"Toll, toll, for the brave—
Brave Kempenfeldt is gone;
His last sea-fight is fought;
His work of glory done.
His sword was in its sheath,
His fingers held the pen,
When Kempenfeldt went down,
With twice four hundred men."—
TOMB OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS.
The Chapel of Edward the Confessor, who founded the Abbey, is full of dead Kings and Queens, so full that a poet has written of the commingled Royal dust that is here reposing:
"Think how many royal bones,
Sleep within these heaps of stones.
Here they lie, had realms and lands,
Who now want strength to lift their hands.
Where, from their pulpit sealed with dust,
They preach, 'In greatness is no trust!'
Here's an acre, sown indeed,
With the richest, royalest seed,
That the earth did e'er suck in,
Since the first man died for sin."
INTERMENTS DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.
Here lies buried Edward the Confessor, before whose tomb was kept continually burning a silver lamp. On one side stood an image of the Virgin, in silver, adorned with two jewels of immense value, presented by Eleanor, Queen to Henry III; on the other side stood an image of the Virgin, carved in ivory, presented by Thomas a-Becket. Edward I offered the Scotch regalia and the antique stone on which the Kings of Scotland were crowned at Scone; this latter relic is still preserved. This shrine was composed of various colored stones, in Mosaic work; but it is so dilapidated that very little idea can be formed of its original beauty and grandeur.
Queen Editha, Queen Maud, Edward I, Henry III, Elizabeth Tudor, daughter of Henry VII, Queen Eleanor, Henry V, the victor of Agincourt, Queen Phillippa, Edward III—with his sword, seven feet long and weighing eighteen pounds, together with his enormous shield, hanging to his tomb,—Margaret of York, Richard II, and a host of others, are here buried. Their tombs are of magnificent workmanship, with full length figures lying recumbent and their hands clasped in prayer.
The Abbots and Priors of the abbey are buried in the walks of the Cloisters, and I stood on three of these mural slabs, and looked at the worn, full length effigies of the dead abbots, in full abbatical robes, ring on finger, mitre on head, and crozier in hand, their Latinized names almost worn away by the footsteps of the hundreds of thousands of men and women who had paced the Cloisters since they were interred, seven hundred years ago. And yet these tombs in Westminster Cloisters are but as yesterday, when compared with the Pyramids of Egypt, or a geological formation.