It is true that there are too many monuments in Westminster Abbey; a memorial chapel in which some of them (especially the huge statues from the north transept) could be put, would be very advantageous. But, at any rate, they are not likely now to be much further added to, and from the old, royal tombs, there is not one fragment of mosaic or one splinter of stone which we should not grieve to lose. Sir Godfrey Kneller, the painter and the friend of Pope, did not wish to be interred in the Abbey because “they do bury fools there.” But his monument is not missed amongst the tombs of England’s greatest children, her kings and queens, her bishops and deans, her statesmen, her soldiers, her poets, her artists, and her philosophers. The whole building is one grand memorial. There may be “fools there,” but they sink into utter insignificance, for “saints are there, the living dead.”
The South East Prospect of the Chapel Royal of St. Peter in the Tower.
ST. PETER’S CHAPEL IN THE TOWER ABOUT 1750.
To pass from the Abbey to the Tower is like passing from honour to shame, and yet amongst those who were imprisoned, executed, and buried in the great fortress and palace which became the state prison of England, many were innocent of the crimes for which they were punished, and many deserved to rest in Westminster even more than some of those who were interred there. There were four recognised burial-places connected with the Tower, the churchyard of St. Peter ad Vincula, the vaults under the church, the vaults “behind the church,” and the outer graveyard. The last named was a narrow strip by the eastern wall, probably used for the burial of the humbler members of the numerous households which composed the Tower precinct. This ground was demolished when the Tower Bridge was made, being required for the wide approach thereto. It is also probable that burials took place in a somewhat promiscuous fashion in other parts of the fortress. We know, for instance, that the young Princes, after they had been smothered, were buried at the foot of the staircase of the White Tower, “meetly deep in the ground, under a great heap of stones,” from whence their remains, or what was supposed to be their remains, were moved to Westminster Abbey in 1674 by Order of King Charles II.
In St. Peter’s Church were buried the headless bodies of many a noble prisoner who was executed close by, with the remains of others who died during their confinement in the Tower—the Earl of Arundel, the Dukes of Somerset, Monmouth, Norfolk, and Northumberland, Queen Katherine, poor innocent Anne Boleyn, her brother, Lord Rochford, the Countess of Salisbury, Catherine Howard, and a great many more whose names are recorded in English history. The chapel is not as beautiful as it might be, and the graveyard attached to it is little more than a part of the great Tower courtyard, but the sad memories connected with it will always hallow this spot. In the quaint little church of Holy Trinity, Minories, supposed by some to be a survival of the Abbey of the Minoresses of St. Clare, there is still shown what is said to be the head of the Duke of Suffolk, the father of Lady Jane Grey. It is in a glass case, preserved like leather, some hair still clings to the scalp, while the false blow of the executioner can be clearly seen just above the place where the head was severed from the trunk. The verger keeps this marvellous relic locked up in a pew; it is a sort of detached fragment of the history of the Tower.
THREE COFFIN LIDS FROM THE TOWER.
I feel that I have done but very scant justice to those London burial-places which contain the ashes of the most illustrious dead. But I have no wish to go over ground already trodden by far worthier chroniclers than myself, and I therefore commend to all who desire to know more about the Cathedral, the Abbey, the Temple, and the Tower, the many excellent books which have been written upon their history, such as Dean Milman’s “Annals of St. Paul’s Cathedral,” Dean Stanley’s “Memorials of Westminster Abbey,” and a number of more ancient and more modern works which especially relate to these buildings and to the monuments they contain. The Kyrle Society has recently published a capital little guide to the Cathedral, which can be bought with the tickets to view the crypt, the whispering gallery, &c., and which also serves as a handbook to the monuments in the nave and aisles.
“Death lays his icy hands on kings:
Sceptre and crown