In the first book of his Chronicles, written between 1369 and 1373, Jean Froissart describes a tender encounter between two royal spouses: Philippa of Hainault (d. 1369) and Edward III, king of England (d. 1377). Gravely ill and confined to her chamber at Windsor Castle, Philippa calls for her husband to be brought to her bedside. As he stands before her, she takes his right hand with her right hand, echoing the solemn oath of the couple’s wedding day, and begs him to grant her three final requests. The last of these enjoins the king to be buried beside her at Westminster Abbey:

Although this passage has been cited as evidence that Edward and Philippa originally planned to commission a joint memorial, the word sepulture can denote either a monument or a burial place, so it is also possible that Froissart is referring merely to joint interment. Indeed, an entry in the queen’s household expenses reveals that she had begun to plan her own, individual monument as early as 1364. By the time of Philippa’s death, it is probable that her sculpted effigy (commissioned from her countryman Jean de Liège in January 1366) would already have been completed, awaiting the final installation of the memorial in the southeast bay of the Confessor’s Chapel in June 1376. Philippa’s monument is strikingly different from the gilt-bronze memorials in the surrounding bays, its contrasting black Dinant marble tomb chest and white alabaster figures emulating the funerary fashions of the French royal tombs at Saint Denis. It has only one effigy, an apparent portrait likeness depicting the queen as a matronly figure with lined cheeks, square chin and rounded stomach. Edward III was afforded no particular prominence on the monument, his presence confined to a miniature statuette on the tomb chest, merely one of the thirty-two figures representing Philippa’s kin. As Philippa’s household clerk and chronicler, Froissart must have been aware of the queen’s plans – already underway at the time he was writing – for her own, individual memorial.