Henry, Prince of Wales, eldest son of James I., born Feb. 19, 1593, and after giving great promise of a blessing to his country, died of a fever at St. James’s palace, Nov. 6, 1612, in the 19th year of his age, and was buried by the side of his grandmother.
In the same tomb are the remains of Arabella Stewart, four children of Charles I.: Elizabeth of Bohemia, daughter of James I.; Prince Rupert her son; Ann Hyde, first wife of James II., and ten of his infant children; William, Duke of Gloucester, son of Ann, and seventeen of her infant children.
The next is the monument of Margaret, Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII., by Edmund Tudor, son of Owen ap Tudor, who married the widow of Henry V. of England, and daughter of Charles VI. of France. This lady was afterwards married to Humphrey Stafford, a younger son of Humphrey, Duke of Buckingham, and lastly, to Thomas Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby; but by the two last had no children. The inscription mentions the charities of this excellent Princess; such as giving a salary to two monks of Westminster; founding a grammar-school at Wimbourne, and two colleges, one to Christ, the other to St. John his disciple, at Cambridge. Of this lady’s bounty, forty poor women partake every Saturday afternoon, in the College Hall; each of them has twopence, one pound and a half of beef, and a fourpenny loaf of bread. She died in July, 1509, in the reign of her grandson, Henry VIII.—Torrigiano, sculptor.
Opposite is a figure to the memory of Lady Walpole, with the following inscription:—“To the memory of Catherine, Lady Walpole, eldest daughter of John Shorter, Esq., of Bybrook, in Kent, and first wife of Sir Robert Walpole, afterwards Earl of Orford, Horace, her youngest son, consecrated this monument. She had beauty and wit, without vice or vanity, and cultivated the arts without affectation: she was devout, though without bigotry to any sect; and was without prejudice to any party, though the wife of a minister, whose power she esteemed but when she could employ it to benefit the miserable, or to reward the meritorious; she loved a private life, though born to shine in public: and was an ornament to Courts, untainted by them. She died August the 20th, 1737.”—Valory, sculptor.
At the end, a monument to the memories of George Monck, and Christopher, his son, both Dukes of Albemarle; also, Elizabeth, Duchess Dowager of Albemarle and Montague, relict of Christopher. George Monck, Duke of Albemarle, was younger son of Sir Thomas Monck, born at Potheridge, Devon, December 6, 1608. He entered the army as a volunteer in 1625, under Sir Richard Grenville. At the death of Cromwell he took an active part in the restoration of Charles II., for which he was loaded with honours, and died in the esteem of his sovereign, in 1670, in the sixty-second year of his age.—Scheemakers, sculptor.
At this end is the Royal Vault, as it is called, in which are deposited the remains of Charles II., who died February 2, 1685; William III., who died March 8, 1702, and Queen Mary, his consort, who died December 28, 1694; Queen Anne, died August 1, 1714; and Prince George, who died Oct. 28, 1708.
THE NAVE.
From this aisle you enter the nave of the Chapel, the stone ceiling of which is curious, and the gates are brass. Here were installed, with great ceremony, the Knights of the most Honourable Order of the Bath, which order was revived in the reign of George I., in 1725. In their stalls are placed brass plates of their arms, &c., and over them hang their banners, swords, and helmets. Under the stalls are seats for the esquires; each Knight has three, whose arms are engraven on brass plates. The small shelving stool which the seats of the stalls form when turned up is called a miserere. On these the monks and canons of ancient times, with the assistance of their elbows on the upper part of the stalls, half supported themselves during certain parts of their long offices, not to be obliged always to stand or kneel. It is so contrived, that if the body became supine by sleep, it naturally fell down, and the person who rested upon it was thrown forward on the middle of the choir.
In the centre, between the Knights’ stalls, is the Royal Vault, where their Majesties George II. and Queen Caroline are buried; the Prince and Princess of Wales, two Dukes of Cumberland, the Duke of York, Prince Frederick William, the Princesses Amelia, Caroline, Elizabeth, Louisa, Anne; and the two infant Princes, Alfred and Octavius, children of George III., were removed in January, 1820, to the new royal vault at Windsor.
What is chiefly to be admired here, as well for antiquity as fine workmanship, is the magnificent tomb of Henry VII. and Elizabeth his Queen, the last of the house of York who wore the English crown. This tomb stands in the body of the Chapel, enclosed in a curious chantry of cast brass, most admirably designed and executed, and ornamented with statues, of which those only of St. George, St. James, St. Bartholomew, and St. Edward, are now remaining. Within it are the effigies of the Royal pair, in their robes of state, lying close to each other, on a tomb of black marble, the head whereof is supported by a red dragon, the ensign of Cadwallader, the last King of the Britons, from whom Henry VII. was fond of tracing his descent, and the foot by an angel. There are likewise other devices alluding to his family and alliances; such as portcullises, signifying his relation to the Beauforts by his mother’s side; roses twisted and crowned, in memory of the union of the two Royal Houses of York and Lancaster. There are six compartments, three on the north, and as many on the south side of its base. The first compartment on the south side contains the figures of the Virgin Mary with our Lord in her arms, and that of the Archangel St. Michael. The figures in the scales, though now mutilated, were meant for personal representations of moral good and evil; the Saint is weighing them in his balance; the good preponderates; but the Devil, who is represented by the figure under his feet, is reaching with one of his clawed feet at the scale which contains the figure of Evil, in order, by the addition of his own force, to render that the heaviest. The first figure in the second compartment is doubtless intended for St. John the Baptist, he having a book in his left hand, with an Agnus Dei impressed upon it. The other is a figure of St. John the Evangelist, and the figure of the eagle. The first figure of the third compartment is intended for St. George; the other figure, from the pig’s head visible near him, the frequent symbol by which he is denoted, is intended for St. Anthony of Vienna. The first figure in the fourth compartment, north side, is meant for Mary Magdalen, supposing her to hold the box of ointment. The other figure represents St. Barbara, who was the daughter of a Pagan, and dwelt with her father in a certain tower. To this tower adjoined a garden, in which the father determined to build a bath, with the necessary accommodation of rooms, and therein to make windows to the number of two only. Being about to undertake a journey, he left his instructions with the artificers, which his daughter presumed to vary, by directing them instead of two to make three. Upon her father’s return, he inquired into the reason of this deviation from his orders; and being told that in allusion to three persons of the Holy Trinity his daughter had directed it, he found that she was become a convert to Christianity; and being exasperated thereat, stimulated the Emperor to a persecution of the Christians, in which she became a martyr to the faith. The first figure in the fifth compartment is intended for St. Christopher, bearing our Saviour upon his shoulder. The other figure is thought to be St. Anne. In the sixth and last compartment, the first figure is intended for King Edward the Confessor; the other figure is a Benedictine Monk. Henry VII. died April 21st, 1509, and his Queen, February 11th, 1502.—The work of Torrigiano.