The story goes that the prudent Abbot made one condition with the offer, and stipulated that the Chapter-House, being lent to the king for the use of the Commons, the Crown should keep it in repair. No doubt the story is true, nor can we blame Abbot Wace for making the best terms he could. Can you not see the knights and the burgesses making their way up the cloisters, where the monks were working or walking, through the door, with its wealth of gold and of carving, past the graves of Chamberlain Hugelin, with his wife and daughter, Abbot Eadwyn, and the chronicler Seculdus, into that "incomparable building" which Henry had determined should be unequalled in beauty? Handsome indeed had been their old meeting-place, but this exceeded anything they had ever seen. "In the centre rose a slender pillar of grey marble, or rather a group of shafts held together by moulded bauds, from which seemed to spring the vaulted roof; the building was eight-sided, in itself a new idea; the walls were richly painted with frescoes setting forth the glories revealed to St. John in his vision of that New Jerusalem, the city not built with hands; the large windows had glass of wondrous colours; saints stood in their niches, and from within and without the Virgin Mother watched over the place." Edward I., throughout his life, held the Abbey in great reverence, and besides carrying on his father’s work and completing the choir stalls, he caused several magnificent tombs to be set up there. Always a devoted son, he resolved that the tomb of Henry III. should lack nothing in beauty; so he sent to Purbeck for the marble, to Rome for the gold and glass mosaics, and to these he added the precious stones of jasper to be brought from France, while to a certain William Torrel he entrusted the work of carving in gilt bronze the fine effigy of the dead king, which, save that it has been robbed of its jewels, is still in perfect preservation, stately in its simplicity. To this tomb the body of Henry was removed; only his heart, as he had himself desired, was carried to the Abbey of Fontrevault in France, there to be placed near to where his mother, his uncle, Richard Coeur de Lion, and others of his race lay buried. In the same year the greatest blow of his life fell on Edward, for after thirty-five years of the happiest married life, Queen Eleanor, "the good merciful lady beloved of all the English," died of slow fever near Lincoln.