In 1556, Queen Mary being on the throne, the Church of Westminster again became an abbey by order of the Queen, and John Feckenham was made abbot of Westminster. He was held in general esteem for his learning, charity, and piety, and he was continually engaged in doing good offices for the Protestants who suffered by the laws of the realm for their faith. Three years after, Mary having died, the monastery was again suppressed by order of Queen Elizabeth, and the abbot and monks were again turned out of the abbey. In 1560 the abbey, by enactment, was made a collegiate church, which it remains to this day, and was endowed with the lands which had belonged to the abbot and monastery. Since that time Westminster Abbey has been governed by a dean and chapter, and has had thirty-three deans in regular succession of the Protestant faith.
The Abbey has the following large clerical staff for its government:
One Dean, eight Prebendaries, one of whom is a Lord, and another a Bishop; a sub-Dean, an Archdeacon, a Precentor, five minor Canons, eleven Lay Clerks, two Sacrists, a Dean's Verger, a Prebendary's Verger, a High Steward, who is a Duke, a Deputy High Steward, a Coroner, a High Bailiff, Searcher and Bailiff of the Sanctuary, a High Constable, a Head Master of Westminster School, Second Master, forty Queen's Scholars on the Foundation, a Steward of the Manorial Court, two Joint Receiver's General, a Chapter Clerk and Registrar, an Auditor, a Commissory and Official Principal, a Registrar of the Consistory Court, and a Deputy Registrar, an Organist and Master of the Choristers, twelve Almsmen, four Bell-ringers, two Organ-blowers, an Abbey Surveyor, a Clerk of the Works, a Beadle of the Sanctuary, and last of all a College Porter and four Probationary Choristers, in all a staff of eighty persons, a very slight reduction upon the old administration of the Abbots of Westminster. These different office holders, in all, receive salaries of about one hundred thousand pounds a year, and the cost of the school, and the repairs of the abbey, make the sundries amount to about twenty thousand pounds a year additional.
TOMB OF SHAKESPEARE.
In the general plunder of monasteries and church property, which distinguished the reign of Henry VIII, Westminster Abbey suffered severely, but it was still worse treated by the Puritans in the great civil war, the abbey being used as a barrack for the soldiers, by the Parliament, who wantonly destroyed many of the tombs and monuments that adorned the various chapels, the altars in the chapels dedicated to the different saints being thrown down, the images broken, and the richly stained windows shattered into fragments. The restoration of the edifice was intrusted to Sir Christopher Wren, who built St. Paul's, but he made a very botching piece of work in the additions which he gave to the towers at the west end.
The imitation of the Gothic style in Wren's additions are wretched and out of place in such an edifice as the Abbey. The front of the Abbey has no columns or pierced works of carving, to which the Gothic style owes so much of its lightness and elegance, and there is a mixture of ornamentation such as the broken scrolls, masques, and festoons over the grand entrance, which gives it a very heavy, flat appearance.
