| THE TOWER OF THE ABBEY. | STAIRCASE TO WATCHING-GALLERY. |
MONASTERY GATE.
The sacrifice of the protomartyr brought its fruits. Verulam became Christian, and within a century was paying him the honors of a saint. In the eighth century King Offa of Mercia, having treacherously murdered King Ethelbert, became conscience-stricken, and to propitiate Heaven founded the abbey. He built a Benedictine monastery, which was richly endowed, and gradually attracted the town away from Verulam and over to its present site. This monastery existed until the Norman Conquest, when it was rebuilt, the ruins of Verulam serving as a quarry. Thus began the great abbey of St. Albans, which still overlooks the Ver, although it has been materially altered since. It prospered greatly, and the close neighborhood to London brought many pilgrims as well as royal visits. The abbots were invested with great powers and became dictatorial and proud, having frequent contests with the townsfolk; and it is recorded that one young man who applied for admission to the order, being refused on account of his ignorance, went abroad and ultimately became Pope Adrian IV. But he bore the abbot no ill-will, afterwards granting it many favors. Cardinal Wolsey was once the abbot, but did not actively govern it. In 1539 its downfall came, and it surrendered to King Henry VIII. The deed of surrender, signed by thirty-nine monks, is still preserved, and the seal is in the British Museum. The abbey is now in ruins; the church and gateway remain, but the great group of buildings that composed it has mostly disappeared, so that the old monastery is almost as completely effaced as Verulam. But the church, by being bought for $2000 for the St. Albans parish church, is still preserved, and is one of the most interesting ecclesiastical structures in England; yet its great length and massive central tower are rather unfavorable to its picturesqueness, though the tower when seen from a distance impresses by its grandeur and simplicity. In this tower, as well as in other parts of the church, can be detected the ancient bricks from Verulam. The ground-plan of St. Albans Church is a Latin cross, and it is five hundred and forty-eight feet long. The western part was erected in the twelfth, and the greater portion of the nave and choir in the thirteenth century. The floor of the choir is almost paved with sepulchral slabs, though of the two hundred monuments the church once contained barely a dozen remain. At the back of the high altar was the great treasury of the abbey, the shrine enclosing St. Alban's relics, but this was destroyed at the Reformation: some fragments have been since discovered, and the shrine thus reproduced with tolerable completeness. On the side of the chapel is a wooden gallery, with cupboards beneath and a staircase leading up to it. In the shrine and cupboards were the abbey treasures, and in the gallery the monks kept watch at night lest they should be despoiled. This vigilance, we are told, was necessary, for rival abbeys were by no means scrupulous about the means by which they augmented their stores of relics. This quaint gallery, still preserved, is five hundred years old. Near the shrine is the tomb of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, brother of King Henry V. and regent during the minority of Henry VI., who was assassinated at Windsor. The tomb was opened in 1703, and the skeleton found buried among spices and enclosed in two coffins, the outer of lead. The vault remained opened, and visitors purloined good Humphrey's bones till nearly all had disappeared, when the authorities concluded it was better to close up the vault and save what remained. The massive gatehouse, which still exists, was built in Richard II.'s reign, and was used for a jail until not long ago they determined to put a school there. In front of it the martyr Tankerfield was burnt, and buried in 1555 in a little triangular graveyard which still exists. Fox, in his Book of Martyrs, relates that he endured the pain with great constancy, and testified to the last against the errors of his persecutors.
THE SHRINE AND WATCHING-GALLERY.
