In the year 1220 a Lady Chapel had been begun at the east end of the Norman church, and when twenty-five years later the Norman apse had to make way for Henry III.’s new structure the Lady Chapel must have been incorporated into the plan. When the King died the presbytery, choir, and transepts had been completed. In 1298 a disastrous fire destroyed the greater part of the Conventual buildings, and thus work and money which might have gone to the completion of the church were diverted to the rebuilding of the monastery.
For a century the Norman Nave served the Gothic church, but about the year 1365 the rebuilding of the Nave was seriously undertaken on the initiative of Simon Langham, who had been Abbot from 1349 to 1362 and subsequently Bishop of Ely, Archbishop of Canterbury and Cardinal. The story of Langham’s generosity does not belong to the present narrative and it must suffice to say that when Islip entered the monastery in 1480 a beginning was being made with the vaulting of three of the four westernmost bays, while the final bay was already raised to the triforium level. Abbot Estney’s enthusiasm for the work is obvious to any who can read between the lines in what are designed to be simple records of receipts and expenditure, and there can be little doubt that Islip caught the infection of that enthusiasm in the course of his association with the Abbot as his Chaplain. Abbot Fascet’s association with the work was honourable if short, and consisted mainly in generously wiping out debts the payment of which he might legitimately have charged on the fabric fund. It is not true as stated in Hacket’s life of Bishop Williams that Islip was responsible for the whole rebuilding of the nave, but his was certainly the glory of its completion.
Meanwhile at the other end of the church building of an entirely different character was going on. It is hardly possible to emphasise too strongly the contrast. At the west end were builders “original enough not to seek after originality in their work,� continuing in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the style and plan laid down by Henry of Reims in the middle of the thirteenth. At the east end the new Lady Chapel was being erected with all the glories of fan tracery in the most elaborate development of the Perpendicular. If further contrast be desired it can be found in Islip’s contemporary building of the Jesus Chapel, roughly midway in position and style between the severe and the ornate beauties of the opposite ends of the church.
The west front of the church as Islip left it at his death may be seen in two pictures. The former of these is an inset into the elaborate capital letter which should have begun the word Titulus in Islip’s mortuary roll, destined unfortunately never to be carried further. Here on the northern tower of the nave stands the great wheel by means of which the heavy stones were raised. It is perhaps no great matter if this picture seems to shew the southern tower in a somewhat more advanced stage than Hollar depicted it in his engravings of 1653 and 1655.
In 1502 the Chapel of St. Erasmus was dismantled and the old Lady Chapel demolished. The image and canopy of the Saint were placed by Islip over what is now the entrance of St. John the Baptist’s Chapel; and on January 24th, 1503, Islip, attended by a distinguished company, laid the foundation of the King’s new chapel.
With the disappearance of the old chapel went also the tombs of Abbot Berkyng and Queen Katharine of Valois, Henry’s “graunt Dame of right noble memorie.� Her coffin was to lie unburied for more than two centuries and a half. Within less than three weeks from the laying of the stone Henry’s wife, Elizabeth of York, died at the Tower of London. Her body was brought in solemn procession a few days later as far as Charing Cross, where it was met by the Abbots of Westminster and Bermondsey in full pontificals with the Convent of the former all vested in black copes. After the solemn censing of the corpse the procession moved onwards to the Abbey church and the funeral service with a sermon by the Bishop of Rochester was duly performed. Then comes a gap in the story, for the site of her immediate burial is unknown. Six years later her husband directed in his Will that the body of the Queen “be translated from the place where it nowe is buried and brought and laide with oure bodye.� This was of course done, but as to the year and manner of it the records are perplexingly silent.
In the building of the new chapel the King’s mother, Margaret, Countess of Richmond, took considerable interest. At the end of the year 1496 she had endowed a chantry for herself at the Shrine of St. Edward, and there mass was said daily for her good estate during life and for her soul after death. She had planned also to found a chantry at Windsor in the new work there, but it does not seem to have come into being, and it is possible, though there is no evidence to prove it, that with the adverse judgment given in the matter of the body of Henry VI. her eyes turned like those of her son towards Westminster. It is certain that from Easter, 1505, a weekly mass was being said for her in the new foundation and it may therefore be supposed that the south aisle, rightly called the Lady Margaret’s Chapel, must have been completed by that date. It is true that about the same time she had provided for masses to be said at the old Lady Altar on the north side of the church until Henry the Seventh’s Chapel should be finished, but entries begin to occur referring to the “King’s mother’s chapel� which preclude the possibility of any other identification.
This weekly mass fell to the monks in turn and the celebrant received three shillings and four pence, which seems a generous endowment. It is noteworthy that one shilling was being paid at this time for the weekly mass for Abbot Estney, probably in the Chapel of St. John Evangelist where he was buried, though the altar is not specified.
The Lady Margaret was indeed a generous benefactress of the new foundation. She gave to the Abbot and Convent the churches of Cheshunt and Swineshead, of the yearly value of more than fifty-three pounds, for the special purposes of the chantries, and also various lands at West Drayton and elsewhere, the proceeds of which the Abbot was to spend in the salaries of divinity readerships at the universities, while in her Will she made gifts of various ornaments to “oure chapell at Westminster� as well as assigning legacies for masses. She is stated to have built an almshouse for poor women in the Almonry by the Chapel of St. Anne.
On St. Peter’s day, 1509, she died in the Abbot’s house, and Bolton, Prior of St. Bartholomew’s, was charged with the erection of her tomb. The Sacrist of that year records the receipt of twenty-two pounds in mass-pence at her funeral.