The achievements of Edward the Black Prince — helm, crest, jupon, shield and gauntlets — hung above his tomb at Canterbury and survive as the most complete such set in England.
Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince, died in 1376 and was buried in Canterbury Cathedral, and his funeral achievements were hung above the tomb.
They survive: a helm with its crest, a jupon bearing the royal arms, a shield, gauntlets and a scabbard. The sword is gone.
As a group they are the most complete set of medieval funerary achievements in England and one of the most important survivals of heraldic material anywhere.
The objects belong to the fourteenth century and to the prince's own lifetime or funeral, and their provenance is exceptionally secure: they have been at Canterbury, above the tomb, since 1376.
That continuity is what makes them valuable. Almost no medieval textile or crest survives, and these did because they hung high in a cathedral and nobody disturbed them.
They were taken down in the twentieth century for conservation, and replicas were made to hang in their place. The originals are displayed in the cathedral under controlled conditions.
The helm is a great helm carrying a crest — a lion or leopard on a chapeau — and it is one of the very few medieval crests in existence, in the same rare class as the Prankh helm.
The jupon is the outstanding piece: a padded, quilted and embroidered garment bearing the royal arms of England quartered with France, and it is one of very few surviving medieval heraldic garments.
The shield, the gilt gauntlets and the scabbard complete the group. The sword itself has been missing since at least the seventeenth century, and the tradition that Cromwell took it is repeated more often than it is evidenced.
The attribution to the Black Prince is as secure as such things get: the objects have hung above his tomb, in a documented cathedral, continuously since his funeral.
What must not be assumed is that they are his battlefield equipment. A funerary achievement may be a man's own arms or may be made for the funeral, and for the textile pieces in particular the question is genuinely open.
The jupon is the clearest case. It is a real, wearable garment of high quality, but whether it was worn in war, worn ceremonially, or made for the tomb cannot be settled from the object.
The Black Prince was the outstanding English commander of his generation, victor at Poitiers in 1356 and a central figure of the Hundred Years' War, and he died before his father, so he never reigned.
The achievements belong to a widespread practice: a dead knight's arms hung above his tomb, a permanent statement of who he had been and what he had been entitled to display.
That the practice preserved so little elsewhere makes this survival disproportionately important, and it is why the Prankh helm and the Pembridge helm keep appearing alongside it.
They are displayed within Canterbury Cathedral, conserved and protected, while modern replicas occupy their original position above the tomb.
The substitution is standard practice and honest — the objects could not survive continued exposure — but it does mean a visitor to the tomb is looking at copies.
The originals have been extensively studied, particularly the jupon, whose construction is a rare direct source for how such a garment was actually made.