Courtenay lived much at Maidstone, and founded the College there; he was also a great benefactor to the church of Maidstone. In his will, made some time before his death, he had bequeathed that his body should be buried in the nave of Exeter cathedral, where the remains of his father and mother rested;¹ but during his last illness he altered his intentions, and added a codicil directing that his remains should be interred in the collegiate church of Maidstone, not esteeming himself worthy to repose in the metropolitan church of Canterbury. At the time of his death, July 31st, 1396, King Richard II. was at Canterbury, and being informed of that event, gave orders that the obsequies should take place there; and his body was accordingly removed to Canterbury for that purpose on the 4th of August, where, according to a small old Obituary in the Registry of Canterbury, he was interred in the presence of the King, nobility, clergy, and ten thousand people.²
   If this be a correct historical outline, we may reasonably conclude that Courtenay's remains lie at Canterbury, beneath the alabaster monument there raised to his memory, though without an inscription. A tomb, however, had been prepared for him at Maidstone. Weaver gives us the Latin hexameter epitaph which was inscribed upon it; it was probably from the pen of Wotton; and expressly asserts that the Archbishop had caused the tomb to be built "ab imo," and had desired to be buried therein: and there still exists in the pavement
  ¹  or farther particulars respecting the Courtenay ancestry and lineage, see Gibbon's digressions on the family of Courtenay, at the end of the sixty-first chapter of his 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'
   ²  Admitting the necessary time which would be occupied by first conveying the news to Canterbury (twenty-six miles), taking the King's directions, returning with them to Maidstone, making preparations for the removal, journey of the body and attendants, (with probably a night's delay at the archiepiscopal palace of Charing), cathedral and other arrangements at Canterbury, we cannot suppose the whole to have been completed in four days, but that the removal commenced four days after death.