The Children's Story of Westminster Abbey

by G. E. Troutbeck

I

The first of the Stuart family to be laid to rest in the Abbey was Margaret, Countess of Lennox, the mother of Lord Darnley. Margaret was the daughter of the Earl of Angus and of Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII. Her epitaph tells us that she “had to her great-grandfather, King Edward IV; to her grandfather, King Henry VII; to her uncle, King Henry VIII; to her cousin-german, King Edward VI; to her brother, King James V of Scotland; to her son (Darnley), King Henry I of Scotland; to her grandchild, King James VI (of Scotland) and I (of England).” This epitaph is again an English history lesson in itself, if we think over it carefully. Margaret’s mother was first married to King James IV of Scotland, and on his death she married the Earl of Angus. Margaret Lennox was thus half-sister to James V of Scotland, and she therefore was a link between the English and Scottish royal houses. She married Matthew Stuart, Earl of Lennox. Her eldest son, Lord Darnley, married Mary, Queen of Scots, and was called King. Her second son was Charles Stuart, father of the Lady Arabella, of whom we hear so much in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. Margaret died in 1578, and is buried in the south aisle of Henry VII’s Chapel, where she has a very fine tomb. Round the tomb are the kneeling figures of her children, Lord Darnley and Charles Stuart among them. Lord Darnley is represented wearing a royal robe, and there are the broken remains of a crown over his head. Charles Stuart is buried here with his mother.

The chief and most interesting Stuart monument in the Abbey is that of Mary, Queen of Scots. This monument is also in the south aisle of Henry VII’s Chapel, and stands above the great Stuart vault, where so many of the Stuart family rest. After Mary’s execution at Fotheringay in 1587, Queen Elizabeth ordered her body to be solemnly buried in Peterborough Cathedral. But when James I came to the throne he commanded that his mother’s remains should be brought to Westminster, and buried in the Abbey. He also said that she was to have a monument equal to that of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth, and that the same honour should be paid to her. A copy of the warrant of James I for the removal of his mother’s body hangs on the wall near her tomb. Queen Mary was buried at Westminster in 1612, and the splendid monument we now see was erected to her. It is very like Queen Elizabeth’s, only larger and more costly. Her tomb in the Abbey was at one time almost a place of pilgrimage.

In 1607, two little princesses, Mary and Sophia, daughters of James I, died, and were buried near Queen Elizabeth, in the north aisle of Henry VII’s Chapel. Their tombs are also close to the spot where the bones of Edward V and Richard Duke of York were afterwards placed. Dean Stanley used to call this corner of Henry VII’s Chapel “Innocents’ Corner,” because these four children are buried here. Princess Mary was the first of James I’s children born in England, and was therefore the first “Princess of Great Britain.” She was only two and a half years old when she died, and seemed to be wonderfully quick of understanding. When she was dying she kept saying: “I go, I go, away I go.”

The baby Princess Sophia, named after her grandmother, the Queen of Denmark, is buried in her pretty cradle-tomb, which is one of the best known in the Abbey. A few years later the eldest brother of these two little girls, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, died, and was buried in the same vault as his grandmother, Mary, Queen of Scots. There was great grief in the country at the death of this promising young prince, who was especially the hope of the Puritan party.

Arabella Stuart, who had such a troubled life, and who was always being suspected of wishing and trying to be made Queen of England, died in 1615, and was buried in the great Stuart vault. Her coffin was placed on the top of the coffin of Mary, Queen of Scots.

Queen Anne of Denmark, wife of James I, died in 1619, and is buried in the central aisle of Henry VII’s Chapel, not far from the tomb of Henry VII himself.

King James the First, who died in 1625, is not buried with any of his own Stuart family, but in the great Tudor vault where Henry VII and Elizabeth of York lie. It is supposed that James wished this because the Stuarts claimed the English throne through the House of Tudor. When we think of these two Kings, one really a Welshman and the other a Scotchman, we remember that it was at James I’s succession that the Scottish crown was united to that of England and Wales. The United Kingdom may be said to have been begun then, although the actual formal union did not take place till long afterwards.

We should also remember that our Colonial Empire really began in James I’s reign. Sir Walter Raleigh’s settlement in Virginia had indeed been given up, but in 1607 and 1610, settlements were again made in Virginia and also in Newfoundland. And more important still, it was in James I’s reign that the celebrated “Pilgrim Fathers” sailed from Plymouth in the Mayflower and crossed to America. They landed in Massachusetts Bay, and called their first settlement New Plymouth.

In 1629, the infant Prince Charles, eldest child of Charles I, was buried in the Stuart vault, and in 1640, another child of Charles I, the little Princess Anne, was laid there also. Soon after her funeral, the troublous days began, and it was not long before the Abbey passed into Cromwell’s hands.