's sake, he died, his body being found in the sea between
Calais and Dover, but the cause thereof was never ascertained (13 Edward
IV. 1473)-
And the family of the eldest son, Thomas Earl of Kent, was
even shorter-lived. He himself served in the retinue of his gallant stepfather
the Black Prince, and was held in high estimation by Richard II.