The Children's Story of Westminster Abbey

by G. E. Troutbeck

II

We must now turn to think of a very different state of things and of very different people, namely, the Parliamentarian Government and the great men of the Commonwealth. Between the years 1653 and 1660 the Parliamentarian Party made great changes in the government and services of the Abbey, and the Presbyterian form of worship was established. Again, as at the time of Henry VIII, various ornaments and other possessions of the church were removed and sold.

Archbishop Laud, one of the chief advisors of Charles I, and a great enemy of the Puritans, was at one time Prebendary of Westminster, and had great influence and authority in the Abbey while he was one of the Chapter. In his old age Archbishop Laud was imprisoned for three years, and, sad to say, he was finally executed by order of the Long Parliament.

Many of the famous Parliamentary soldiers and statesmen were buried in the Abbey, as they most of them certainly deserved to be. Whether we like all they did or not, we grieve to think that the bones of these great Englishmen were nearly all taken out of their graves at the time of the Stuart Restoration, and buried in a large pit outside the Abbey walls. To us it seems a mean and unworthy revenge, but perhaps we can hardly understand how angry the Royalists were.

We see, however, that from this time onward it was no longer thought necessary that people must be of royal or noble birth in order to deserve a grave in the Abbey. Any man who had done any especial service to his country and nation, whether in peace or war, was henceforward thought worthy of a place there, and this is just what helps to make the Abbey one of the most interesting places in the world.

The chief man of the Parliamentary party to be buried in the Abbey was, of course, Oliver Cromwell himself. He died in 1658, and was buried in Henry VII’s Chapel. Although he was only called Lord Protector, his funeral was very stately, like that of a sovereign. It seems to us a curious thing that Cromwell should have wished that he and his family should be buried in this Chapel, among the royal Tudors and Stuarts, but so it was.

Henry Ireton, son-in-law of Cromwell, and deputy for the Protector in Ireland, died in 1651, and was buried in the Cromwell vault in Henry VII’s Chapel.

John Bradshaw, President of the Council that condemned Charles I to death, died in 1659, and was also buried in the Cromwell vault. Bradshaw had lived for some time at Westminster, the Deanery having been leased to him. An old story says that his ghost used to haunt part of the Triforium.

These three men, Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, were always looked upon as the chief regicides, and at the Restoration their bodies were not only dug up, but they were hanged at Tyburn and buried beneath the gallows. The heads were struck off by the executioner, and put up on poles outside Westminster Hall.

Among other well-known names of the Commonwealth times are John Pym and William Strode, who are buried close to one another in the North Ambulatory. Pym was the famous leader of the popular party in the Long Parliament. He died in 1643. Strode was one of the five members whom Charles I demanded to have given up to him when he came to the House of Commons with an armed force in 1641–42.