Ad dextrum Altaris Latus

    Jacet

    IOANNES DUX BETFORDI

    Normanniae pro Rex

    Obiit Anno

    MCCCCXXXV.

The Duke’s tomb will be seen engraved in Sandford’s Genealogical History,[43] p. 314; which plate, in fact, is the identical one used by Ducarel; who had the singularly good fortune to decorate his Anglo-Norman Antiquities without any expense to himself![44]

There is a curious chapter in Pommeraye’s Histoire de l’Eglise Cathedrale de Rouen, p. 203, respecting the Duke’s taking the habit of a canon of the cathedral.  He attended, with his first wife, ANNE OF BURGUNDY, and threw himself upon the liberality and kindness of the monks, to be received by them as one of their order:  “il les prioit d’etre receu parmy eux comme un de leurs freres, et d’avoir tous les jours distribution de pain et de vin, et pour marque de fraternite d’etre vetu du surplis et de l’aumusse:  comme aussi d’etre associe, luy et sa tres genereuse et tres illustre epouse, aux suffrages de leur compagnie, et a la participation de tous les biens qu’il plaira a Dieu leur donner la grace d’operer,” p. 204.  A grand procession marked the day of the Duke’s admission into the monkish fraternity.  The whole of this, with an account of the Duke’s superb presents to the sacristy, his dining with his Duchess, and receiving their portion of “eight loaves and four gallons of wine,” are distinctly narrated by the minute Pommeraye.

As you approach the Chapel of the Virgin, you pass by an ancient monument, to the left, of a recumbent Bishop, reposing behind a thin pillar, within a pretty ornamented Gothic arch.[45] To the eye of a tasteful antiquary this cannot fail to have its due attraction.  While however we are treading upon hallowed ground, rendered if possible more sacred by the ashes of the illustrious dead, let us move gently onwards towards the Chapel of the Virgin, behind the choir.  See, what bold and brilliant monumental figures are yonder, to the right of the altar!  How gracefully they kneel and how devoutly they pray!  They are the figures of the CARDINALS D’AMBOISE—­uncle and nephew:—­the former, minister of Louis XII.[46] and (what does not necessarily follow, but what gives him as high a claim upon the gratitude of posterity) the restorer and beautifier of the glorious building in which you are contemplating his figure.  This splendid monument is entirely of black and white marble, of the early part of the sixteenth century.  The figures just mentioned are of white marble, kneeling upon cushions, beneath a rich canopy of Gothic fretwork.  They are in their professional robes; their heads are bare, exhibiting the tonsure, with the hair in one large curl behind.  A small whole-length figure of St. George, their tutelary saint, is below them, in gilded marble:  and the whole base, or lower frieze, of the monument, is surrounded by six delicately sculptured females, about three feet high, emblematic of the virtues for which these cardinals were so eminently distinguished.  These figures, representing Faith, Charity, Prudence, Force, Justice, and Temperance, are flanked by eight smaller ones, placed in carved niches; while, above them, are the twelve Apostles, not less beautifully executed.[47]