King Richard III is buried at Leicester, and after him came the poor little Edward V, who, with his brother, Richard Duke of York, was murdered in the Tower. Their bones remained at the Tower until the reign of Charles II, when they were found under a staircase. Charles II commanded that they should be brought to the Abbey, and they are placed in a tomb in Henry VII’s Chapel. Strangely enough, both these little princes are closely connected with Westminster. In 1470, Queen Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward IV, had taken refuge in the Sanctuary at Westminster. Nobody could dare to hurt any one who had taken sanctuary, and so the Queen felt she was safe in that time of war and trouble. Here Edward V was born. He was baptized in the Abbey, and the Abbot of Westminster was one of his godfathers.
Then later on, after Edward IV’s death, when Richard III was trying to get the crown for himself, Elizabeth Woodville again took shelter in the Sanctuary at Westminster, and brought her five daughters and her second son, the little Richard Duke of York. Edward V was already in the Tower. Richard III sent to Westminster, and insisted that his young nephew should be allowed to join Edward in the Tower. He dared not take him out of Sanctuary by force, but he made the Archbishop of Canterbury persuade the poor Queen to let the boy go. She was dreadfully grieved, and tried all she could to keep her son safely with her, but in vain. They parted with tears, and she never saw him again.
A little daughter of Edward IV, Margaret Plantagenet, is buried in a tiny tomb in the Confessor’s Chapel. In the Islip Chapel is the grave of Anne Mowbray, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. She was betrothed to Richard Duke of York when they were both little children of only five years old.
Anne Neville, the unhappy wife of Richard III, and daughter of Warwick “the Kingmaker,” lies in a forgotten grave in the South Ambulatory.
We see, then, how much there is in the Abbey to remind us of the Houses of Lancaster and York, and of the Wars of the Roses, besides the great wars in France.
But further, we shall now find that it was becoming more and more the custom for the famous men of the age to be buried in the Abbey.
Richard Courtney, Bishop of Norwich, a great friend of Henry V, is buried there. He died just before the Battle of Agincourt, and was nursed by the King in his last illness. In St. Paul’s Chapel is the fine tomb of Ludovic Robsert, Lord Bourchier, who fought at Agincourt and was afterwards made the King’s Standard Bearer. Sir Humphrey Bourchier, who died fighting on the Yorkist side at the Battle of Barnet in 1471, is buried in Edmund’s Chapel. Sir Thomas Vaughan, Treasurer to Edward IV and Chamberlain to Edward V, is buried in the Chapel of St. John the Baptist.
While speaking of this time in English history, we must not forget one man who did a very great and important work in the world, and who was very closely connected with the Abbey, although he is not actually buried there. This was William Caxton, the first English printer. Caxton belongs almost entirely to the Lancastrian and Yorkist times, as he was born in 1410, during the reign of Henry IV, and died in 1491, in the reign of Henry VII. About the year 1471 (the year in which Henry VI died) Caxton came to live in Westminster. He set up his printing-press in a house quite close to the Abbey, and there he worked for the last twenty years of his life. It seems that the Abbot of Westminster was greatly interested in Caxton and his work, and one of his great friends and patrons was the Lady Margaret, mother of King Henry VII. Caxton printed several books for her. Caxton is buried quite near the Abbey, in St. Margaret’s Churchyard. There is a fine stained-glass window to his memory in St. Margaret’s Church. Caxton stood on the threshhold of the modern world, and, as we realise the great changes brought about in human life by the art of printing, we may think of that window in St. Margaret’s, where Caxton is represented holding his motto: “Fiat Lux” (let there be light), while below are Tennyson’s beautiful lines:
“Thy prayer was Light, more Light while time shall last,
Thou sawest the glories growing on the night;