Henry II's epitaph

Where James Bond, Alexander and Richard intersect

A short note on King Henry II’s epigraph. Following on my previous post about the conflict between Richard and William Marshall at the end of Henry’s life, I’ve been doing more research on Henry’s death and funeral. After his death, he was buried at Fontevrault Abbey.

The burial of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II at Fontevrault Abbey

He has a rather sombre epitaph:

I was Henry the King
To me Diverse realms were subject, I was duke and count of many provinces.
Eight feet of ground is now enough for me, whom many kingdoms failed to satisfy.
Who reads these lines, let him reflect, upon the narrowness of death.
And in my case behold, the image of our mortal lot.
This scanty tomb doth now suffice,
For whom the Earth was not enough¹

As it happens I am a James Bond fan, and that last line rang a bell. The wrong bell, it turns out, but still a bell. That last line might as well be the title of one of the James Bond movies, The World is Not Enough. This movie is not from one of Fleming’s books. Could the screenwriters really have taken the title from Henry’s epitaph? It seemed mildly implausible to me, so I read on.

It turns out the “Orbit non sufficit” is on the James Bond coat of arms, as a result of early research into the Bond character, performed by Mirrlees of the College of Arms for Fleming.² It’s thought that Mirrlees may have taken this from a real “Bond” coat of arms. Which begs the question of where that might have come from.

But that isn’t the connection, I don’t think. The tomb of Alexander the great is lost, and thought to be somewhere in Alexandria, Egypt³. But his purported epigraph was “A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.” While I cannot find any direct evidence for it, it sounds a more likely derivation.

1. via Ralph of Diceto, a contemporary chronicler

2. https://jackl0073.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/a-look-at-charles-helfensteins-book-about-on-her-majestys-secret-service/

3. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/lost-tomb-alexander-great