Trinity Chapel

Over time other significant burials took place in this area such as Edward Plantagenet (the Black Prince), who was interred on the south side of Becket's shrine.

It was unusual for a King of England not to be buried at Westminster Abbey, but Becket's cult was then at its height, as evidenced in the Canterbury Tales, and Henry seemed particularly devoted to it, or at least keen to be associated with it.

Likewise, the three large coats of arms that dominate the tester painting are surrounded by collars of SS, a golden eagle enclosed in each tiret.

[7] On top of the tomb chest lie detailed alabaster effigies of the King and Queen, crowned and dressed in their ceremonial robes.

Henry's body was evidently well-embalmed, as an exhumation in 1832 established, allowing historians to state with reasonable certainty that the effigies are accurate portrait.

However, Robert Willis in his Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral (1845) rejected this idea, saying that 'corona' was a word applied to the eastern apses of many churches in the medieval period.

Plan of Trinity Chapel