The Children's Story of Westminster Abbey

by G. E. Troutbeck

III

We now come to the time of the Restoration, and must think of the rest of the Stuart family who are buried at Westminster.

King Charles I had been buried in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, and although there had been much talk of moving his body into a splendid tomb in Henry VII’s Chapel, this was never done, and Charles I, like Henry VI, still rests at Windsor.

The first Stuart to be buried in the Abbey after the Restoration was Henry of Oatlands, Duke of Gloucester, son of Charles I. It was Henry who, when he was a little boy, promised his father that he would be torn in pieces before he would let himself be made King instead of either of his elder brothers, Charles or James. He died in 1660, to the great grief of Charles II, who had a very special love for him.

Then came a daughter of Charles I, Mary, Princess of Orange, mother of King William III. She also died in 1660. Very soon afterwards, Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, daughter of James I, died, and was buried in the great Stuart vault. She is very closely connected with the later history of England, because her daughter Sophia, who married the Elector of Hanover, was the mother of King George I, and therefore Elizabeth was direct ancestress of King Edward VII. Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice, who fought in the great Civil War, were sons of Elizabeth, and Prince Rupert is buried here beside his mother.

King James II, who died in France in the year 1701, was first buried in the Chapel of the English Benedictines in Paris. It was hoped that his body would at last be brought to Westminster to be buried near the graves of the other Kings of England. But this never happened, and James II was finally buried in the Church of St. Germains, near Paris. His first wife, Anne Hyde, daughter of Lord Clarendon, and mother of the two Stuart Queens, Mary and Anne, died in 1671, and is buried in the Abbey, in the vault where Mary, Queen of Scots, rests. Many children of James II are buried there also. But the son of his second wife, Mary of Modena, the Prince James whom many people thought the rightful successor to the throne, is buried in another great St. Peter’s—St. Peter’s at Rome. Not only is James—the Chevalier de St. George, as he was called—buried in St. Peter’s, but also his wife and his two sons, Charles Edward (Prince Charlie) and Henry Benedict, Cardinal of York. With the Cardinal of York the male line of James II ended, and we go back to his two daughters, Mary and Anne.

William III and Mary II are both buried in the Abbey, near the other Stuarts. Queen Mary’s funeral was a very solemn and mournful one, and she was much lamented by her subjects.

Queen Anne and her husband, Prince George of Denmark, are buried close by, and Queen Anne’s eighteen infant children are buried in the great Stuart vault under the monument of Mary, Queen of Scots. Only one of Queen Anne’s children lived for any time, and that was William, Duke of Gloucester, who died in 1700, aged eleven, “of a fever occasioned by excessive dancing on his birthday.”

There are a few other relations of the Stuart family buried in the Abbey, but with Queen Anne the Stuart history really ends so far as the Abbey is concerned. None of the Stuart Kings have any monuments.

We must now call to mind some of the chief men of the Stuart times whose graves are at Westminster. The greatest contemporaries of James I, Lord Bacon and Shakspeare, are not buried in the Abbey. Lord Bacon is buried at Verulam; and although Shakspeare has a monument in the Abbey, he is not buried there, but, by his own desire, at his own native Stratford.

When we think of the reigns of James I and Charles I, we often recall the name of a man who was a great friend and favourite of both these Kings. This man is George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, whom James I used to call by the silly name of “Steenie.” While we speak of Buckingham, we remember that he had a great deal to do with preventing Charles I’s marriage to a Spanish Infanta, and with bringing about his marriage with Henrietta Maria of France. We also think of Buckingham’s unsuccessful attempts to relieve La Rochelle, where the Huguenots were besieged by Cardinal Richelieu, and in this way the French history of that time seems to be brought very close to the Abbey.

As everyone knows, the Duke of Buckingham was murdered at Portsmouth in 1628, and he was buried in great state in Henry VII’s Chapel, where a splendid monument was erected to him. Several of the Duke’s family are buried in the same vault, and among them a young son, Francis, who was killed in the Civil Wars, at the Battle of Kingston.

Sir George Villiers and his wife, the father and mother of the Duke of Buckingham, are buried beneath a large monument in the Chapel of St. Nicholas. It is said that the last meeting between the Duke of Buckingham and his mother was a very sad and troubled one, as they had both received a mysterious warning that some terrible thing was going to happen to the Duke. When the Duke was murdered six months afterwards, his mother appeared quite calm, as if she had been prepared to hear the dreadful news.

Dudley Carleton and Lord Cottington, two men who held important offices under the Stuarts, are buried in St. Paul’s Chapel. Dudley Carleton was educated at Westminster School, and became first Secretary of State and Minister for Foreign Affairs. He was actually with the Duke of Buckingham when he was assassinated, and saw the murder. It was Carleton who saved the murderer, Felton, from being torn in pieces by the angry soldiers.

Lord Cottington was an able and accomplished man. He was ambassador in Spain under James I, Charles I, and again under Charles II.

Another well-known name of that time is that of Sir Thomas Richardson, who was Lord Chief Justice in the time of Charles I. It was Sir Thomas Richardson who had to tell Charles I that torture was illegal, when the King wished to use it after the death of Buckingham. Sir Thomas used to be called the “jeering Lord Chief Justice,” because of the sarcastic things he used to say. For example, when he condemned Prynne, he said that “he might have the Book of Martyrs to amuse him in prison.”

We have already spoken about the burials of the great men of the Commonwealth, and must speak of some of the famous people of the later Stuart times after the Restoration.

The great Lord Clarendon, father of James II’s first wife, and therefore grandfather of Queen Mary and Queen Anne, is buried near the steps of Henry VII’s Chapel. Every one will remember the name of his famous book, The History of the Great Rebellion.

In Henry VII’s Chapel, not far from the tomb of Queen Elizabeth, is buried General Monck, the man who had so much to do with the Restoration of the Stuart Kings. He was made Duke of Albemarle by Charles II. His funeral was very stately, and a large monument was put up to him close to the graves of the Stuart sovereigns, whom he had helped to bring back to England.

There are several graves and monuments in the Abbey which remind us of the great sea-fights with the Dutch that were going on just at this time.

One of these is the monument to Edward Montague, Earl of Sandwich, who took such a great part in the victory over De Ruyter off Sole Bay in 1672. Lord Sandwich’s ship was somehow set on fire; it blew up, and he perished with it. He was buried in General Monck’s vault in Henry VII’s Chapel. Two young lieutenants, Sir Charles Harbord and Clement Cottrell, who died with Lord Sandwich, are commemorated in the Nave.

Another distinguished sailor, Sir Freschville Holles, was also killed in the engagement off Sole Bay, and is buried in St. Edmund’s Chapel. Sir Freschville Holles had been knighted by Charles II after the naval victory over the Dutch off Lowestoft in 1665. Five other officers, who were all killed in this battle off Lowestoft, are buried in the North Ambulatory.

Admiral Sir Edward Spragge and a young lieutenant called Richard Le Neve, who were killed in a sea-fight with Van Tromp in the year 1673, are also buried in the Abbey.

Another name we ought to remember is that of Sir Palmes Fairborne, Governor of Tangier, who was killed when defending Tangier against the Moors in 1680. His monument is in the Nave, and reminds us that Tangier once belonged to England, having been part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II. Sir Palmes Fairborne was buried at Tangier.

The Battle of the Boyne in the reign of William III is brought to our minds when we look at the monument of General Philipps in the North Transept. General Philipps fought on William III’s side in that battle. He lived to a great age, and was Governor of Nova Scotia from 1720 to 1740.

In the Nave there is a monument to Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy, who distinguished himself in the naval war of Queen Anne’s reign, and fought under Admiral Rooke at Cadiz in 1702. Sir Thomas Hardy did not die until 1732, but he really belongs to these later Stuart times. The taking of Gibraltar in 1704 is recalled to our minds later on by the memorials to Richard Kane and Coote Manningham. Kane held Gibraltar for eight months against the Spaniards in George I’s reign.

We must now turn to some of the graves and monuments connected with the great French war of Queen Anne’s reign—the War of the Spanish Succession, as it was called.

The body of the great Duke of Marlborough, the victorious General at the Battles of Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet, was buried in the Abbey in 1722, and removed to the Chapel at Blenheim Palace twenty-four years afterwards. The Duke’s first grave was in Henry VII’s Chapel, in the vault where Cromwell, Ireton, Bradshaw, and others had lain.

In the Nave are monuments to General Killigrew, who was killed at the Battle of Almanza in 1707, to Colonel Bringfield, who was killed at Ramillies in 1706, and to Major Creed, who was killed at Blenheim in 1704.

In the North Ambulatory is a monument to Earl Ligonier, one of Queen Anne’s Generals, who fought under Marlborough, and was at the Battle of Blenheim. Lord Ligonier belonged to an old Huguenot family from the south of France, and he, with some other distinguished Huguenots who are buried in the Abbey, came over to England about the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, when the Protestant worship was forbidden in France, and many Huguenots took refuge in England. Earl Ligonier died in 1770.

Another hero of the Dutch and French wars rests in the Abbey, and that is Sir Cloudesley Shovel, one of the greatest naval commanders of the time. His monument is rather curious, and represents him wearing Roman armour and a wig such as was in fashion in his own day. The story of his death is a very dreadful one. The Admiral had helped in the almost entire destruction of the French Mediterranean squadron in 1707, and was sailing for home when a violent gale drove his ship on to the rocks off the Scilly Isles. The ship was wrecked, and Sir Cloudesley Shovel was washed ashore, bruised and unconscious, but not quite dead. Thirty years afterwards a fisherman’s wife confessed that she had found the body, and that for the sake of a valuable emerald ring the Admiral wore she had actually killed him.

In the Nave is a curious tablet in memory of Admiral Baker, who was second in command to Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and brought the rest of the ships home after Sir Cloudesley’s flagship was lost. Admiral Baker was afterwards Governor of the Island of Minorca, which at that time belonged to England. He died in Minorca in 1716, and is buried there. Minorca had been added to our possessions by the first Earl Stanhope, who did distinguished service in the War of the Spanish Succession. He and three other of the Earls Stanhope have a monument on the Choir Screen, opposite to that of Sir Isaac Newton.

We must now look back through all the Stuart and Commonwealth time, and say a few words about the poets and other writers who belong to those days, and who are buried in the Abbey.

Ben Jonson, the celebrated poet and play-writer, and a contemporary of Shakspeare, is buried in the Nave, and has a monument in Poets’ Corner. On the monument is the well-known inscription: “O rare Ben Jonson!” Ben Jonson was born near Westminster; he was educated at Westminster School, and during his last years he lived close to the Abbey. He died in 1637, in a little house in St. Margaret’s Churchyard. There are one or two famous stories about Ben Jonson asking for a grave in the Abbey. One story says that he begged for eighteen inches of square ground in the Abbey from Charles I. Another says that in a conversation with the Dean he said he was too poor to have a full-length grave. “No sir, six feet long by two feet wide is too much for me. Two feet by two feet will do all I want.” “You shall have it,” said the Dean, and thus the conversation ended. Whether these curious stories are true or not, it is the fact that Ben Jonson was buried standing up. This was discovered when Sir Robert Wilson’s grave was being made in 1849.

Looking round Poets’ Corner, we find the names of the following poets:—

Michael Drayton, author of the Polyolbion, who died in 1631. The beautiful epitaph is said to be by either Ben Jonson or Francis Quarles.

[D. Weller.
POETS’ CORNER.

Abraham Cowley, who died in 1667. He had a very grand funeral in the Abbey, which was attended by many distinguished people. Cowley was educated at Westminster School, and he was a devoted Royalist.

Sir William Davenant, the Cavalier, who succeeded Ben Jonson as Poet-Laureate in Charles I’s time. He died in 1668.

John Dryden, Poet-Laureate to Charles II and James II. He was educated at Westminster School under the famous Headmaster, Dr. Busby. Dryden began by being a great admirer of Cromwell, but afterwards he became a strong Royalist and held several offices under the crown after the Restoration. He died in 1700, in great poverty, and is buried near Chaucer. His best known poems are perhaps the Ode on “Alexander’s Feast” and the “Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day.” His political satires “Absalom and Achitophel” and “The Hind and the Panther” were the works which made his fame in his own day.

On the south wall of Poets’ Corner is a small monument to Samuel Butler, the author of a famous satire on the Puritans, called Hudibras. Samuel Butler lived from the reign of James I until after the Restoration, and died in 1680.

Francis Beaumont, who wrote plays with John Fletcher, is buried close to Poets’ Corner with his brother, Sir John Beaumont, who was also a poet. He died in 1616.

But, as we all know, far the greatest poet of those days was John Milton, whose monument is not far from the grave of Spenser.

Milton is not buried in the Abbey, but in St. Giles’ Cripplegate. As the Abbey was always strongly Royalist, it was a long time before Milton’s name was allowed even to appear on its walls, Milton having been so prominent on the Parliamentarian side. Not even Paradise Lost could make them altogether forget his Puritan sympathies. However, in 1738, the monument we now see in Poets’ Corner was put up by a certain William Benson, who belonged to the Whig party in politics. Thus one of the greatest English poets came at last by his own.

When speaking of Milton we are reminded of one of our best English musicians, Henry Lawes, who wrote the music to Comus, and who is buried in the cloisters. His brother, William Lawes, was a member of the Abbey choir.

A fine bust of the well-known composer, Orlando Gibbons, has quite lately been placed in the Abbey, in that North Aisle of the Choir which is known as the “Musicians’ Aisle.” Orlando Gibbons was appointed organist of the Abbey in 1623. His son, Christopher Gibbons, was the first organist of the Abbey after the Restoration, and was a favourite of Charles II. He is buried in the Cloisters.

Close by is the grave of Henry Purcell, who is perhaps our greatest English composer. He belongs entirely to the Stuart times, and his life was spent at Westminster. He was organist of the Abbey and composed some of our finest English Church music, besides other things. He died in 1695, at about the same age as Mozart, Schubert, and Mendelssohn, that is, 37. Above his grave is a tablet with an epitaph said to have been written by Dryden. It runs as follows:—

“Here lies Henry Purcell, Esq., who left this life, and is gone to that blessed place where only his Harmony can be exceeded.”

Two other well-known Church musicians of the Stuart times are buried in this aisle; these are Dr. John Blow and Dr. William Croft, who were both organists at the Abbey.

All English children will like to know that there is very soon to be a window in the Abbey to John Bunyan, author of the Pilgrim’s Progress. The window will commemorate his life and works.

Another remarkable writer of the Stuart and Commonwealth times, that learned and holy man, Richard Baxter, author of the Saint’s Everlasting Rest, has no memorial in the Abbey, but he is known to have preached one of his finest sermons here in 1654, and this is very interesting to remember.

The grave of Sir Robert Moray, First President of the Royal Society, reminds us of the beginning of that great Society during the reigns of the later Stuart Kings. Sir Robert Moray was both a soldier and a man of science. Burnet calls him “the wisest and worthiest man of his age.” He died in 1673.

The only painter who has a monument in the Abbey belongs to Stuart times. This is Sir Godfrey Kneller, a celebrated portrait painter in the reigns of Charles II, James II, William III, and Queen Anne. He was a Westphalian by birth. He died in 1723, and was buried in the garden of his house at Whitton. Kneller did not want to be buried in the Abbey; for, he said: “they do bury fools there.”

Another interesting remembrance of these troubled Stuart days is the monument in the Cloisters to Sir Edmond Berry Godfrey. He was the Judge to whom Titus Oates professed to reveal the Popish plot of 1678. Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey’s death was rather mysterious, and it was supposed, though not on good foundation, that he had been murdered by some one connected with the plot.

We must mention one more grave in the Abbey itself. This is the grave of the wonderful old Thomas Parr,—“old Parr” as he used to be called. He died in 1635, and always claimed that he had been born in 1483. He is buried in the South Transept, and his epitaph says that “He lived in the reignes of ten princes, namely: King Edward IV, King Edward V, King Richard III, King Henry VII, King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, King James, King Charles; aged 152 years, and was buried here, 1635.”

We have now mentioned most of the principal people of the Stuart and Commonwealth times who are in any way connected with the Abbey, and must pass on to the history of the House of Hanover.

[W. Rice, F.R.P.S.
MONUMENT OF GENERAL WOLFE.

CHAPTER VIII
THE HOUSE OF HANOVER AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

“We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town;

We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down.

Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power with the Need,

Till the Soul that is not man’s soul was lent us to lead.”

Rudyard Kipling (The Seven Seas).

At the death of Queen Anne a great change took place in the reigning family. The people would not have Queen Anne’s brother, Prince James, for their King, because he was a Roman Catholic, but there were many plans and plots in his favour, as we have heard. And even here again the Abbey plays a part in it all, for the famous Dean of Westminster, Francis Atterbury, was concerned in these Jacobite plots. It is said, indeed, that on Queen Anne’s death he had been ready to go to Charing Cross to proclaim James III, but James and his friends somehow let their opportunity slip, and instead of James III, George I was proclaimed. Later on it was discovered that Jacobite plots still went on at the Westminster Deanery, and Dean Atterbury was imprisoned and then exiled in France, where he died in 1731–32. He is buried in the Abbey, close to the Deanery entrance in the Nave, and, as he wished, “as far from Kings and Cæsars as the space will admit of.”

George I, in spite of his mother’s descent from the Stuarts, was really a foreigner, and he is buried in his native town of Hanover, just as the first Norman King is buried at Caen, and the first Plantagenet Kings at Fontevrault.

George II, and his wife, Caroline of Anspach, are buried in Henry’s VII’s Chapel, straight in front of Edward VI’s grave. Queen Caroline died in 1737, and George II in 1760. They are the last sovereigns buried at Westminster. Since that time the Kings and Queens of England have been buried at Windsor and in the new Mausoleum at Frogmore, where Queen Victoria and Prince Albert rest.

At the funeral of Queen Caroline the choir sang the beautiful anthem which had just been composed by Handel, “When the ear heard her, then it blessed her.” It was King George’s special wish that his ashes should mingle with his wife’s, and therefore the two coffins are placed in one large sarcophagus. There is no monument; only the names on the stones above.

It is interesting to remember that George II was the last English sovereign to be present at a battle. During the years 1740 to 1748 several of the nations of Europe were fighting in what was called the War of the Austrian Succession. This war was really caused by Frederick the Great of Prussia and other German sovereigns trying to get various possessions away from the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. England took the Austrian side, and George II himself joined the army at the Battle of Dettingen, in 1743. The English and their allies were victorious. Handel composed his famous “Dettingen Te Deum” for the thanksgiving after the victory.

Several other members of the Hanoverian Royal House are buried in the central aisle of Henry VII’s Chapel. Among them are the following: Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales (son of George II), and his wife, Augusta Princess of Wales, the father and mother of King George III.

William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, third son of George II, is also buried here. The Duke of Cumberland was a brave soldier, but his severity to the Scotch Jacobites after the Battle of Culloden in 1746 earned him the name of “the Butcher.” The Scotch, who had been fighting for Prince Charlie, were mercilessly slaughtered, and this cruelty has never been quite forgotten.

There are several other monuments in the Abbey to remind us of the Jacobite Rising of 1745. Such, for instance, is the monument to Marshal Wade, on the south side of the Nave. Marshal Wade was commander-in-chief of the army which was sent to quell the rebellion, and he was the man who made the great military roads through the Highlands spoken of in the well-known rhyme—

“If you’d seen these roads before they were made

You would hold up your hands and bless Marshal Wade.”

Two other soldiers who fought at Culloden, General Guest and Colonel Webb, are buried in the East Cloister. General Guest, who has a monument in the North Transept, defended Edinburgh against the rebels in 1745.

There is a tablet to Colonel Webb in the East Cloister.

Just at this time France declared war upon England, and took up the cause of Prince Charles Edward. In 1745 a battle was fought at Fontenoy, in Flanders. The English and their allies were under the command of the Duke of Cumberland, but their army was much smaller than the French army, and although they made a gallant attempt, they had to retreat. In the Westminster Cloisters there is a monument to two brave soldier-brothers of the name of Duroure, one of whom was killed at Fontenoy.

The naval victories over the French won by Admiral Anson and Admiral Hawke in 1747 are recorded on the Abbey walls by the monuments of Captain Philip Saumarez and Sir Charles Saunders, who both fought in the action off Finisterre. We shall meet with Sir Charles Saunders’s name again later on.

The monument to Admiral Vernon, at the end of the North Transept, tells us of the war with Spain in 1737–40, and of the English victories at Porto Bello and Cartagena. In the North Transept aisle is a monument to Lord Aubrey Beauclerk, who was killed in 1740, on Admiral Vernon’s expedition to Cartagena. And again, we are reminded of the fights with the Spanish fleet in the West Indies when we look at the monuments to Admiral Wager and Sir Peter Warren, which are also both in the North Transept. Sir Peter Warren’s monument is a very fanciful one. It was made by the French sculptor, Roubiliac, the sculptor of the well-known Nightingale Monument in the Chapel of St. Michael. Roubiliac has actually represented the marks of smallpox on the face of Sir Peter Warren’s bust!

Sir Peter Warren’s nephew, Admiral Tyrrell, has a monument in the Nave. Tyrrell once defeated three French men-of-war single-handed, while he was commanding the Buckingham. He died in 1766, and is buried at sea.

Close to the entrance of the former Baptistery is the huge monument to Captain James Cornewall, who was killed in a great fight with the Spanish-French fleet off Toulon early in 1744. This monument was the first which was erected by Parliament in honour of a distinguished sailor.

In 1756 began the Seven Years’ War, between Prussia on one side, and Austria, France, Russia, Poland, Saxony, and Sweden on the other. These countries wanted to break up the kingdom of Prussia, which was becoming very powerful under Frederick the Great. Now, England was already at war with France, and she took the side of Prussia. The Duke of Cumberland, of whom we have already heard a good deal, was in command of the army in Hanover. At first, things seemed to be going very badly for England, but the tide turned when William Pitt, “the Great Commoner,” as he was called, became War Minister. William Pitt was indeed the foremost man in England’s history at this time, for not only did he strengthen our position in Europe, but it was he who slowly built up our world-wide Empire. He was created Earl of Chatham in 1766, and died in 1778. All this is most interesting and important to remember when we are in the Abbey, because this great English statesman is buried in the North Transept—Statesmen’s Corner, as it began to be called. Pitt’s monument is close to the North Transept door. High up you will see the figure and keen, eagle face of Lord Chatham, who is represented as if speaking to a large audience, his arm outstretched as though to make his words the more impressive, reminding us that he was a great orator as well as statesman. Perhaps he looked like this when he made his impassioned protests against the unjust taxation of the American colonies.

[D. Weller.
MONUMENT OF THE EARL OF CHATHAM.

The Seven Years’ War ended with the Peace of Paris in 1763, but meanwhile there had been a great deal of fighting, chiefly at sea, with the French and Spaniards. Many of these battles went on in the West Indies, where England was victorious. One of our successes, the taking of Havana from Spain in 1762, is brought back to our minds by the monuments to Admiral Pocock and Rear-Admiral Harrison. Admiral Pocock was commander-in-chief of the expedition, and conveyed Lord Albemarle and his troops to Havana.

Another of the great events in our history during the eighteenth century was the conquest of Canada from the French, a conquest always connected with the name of General Wolfe, who was killed at the taking of Quebec in 1759. There is a very large and, sad to say, very ugly monument to General Wolfe in the Abbey. It is in the North Ambulatory, and makes a great contrast to the splendid and beautiful Plantagenet tombs just opposite to it. However, the monument is very interesting, because the whole scene of Wolfe’s death is represented on it. The group of figures shows Wolfe mortally wounded, and hearing, just before his death, that his soldiers were putting the enemy to flight. Below this group is a bronze bas-relief representing the Heights of Abraham, which had been scaled by the British, and also the landing of the British troops from the river St. Lawrence. So important was Wolfe’s victory that, in the following year, the English had won all Canada.

Admiral Sir Charles Saunders has already been mentioned, and his grave in the Islip Chapel reminds us, not only of his services in the French war, but also of his share in the conquest of Canada, for he was commander-in-chief of the fleet which carried General Wolfe and his soldiers to the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Another Admiral, Charles Holmes, who served with Saunders at the taking of Quebec, has a memorial in the Nave. Viscount Howe and Colonel Townshend, who both fell at Ticonderoga during this same Canadian War, have memorials in the Abbey. Viscount Howe was the elder brother of the great Admiral, Lord Howe. His monument was put up by the people of Massachusetts a short time before the American colonies separated from the Mother Country.

General Adrian Hope, one of the first English Governors of Quebec, has a monument in the North Transept.

This is perhaps a good place in which to speak of another man who did a great deal for our Colonial Empire, namely, George Montague Dunk, Earl of Halifax, whose monument is also in the North Transept. He was a prominent statesman in the reigns of George II and George III, and he did so much for commerce in America that he was called the “Father of the Colonies.” He had also a great deal to do with the founding of the colony of Nova Scotia, and its capital, Halifax, is named after him. He died in 1771.

But we must now turn to quite another part of the world, and think of what was going on in India. Just about this time, or a little earlier, Clive had made the conquest of Bengal, and we find much to remind us of this in the Abbey.

At the end of the North Transept aisle is the monument—a terribly ugly one—put up by the East India Company to the memory of Admiral Watson, who helped Clive to recapture Calcutta from the cruel Suraj-ad-Dowlah, the man who shut up the Europeans in the “Black Hole of Calcutta,” of which every one has heard. Watson also helped Clive to take Chandernagore. He died in 1757, the year of the Battle of Plassey, and the year after the taking of Calcutta.

Major-General Stringer Lawrence, who defended Trichinopoly against the French in 1753–54, has a monument in the Nave. In the North Transept, again, is the monument to Sir Eyre Coote, who drove out the French from the Coromandel coast, and took Pondicherry in 1761.

Another monument in the North Transept reminds us of a famous man who is connected with the Anglo-Indian history of the time. This is Warren Hastings. It is true that he properly belongs to a rather later date, but as he has so much to do with India we will speak of him now. Warren Hastings was the first Governor-General of the British possessions in India, and was appointed to that post in 1773. He did a great deal to save the British Empire in India. It was while Warren Hastings was Governor-General that Hyder Ali and son, Tippoo Saib, rose against the English, and Hastings put down the rebellion. Unhappily, his enemies accused him of wrongful exactions of money, and when Warren Hastings returned to England he was impeached before the House of Lords on charges of cruelty and oppression towards the natives of India. The trial went on for years, and Hastings was finally acquitted. The expenses of the trial left him penniless, but the East India Company granted him a pension, and he spent his remaining years in retirement at his own home at Daylesford. He is not buried in the Abbey, but he has a special connection with Westminster, because he was educated at Westminster School. Hastings died in 1818.

In the North Transept is a statue of Sir John Malcolm, another soldier who greatly distinguished himself in the various wars in India during Clive’s time. He was sent as Envoy to Persia in 1799, being the first English Envoy sent there since the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He was finally Governor of Bombay in 1830, and died in 1833.

As we know, the disturbances in India went on for some long time, in spite of English victories under General Lake and Sir Arthur Wellesley (afterwards Duke of Wellington). Wellesley’s great victory in this war was at the Battle of Assaye, in 1803.

Again, all English people, young and old, know about the war in which we lost our American colonies during George III’s reign, and there are several monuments in the Abbey to bring the story of it back to our minds.

General Burgoyne, whose surrender at Saratoga lost America to England, is buried in the North Cloister. Near him is buried Colonel Enoch Markham, who served throughout the same war. In the Abbey itself is the famous monument of Major André, who was hanged as a spy by the Americans in 1780. André had gone on a secret mission to the American General, Arnold, who betrayed a fortress on the Hudson River to the British. On his way back from the meeting André was taken, and, in spite of every effort to save him from a traitor’s death, he was hanged by order of General Washington, and was buried under the gallows on the banks of the Hudson. Forty years later his body was removed, at the request of the Duke of York, and was finally buried in the Abbey. Some locks of his beautiful hair still remained, and these were sent to his sisters. The chest in which André’s bones were sent home is still in the Islip Chantry. His monument is in the south aisle of the Nave, and the head of his figure has more than once been broken off and taken away, either by people with strong political feelings on one side or the other, or else by some mischievous schoolboy. There is a famous story of Charles Lamb half accusing Southey of having carried off André’s head. Southey did not like this, and it was a long time before he quite forgot it.

The war with the American colonies is thought to have broken Lord Chatham’s heart. Every one remembers the last scene in his public life—a scene represented in a famous picture—when Lord Chatham came to the House of Lords to make one last protest against a policy which meant the loss of the American colonies. During his speech he fell to the ground in a fit, and died a few weeks afterwards.

The French wars in the later part of the eighteenth century have a memorial in the Abbey in the enormous monument to the three captains, Bayne, Blair, and Lord Robert Manners, in the North Transept. These three captains fell in 1782, at Admiral Rodney’s victorious fight with the French off Guadaloupe in the West Indies. In St. Michael’s Chapel is another memorial of the same wars in the monument which tells of the death of Admiral Kempenfelt in the shipwreck of the Royal George at Spithead in 1782.

Again, Lord Howe’s famous victory over the French off Ushant, on June 1st, 1794, has left its mark on the Abbey in the monuments of Captains Hardy and Hutt, and of Captain Montagu, which are both in the Nave.

In the reign of George I there was a terrible happening which caused great misery throughout England, and which has never been forgotten. This was what was called the South Sea Bubble,—that is, the failure of the South Sea Company. We are reminded of this disgraceful business even in the Abbey, because of the grave and monument of the poet Craggs, who was mixed up with it. Craggs is buried in Henry VII’s Chapel, and his monument is in the Baptistery.

As we are now coming quite close to the end of the eighteenth century it will be best to turn back and think of some of the great writers, men of science, musicians and others, who belonged to that time and are either buried or commemorated in the Abbey.

We will begin with Joseph Addison, the author of many beautiful essays in the Spectator and the Tatler. He died in 1719, and was buried in Henry VII’s Chapel, in the same aisle as the Tudor Queens. His statue is in Poets’ Corner. Addison’s beautiful hymn, “The spacious firmament on high,” is sometimes sung in the Abbey, and ought to be well known to all English children.

Now we come to the great Sir Isaac Newton, the famous mathematician and philosopher, who discovered the law of gravitation. He died in 1727, and was buried in the Nave, close to the Screen. He had a very stately funeral, at which a great number of distinguished men were present. The famous French writer, Voltaire, was there as a spectator. The monument is quite near the grave, and is meant to represent Newton’s discoveries. It is not the sort of monument we care about now, and the inscription on the gravestone below is much better: “Here lies all that was mortal of Isaac Newton.”

James Thomson, who wrote a poem called The Seasons, has a monument in Poets’ Corner. He died in George II’s reign, and is buried in Richmond Parish Church.

Sir Richard Steele, a famous essay writer of the time, is brought to our memory by the grave of his second wife in Poets’ Corner.

John Gay, author of the Fables, which were written for the education of the Duke of Cumberland, was buried in Poets’ Corner in 1732. His monument is over the door into St. Faith’s Chapel, and on it are carved these curious lines—

“Life is a jest, and all things show it;

I thought so once, and now I know it.”

Thomas Gray, who wrote the famous Elegy in a Country Churchyard, has a monument in Poets’ Corner, but he is buried in the beautiful churchyard at Stoke Pogis, which he loved so well. Gray’s poem is so celebrated that a learned Italian has lately made a very beautiful translation of it into his lovely native tongue. Gray died in 1771.

Oliver Goldsmith, author of the Vicar of Wakefield, the Deserted Village, and She Stoops to Conquer, died in 1774, and was buried in the Temple Churchyard. He has a monument in Poets’ Corner, and the Latin epitaph on it was written by the great Dr. Johnson.

Dr. Samuel Johnson, author of the Lives of the Poets, Rasselas, and the famous English Dictionary, died in 1784, and is buried in the Abbey at the foot of Shakspeare’s monument, close to David Garrick, the great actor, who had died four years before. Dr. Johnson’s only monument is his gravestone. Garrick has a rather foolish looking monument on the western wall of the South Transept.

Near Shakspeare’s monument is the bust of Robert Burns, the Scottish poet, who died in 1796.

A window in the former Baptistery commemorates two well known English poets who were both educated at Westminster School. These are George Herbert, who really belongs to the Stuart times, and William Cowper, who died in 1800. George Herbert’s poems are all on sacred subjects, and Cowper wrote some of the hymns which are very familiar to us all. But Cowper also wrote other things, some of the best known of his poems being the Task and John Gilpin. This window was given to the Abbey by Mr. Childs, of Philadelphia.

One of the greatest names of the eighteenth century is that of the famous musician, George Frederick Handel, the composer of the “Messiah” and many other splendid works. He died in 1759 and was buried in Poets’ Corner. His monument is by Roubiliac, and represents Handel holding the music of his famous song, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” Just below his monument is a medallion in memory of the great Swedish singer, Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt, who died in 1889, and who used to sing that very song so finely. The same words are carved on her monument also.

When Charles Dickens was buried in 1870, the coffin of Handel was seen by those who were present at the funeral.

While we are speaking of musicians it will be interesting to note that Dr. Burney, author of the well-known History of Music, has a monument in the Musicians’ aisle.

The monuments to Dr. Isaac Watts, the well-known hymn-writer, and to John and Charles Wesley, are in the South Choir aisle, and bring back the memory of men who did great work in the eighteenth century, work that still has much influence in England.

Several of the eminent doctors of the eighteenth century are buried in the Abbey. Such are Richard Mead, physician to George II, who died in 1754; Dr. John Freind, a favourite of George II and Queen Caroline, who died in 1728; and Dr. Hugh Chamberlen, who also died in 1728.

Another man who was famous in a very different way was James Watt, the inventor of the steam-engine. He has a monument in St. Paul’s Chapel. It is of giant size, and actually broke down the pavement in the Chapel when it was brought in. Watt died in 1819.

William Horneck, one of the earliest of our great English engineers, is buried in the South Transept, and has a memorial tablet in the North-West Tower. He died in 1746.

We will add to our list of eighteenth century men the names of two inventors, who are buried side by side in the Nave. These are (1) Thomas Tompion, who died in 1713. He was called the “Father of English Watch-making,” because of the many improvements he introduced in the art of making clocks and watches. (2) George Graham, who died in 1751, nephew and pupil of Tompion. He invented a curious astronomical instrument called the “Orrery,” so named after Lord Orrery, who is also buried in the Abbey.

In the North Transept there is a monument to Jonas Hanway, a philanthropist and traveller, who died in 1786. Hanway was so kind, and worked so hard to help those who were less fortunate than himself, that he was called “the friend and father of the poor.” He is said to have been the first person in England who ever carried an umbrella. It seems curious that such a useful invention was not made until the eighteenth century.

In the West Cloister is a monument to Dr. Benjamin Cooke, who died in 1793, having been organist of the Abbey for thirty years. In the North Aisle of the Choir are the grave and monument of Dr. Samuel Arnold, a well-known Church musician, who succeeded Dr. Cooke as organist of the Abbey, and died in 1802.

Two famous engravers, William Woollett, who died in 1785, and George Vertue, who died in 1756, have monuments in the West Cloister. Vertue is buried in the North Cloister, near one of his family, who was a monk.

Several well-known actors and actresses of the eighteenth century are also buried in the Cloisters.

CHAPTER IX
THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES

—”our slowly grown

And crown’d Republic.”

Tennyson (To the Queen).

It is very difficult properly to divide the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, because, of course, history does not cut itself up into lengths of a hundred years. But in telling the story of a place like the Abbey it is better to have some division, and as the French Revolution took place nearly at the end of the eighteenth century, a kind of natural division comes at that time, for we know that the French Revolution made a great and lasting change all over Europe.

[D. Weller.
STATUE OF WILLIAM WILBERFORCE.

When we begin to speak of the early nineteenth century we have again to think of wars, for the fights with Napoleon were still going on. Nelson’s great victories have not left much record in the Abbey, excepting the wax effigy of the great Admiral himself, of which we will speak later. One of Nelson’s Captains, Edward Cooke, has a monument in the Abbey. Cooke died of a wound which he received during a victorious fight with a French frigate in the Bay of Bengal in 1799.

When we think of these wars with Napoleon there is one grave in the Abbey which at once comes to our mind. It is that of the younger William Pitt, son of the great Earl of Chatham, of whom we read in the last chapter. William Pitt became Prime Minister of England when he was only twenty-three, and his ministry lasted through some years of a very troubled and anxious time. In spite of Nelson’s victories he was so crushed by Napoleon’s victory over the Austrians and Russians at Austerlitz in December 1805, that he died shortly afterwards, worn out with anxiety and disappointment. He was buried in the same vault with his father, and he had a large monument put up to him over the great West Door. He was only forty-six when he died, and it seems sad to think that he should not have lived to see his country’s victories in the Peninsular War and at Waterloo.

A further memorial of these wars is the bust of the Corsican patriot, Pasquale de’ Paoli, who fought against Napoleon for the independence of Corsica, and finally took refuge in England. His monument brings back an interesting bit of English history, namely, that for a short time, from 1794 to 1797, Corsica was under British rule.

The war known as the Peninsular War began in 1808. England was helping Spain against Napoleon, who had dethroned the King of Spain and made his own brother, Joseph, King instead. The Spaniards rose in arms, and drove Joseph Buonaparte out of Madrid. They appealed to England for help, and Sir Arthur Wellesley went out with 10,000 men. He defeated the French at Roliça, a victory which is commemorated in the Abbey by the tablet to Lieutenant-Colonel George Lake, who fell in that battle.

The next year, 1809, was famous for the Battle of Corunna, where Sir John Moore defeated the French and lost his own life. One of the officers who fought at the Battle of Corunna, General Coote Manningham, has a memorial in the North Transept. The services of Wellington’s chief engineer, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Richard Fletcher, who died in 1813, are recalled by a tablet to his memory in the North-West Tower. Fletcher directed the engineering works during the sieges of Badajos, and commanded the assault on the fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo, when these fortresses were taken and held against the French by Wellington in 1812. He was killed in an assault on the town of St. Sebastian. In the Nave is buried Sir John Leith, another soldier who fought in this war and greatly distinguished himself. He fought at Corunna, Badajos, and Salamanca. He died in 1816, in the West Indies, where he was in command of the forces.

There are memorial tablets in the Abbey to three other officers who fell in the Peninsular War. One is to Captain Bryan, who fell in the Battle of Talavera in 1809, when Sir Arthur Wellesley defeated King Joseph Buonaparte and Marshals Victor and Jourdan; the second is to a Lieutenant Beresford, who was killed at Ciudad Rodrigo in 1812; and the third is to Lieutenant-Colonel Macleod, who fell at the siege of Badajos, also in 1812.

In the Nave is buried a famous Admiral, Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald, who served in many of our wars, first against Spain and then on the Spanish side in the Peninsular War. Lord Dundonald died in 1860, but he left the navy in 1814 because of a false accusation which was made against him. He then went out to Chili, where he served the cause of Chilian Independence. Lord Dundonald was afterwards proved to have been innocent of the charges made against him, and his banner as Knight of the Bath was restored to its place in Henry VII’s Chapel. At the time of his disgrace it had been taken away and kicked down the steps of the Chapel.

In the Nave is another monument connected with this time in our history. It is that of Spencer Perceval, who was Prime Minister during the Peninsular War. He was shot in the Lobby of the House of Commons in 1812 by a man whose business had been ruined by the war, and who was supposed to be mad.

The bust of Lord John Russell in the North-West Tower, a part which is often called “Whigs’ Corner,” reminds us of the great Parliamentary Reform Bill, which was one of the most important events in the last century. The change was much needed, as the people of the country were not properly represented. Some large and important towns had no member at all, while some very small and insignificant places were allowed to return one or more members to Parliament. The reform was made more difficult on account of the disturbances and revolutions in France and elsewhere, which made people think it was better to have no changes at all. However, in 1831, Lord John Russell brought in his Reform Bill, which passed, after great discussion and struggle, in 1832. Lord John Russell, afterwards Earl Russell, was educated at Westminster School. He is not buried in the Abbey, although it was proposed to give him a public funeral there. It was his own wish to be buried with his family at Chenies, in Buckinghamshire.

We have just spoken of the changes and revolutions that went on in France during the earlier years of the nineteenth century. We are reminded of these when we find in the Abbey the beautiful tomb of the Duc de Montpensier, brother of King Louis Philippe, who died in 1807, while he and his brother were living in exile in England. The Duke is buried in Henry VII’s Chapel, quite close to Dean Stanley. The Duc de Montpensier is the only French prince buried in the Abbey. His monument is one of the finest modern ones that we have at Westminster. Queen Louise of Savoy, wife of King Louis XVIII of France, was also buried for a short time in the Abbey, and there is an interesting account of her funeral in the Precentor’s book. Her body was afterwards removed to Sardinia. Queen Louise died in 1810.

But to return to our own English history. One of the first acts of the new reformed Parliament was to abolish negro slavery in all the English colonies and possessions. This great work of Christian charity had been for years in the minds of many good people who had worked and fought hard for the cause. The measure passed in 1833.

Like the Reform Bill, the abolition of the Slave Trade was one of the greatest events in the nineteenth century, and there are many memorials of it in the Abbey.

We will begin by mentioning Charles James Fox, who was the great political rival of the younger Pitt, and who died a few months after him, in 1806. He was buried in the North Transept, but his monument is in the Nave, not far from Pitt’s. The kneeling figure of the negro on the monument is an allusion to Fox’s last speech in the House of Commons, when he proposed the abolition of the Slave Trade.

In the South Transept there is a monument to Granville Sharp, who did so much in the cause that he was called the father of the Anti-Slavery Movement. He was also one of the founders of the British and Foreign Bible Society. He died in 1813, and the African Society put up the monument to him.

Zachary Macaulay, who had been Governor of Sierra Leone, was another fighter in the same cause. He has a monument in “Whigs’ Corner,” under the North-West Tower.

But the name chiefly remembered when we speak of the Anti-Slavery Movement is that of William Wilberforce, who died in 1833, just before the great Emancipation Day, the day which set the slaves free in all the British dominions. Wilberforce’s monument is in the North Choir aisle, and represents him sitting in a chair with his legs crossed, and in a very odd posture altogether. He is buried in the North Transept.

Near Wilberforce’s monument is that of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, who had also helped in the fight against the Slave Trade. Buxton had also done a great work in the reform of our laws concerning the punishment of criminals, and his labours were shared by Sir James Mackintosh, who has a memorial bust in “Whigs’ Corner.”

Not far off is the monument to Sir Stamford Raffles, the first Governor of the colony of Java, which we had conquered from the Dutch, and which we afterwards gave back to them, much against Sir Stamford Raffles’s advice. England owes her colony at Singapore to the influence of Sir Stamford Raffles, and she also owes him her power in the Eastern Seas. When he finally came home, Raffles founded the Zoological Society of London, and was its first President. He ought to be remembered among the men who helped to do away with slavery, as he himself set free all the negroes who were under his authority. He died in 1826.

Two other monuments in “Whigs’ Corner” remind us of men who worked hard for the abolition of the Slave Trade and for the change in our penal laws. These are the monuments of Lord Holland and of the Marquis of Lansdowne. Lord Holland was the nephew of Charles James Fox, whose monument is close by. He died in 1840. Lord Lansdowne, who died in 1863, had a long political career, which began in the days of Pitt.

[W. Rice, F.R.P.S.
CHARLES JAMES FOX.

Almost in the middle of the Nave lies the famous African explorer and missionary, David Livingstone, who, although he belongs to a rather later date, may well be remembered with the noble group of men who fought against the Slave Trade. Livingstone died in Africa in 1873, and his body was brought back to England by his faithful black servant, Jacob Wainwight, who followed his coffin as it was carried up the Abbey, and threw a palm branch into the open grave. On the tombstone are carved the last words in Livingstone’s diary. They are as follows: “All I can add in my solitude is, may Heaven’s rich blessing come down on every one, American, English, or Turk, who will help to heal this open sore of the world” (that is, the Slave Trade).

Another Parliamentary measure which was very important for England was the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, and the introduction of Free Trade a few years later. Two of the chief leaders of these movements have memorials in the Abbey. One of them is Sir Robert Peel, whose statue stands in a most conspicuous place just at the corner of the North Transept and the North Ambulatory. The other is Richard Cobden, whose bust is placed in the North Transept aisle.

We must now turn from home politics to more wars in various parts of the world, wars which also have written some of their story on the Abbey walls.

In 1854 the Crimean War, between Russia on one side and Turkey with her English and French allies on the other, broke out. The real Westminster memorial to the heroes of the Crimean War stands in Broad Sanctuary, just outside the Abbey, and speaks to us of the Westminster scholars who fell in the Crimea, the most famous of them being Lord Raglan. But there are windows in the Abbey in memory of officers who served in this war, as well as in the war in India which followed it. Some years before the Crimean War there had been wars and disturbances in Afghanistan, in the Punjaub, and in Burmah; and at last, in 1857, the terrible Indian Mutiny broke out. The horrors of this time will probably never be forgotten while English history lasts, and we need only speak of the massacre of Cawnpore and the siege of Lucknow in order to bring the story of the Mutiny back to every one’s mind.

There are many graves and monuments in the Abbey to tell us of the brave men who saved our Indian Empire at that troubled time.

The first Afghan War is commemorated by the grave of Sir George Pollock, who fought his way through the Khyber Pass to Cabul, after the terrible slaughter of the British in 1842. Sir George Pollock was thanked by Parliament for his services in that war. He died in 1872, and is buried in the Nave.

In the North Transept is the bust of Sir Herbert Edwardes, who greatly distinguished himself in the Sikh War, and quelled the outbreak at Mooltan in 1848. He also did good service during the Mutiny. He died in 1868.

In the Nave are the graves of three of the great heroes of the Indian Mutiny, namely, Sir Colin Campbell (afterwards Lord Clyde), Sir James Outram, and John Laird Mair, Lord Lawrence.

Sir Colin Campbell joined the army when he was quite a boy, and fought in the Peninsular War. He served under Sir John Moore in the advance to Salamanca, and in the famous retreat to Corunna. Later on he fought in the Sikh War, and then in the Crimean War. He was sent out to India to help to crush the Mutiny, and the most celebrated thing he did was the relief of Lucknow, thus putting an end to that terrible siege. He died in 1863.

Sir James Outram’s grave is close by, and all English boys and girls should look at his monument, where they will see a representation of the great scene at Lucknow, when Sir Colin Campbell relieved the town and met the gallant defenders, Outram and Havelock. Outram died in 1863.

The name of Sir Henry Lawrence ought also to be remembered when we speak of Lucknow, although his body does not rest in the Abbey. He did much to save Lucknow in the time of the siege, and he was killed on the ramparts only a short time before Sir Colin Campbell arrived with his Highlanders.

The grave of his brother, John, Lord Lawrence, reminds us of a great and good man who served his country well in India. Although he was a civilian and not a soldier by profession, he had great military ability, and it was he who really saved the Punjaub at the time of the Mutiny. He succeeded Lord Elgin as Viceroy of India in 1863, and died in 1879. On his tombstone are words which we all might pray to deserve: “He feared man so little because he feared God so much.”

There is a fine bust of Lord Lawrence against the south wall of the Nave, not far from where he is buried.

In the North Transept are windows in memory of seven officers who were killed in the Indian Mutiny. These are Sir Henry Barnard, K.C.B., Lieutenant-Colonel Woodford, Lovick Cooper, a young ensign, Captain Thynne, Ensign Bankes, Captain Moorsom, and Lieutenant-Colonel Adrian Hope.

Four of these officers had also fought in the Crimean War in 1854–56, and had distinguished themselves by their services at that time.

Colonel Adrian Hope had also fought in the Kaffir War, and thus his name brings the remembrance of South Africa into the Abbey, long before the memorial was put up to those who fell in the last Boer War.

There is a window in the North Transept to the memory of officers who were lost in the Captain, which foundered off Cape Finisterre on 7th September 1870, five days after that great Battle of Sedan which ended the terrible war between France and Germany.

In St. Andrew’s Chapel there is also a window to the memory of those that fell in action and died from the effects of wounds or climate during the Ashanti War in 1873.

A bronze bust in the North-West Tower reminds us of another soldier hero of our time, Charles George Gordon, remembered chiefly for his work in China, in Egypt, and in the Soudan. The story of Gordon’s death at Khartoum in 1885 will never be forgotten. His name and noble character are always kept fresh in our memory by the Gordon Boys’ Home, which does such excellent work in training boys for the army.

South Africa has one direct memorial at Westminster, for in the North Cloister there is a tablet in memory of the men of the Queen’s Westminster Volunteer Corps who fell in the Boer War of 1899–1902. The tablet was put up in 1901, and was unveiled by the Secretary of State for War.

We are reminded of an earlier time in the history of the Volunteers by the monument of George Herries, the first Colonel of the London and Westminster Light Horse Volunteers, of which he was described as the “father.” George Herries was a well-known merchant. He died in 1819, and was buried in the Abbey with military honours. His monument is in the Nave.

We must now look back over the nineteenth century, as we did over the eighteenth, and call to mind many other great men whose graves and monuments we find in the Abbey,—statesmen, writers, and men of science.

As we have been speaking of the political history of England, let us begin with some of the great statesmen.

Lord Chatham, as we have seen, belonged to the eighteenth century. The younger William Pitt, and his great political rival, Charles James Fox, died quite early in the nineteenth century, and their graves and monuments have already been described.

As we enter by the great North Door we see on our left a striking group of three statues. These represent (1) George Canning, the great statesman and orator, who died in 1827; (2) his son, Charles, Earl Canning, Viceroy of India; and (3) their cousin, Stratford Canning, Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe, who was for fifty years our Ambassador in the East.

[D. Weller.
STATESMEN’S CORNER, EASTERN AISLE.

Among other things, George Canning was closely connected with that important political change of the last century, which is known as the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill. This was the measure which allowed Roman Catholics to be members of Parliament, and removed other disabilities under which they had suffered. The measure did not actually become law until after Canning’s death.

Earl Canning was Governor-General of India during the Mutiny, and became the first Viceroy. His name is always to be remembered with those of Clyde, John and Henry Lawrence, and the other great men of the Mutiny time. Lord Canning died in 1862. The Cannings are buried in the North Transept, in a vault near that of the Pitt family.

Close by is the grave of Henry Grattan, who died in 1820, the great defender of the rights of Ireland.

On the opposite side of the Transept to the Cannings is the statute of George Canning’s chief political rival, Lord Castlereagh, afterwards Marquis of Londonderry, who died in 1822. Lord Castlereagh was Foreign Secretary, and attended the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818. He helped greatly to make peace in Europe after all the fights with Napoleon. He unfortunately became very unpopular later, partly because of the heavy taxes the people had to pay after the French wars, and partly because he thought the Press had too much liberty and he tried to curtail that liberty. There was a terrible riot at his funeral, and the mourners had to fight their way through an angry mob.

Close to Castlereagh’s statue is that of Lord Palmerston, who was twice Prime Minister in Queen Victoria’s reign, after being Secretary of State for War for twenty years. Lord Palmerston was Prime Minister during the Crimean War and at the time when the Indian Mutiny began. He was given a public funeral, and is buried in the North Transept. His wife is buried with him.

On the side opposite to Castlereagh and Palmerston is the statue of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Lord Beaconsfield is remembered as a famous leader of the Conservative party in Parliament, and as a man who did much for the growth of the British Empire. It was at his suggestion that the late Queen took the title of Empress of India, and to him we owe much of our present position in Egypt. Lord Beaconsfield was also a well-known writer of novels. His most famous books are perhaps Lothair, Sybil, and Coningsby. Lord Beaconsfield died in 1881, and is buried at Hughenden in Buckinghamshire.

William Ewart Gladstone, the great Liberal leader, and Lord Beaconsfield’s chief political opponent, is buried in the North Transept, and his statue stands next to that of Disraeli. Mr. Gladstone was four times Prime Minister. The Bill for the Disestablishment of the Irish Church was passed when he was in power in 1871. Gladstone was not only eminent in politics, but he exercised a considerable literary, social, and moral influence over many of his fellow-countrymen. Gladstone died in 1898.

In the year 1870 the Education Bill was passed, a Bill which has made a great difference to all English people, as everybody now has the opportunity of going to school and of having a good and useful teaching, not only in reading and writing, but in many other things as well. The scheme for this new plan of education was made by William Edward Forster, who is commemorated in the Abbey by a medallion which is placed above the monument of his uncle, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, in the North Choir aisle.

The grave and monument of Sir Rowland Hill in St. Paul’s Chapel remind us of another important change which took place in 1839, namely, the introduction of the penny postage and the invention of adhesive postage stamps.

Another monument, a very beautiful and interesting one, is that erected to the memory of Henry Fawcett, the blind Postmaster-General, who accomplished so much good work in spite of the terrible disadvantage of his blindness, which was the result of an accident when he was quite young. This always seems to be a monument to undaunted courage and perseverance in the face of great misfortune, and it should teach us to be brave and patient, however much things may seem to be against us.

It is now time to speak of the chief authors of the century, and to turn our thoughts once more to Poets’ Corner.

Here, next to Dr. Johnson, we find the grave of the brilliant play-writer and parliamentary orator, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the author of the Rivals and The School for Scandal. Sheridan died in 1816, the year after the Battle of Waterloo.

Against the wall, close to the door of St. Faith’s Chapel, is the bust of the great novelist, Sir Walter Scott, who died in 1832. His Waverley Novels are too famous to need any description. We need only speak of Ivanhoe, Quentin Durward, The Antiquary, and Kenilworth, in order to remind English people of all ages of many hours of interest and delight. The particular position was expressly chosen for the bust of Sir Walter Scott, because it is close to the monument of the Duke of Argyll and Greenwich, the same Duke of Argyll who appears in Scott’s famous story, The Heart of Midlothian. The bust was placed in the Abbey only a few years ago; it is a copy of the bust by Chantrey at Abbotsford.

Above Shakspeare’s monument are busts of two celebrated poets of the early part of the nineteenth century—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, author of “The Ancient Mariner,” “Christabel,” and other well-known poems, and Robert Southey, Poet-Laureate, author of “Thalaba,” “The Curse of Kehama,” and the poem on the Waterfall at Lodore. Coleridge died in 1834, and Southey in 1843, in the reign of Queen Victoria. Neither Coleridge nor Southey is buried in the Abbey. Southey was one of the famous group of “Lake poets,” and is buried in the lake country, at Crosthwaite, near Keswick.

Close by Shakspeare’s monument is the statue of Thomas Campbell, who wrote “The Pleasures of Hope,” “The Battle of the Baltic,” “Ye Mariners of England,” and other poems.

Under the South-West Tower, in the former Baptistery, is the monument of the great poet, William Wordsworth, who lived through the time of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, and died in 1850. He was the chief of the “Lake poets.” Wordsworth is not buried in the Abbey, but in Grasmere churchyard, in that English lake-country where he was born and which he loved so dearly. Wordsworth’s chief poems are “The Excursion,” “The White Doe of Rylstone,” “Tintern Abbey,” the “Ode on Immortality,” and the “Ode to Duty.” But there are many others, great and small, which are part of the heritage he has left to his fellow-countrymen.

In the Baptistery, just opposite Wordsworth’s monument, is a memorial portrait bust of Charles Kingsley, the great preacher and writer, author of Alton Locke, Westward Ho!, Hypatia, and of many well-known poems. Charles Kingsley is remembered with especial interest and affection at the Abbey, as he was Canon of Westminster for two years. He died in 1875, and is buried at Eversley, in Hampshire, where he was rector for so long.

Next to Kingsley is a bust of Matthew Arnold, the poet, essayist, and critic. Next to him again is a bust of Frederick Denison Maurice, a great religious teacher of the nineteenth century. Opposite to these, and next to Wordsworth, is the monument to John Keble, author of The Christian Year. Next to that is the monument of the famous Dr. Thomas Arnold, who was headmaster of Rugby, and who did much to improve the whole life in the public schools of England. Matthew Arnold, of whom we have just heard, was his son.

In Poets’ Corner, close to the grave of Chaucer, lie two other famous poets of the Victorian age, Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning.

Tennyson will always be remembered as the poet of In Memoriam and The Idylls of the King, and also of many splendid patriotic poems which all English boys and girls ought to know. He died in 1892, and when his grave was being dug in Poets’ Corner a skull and leg-bone were found, which were evidently those of Geoffrey Chaucer, who had been buried here nearly five hundred years before. By Tennyson’s own wish the Union Jack was wrapped round his coffin and buried with him. A fine bust of Tennyson has been placed against a pillar near his grave.

Robert Browning, author of The Ring and the Book, Pippa Passes, By the Fireside, and many other famous poems, died at Venice in 1889. His body was brought back to be buried in the Abbey. His wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, well known as a poetess, is buried in Florence.

Near Chaucer’s monument is a bust of the American poet, Longfellow, who died in 1882. Some of his poems are familiar to most English children.

Charles Dickens, the great novelist, is buried in Poets’ Corner, just under Handel’s monument and close to Handel’s grave. Dickens will always be remembered as the author of David Copperfield, The Old Curiosity Shop, Christmas Stories, and many other books which are dear to the hearts of all English people.

Against the wall, on either side of Addison’s statue, are the busts of two other great writers of the last century,—Lord Macaulay, the poet and historian, and William Makepeace Thackeray, the famous novelist. Lord Macaulay, who died in 1859, was the son of Zachary Macaulay, of whom we have already heard in connection with the abolition of the slave-trade. Among Lord Macaulay’s best known writings are the Lays of Ancient Rome. His grave is close by Addison’s statue. Thackeray, who wrote Esmond, The Newcomes, Vanity Fair, and many other celebrated books, is not buried in the Abbey, but at Kensal Green. He died in 1863.

Nearer to the Choir aisle are the busts of the two great historians of Greece, Bishop Thirlwall and George Grote, who are buried in the same grave. They both died in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Just above the bust of Sir Walter Scott is a bronze medallion with a portrait head of John Ruskin, author of The Stones of Venice, Modern Painters, Sesame and Lilies, and many other well-known works on art and life.

In St. Edmund’s Chapel is the grave of Edward Bulwer Lytton, Lord Lytton, author of many widely read novels and historical romances. Among his best known books are The Last Days of Pompeii, The Caxtons, Rienzi, and Kenelm Chillingly. He died in 1873.

Several of the great actors of the nineteenth century are commemorated in the Abbey. Such are Mrs. Siddons, and her brother, John Philip Kemble, whose statues are in St. Andrew’s Chapel. Sir Henry Irving, the well-known actor of Shakspeare’s plays, as well as of many others, died in 1905, and is buried at the foot of Shakspeare’s monument, close to the grave of his great brother-actor, David Garrick.

In the Musicians’ Aisle is the grave of Sir William Sterndale Bennett, one of the chief English composers of his time. He died in 1875. In the same aisle is a medallion in memory of Michael Balfe, who composed The Bohemian Girl, and a window to James Turle, who was organist of the Abbey for fifty-six years. In St. Andrew’s Chapel is a window in memory of Vincent Novello, founder of the famous house of music publishers of that name.

[D. Weller.
GRAVES OF NEWTON, HERSCHEL, DARWIN, AND KELVIN.

The great and especial glory of the nineteenth century was the wonderful development of almost every kind of scientific knowledge and work, and the number of important scientific discoveries that were made. It is not too much to say that some of these discoveries, and some of the new theories about our world and the things in and around it, have influenced and changed our lives and our thoughts very much indeed. We can see this very plainly if we think of what Darwin has taught us, and if we think of the invention of the steam-engine, the introduction of railway travelling, and of steamships, of land and ocean telegraphy, telephones, motors, wireless telegraphy, and now of airships. This extraordinary progress in scientific research and knowledge is not without its record in the Abbey, as we shall see. We shall find that many of the great men of science who lived in the nineteenth century are either buried or commemorated in the Abbey.

Foremost among these is Charles Robert Darwin, the biologist of world-wide fame, author of The Origin of Species, The Descent of Man, and other celebrated scientific works. Darwin died in 1882, and is buried in the north aisle of the Nave, quite near the grave of Sir Isaac Newton.

Next to Darwin lies the famous astronomer, Sir John Frederick Herschel, who died in 1871. Another astronomer, John Couch Adams, discoverer of the planet Neptune, has a memorial in this same north aisle. Close by are memorials to James Prescott Joule, who discovered certain laws connected with heat and electricity, and to Sir George Gabriel Stokes.

A little farther down the aisle is the grave of the great geologist, Sir Charles Lyell, who died in 1875. His bust is placed near the tablet in memory of Dr. John Woodward, who lived in the eighteenth century, and who has been called the “father of English Geology.”

On the other side of the Nave is a memorial to William Buckland, Dean of Westminster, who was twice President of the Geological Society, and wrote many books about geology. In the South Transept, near the monument of Dr. Busby, is the grave of William Spottiswoode, who was President of the Royal Society and Printer to Queen Victoria. He died in 1883.

One of the most famous men of science of our own day, William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, rests close to Newton. He was born in 1824, and died in 1907, and devoted his long life to the pursuit of science,—to what is called “applied science” as well as to speculative science. We owe to Lord Kelvin many of the wonderful inventions now in quite common use,—in navigation, in telegraphing under the ocean, and in other ways.

One of the most important changes in the life of the whole nation was brought about in the nineteenth century by the introduction of railway travelling. Those of us who are quite young, and have hardly ever heard of a time when there were no railways, cannot realise or understand how great this change must be.

Even railways have their memorials in the Abbey, for in the Nave we find the grave of Robert Stephenson, who died in 1859, engineer of the Birmingham Railway and of the Britannia Bridge over the Menai Straits. He is buried next to the famous engineer, Thomas Telford, who died in 1834, and whose chief works were the Caledonian Canal, the Menai Bridge, and the plan for the inland navigation of Sweden. There is a large statue of Telford in St. Andrew’s Chapel. Not far from the grave of Robert Stephenson is a window in his memory. It is not at all beautiful, as it represents railway bridges and other things which do not look well in a stained-glass window,—but it is certainly interesting.

Near this are windows in memory of the great engineers (1) Richard Trevithick, who died in 1833, the inventor of the high-pressure steam-engine, and of the first real railway engine; (2) Brunel, who died in 1859, and who built the largest steamships known in his time, the Great Eastern and the Great Western; and (3) John Locke, who died in 1860, and who designed the “Crewe Engine.”

Close to these a beautiful new window has been erected to the memory of Sir Benjamin Baker, who died in 1907. He was the engineer of the Forth Bridge, the Assouan Dam, and other important works. In the window are full-length figures of Edward III and of Cardinal Langham, once Abbot of Westminster.

Near the graves of Stephenson and Telford are buried four distinguished architects of the nineteenth century. These are:—

(1) Sir Charles Barry, who built the present Houses of Parliament, and who died in 1860.

(2) Sir Gilbert Scott, who died in 1878. He was one of the leaders in the revival of Gothic architecture in England.

(3) George Edmund Street, who died in 1881. A distinguished architect in the Gothic style. He designed the present Law Courts.

(4) John Loughborough Pearson, who died in 1897.

Sir Gilbert Scott and Mr. Pearson were both of them “Surveyors of the Fabric” to the Abbey. This means that they had charge of the actual building from the architectural point of view.

In the Chapel of St. John the Evangelist is a memorial to the great Arctic explorer, Sir John Franklin, who was lost in 1847, with both his crews, while making the discovery of the North-West Passage. The monument was put up by Lady Franklin. On it is a representation of the vessel fast in the Polar ice, and round the sculptured scene are the words—

“O ye ice and snow, O ye frost and cold, bless ye the Lord; Praise him and magnify Him for ever.”

Below are Tennyson’s beautiful lines—

“Not here: the White North has thy bones; and thou

Heroic sailor soul,

Art passing on thy happier voyage now

Towards no earthly pole.”

Close by is the memorial to another Arctic explorer, Admiral Sir Leopold M‘Clintock, who died in 1907. It was he who discovered the remains of Franklin’s ships, and thus found out how he had died.

Before ending this long list of people who are gathered into remembrance in the Abbey, we must not forget the names of some of those who have served their fellow-men by special works of love and kindness.

Close to the great West Door is a fine statue of Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, who did a great deal to make the lives of poor children healthier, happier, and better, and to whom England owes many improvements in the laws about work in factories and mines.

Lord Shaftesbury is remembered in Westminster as President of the Westminster Window Garden show, a flower show which was intended to encourage poor people to grow nice flowers in their windows, and so to brighten the dulness and ugliness of town streets, as well as to teach them something about Nature. Lord Shaftesbury used to come every year to give the prizes at this show, which used to be held in Dean’s Yard.

Lord Shaftesbury also took great interest in George Peabody’s scheme for improving the dwellings of the poor, and tried all he could to help on this good work. He died in 1883.

George Peabody, who gave such generous help towards building better houses for the poor, was an American. He died in London in 1869, and his body rested for a short time in the Abbey, close to the place where Lord Shaftesbury’s statue now stands.

Quite near this spot also is the grave of Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who died in 1907, and whose name will long be remembered for her works of charity.

CHAPTER X
THE WAX EFFIGIES

... “We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.”

Shakspeare (The Tempest).

Before speaking of the other parts of the Abbey buildings we must not forget the little Islip Chantry, or upper part of Abbot Islip’s beautiful chapel in the North Ambulatory. In this Chantry are the presses which contain the celebrated wax effigies of which we so often hear.

In olden times it used to be the custom to carry effigies in the funeral processions of sovereigns and of other important personages, and to leave these effigies standing beside the grave for a month or more after the funeral. This custom succeeded to the yet older one of carrying the dead body of the sovereign with its face exposed, in order to show that the sovereign was really dead, and that there had been no foul play. In those days, unfortunately, foul play was not very uncommon, as we see in the case of Edward II and Richard II.

The oldest effigies were not made of wax, but of wood, and they had heads, hands, and feet made of plaster. The effigy of Henry V was made of boiled leather, or, as an old description says: “boyled hides.” In later days people learned to make effigies in wax, and some of them were no doubt very good portraits. There are eleven of these wax effigies still shown in the Islip Chantry.

The oldest which now remains is that of Charles II, which stood for a long time beside his grave in Henry VII’s Chapel. The face is just like the pictures we see of Charles II. He wears the blue and red velvet robes of a Knight of the Garter, with collar and ruffles of real, and very beautiful, point lace. The effigy of Queen Elizabeth is a Restoration, and no doubt a copy of the original, which had got quite worn out by 1708. Some people think the head may really be that of the first effigy. The face is very sad and worn, and looks as if Queen Elizabeth had been very unhappy in her old age. We recognise the familiar Elizabethan dress, the ruff, the high-heeled shoes, the pointed bodice and wide skirts.

[D. Weller.
QUEEN ELIZABETH.

[D. Weller.
CHARLES II.

Next to Queen Elizabeth stand the effigies of William III and Mary II, which are placed together in one large case. The crown is on a pedestal between the two figures, and both sovereigns carry the sceptre and the orb, so as to show that they reigned jointly, Mary not being Queen-Consort merely. William was evidently a good deal shorter than his wife, for he stands on a foot-stool in order to look equal in height. Mary wears a brocaded skirt, and a purple velvet robe over it. She also wears imitation paste and pearl ornaments and beautiful lace in her sleeves. The last effigy of a sovereign is that of Queen Anne. She is represented seated, and is dressed in robes of brocaded silk. She wears many ornaments, and has a crown over her dark, flowing hair. Her face is rather fat, with a kindly, good-natured expression.

Close to the case which holds the effigy of Queen Anne is a figure of General Monck, in armour. This figure used to look very much battered and greatly the worse for wear, but it has lately been rather mended up. The cap is the famous one mentioned in the Ingoldsby Legends, in the well-known lines—

“I thought on Naseby, Marston Moor, and Worcester’s crowning fight,

When on my ear a sound there fell, it filled me with affright;

As thus, in low unearthly tones, I heard a voice begin—

‘This here’s the cap of General Monck! Sir, please put summat in.’”

General Monck, afterwards Duke of Albemarle, is buried in Henry VII’s Chapel, as we have already said.

The next effigy is that of Frances Theresa Stuart, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox, a great beauty in her day. She was maid-of-honour to Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II. She sat as a model for the figure of Britannia on a medal which was struck to commemorate the Treaty of Breda, when peace was made between the English and Dutch after the first Dutch War. This was in 1667. The figure of Britannia is no doubt the same that we now see on our pennies and halfpennies. Frances Stuart is dressed in the robes she wore at the Coronation of Queen Anne. Beside her is her parrot, which died a few days after her. This lady left particular orders about her effigy, directing that it should be “as well done in wax as can bee—and sett up in a presse by itself, ... with cleare Crowne glasse before it, and dressed in my Coronation Robes and Coronett.” The effigy at first stood beside the Duchess’s grave in Henry VII’s Chapel.

Next to the Duchess of Richmond and Lennox stand the effigies of Catherine, Duchess of Buckinghamshire, and her little son, the Marquis of Normanby, who died when a child. The Duchess, with her husband and children, are buried in Henry VII’s Chapel, and a large monument is erected there to the Duke, who was distinguished as a politician, soldier, and man of letters in the reigns of Charles II and James II.

The Duchess of Buckinghamshire died in 1743. Her effigy is dressed in the robes that she wore at the Coronation of George II. This lady settled all about her own funeral with the Garter King-at-Arms, and was quite afraid lest she should die before the grand canopy came home. “Let them send it,” she said, “though all the tassels are not finished.” Buckingham House, where the Duchess lived, was built by her husband on the site of the present Buckingham Palace.

In the middle of the Chantry is a glass case containing the effigy of Edmund Sheffield, last Duke of Buckinghamshire, and son of the Duchess whose effigy has just been described. The young Duke died in Rome in 1735, aged only nineteen. This effigy, which is a very fine one, was the last ever carried at a funeral. The Duchess wanted to borrow the great Duke of Marlborough’s funeral car for the funeral of her son. But Sarah, the celebrated Duchess of Marlborough, replied very haughtily that “it carried my Lord Marlborough, and it shall never be profaned by any other corpse.” Whereupon the Duchess of Buckinghamshire retorted: “I have consulted the undertaker, and he tells me I may have a finer for twenty pounds.”

There are two other wax figures in the Chantry, but they are not, properly speaking, effigies, because they were not used in the funeral processions, but were only put up to attract sightseers. These figures represent two very eminent Englishmen, namely, William Pitt the elder, afterwards Lord Chatham, and Lord Nelson. Both figures are remarkably good, and must be excellent likenesses. Lord Chatham wears his peer’s robes, and a wig, such as was then the fashion.

Lord Nelson’s effigy is dressed in naval uniform; all the dress, except the coat, belonged to Nelson himself. The eye-patch for Nelson’s blind eye was found attached to the inner lining of the hat when Maclise borrowed it to copy for his well-known picture, “The Death of Nelson.”

These wax effigies, then, are not mere curiosities, but are interesting, both as showing us an ancient funeral custom and as representing people who played a part in the English history of their day.

[W. Rice, F.R.P.S.
SOUTH CLOISTER.

CHAPTER XI
THE MONASTIC BUILDINGS

“That Fabric rises high as Heaven,

Whose Basis on Devotion stands.”

Matthew Prior.

With the help of the Abbey we have taken a long, and perhaps rather hurried, journey through many centuries of our country’s history, and have tried to think of the many links by which the Abbey is bound to all English hearts. We must now turn back again across those centuries, and try to remember something of the old monastery, of its buildings, of the Abbots who governed it, and of the sort of lives the monks lived.

The Abbey, as we already know, was dedicated to St. Peter from the earliest days. The monks belonged to the great Benedictine order. That order, which had spread over all Europe, “from Poland to Portugal, and from Cumberland to Calabria,” was founded by St. Benedict in the sixth century after Christ. St. Benedict was born in Italy about the year 480, during a very restless and troubled time, just after the last Emperor had been driven out of Rome. Benedict very soon determined to live the life of a monk, and when he was quite a boy he went away from Rome to a place in the mountains near. From this place he went to a yet more remote and lonely one, the wild and beautiful Subiaco, where the Emperor Nero had once had a “villa” or country house.

There are two famous Benedictine monasteries at Subiaco, and it is an interesting thing to remember that the first books printed in Italy were printed at one of these monasteries, just as in England many of Caxton’s books were printed under the shadow of the Benedictine Abbey of Westminster.

Again, when St. Benedict built his great monastery at Monte Cassino, he built it on the site of a Temple of Apollo, just as King Lucius is said to have done in those far-off days at “Thorney,” or Westminster.

St. Benedict directed that the monks of his order should divide their time between the services in the church, study, and manual work of some kind. It should never be forgotten that it is largely to the monasteries that we owe the preservation of learning, and our inheritance of the great writings of the Greek and Roman world.

The idea of making monasteries places of study and learning did not begin with St. Benedict, but Western Europe owes him a great debt for having insisted that study should be an important part of a monk’s work. This was a great service to mankind and to civilisation in those wild days of barbarian invasion and almost constant war.

It should be remembered, too, that the clergy and monks were the chief, if not the only, teachers during several centuries. If we want to see and understand this we can find an example in what our own countryman, Alcuin of York, did for education under the patronage and with the help of Charlemagne.

The Chapel dedicated to St. Benedict in the Abbey has already been mentioned two or three times. This Chapel is just at the entrance of the South Ambulatory.

On the south side of the Abbey Church, and protected by it from the cold north, lies the beautiful cloister where the monks and their pupils spent a great deal of their time. The Cloister-walks form a quadrangle, with a large grass plot in the middle. Under that peaceful grass plot many of the Westminster monks are resting, and many people are buried in the Cloister itself.

The present Cloister is of different dates. Parts of the East and North Walks are of the time of Henry III and Edward I. Another part of the East Walk was built in the reign of Edward III, and the South and West Walks were built some years later by Abbot Litlington. It is said that every style of English architecture can be seen in the Westminster Cloisters; and this is true, because, as we shall see, some of the old Norman Cloister remains, and in the great Cloister we can find the Early English, the Decorated, and the Perpendicular styles.

The Cloister was not a burial-place only. It was a very important part of the monastery, as much of the daily life went on there.

In those days the windows had glass in them; the floor and benches were strewn with straw and hay in summer, and with rushes in winter. The walls were decorated with frescoes, and lamps hung from the vaulting.

The East Cloister was given up to the Abbot, who was a great personage. Whenever he passed, every one rose and bowed and kept silence. The monks themselves used the North Cloister, where the Prior also sate. The novices and pupils worked at their lessons in the West Cloister. The pupils sate one behind the other; they were not allowed to make jokes or to make signals to one another. They had to talk always in French. They were to take great care about their writing and illuminations, and no doubt many beautiful old illuminated missals and other books came forth from those Cloister walks at Westminster.

In the South Cloister is a very large bluish gravestone, reminding us of the terrible plague which visited most of Europe about the middle of the fourteenth century, and which was called “The Black Death.” Twenty-six of the Westminster monks, including the Abbot, died of the Black Death in 1348–49, and the monks are supposed to have been buried beneath this huge gravestone, which used to be called “Long Meg.” The Abbot, Byrcheston, was buried near the Chapter-House entrance, in the part of the Cloister which was built in his time.

Close to “Long Meg” are the graves of several of the Abbots of Norman and early Plantagenet times. Three of the figures still remain close to the wall, but the names are not carved over the right gravestones. After 1220 it became the custom to bury the Abbots in the church itself.

In the East Cloister there is a beautiful carved archway, which forms the entrance to a lovely little passage with very sharply pointed arches. This passage leads into the Chapter-House, one of the finest parts of the Abbey buildings. The “incomparable Chapter-House,” as an old chronicler calls it, was begun by Henry III in 1250. It is eight-sided, and the vault springs from a tall and graceful central pillar, just as the branches spring from a palm tree. The windows are very famous for their beautiful tracery. The stained glass in them is modern, and is a memorial to the late Dean Stanley.

The walls were once covered with paintings, but these have been sadly destroyed, and only very few have been preserved. In the glass cases which are now placed in the Chapter-House are many most interesting and valuable things, such as the great illuminated missal presented to the Abbey by Abbot Litlington, and charters granted to the Abbey by various Kings, from the Saxon times onward.

There is also a splendidly bound book of Henry VII’s time, concerning certain arrangements between the King and the Abbey of Westminster, and the Liber Regalis, or Coronation book of Richard II.

In another case will be found an interesting collection of old seals.

The Westminster Chapter-House has had a very varied and rather exciting history. In the old days the Chapter-House was the meeting-place of the convent. There the affairs of the monastery used to be discussed; there complaints might be made; there the monks might confess their faults; and there, usually, they were punished. The Consistory Court of the convent used to be held in the South-West Tower. The seats for the judge and his assessors are still to be seen against the south wall, below the monument to Henry Fawcett. A Consistory Court was the place where trials which had to do with church matters were held.

[G. A. Dunn.
THE CHAPTER-HOUSE.

About thirty years after the Chapter-House was first built it began to be used as the meeting-place of the House of Commons, at the time when the Commons were separated from the Lords. The last time that the Commons sate in the Westminster Chapter-House was on the last day of Henry VIII’s reign, and the last act passed there was the attainder of the Duke of Norfolk (1546). In 1547 the House of Commons moved to the Chapel of St. Stephen in the Palace of Westminster, and the Chapter-House began to be used as the Record Office. It is curious, when we look at the Chapter-House as it is now, to think that it was once all lined round with galleries and cupboards, and that the Records of the kingdom were kept here until 1864. Soon afterwards the Chapter-House was restored to its present state, and is no doubt very like what it was in Henry III’s time. While it was the Record Office, Domesday Book and many other most precious books and documents had their home at Westminster.

Under the Chapter-House is a crypt, of which the walls are eighteen feet thick, and which, long centuries ago, was used as the Royal Treasury. The Regalia and stores of money were kept there. In 1303 a terrible thing happened. There was a great robbery of the Royal Treasure; the money which Edward I had collected for the Scottish wars was stolen, as well as part of the Regalia. It is sad to think that some of the Westminster monks had to do with this disgraceful robbery, but they were found out and punished.

Below the pavement of the entrance to the Chapter-House are buried (1) Abbot Edwyn, the friend and adviser of Edward the Confessor, and the first Abbot of his new monastery; (2) Hugolin, who was Chamberlain and Treasurer to the Confessor; and (3) Sulcard, a monk, who wrote the first history of the Abbey. In the vestibule, close to the Chapter-House, are the modern window and tablet in memory of James Russell Lowell, the well-known American poet and prose writer. Lowell was for many years the United States Minister in London, and was much beloved, both in this country and his own.

The Chapel of the Pyx, close by the Chapter-House, was formerly the monastic Treasury. At one time the Regalia were kept there. The Chapel is so called from the “pyx,” or box, which contained the standard coins of the realm, used for testing our current coinage. The pyx has now been moved to the Mint, but the Chapel still keeps its ancient name. The Chapel of the Pyx, and the buildings next to it, belong to the Norman time, and over them the monks’ Dormitory was built. Part of the old Dormitory is now used as the Chapter Library, and part as the Great School.

Most of the treasures in the old monastic library were destroyed in the time of Edward VI; and unfortunately, many of the books collected by the earlier Deans were destroyed in a fire in 1694.

Another very interesting part of the monastic buildings was the Refectory, or dining-hall of the monks. The first Refectory was built, probably, in the early Norman times, and was a stately room. It was rebuilt in the reign of Edward III, when it was made still larger, and only the lower part of the old Norman walls was kept. Some of this Norman wall can still be seen.

In the book of the “Customs” of the monastery, or “Consuetudines,” as the long Latin name goes, are very strict rules about behaviour at meals. No monk might speak at all, and even the guests might only whisper. No one was to sit with his hand on his chin, or with his hand over his head, because that might look as if he were in pain. No one might lean on his elbows, or stare, or crack nuts with his teeth. All these old rules seem to be very good ones, and might be useful to some people in the twentieth century.

But the Refectory is interesting for many historical reasons. Here, in 1252, Henry III swore to observe Magna Charta. Henry, standing with the Book of the Gospels in one hand and a lighted taper in the other, and surrounded by the Archbishops and other great clergy, took his solemn oath. Upon this they all dashed their tapers on the ground, saying “So go out, with smoke and stench, the accursed souls of those who break or pervert the Charter.”

In 1294, Edward I held a great council of clergy and laity in the Refectory at Westminster. On this occasion the King was demanding a subsidy of half their possessions, to the consternation of the assembled council. The Dean of St. Paul’s was trying to persuade the King not to ask so much, and in his anxiety and excitement the poor man fell dead at Edward’s feet. The old history says that Edward took very little notice,—“passed over this event with indifferent eyes,” and insisted on having what he asked.

It was in the Refectory that the Commons impeached Piers Gaveston, the favourite and bad adviser of Edward II. And besides this, the Commons met here several times during the reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V, so we see that this great hall has been very closely connected with the history of England.

It is supposed that part of the large quantity of stone granted to Protector Somerset was taken from the Refectory. This stone was used by him in the building of Somerset House.

Another important part of the monastery was the Infirmary, the place where the old and infirm monks lived in their old age. It stood on the site of what is now called the Little Cloister, but the present Little Cloister is much more modern, and belongs to what is called the “Jacobean” time.

The low, barrel-vaulted passages which lead from the Great Cloister to the site of the old Infirmary are some of the very oldest parts of the Abbey buildings, as they were built, if not actually during the Confessor’s lifetime, at any rate by the first Norman Kings. They are therefore more than 800 years old. In one of the ancient Norman rooms, below the former Dormitory of the monks, the Dean and Chapter have lately arranged a very interesting kind of museum, containing various fragments of old carving and other valuable relics of former times. There, too, have been placed the very oldest of the wax effigies, which are too battered and ragged to be shown with the others in the Islip Chantry. Here are the rather ghastly remains of the effigies of Edward III and Philippa, Henry V and Katherine de Valois, of Mary Tudor and some others.

Round to the left, through an even darker bit of Cloister, was the Infirmary, of which we were just now speaking. The Infirmary was almost a monastery in itself, having a cloister, a garden, and a very beautiful chapel of its own. This chapel was built in the twelfth century, and was dedicated to St. Katherine. Some of its arches still remain in the garden of one of the modern houses. Many interesting things took place in St. Katherine’s Chapel. One of these was a famous struggle between the Archbishops of Canterbury and York as to which was to sit in the chief place on the right hand of the Papal Legate. It was settled that the Archbishop of Canterbury was to have the precedence, and be called “Primate of all England.” Another interesting event connected with St. Katherine’s Chapel, and a pleasanter one to think of, is the consecration of St. Hugh of Lincoln in 1186. St. Hugh was a pupil and disciple of St. Bruno, and came to his northern bishopric from the famous monastery of the Grande Chartreuse in the south of France. The old garden of the Infirmary is still the Abbey garden, and lies just beyond the Little Cloister. Close to it is the ancient Jewel House, where the King’s jewels used to be kept. It was built by Richard II on a piece of ground which was bought from the Abbey by Edward III in the last year of his reign.

Other parts of the monastery, such as the granary, the malt-house, brew-house, and bake-house, stood in the square or court which is now called Dean’s Yard. Parts of some of these ancient buildings still remain below the modern houses. We shall hear of the granary again, in another chapter.

In former days Dean’s Yard used to be known as “The Elms,” and was enclosed by the old monastery walls.

The Almonry, or place where the alms of the monastery used to be given to the poor, was on the south-west side of Broad Sanctuary. It was close to the Almonry that Caxton set up his printing-press.

We can easily see what an important place a great monastery must have been, when we think of all its different parts, and of the work of various kinds that went on in it.

But we must not take leave of the old monastic buildings and life without saying a few words about the Sanctuary, which played an important part in the Abbey history, and even in the history of England. It has already been told how Queen Elizabeth Woodville “took Sanctuary,” as they said in those days, and how Edward V was born while she was at Westminster. The Abbey, like many other great religious houses, had the right of Sanctuary. That is to say, people who took refuge there could not be carried off to prison, or injured in any way. It was considered an awful thing to kill any one who was in Sanctuary. In the rough and cruel times of the Middle Ages it was perhaps a good thing for people to have such a refuge, and no doubt many helpless and innocent persons were then saved from violence and injustice. But, as might be expected, many bad people used to fly into Sanctuary, and as time went on this became a great abuse. Queen Elizabeth took away some of the privileges of Sanctuary, and in James I’s reign it was done away with altogether.

The actual Sanctuary Tower, which was a square Norman fortress, stood very much where Westminster Hospital now stands. Close to this tower there was a belfry, where some famous bells used to hang.

Near the Sanctuary Tower was the old Gatehouse, or prison, of the monastery. It was in this Gatehouse that Sir Walter Raleigh spent the last night of his life, and other well-known people were imprisoned there, such as John Hampden, and Richard Lovelace, the Cavalier poet.

CHAPTER XII
SOME OF THE ABBOTS

“It is no small thing to dwell in monasteries, or in a congregation, and to live there without complaint, and to persevere faithfully even unto death.”

(The Imitation of Christ.)

The name of Abbot Edwyn, who was the first Abbot to rule over the Confessor’s newly founded monastery, leads us on to think of some few others among the Abbots who played a part in English history. We may begin by mentioning the name of Abbot Gilbert Crispin, a Norman, who was Abbot during the time of the Norman Kings, from 1085 to 1117. He had been a monk at the famous monastery of Bec in Normandy, and was a pupil of St. Anselm and of Lanfranc. Crispin was a learned man, and ruled the Abbey during a stormy time in English history. William Rufus seems to have had a great regard for him, and for the love he bore him he was kinder to the Westminster monks than to many others. It was while Crispin was Abbot that the Confessor’s tomb was first opened.

In his time, too, Henry I’s marriage with the Saxon princess, Matilda, took place, and on the same day, 11th November 1100, Matilda’s Coronation by Archbishop Anselm.

Two of the Abbots in the early Plantagenet times obtained from the Pope the right to wear a mitre and other outward marks of dignity. In later days the “mitred Abbot” of Westminster sate in the House of Lords, next after the Bishops. In Henry III’s reign the Abbey was made independent of the Bishop of London, and it keeps that independent position down to our own day.

Abbot Berkyng, who was a great friend and adviser of Henry III, was one of the people who signed Magna Charta. He was a Privy Councillor, and finally Lord Treasurer. He was also one of the Lords Justices of the kingdom while Henry III was away at the Welsh wars in 1245. This shows us what important men the Abbots were in those days. Abbot Berkyng died in 1246, and was first buried in front of the altar of Henry III’s Lady Chapel. His body now lies in the South Ambulatory, close to the steps of Henry VII’s Chapel.

The next Abbot we will mention is Abbot Ware. His name is interesting because in 1267, while Henry III was building his new Abbey Church, Abbot Ware went on a visit to Rome, and brought back with him the materials for the wonderful mosaic pavement in the Sacrarium, and the materials for the decoration of the Confessor’s shrine. He also brought with him the Italian workmen who laid the pavement, and who made the lovely glass and gold mosaics for the shrine. It was Abbot Ware who drew up the “customs” of which we have just heard, with all kinds of rules and directions for behaviour.

We must now pass over nearly a century, and speak of one very able and energetic Abbot who did a great deal of building in the Nave, the cloisters, and elsewhere in the monastery. This was Nicholas Litlington, who was made Abbot in 1362, in succession to Abbot Langham. Abbot Langham, who was made a Cardinal by the Pope, is buried in a very fine tomb in St. Benedict’s Chapel. He left a large sum of money to the Abbey, and this money was used by Abbot Litlington for building. Litlington died in 1386, and is buried in the South Transept.

The fine rooms known as the College Hall and Jerusalem Chamber were built by Abbot Litlington somewhere about the end of Edward III’s reign, when he rebuilt the Abbot’s house. It is thought that there had probably been an earlier Jerusalem Chamber on the same site as the present one. The name is said to have been given to the room because the tapestries which hung on the walls represented scenes from the history of Jerusalem.

It has already been told how Henry IV died in this famous room, and how Shakspeare describes the scene in his play.

Another interesting bit of English history to be remembered in the Jerusalem Chamber is the banquet given to the French Ambassadors in 1624, by Lord Keeper Williams, then Dean of Westminster, in honour of Charles I’s marriage with Henrietta Maria of France. Dean Williams restored and decorated the room for this occasion, and on the cedarwood mantelpiece are small carved heads representing Charles I and his French bride.

Much important work of various kinds has been done in the Jerusalem Chamber. The Assembly of Divines held its meetings here in 1643, during the time of the Commonwealth, and drew up the Longer and Shorter Catechism, and the Confession of Faith, known as the “Westminster Confession.”

Here, too, the Revisors of the Old and New Testaments used to meet for their great work, which began in 1870.

[D. Weller.
THE JERUSALEM CHAMBER.

The Jerusalem Chamber is now used as the Chapter-House, because the actual Chapter-House still belongs to the Government, and not to the Abbey.

The College Hall, which was built by Abbot Litlington to be his refectory or dining-hall, is now used as the dining-hall for the Westminster scholars. It is a beautiful room, with long windows in the Early Perpendicular style, and a minstrels’ gallery at one end. The fireplace, or stove, is in the middle of the room, and gives it a very old-world look. The long tables in the hall are said to be made of chestnut wood from the wrecked ships of the Spanish Armada, and to have been given to the school by Queen Elizabeth.

The College Hall forms one side of the old courtyard of the “Abbot’s place” (or palace) as it was called, part of which house is now the Deanery.

Litlington’s successor, Abbot Colchester, is said to have joined in a conspiracy against Henry IV. This story was evidently accepted by Shakspeare, for in his play, King Richard II, he writes—

“The grand Conspirator, Abbot of Westminster,

With clog of conscience and sour melancholy,

Hath yielded up his body to the grave.”

There is, however, no good foundation for the story of Abbot Colchester’s conspiracy, and he lived on quietly until 1420.

Two of the Abbots of Henry VII’s reign, Abbot Esteney and Abbot Islip, did a good deal of building in the church and precincts. The great West Window was set up in Abbot Esteney’s time, and the tracery shows how entirely different the Perpendicular style of architecture is from the Early English, in which the rest of the Abbey is built. The glass of the West Window was put in much later, during the reign of George II.

In Abbot Islip’s time Henry VII’s Chapel was built, the Abbot himself laying the foundation-stone. The western towers were carried up as far as the roof, and some rooms were added to the Abbot’s house. One of these is the charming panelled room known as the Jericho Parlour.

In the Nave, just over the Dean’s entrance, is a wooden gallery, which is called the “Abbot’s Pew.” This, too, was put up by Abbot Islip. Islip also fitted up the beautiful little Chapel which is named after him, and in which he is buried. On the frieze of the Chapel are curious little carvings, representing the Abbot’s name. One is an eye, with a hand holding a branch, or slip: I-slip. Another is a man slipping from the branch of a tree: “I slip.” A little design like this is properly called a “rebus,” and there are many of them to be found on tombs erected about that time.

In the Chantry above Islip’s Chapel are the wax effigies, about which we have already read.

The last Abbot, John Feckenham, who was appointed in Mary Tudor’s time, had suffered much for his religion during the reign of Edward VI. But in spite of having himself been persecuted he was a kind and tolerant man, and was good to the Protestants who were persecuted in Queen Mary’s time.

Abbot Feckenham went to visit Lady Jane Grey in prison, and was with her on the scaffold, but he could not persuade her to give up her Protestant form of faith.

It was Abbot Feckenham who restored the Confessor’s shrine after it had been all dismantled and partially destroyed in the reign of Henry VIII.

The funeral of Anne of Cleves took place in Feckenham’s time. Anne had become a Roman Catholic. She died at Chelsea in 1557, and was buried with great state by Queen Mary’s order.

On 24th December 1558, Abbot Feckenham must have taken part in the last royal funeral service held in the Abbey according to the Roman Catholic rite. This was the service ordered by Queen Elizabeth on the death of the Emperor Charles V, who was Queen Mary’s father-in-law.

Feckenham quite refused to obey Queen Elizabeth’s laws concerning Church matters, although Elizabeth seems to have been very kindly disposed towards him.

When the monastery was dissolved in 1559 the Abbot and some of the monks were sent to the Tower, and Feckenham lived on for twenty-five years in a kind of captivity, though he did not remain at the Tower. He was a very good man: kind to the poor and suffering, and steadfast to what he believed to be right. Since his day the Abbey has been governed by a Dean and Chapter, and the monastic life has ended.

CHAPTER XIII
WESTMINSTER SCHOOL

“Enflamed with the study of learning, and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.”

Milton (Tract on Education).

Before we say farewell to the Abbey and its story altogether we must speak of one very important part of it, and one that ought to be specially interesting to all English children, namely, the ancient and famous Westminster School.

The history of the School takes us back really to Saxon times, as we know that there was a school belonging to the monastery in the Confessor’s days, and it may have been there even earlier than that. There is a charming little story of that old convent school in the eleventh century. The Abbot of Croyland used to tell of the kindness he received from the Lady Editha, wife of the Confessor, when he was a boy at the monk’s school in the cloisters. When she met him coming from school, Editha would question him about his studies, and then, he says: “She would always present me with three or four pieces of money, which were counted out to me by her handmaiden, and then send me to the royal larder to refresh myself.”

The School seems to have been what was called a “Grammar School,” which really meant that Latin was taught there, for in those old days they used to speak of Latin as “grammar.” The school was probably a place of general education, and not intended only for boys who were going to become monks. But, of course, when speaking of Westminster School it must be remembered that it owes its present form, and its wide influence and prosperity, to its foundation by two of the Tudor sovereigns, King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth.

In 1540, Henry VIII established the School with two masters and forty scholars. There were probably other boys as well. The School went on and flourished during the reigns of Edward VI and Mary, and then, when the monastery was finally dissolved, it was re-established by Queen Elizabeth in 1560. Queen Elizabeth kept very much to her father’s plan, and arranged for a Headmaster, an undermaster, and forty scholars, who are called “King’s scholars” or “Queen’s scholars,” according to whether the sovereign is a King or a Queen. It was settled that the School was to be part of the Collegiate Foundation of St. Peter in Westminster, and the Dean was to be head of the school, just as he was of the rest of the College.

As we already know, the boys dined, as now, in Abbot Litlington’s Refectory, the present College Hall. The old granary of the monastery, which stood in the middle of what is now Dean’s Yard, was fitted up as their dormitory, and there also they used to do what a modern boy would call his “home-work.” This arrangement was made for them by the first Dean of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, Dr. William Bill.

In those old days there must have been a good deal of what we should call hardship, for nearly every one now lives a much more comfortable life than people did in the Elizabethan times.

The Great School is part of what used to be the monks’ dormitory. It is a splendid room, first built in the Norman days, and then altered or rebuilt in the fourteenth century. It stands on a lower storey which is part of the Norman buildings. The School was very well restored not many years ago. Besides the Great School there are, of course, many class-rooms.

The King’s scholars now live in a fine building which was begun in Dean Atterbury’s time, and designed by Sir Christopher Wren. It is here that the famous “Westminster Play” is acted every year, about Christmas time. The performance of this Latin play is a very old custom, and probably began in the time of Queen Elizabeth. If any member of the Royal Family has died during the year the play is not given.

Another curious old custom in the school is the tossing of the pancake on Shrove Tuesday. This takes place in the Great School. In former days, when classes were held in the Great School, there used to be a curtain hung right across, to divide the upper and lower schools. This curtain hung from an iron rod, which still remains, although the curtain has gone. Every Shrove Tuesday the college cook has to bring a very solid sort of pancake and throw it over this high bar. No doubt he has to practise a good deal before he can do it properly, and he does not always throw it over the first time. The boys scramble to catch it, and if any boy gets the whole pancake the Dean’s Verger leads him to the Dean, who gives him a guinea.

[W. Rice, F.R.P.S.
LITTLE DEAN’S YARD—ENTRANCE TO GREAT SCHOOL.

In old days the whole school might join in the scramble, and rather a dangerous one it was. Now it has been arranged that only a certain number of boys may struggle for the pancake, these boys being chosen from various forms.

Some of the most celebrated of the Westminster scholars have graves or monuments in the Abbey, and thus are doubly connected with Westminster. A few of these have already been mentioned, as, for example, Ben Jonson, the famous poet and dramatist, and the poets Abraham Cowley, George Herbert, John Dryden, William Cowper, and Robert Southey.

Matthew Prior, a poet much admired in his own day, was also a Westminster scholar. He died in 1721, and was buried near Spenser. His monument is near Poets’ Corner door.

Barton Booth, a well-known actor in the eighteenth century, was at Westminster school. He died in 1733, and his widow put up a monument to him in Poets’ Corner many years afterwards. Two streets in Westminster are named in memory of him. One of these is Barton street, and the other is Cowley street, called after Booth’s burial-place at Cowley, in Middlesex. Both these streets are close to the Abbey precincts.

Most people have heard of the famous Headmaster of Westminster in the seventeenth century, Dr. Richard Busby. He was Headmaster during the troublous times of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, and was still headmaster in the reigns of Charles II and James II. He was a very remarkable man, and had many distinguished pupils. He was celebrated both for scholarship and for severity.

It is told of Dr. Busby that on one occasion, when Charles II paid an unexpected visit to the School, he would not take off his hat in the King’s presence, for fear that if he did so the boys might think less of his authority.

Dr. Busby died in 1695, and was buried in the South Transept. His monument is very interesting, partly on account of the pathetic figure of Busby and the fine expression of the face.

One of his remarkable pupils is buried near him, and the monuments are quite close to one another. This pupil was Dr. Robert South, a great preacher, and Prebendary of Westminster. South could remember seeing Cromwell when he first appeared in Parliament, and heard Charles I prayed for in the Abbey on the very day of his death, “that black and eternally infamous day of the King’s murder.” Dr. South died in 1716.

There was always a great deal of Royalist feeling in the School, even all through the Commonwealth time, and a leading Independent went so far as to say that it would never be well with the nation until the School was suppressed, so strongly did the boys take the Royalist side.

Dean Atterbury, of whom we have already heard, was a Westminster scholar, and a pupil of Dr. Busby. As we know, he took a great part in the plots to bring back James II’s son, some of which plots went on in a secret chamber in the Deanery itself.

Richard Hakluyt, author of the Voyages and Travels; Warren Hastings, of Indian fame; and the well-known statesman, Lord John Russell, all formerly Westminster boys, have already been mentioned. In Statesmen’s Corner is the large monument of Lord Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice of England in 1756. He was also a Westminster scholar, and desired to be buried in the Abbey, “from the love which he bore to the place of his early education.” He died in 1793.

Charles Wesley and his elder brother Samuel were both educated at Westminster School. The memorial to John and Charles Wesley in the South Choir aisle has already been described. It is interesting to remember that Westminster School was in this way directly connected with one of the most important religious movements in England during the eighteenth century.

Among the great soldiers who were at Westminster School were Lord Lucan, the Marquis of Anglesey, and Lord Raglan. John Locke, the philosopher, Sir Christopher Wren, the great architect, and Edward Gibbon, author of the famous Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, were also Westminster boys.

And now our travels through the centuries and round the Abbey, with all its memories, must end. We have seen how that little Church on Thorney Isle has gradually grown into this stately Abbey, the home of all the great Anglo-Saxon race. We have seen too, at the same time, how the little English kingdom of the early Saxon days has expanded into a world-wide empire. It is for the children of Great Britain to see that the Abbey shall stand, not only for noble memories, but also for high hopes,—hopes, not only of riches and worldly success, but of the righteousness that exalteth a nation.

Printed by Morrison & Gibb Limited, Edinburgh

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.