The Pleasures of England / Lectures given in Oxford

by John Ruskin

"The ancient church, 'situated low,' indicated in this vision the one whose attached monastery had been destroyed by the Danes, but its little church remained, and was already dear to the Confessor, not only from the lovely tradition of its dedication by the spirit of St. Peter;" (you must read that for yourselves;) "but also because of two miracles happening there to the King himself.

"The first was the cure of a cripple, who sat in the road between the Palace and 'the Chapel of St. Peter,' which was 'near,' and who explained to the Chamberlain Hugolin that, after six pilgrimages to Rome in vain, St. Peter had promised his cure if the King would, on his own royal neck, carry him to the Monastery. The King immediately consented; and, amidst the scoffs of the court, bore the poor man to the steps of the High Altar. There the cripple was received by Godric the sacristan, and walked away on his own restored feet, hanging his stool on the wall for a trophy.

"Before that same High Altar was also believed to have been seen one of the Eucharistical portents, so frequent in the Middle Ages. A child, 'pure and bright like a spirit,' appeared to the King in the sacramental elements. Leofric, Earl of Mercia, who, with his famous countess, Godiva, was present, saw it also.

"Such as these were the motives of Edward. Under their influence was fixed what has ever since been the local centre of the English monarchy."

"Such as these were the motives of Edward," says the Dean. Yes, certainly; but such as these also, first, were the acts and visions of Edward. Take care that you don't slip away, by the help of the glycerine of the word "motives," into fancying that all these tales are only the after colours and pictorial metaphors of sentimental piety. They are either plain truth or black lies; take your choice,—but don't tickle and treat yourselves with the prettiness or the grotesqueness of them, as if they were Anderssen's fairy tales. Either the King did carry the beggar on his back, or he didn't; either Godiva rode through Coventry, or she didn't; either the Earl Leofric saw the vision of the bright child at the altar—or he lied like a knave. Judge, as you will; but do not Doubt.

"The Abbey was fifteen years in building. The King spent upon it one-tenth of the property of the kingdom. It was to be a marvel of its kind. As in its origin it bore the traces of the fantastic and childish" (I must pause, to ask you to substitute for these blameful terms, 'fantastic and childish,' the better ones of 'imaginative and pure') "character of the King and of the age; in its architecture it bore the stamp of the peculiar position which Edward occupied in English history between Saxon and Norman. By birth he was a Saxon, but in all else he was a foreigner. Accordingly the Church at Westminster was a wide-sweeping innovation on all that had been seen before. 'Destroying the old building,' he says in his charter, 'I have built up a new one from the very foundation.' Its fame as a 'new style of composition' lingered in the minds of men for generations. It was the first cruciform church in England, from which all the rest of like shape were copied—an expression of the increasing hold which, in the tenth century, the idea of the Crucifixion had laid on the imagination of Europe. The massive roof and pillars formed a contrast with the rude wooden rafters and beams of the common Saxon churches. Its very size—occupying, as it did, almost the whole area of the present building—was in itself portentous. The deep foundations, of large square blocks of grey stone, were duly laid; the east end was rounded into an apse; a tower rose in the centre, crowned by a cupola of wood. At the western end were erected two smaller towers, with five large bells. The hard strong stones were richly sculptured; the windows were filled with stained glass; the roof was covered with lead. The cloisters, chapter-house, refectory, dormitory, the infirmary, with its spacious chapel, if not completed by Edward, were all begun, and finished in the next generation on the same plan. This structure, venerable as it would be if it had lasted to our time, has almost entirely vanished. Possibly one vast dark arch in the southern transept, certainly the substructures of the dormitory, with their huge pillars, 'grand and regal at the bases and capitals,' the massive, low-browed passage leading from the great cloister to Little Dean's Yard, and some portions of the refectory and of the infirmary chapel, remain as specimens of the work which astonished the last age of the Anglo-Saxon and the first age of the Norman monarchy."

Hitherto I have read to you with only supplemental comment. But in the next following passage, with which I close my series of extracts, sentence after sentence occurs, at which as I read, I must raise my hand, to mark it for following deprecation, or denial.

"In the centre of Westminster Abbey thus lies its Founder, and such is the story of its foundation. Even apart from the legendary elements in which it is involved, it is impossible not to be struck by the fantastic character of all its circumstances. We seem to be in a world of poetry." (I protest, No.) "Edward is four centuries later than Ethelbert and Augustine; but the origin of Canterbury is commonplace and prosaic compared with the origin of Westminster." (Yes, that's true.) "We can hardly imagine a figure more incongruous to the soberness of later times than the quaint, irresolute, wayward prince whose chief characteristics have just been described. His titles of Confessor and Saint belong not to the general instincts of Christendom but to the most transitory feelings of the age." (I protest, No.) "His opinions, his prevailing motives, were such as in no part of modern Europe would now be shared by any educated teacher or ruler." (That's true enough.) "But in spite of these irreconcilable differences, there was a solid ground for the charm which he exercised over his contemporaries. His childish and eccentric fancies have passed away;" (I protest, No;) "but his innocent faith and his sympathy with his people are qualities which, even in our altered times, may still retain their place in the economy of the world. Westminster Abbey, so we hear it said, sometimes with a cynical sneer, sometimes with a timorous scruple, has admitted within its walls many who have been great without being good, noble with a nobleness of the earth earthy, worldly with the wisdom of this world. But it is a counterbalancing reflection, that the central tomb, round which all those famous names have clustered, contains the ashes of one who, weak and erring as he was, rests his claims of interment here, not on any act of power or fame, but only on his artless piety and simple goodness. He, towards whose dust was attracted the fierce Norman, and the proud Plantagenet, and the grasping Tudor, and the fickle Stuart, even the Independent Oliver, the Dutch William, and the Hanoverian George, was one whose humble graces are within the reach of every man, woman, and child of every time, if we rightly part the immortal substance from the perishable form."