made between
John of Eltham and Joan daughter of Ralph the Count of Eu; and in the
next year with Mary daughter of the Count of Blois: but both
negotiations fell through. Perhaps Prince John, full of the fighting
instinct of his race, preferred to follow his brother to Scotland, where
a fresh war had broken out. In 1334 a third proposal of marriage was
made between the Prince and Mary, daughter of Ferdinand, King of Spain.
The agreement was drawn up and all was settled. The wedding however was
not to be. "For in the month following being in Scotland in St. John's
Town (now Perth) he died in October, 1334, at his nineteenth year of
age."

Prince John's body was brought from Scotland to Westminster, where he
was solemnly interred in the Abbey. The funeral was one of extreme
magnificence; the Westminster monks receiving as much as one hundred
pounds for horses and armor offered as gifts at it. This practice of
offering at funerals armor and horses which sometimes were afterwards
redeemed for money, was by no means unusual in the Middle Ages. At Henry
the Fifth's burial, his three chargers marched up the nave to the altar
steps behind his funeral car. And every one who has been in the Abbey
must remember how the saddle, the shield, and "the very casque that did
affright the air at Agincourt--"[20] the helmet "which twice saved his
life on that eventful day," and still shows the dents of the Duke of
Alencon's ponderous sword--hang in the dusky light above his chantry.

King Edward seems to have been dissatisfied with the first place chosen
for his young brother's tomb. There is a very interesting warrant
written in curious old French among the archives of the Abbey, dated
"Brussels, the twenty-third day of August, in the thirteenth year of our
reign," while Edward was beseiging Tournay in 1340. In it he directs the
abbot and monks to order and suffer, _"que le corps de nostre trescher
frere Johan jadis Counte de Cornewaill peusse estre remuez et translatez
du lieu ou il gist jusques a autre plus covenable place entre les
Roials. Faisant toutesfoitz reserver et garder les places plus
honourables illoeques pour le gisir et la sepulture de nous et de noz
heirs, selonc ce que reson le voudra droitement demander."_[21]

St. Edmund's Chapel was therefore chosen as meeting all requirements. It
lies on the south side of the Abbey, and is only separated from the
Confessor's Shrine and the tombs of the kings by the ambulatory. Of a