One of the great glories of Batalha is the side chapel already mentioned, the octagonal “chapel of the Founder.” The arrangement of it and its general effect are strikingly like those of Queen Victoria’s mausoleum at Frogmore. In the centre, standing high and imposing in all the pomp of Gothic tracery, are the twin tombs of John the Great and his English wife, their sculptured effigies hand in hand as the noble pair went through life; and around the chapel are ranged the sarcophagi of their sons Pedro, João, Fernando (who chivalrously passed all the best years of his life a hostage to the Moor), and, the greatest of them all, the Prince Dom Henrique the Navigator, who made Portugal a world power. Upon each stone coffin are carved the insignia of the Garter and the arms of England quartered with those of Portugal, and along the fillets run the quaint mottoes that each royal personage adopted for his device. Some of them are enigmatical; such as that which consists of the repetition of the word “_Désir_” alternating with the scale of justice, and the other that offers the riddle of “VII.,” a cogwheel, and “_Jamais_” repeated again and again. “Pro rege pro grege,” on the other hand, if hackneyed, is still quite intelligible.
“All these princes,” says Beckford, “in whom the high bearing of their intrepid father and the exemplary virtues and strong sense of their mother were united, repose after their toil and suffering in this secluded chapel, which, indeed, looks a place of rest and holy quietude; the light equally diffused, forms, as it were, a tranquil atmosphere, such as might be imagined worthy to surround the predestined to happiness in a future world. I withdrew from the contemplation of these tombs with reluctance, every object in the chapel that contains them being so pure in taste, so harmonious in colour, every armorial device, every mottoed label, so tersely and correctly sculptured.... The Plantagenet cast of the whole chamber conveyed to me a feeling so interesting, so congenial, that I could hardly persuade myself to move away.”
Every word written by Beckford a hundred and twenty years ago of this chapel is true to-day, and I could have lingered for hours before the coffins of these heroic princes and their parents in a day-dream of recollection prompted by their noble lives and deeds.