heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

382 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
in life, had been professed with her in that house. In due time stately
memorials arose. At Hardby, a chantry; at each of the resting-places a
cross, erected by the best architects of the day, John de Bello, Richard de
Stowe, Dymenge de Legeri, Michael de Canterbury, Richard and Roger
de Crundale. William de Ireland and Alexander le Imaginator executing
the sculpture. In London, the spot in the church of the Friars Predicants
where her heart was deposited, was decorated by William de Hoo, William
de Suffolk, Walter de Newmarch, and Walter le Durham. All these
memorials, save Geddington and Waltham, have passed away but her
;
tomb at Westminster, though much defaced, still remains :
exquisite in
beauty, chaste in design, with the beautiful recumbent figure by Master
William Torel, goldsmith, for which William Sprot and John de Ware
furnished the metal, and Flemish coin to the amount of 476
florins were
bought for the gilding. Shields, with the arms of Castile and Leon,
England and Ponthieu, adorn the side of the tomb ;
and who can fail
to read in the expression of that beautiful face of Grecian caste, the
character given of her "
:
by Walsingham Fuerat nempe mulier pia,
" modesta, misericors, Anglicorum amatrix omnium/'
The most superficial reader of history must be acquainted with the
many traits still extant of her pure and holy
life. Much of it must have
been spent here at York. It seems only appropriate, therefore, that so many
of our windows should be adorned, not only with the family cognizance of
the Castle, but with a badge which is significant of one of the most devoted
acts of her married life, and which her husband, I venture^to think, adopted
and cherished in grateful commemoration of that most precious of all gifts
from God the unfailing devotion of a faithful and loving wife.
None need to be reminded that when Edward, as Prince of Wales,
went to the Crusades, his young wife accompanied him, and shared his
dangers and fatigue ; or that he was nearly assassinated when besieging
Acre, by a fanatic who had sought a private interview on the pretence of
bearing a secret message from the Emir of Joppa. Edward, though taken
at a disadvantage, lying on his couch, with his customary courage and
promptitude parried the blow with his arm, felled his assailant to the
ground with a kick on the breast, and, springing to his feet, killed him
with' a blow of a camp-stool. But the poignard had pierced his arm, and
Camden quotes a story of Sanctius, a Spanish historian, that Eleanor
promptly sucked the poison from the wound, which, after some threatening
symptoms owing to the heat of the climate, was finally healed, according
to Walter Hemingford, by the treatment and unguent applied by the
surgeon of the Master of the Templars. What more natural than that
Edward, in accordance with the custom of Crusaders to adopt some device
significant of their having been in the Holy Land, should select something