It may not be uninteresting here to add that, in the exploration to which this work gave opportunity, there were discovered on the north side of the sacrarem and lower dais, about three feet below the pavement, the bases of three piers which were left here of the old Abbey of the Confessor. They are of early Norman character, and, from their position, shew that that early structure was nearly equal in size to the present structure of Henry the Third. They possess such great interest that means have been adopted so to cover them with the pavement that they can be uncovered and exposed to view.
On the sides of the altar are the curious and ancient monuments of King Sebert; Ann of Cleves, Henry the Eighth’s wife; Aveling, Countess of Lancaster; Aymer de Valence; and Edmund Crouchback. The mosaic pavement was done by Richard de Ware, Abbot of Westminster in the year 1260, who brought from Rome the stones, and workmen to set them; it is much admired; and there were letters round it in brass, which composed Latin words. The design of the figures that were in it was to represent the time the world was to last, or the primum mobile, according to the Ptolemaic system then in vogue, and was given in some verses, formerly to be read on the pavement, relating to those figures. The following explanation is given of them:—
If the reader will probably revolve all these things in his mind, he will find them plainly refer to the end of the world.
The threefold hedge is put for three years, the time a dry hedge usually stood; a dog, for three times that space, or nine years, it being taken for the time that creature usually lives; a horse, in like manner, for twenty-seven; a man, eighty-one; a hart, two hundred and forty-three; a raven, seven hundred and twenty-nine; an eagle, two thousand one hundred and eighty-seven; a great whale, six thousand five hundred and sixty-one; the world, nineteen thousand six hundred and eighty-three; each succeeding figure giving a term of years imagined to be the time of their continuance, three times as much as that before it.
In the last four verses, the time when the work was performed, and the parties concerned in it, are expressed; that Henry III. was at the charge; that the stones were purchased at Rome; that one Oderick was the master workman; and that the Abbot of Westminster, who procured the materials, had the care of the work.
The solemn offices of crowning and enthroning the sovereigns of England takes place in the centre of the sacrarium, and beneath the lantern is erected the throne at which the peers do homage. When the crowns are put on, the peers and peeresses put on their coronets, and a signal is given from the top of the Abbey for the Tower guns to fire at the same instant.
To take an advantageous view of the inside, you must go to the west door, between the towers; and the whole body of the church opens itself at once to your eye, which cannot but fill the mind of every beholder with the awful solemnity of the place, caused by the loftiness of the roof, and the happy disposition of the lights and of that noble range of pillars, by which the whole building is supported. The pillars terminate towards the east by a sweep, thereby enclosing the Chapel of Edward the Confessor in a kind of semicircle, and excluding all the rest. On the arches of the pillars are galleries of double columns, fifteen feet wide, covering the side aisles, and lighted by a middle range of windows, over which there is an upper range of larger windows: by these and the under range, with the four capital windows, the whole fabric is so admirably lighted, that the spectator is never incommoded by darkness, nor dazzled with glare.