The Children's Story of Westminster Abbey

by G. E. Troutbeck

The first Stuart to be buried in the Abbey after the Restoration was Henry of Oatlands, Duke of Gloucester, son of Charles I. It was Henry who, when he was a little boy, promised his father that he would be torn in pieces before he would let himself be made King instead of either of his elder brothers, Charles or James. He died in 1660, to the great grief of Charles II, who had a very special love for him.

Then came a daughter of Charles I, Mary, Princess of Orange, mother of King William III. She also died in 1660. Very soon afterwards, Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, daughter of James I, died, and was buried in the great Stuart vault. She is very closely connected with the later history of England, because her daughter Sophia, who married the Elector of Hanover, was the mother of King George I, and therefore Elizabeth was direct ancestress of King Edward VII. Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice, who fought in the great Civil War, were sons of Elizabeth, and Prince Rupert is buried here beside his mother.

King James II, who died in France in the year 1701, was first buried in the Chapel of the English Benedictines in Paris. It was hoped that his body would at last be brought to Westminster to be buried near the graves of the other Kings of England. But this never happened, and James II was finally buried in the Church of St. Germains, near Paris. His first wife, Anne Hyde, daughter of Lord Clarendon, and mother of the two Stuart Queens, Mary and Anne, died in 1671, and is buried in the Abbey, in the vault where Mary, Queen of Scots, rests. Many children of James II are buried there also. But the son of his second wife, Mary of Modena, the Prince James whom many people thought the rightful successor to the throne, is buried in another great St. Peter’s—St. Peter’s at Rome. Not only is James—the Chevalier de St. George, as he was called—buried in St. Peter’s, but also his wife and his two sons, Charles Edward (Prince Charlie) and Henry Benedict, Cardinal of York. With the Cardinal of York the male line of James II ended, and we go back to his two daughters, Mary and Anne.

William III and Mary II are both buried in the Abbey, near the other Stuarts. Queen Mary’s funeral was a very solemn and mournful one, and she was much lamented by her subjects.

Queen Anne and her husband, Prince George of Denmark, are buried close by, and Queen Anne’s eighteen infant children are buried in the great Stuart vault under the monument of Mary, Queen of Scots. Only one of Queen Anne’s children lived for any time, and that was William, Duke of Gloucester, who died in 1700, aged eleven, “of a fever occasioned by excessive dancing on his birthday.”

There are a few other relations of the Stuart family buried in the Abbey, but with Queen Anne the Stuart history really ends so far as the Abbey is concerned. None of the Stuart Kings have any monuments.

We must now call to mind some of the chief men of the Stuart times whose graves are at Westminster. The greatest contemporaries of James I, Lord Bacon and Shakspeare, are not buried in the Abbey. Lord Bacon is buried at Verulam; and although Shakspeare has a monument in the Abbey, he is not buried there, but, by his own desire, at his own native Stratford.

When we think of the reigns of James I and Charles I, we often recall the name of a man who was a great friend and favourite of both these Kings. This man is George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, whom James I used to call by the silly name of “Steenie.” While we speak of Buckingham, we remember that he had a great deal to do with preventing Charles I’s marriage to a Spanish Infanta, and with bringing about his marriage with Henrietta Maria of France. We also think of Buckingham’s unsuccessful attempts to relieve La Rochelle, where the Huguenots were besieged by Cardinal Richelieu, and in this way the French history of that time seems to be brought very close to the Abbey.

As everyone knows, the Duke of Buckingham was murdered at Portsmouth in 1628, and he was buried in great state in Henry VII’s Chapel, where a splendid monument was erected to him. Several of the Duke’s family are buried in the same vault, and among them a young son, Francis, who was killed in the Civil Wars, at the Battle of Kingston.

Sir George Villiers and his wife, the father and mother of the Duke of Buckingham, are buried beneath a large monument in the Chapel of St. Nicholas. It is said that the last meeting between the Duke of Buckingham and his mother was a very sad and troubled one, as they had both received a mysterious warning that some terrible thing was going to happen to the Duke. When the Duke was murdered six months afterwards, his mother appeared quite calm, as if she had been prepared to hear the dreadful news.