The Children's Story of Westminster Abbey

by G. E. Troutbeck

The famous House of Tudor, in which the Plantagenet lines of York and Lancaster were united, is in many ways very closely connected with the Abbey. All the Tudor sovereigns, except one, are buried in the Abbey. But this is not all, for the Abbey and the School owe their present establishment to Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth, as we shall find later on.

It was in the Tudor times that modern England really began, and most of the great changes that took place in the Church and the nation at that time are faithfully reflected in the Abbey history. We can read them there, just as we can read the story of the Norman Conquest, of the Conquest of Scotland, or of the French Wars.

We ought also to look beyond our own country, and remember what was going on in other parts of the world. While the Tudors were reigning in England, Christopher Columbus discovered America, and the Portuguese navigator, Vasco de Gama, sailed round the Cape of Good Hope, thus finding a new way to the East Indies. These two discoveries made a great change in the history of the world, and some of the monuments in the Abbey will speak to us of the difference which those discoveries made to England.

When we speak of the Tudors we naturally think first of King Henry VII, who built the beautiful chapel at the eastern end of the Abbey, directing that it should be the burial-place of himself and his family.

The foundation of the Chapel has an interesting history connected with the House of Lancaster. Through his mother, Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII descended from John of Gaunt, and therefore from Edward III, and he was very anxious that people should remember this. Partly for that reason, he wanted very much to bring the body of Henry VI from Windsor, and to bury it in the new, splendid chapel at Westminster. He also wished the Pope to declare Henry VI to be a saint; and indeed, many people at that time thought him to be so. However, it happened that the body of Henry VI was never moved from Windsor after all, but there was at that time an altar to his memory in Henry VII’s Chapel.

[D. Weller.
MARGARET BEAUFORT, COUNTESS OF RICHMOND, AND MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

The great gates and the sculptured ornament of the Chapel are in themselves quite a lesson in English history. On the gates and on the walls we see the famous Tudor Roses, which are the red and white roses of Lancaster and York united. There is also the Portcullis of the Beaufort Castle in Anjou, which castle had belonged to Edmund Crouchback, and descended through him to John of Gaunt. Again, we see the crown caught in a bush on Bosworth Field, and two Yorkist badges, the Rose in the Sun, and the Falcon on the Fetterlock. On the gates, too, we find the daisy or “Marguérite,” the name-flower of Henry VII’s mother, the Lady Margaret. Last, but not least, we find the Red Dragon of the last British King, Cadwallader, from whom Henry VII claimed to descend, reminding us that the Tudors boasted of descent from the ancient British stock,—from King Arthur and Llewellyn. Round the Chapel, in the graceful little niches that adorn the walls, are statues of angels and saints. Among them are the Apostles, some of the martyrs, and also the royal saints of Britain, St. Edward, St. Edmund, St. Oswald, and St. Margaret of Scotland.

The first person to be buried in Henry VII’s Chapel was his wife, Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV. She died in 1503, and was first buried in one of the side Chapels, until her husband’s new Chapel was ready.

In 1509, Henry VII died, and was buried in the middle of the nave of his Chapel. The funeral ceremony was very splendid, and over his grave rises one of the most magnificent tombs in the whole Abbey. The monument itself was made by the great Florentine sculptor, Torrigiano, who was a fellow-student and rival of Michael Angelo. We are told that Torrigiano broke Michael Angelo’s nose in a fight they had at Florence. At any rate, he knew how to design a beautiful monument.