ssacre of the Bards. In spite of that very
familiar quotation from Gray's Ode,

Ruin seize thee, ruthless king!

one is thankful to know that modern historians have proved this terrible
accusation to be a mere fable; besides it is a fact that from the time
of Edward to that of Elizabeth, the productions of the bards were so
numerous as to fill more than sixty volumes in quarto.

Meantime the Abbey had been yearly growing in beauty. Edward the First
added to his father's building. On his return from the crusades he
brought from France the slabs of porphyry, the precious marbles, which
still help to make his father's tomb one of the most gorgeous monuments
in the Abbey. He filled the Confessor's Chapel with trophies of his
wars--the dagger with which he was wounded at Acre--the Black Rood of
St. Margaret and the Stone of Fate from Scotland. But these were all
given in later years. What we have to do with were certain trophies of
the Conquest of Wales.

While the king was still engaged in quieting down his new principality,
his eldest son Prince Alfonzo, named after his grandfather Alfonzo of
Castile, came journeying back to London. He brought with him Llewellyn's
golden crown, said by tradition to have belonged to King Arthur, also
jewels and ornaments, and possibly the precious Crocis Gneyth (or Cross
of St. Neot) which certainly was brought to the Abbey from Wales during
Edward the First's reign.

The little lad who was twelve years old, came with these treasures to
Westminster; and he offered up Llewellyn's crown and the jewels in the
Confessor's Chapel, where "they were all applied to adorn the tomb of
the blessed King Edward."[18] We can fancy the boy, dressed after the
fashion of those days in chain armour from head to foot with a long
flowing cloak, accompanied by a great train of knights and nobles,
wending his way up the solemn Abbey with his offerings, and gravely
hanging up the crown in the Sanctuary of the English Kings.

There is indeed something to touch one's imagination in this act--the
hand of the innocent boy putting the finishing stroke to the great
struggle between the British and Anglo-Saxon races. Henceforth they were
to be one. The proudest title of the heir to the English throne was to
be "Prince of Wales." The Plantagenets were to reign over Arthur's
mysterious realm, till two hundred years later Arthur and Llewellyn's
descendants, the Tudors, should sit on the throne of England.

But Al