The summons was solemnly read by the shrine, and when, after thirty days, no voice or presence had issued from it, the case was formally tried at Westminster, sentence pronounced, the bones of the defendant were adjudged to be publicly burned, his treasures confiscated to the Crown, and his name blotted out of every service-book. Strange as the trial of a dead man may seem to us, it was not without precedent. So had the dead Wycliffe been cited, and his bones burned. So did Queen Mary to the dead Bucer. It is pleasanter to think of the Emperor Charles V by the grave of Erasmus. A courtier proposed that he should exhume and burn the great scholar "who laid the egg which Luther hatched"; the Emperor's fine reply was: "I war not with the dead". Long before these changes and troubles, when the Chapel of the Shrine was the most honoured of the high places in the Cathedral, the Black Prince was laid here as the most honoured of its dead; and it is a testimony to the tenacious affection of the nation for his memory, that no desecrating hand has ever been laid, even in turbulent times, on his grave. The armour of the beautiful effigy has lost the gilding which once made him a golden knight, but it is fresh and clear in its outlines as it was in the fourteenth century. His helm, surcoat, gauntlets, shield, and scabbard still hang above him; round his resting place is the railing with its six tall iron posts for the great candles, which were lit on the anniversaries of his death. What tragedies and tumults would have been arrested by his strong hand, had he lived, we cannot tell; but a more impressive monument to a more beloved memory does not perhaps exist. A few yards away lies the man who wrested the throne from the Prince's son, Richard II, while Canterbury nave was building. Visitors sometimes recognize in the portrait-statue of Henry IV, as he lies beside his Queen, Joan of Navarre, a curious family likeness to King Edward VII, witnessing to the persistence of Plantagenet blood. When the vault was opened in 1832 its occupant was found to be in a singular state of preservation, with a little simple cross, of two twigs tied together, laid upon his breast. The monument is of rare artistic merit, as is the chantry close by, which he built for "twey preestes" to say masses for his soul.