The Children's Story of Westminster Abbey

by G. E. Troutbeck

[D. Weller.
MONUMENT OF THE EARL OF CHATHAM.

The Seven Years’ War ended with the Peace of Paris in 1763, but meanwhile there had been a great deal of fighting, chiefly at sea, with the French and Spaniards. Many of these battles went on in the West Indies, where England was victorious. One of our successes, the taking of Havana from Spain in 1762, is brought back to our minds by the monuments to Admiral Pocock and Rear-Admiral Harrison. Admiral Pocock was commander-in-chief of the expedition, and conveyed Lord Albemarle and his troops to Havana.

Another of the great events in our history during the eighteenth century was the conquest of Canada from the French, a conquest always connected with the name of General Wolfe, who was killed at the taking of Quebec in 1759. There is a very large and, sad to say, very ugly monument to General Wolfe in the Abbey. It is in the North Ambulatory, and makes a great contrast to the splendid and beautiful Plantagenet tombs just opposite to it. However, the monument is very interesting, because the whole scene of Wolfe’s death is represented on it. The group of figures shows Wolfe mortally wounded, and hearing, just before his death, that his soldiers were putting the enemy to flight. Below this group is a bronze bas-relief representing the Heights of Abraham, which had been scaled by the British, and also the landing of the British troops from the river St. Lawrence. So important was Wolfe’s victory that, in the following year, the English had won all Canada.

Admiral Sir Charles Saunders has already been mentioned, and his grave in the Islip Chapel reminds us, not only of his services in the French war, but also of his share in the conquest of Canada, for he was commander-in-chief of the fleet which carried General Wolfe and his soldiers to the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Another Admiral, Charles Holmes, who served with Saunders at the taking of Quebec, has a memorial in the Nave. Viscount Howe and Colonel Townshend, who both fell at Ticonderoga during this same Canadian War, have memorials in the Abbey. Viscount Howe was the elder brother of the great Admiral, Lord Howe. His monument was put up by the people of Massachusetts a short time before the American colonies separated from the Mother Country.

General Adrian Hope, one of the first English Governors of Quebec, has a monument in the North Transept.

This is perhaps a good place in which to speak of another man who did a great deal for our Colonial Empire, namely, George Montague Dunk, Earl of Halifax, whose monument is also in the North Transept. He was a prominent statesman in the reigns of George II and George III, and he did so much for commerce in America that he was called the “Father of the Colonies.” He had also a great deal to do with the founding of the colony of Nova Scotia, and its capital, Halifax, is named after him. He died in 1771.

But we must now turn to quite another part of the world, and think of what was going on in India. Just about this time, or a little earlier, Clive had made the conquest of Bengal, and we find much to remind us of this in the Abbey.

At the end of the North Transept aisle is the monument—a terribly ugly one—put up by the East India Company to the memory of Admiral Watson, who helped Clive to recapture Calcutta from the cruel Suraj-ad-Dowlah, the man who shut up the Europeans in the “Black Hole of Calcutta,” of which every one has heard. Watson also helped Clive to take Chandernagore. He died in 1757, the year of the Battle of Plassey, and the year after the taking of Calcutta.

Major-General Stringer Lawrence, who defended Trichinopoly against the French in 1753–54, has a monument in the Nave. In the North Transept, again, is the monument to Sir Eyre Coote, who drove out the French from the Coromandel coast, and took Pondicherry in 1761.