Every monastery had to have its school, so the monks of St. Peter’s started theirs—the forerunner of the Westminster School or St. Peter’s College founded by Queen Elizabeth in 1560. Ben Jonson went to school here, and so did George Herbert and Dryden and Cowper and Southey, Hakluyt of Voyages fame, and Wren and Locke and Warren Hastings and many other famous men I do not know, including Prior.
The school sergeant at the lodge will show the Edward III. College Hall, with its minstrel gallery and oaken tables made from the beams of the Spanish Armada. Forty years ago the school annexed Ashburnham House, another interesting unnoticed corner that can be seen any Saturday afternoon, on application to the hall porter. This charming house was built in the seventeenth century by Webb, a famous disciple of Inigo Jones. Alas, his celebrated staircase is given over to dust and spiders, and only restored to a semblance of its former beauty on state occasions, such as Founders’ Day in November or at Christmas, when the boys perform their well-known Latin plays.
There are many interesting things about the school and the buildings that I leave untold, so go and see for yourself this quiet backwater of London.
St. Margaret’s Church
“That, if I chance to hold my peace,
These stones to praise Thee may not cease.”
George Herbert.
St. Margaret’s Church, open till four except on a Saturday, is interesting not only for its architectural beauty, but for its many associations, and since 1916 it has had a deepened interest for the British Dominions beyond the Seas, as it was then created their parish church.
Pepys, who simply refuses to be left out of anything, was married here to his pretty wife, of whom he was so proud that she need not have been jealous of Mrs. Knipp.
In the chancel lies Sir Walter Raleigh, buried in St. Margaret’s after his execution in front of Westminster Palace in 1618. Admiral Blake lies in the churchyard, and there is a fine window in his honour on the north side.
The celebrated east window has had a career that is not without its comic side. It was originally sent over to England by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain as a betrothal gift to Prince Arthur, the eldest son of Henry VII., with whom they had arranged the marriage of their daughter Catherine.
Before the window arrived the bridegroom had died, and Henry VIII., who married the bride, did not want a window with a portrait of Prince Arthur and Catherine. He sent it to Waltham Abbey, and from that time its history is a moving one.