The Children's Story of Westminster Abbey

by G. E. Troutbeck

Another monument in the North Transept reminds us of a famous man who is connected with the Anglo-Indian history of the time. This is Warren Hastings. It is true that he properly belongs to a rather later date, but as he has so much to do with India we will speak of him now. Warren Hastings was the first Governor-General of the British possessions in India, and was appointed to that post in 1773. He did a great deal to save the British Empire in India. It was while Warren Hastings was Governor-General that Hyder Ali and son, Tippoo Saib, rose against the English, and Hastings put down the rebellion. Unhappily, his enemies accused him of wrongful exactions of money, and when Warren Hastings returned to England he was impeached before the House of Lords on charges of cruelty and oppression towards the natives of India. The trial went on for years, and Hastings was finally acquitted. The expenses of the trial left him penniless, but the East India Company granted him a pension, and he spent his remaining years in retirement at his own home at Daylesford. He is not buried in the Abbey, but he has a special connection with Westminster, because he was educated at Westminster School. Hastings died in 1818.

In the North Transept is a statue of Sir John Malcolm, another soldier who greatly distinguished himself in the various wars in India during Clive’s time. He was sent as Envoy to Persia in 1799, being the first English Envoy sent there since the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He was finally Governor of Bombay in 1830, and died in 1833.

As we know, the disturbances in India went on for some long time, in spite of English victories under General Lake and Sir Arthur Wellesley (afterwards Duke of Wellington). Wellesley’s great victory in this war was at the Battle of Assaye, in 1803.

Again, all English people, young and old, know about the war in which we lost our American colonies during George III’s reign, and there are several monuments in the Abbey to bring the story of it back to our minds.

General Burgoyne, whose surrender at Saratoga lost America to England, is buried in the North Cloister. Near him is buried Colonel Enoch Markham, who served throughout the same war. In the Abbey itself is the famous monument of Major André, who was hanged as a spy by the Americans in 1780. André had gone on a secret mission to the American General, Arnold, who betrayed a fortress on the Hudson River to the British. On his way back from the meeting André was taken, and, in spite of every effort to save him from a traitor’s death, he was hanged by order of General Washington, and was buried under the gallows on the banks of the Hudson. Forty years later his body was removed, at the request of the Duke of York, and was finally buried in the Abbey. Some locks of his beautiful hair still remained, and these were sent to his sisters. The chest in which André’s bones were sent home is still in the Islip Chantry. His monument is in the south aisle of the Nave, and the head of his figure has more than once been broken off and taken away, either by people with strong political feelings on one side or the other, or else by some mischievous schoolboy. There is a famous story of Charles Lamb half accusing Southey of having carried off André’s head. Southey did not like this, and it was a long time before he quite forgot it.

The war with the American colonies is thought to have broken Lord Chatham’s heart. Every one remembers the last scene in his public life—a scene represented in a famous picture—when Lord Chatham came to the House of Lords to make one last protest against a policy which meant the loss of the American colonies. During his speech he fell to the ground in a fit, and died a few weeks afterwards.

The French wars in the later part of the eighteenth century have a memorial in the Abbey in the enormous monument to the three captains, Bayne, Blair, and Lord Robert Manners, in the North Transept. These three captains fell in 1782, at Admiral Rodney’s victorious fight with the French off Guadaloupe in the West Indies. In St. Michael’s Chapel is another memorial of the same wars in the monument which tells of the death of Admiral Kempenfelt in the shipwreck of the Royal George at Spithead in 1782.

Again, Lord Howe’s famous victory over the French off Ushant, on June 1st, 1794, has left its mark on the Abbey in the monuments of Captains Hardy and Hutt, and of Captain Montagu, which are both in the Nave.

In the reign of George I there was a terrible happening which caused great misery throughout England, and which has never been forgotten. This was what was called the South Sea Bubble,—that is, the failure of the South Sea Company. We are reminded of this disgraceful business even in the Abbey, because of the grave and monument of the poet Craggs, who was mixed up with it. Craggs is buried in Henry VII’s Chapel, and his monument is in the Baptistery.

As we are now coming quite close to the end of the eighteenth century it will be best to turn back and think of some of the great writers, men of science, musicians and others, who belonged to that time and are either buried or commemorated in the Abbey.