The tomb of our second founder, the builder of this portion of the Abbey Church, has, like the shrine of St. Edward, suffered much from the despoiler's hand. The tomb was made by the same Italian workmen who were employed upon the shrine, but the effigies, both of Henry and his daughter-in-law, Eleanor of Castile, who is buried at his feet, are by an Englishman, one William Torel. We see on this side one of the porphyry slabs which Edward I. brought with him from the Continent, when he returned from the Crusades a year after his father's death. In the niches below, some of the most precious relics were kept. Beyond the small black marble tomb of Elizabeth Tudor is that of Queen Eleanor, first wife of Edward I., flanked by one of the entrance turrets to the Chantry of Henry V. * * * * * * Fortunately there is still much left, and nothing can touch the historical interest even of these mutilated tombs. One little pillar on the shrine itself is practically intact, and from the north ambulatory, above the reach of a man's arm, we shall see some of the mosaic decoration which once adorned the whole of the tomb of Henry III. Thanks to their grilles, the silver-gilt effigies of Henry and his daughter-in-law, Eleanor of Castile, were secure from the despoiler's hand, and remain as examples of the skill of an English artist, one William Torel. The exceedingly interesting iron grille which guards Eleanor's image is also by an English hand, that of Master Thomas of Lewes, a {74} Sussex smith, and we inform our friends that Sussex was in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, probably till much later, an iron-smelting county--a fact which is recalled by the hammer ponds at the present day. Beneath our feet, protected by the linoleum, are fragments of the ancient pavement, and north and south of the shrine lie two Saxon queens whose bodies were removed here from the Confessor's church, when it was pulled down by Henry III. Both were called by the old English name of Editha. The elder is connected with the first historic foundation of the Abbey, for she, the Confessor's wife, was present at the consecration (Innocents' Day, 1066) of the choir and transepts, when her husband lay helpless on his deathbed. Her niece changed the Saxon name of Editha for the Norman Matilda or Maud when, by her marriage with Henry I., the two rival races were united in one family. It is pleasant here to turn to the foreigners amongst us and remind them that while we speak of English sovereigns who were continually at war with their ancestors, yet the discord was more apparent than real. For these very men, the sworn enemies of France and of Spain for many a long generation, were the husbands or {75} the sons of French, Spanish, and other foreign princesses. Not only were they blood relations, but the language of their courts and of their legal documents was French, and when they