In St. Edmund’s Chapel, farther on, Milton as a lad of fourteen may have seen in 1622 the young man interred whose tomb is surmounted by a beautiful figure of a youth in Roman armour. Hard by under a lofty canopy lie two notable recumbent figures, which mark the grave of the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury, and show the style of costume of Milton’s boyhood years.
Among the monuments of his contemporaries in the chapel of Henry VII. that must have awakened a sensation of disgust in the mind of the Puritan poet, was that of the Duke of Buckingham, whose barbaric splendour of attire has already been noted, and who was murdered in 1628. Near by his huge and ostentatious tomb, so characteristic of the man whom it commemorates, lie under the pavement the graves of his king, James I., and his consort.
We may be sure that the graves which most interested Milton here were those of Oliver Cromwell, his mother and sister, and his daughter, Elizabeth Claypole, his son-in-law, Ireton, and Bradshaw, who was president of the tribunal which condemned Charles I. The Genoese envoy of the time thus described Cromwell’s death and burial in his despatch to the Council of Genoa: “He left the world with unimaginable valour, prudence, and charity, and more like a priest or monk than a man who had fashioned and worked so mighty an engine so few years.... His body was opened and embalmed, and little trace of disease found therein; which was not the cause of his death, but rather the continual fever which came upon him from sorrow and melancholy at Madame Claypole’s death.” Cromwell’s body lay in state at Somerset House, and was thence escorted to the tomb by an immense throng of mourners, which included the city companies. “The effigy or statue of the dead, made most lifelike in royal robes, crown on head, in one hand the sceptre and in the other the globe, was laid out on a bier richly adorned and borne hither in a coach made for the purpose, open on every side, and adorned with many plumes and banners.” It is said that Cromwell especially loved the Abbey, and instituted the custom of commemorating English worthies within its walls. Admiral Blake was the first to receive this honour in 1657. “Cromwell caused him to be brought up by land to London in all the state that could be; and to encourage his officers to adventure their lives that they might be pompously buried, he was with all solemnity possible interred in the Chapel of Henry VII., among the monuments of the kings.” Who can doubt that Milton stood in sightless grief beside these tombs, before the desecration of “Oliver’s Vault?” Only the body of Cromwell’s daughter was left in peace, and still remains. His mother and sister were reburied in the green, and the reader already knows what was the vile treatment of the other bodies. It is said that to the royalist dean of Westminster, Thomas Sprat, we owe the refusal of interment in the Abbey to the “regicide” John Milton. Had he been buried later where Cromwell’s body had lain, he too might have been thrust forth. It was this dean who esteemed Cowley as a superior poet to Milton, and called the former the “Pindar, Horace, and Virgil of England.” In the south aisle lie General George Monck and Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, eldest daughter of James I., whose marriage we have seen was celebrated by a merry masque within the Temple grounds. This was the English princess for whom a part of Heidelberg Castle was built; she was mother of Prince Rupert, whose strenuous efforts to save the fortunes of his uncle, Charles I., did not endear him to Milton and his friends. In this chapel lies a wretched victim of her cousin, James I. This is the Lady Arabella Stuart, whose marriage so displeased the king that he immured her in the Tower, where, bereft of reason by her miseries, she died when Milton was a boy.
At the eastern end of the north aisle of the chapel of Henry VII. is a baby’s cradle-tomb, which has been the frequent theme of verse. Standing beside the little marble form of this daughter of James I., Milton may have felt a pang of heart as he thought of his own little one buried in St. Margaret’s, but a stone’s throw distant. Of those who were associated with Milton’s public work at Whitehall, was Admiral Edward Popham, general of the Fleet of the Republic under Cromwell, who died in 1651. He was buried at the state’s expense in the chapel of Henry VII., but after the Restoration his monument, on which is his figure full size in armour, was removed to John the Baptist’s Chapel and the inscription on it was erased. Opposite his tomb is the grave of Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex, son of Elizabeth’s unhappy favourite, who, after serving King Charles, became General-in-Chief of the Parliamentarian army in 1642. He died in 1646, and was buried with high honours by the Independents. In St. John’s Chapel rests the body of the wife of Colonel Scot, one of the judges of Charles I., who was executed at Charing Cross.
At the foot of the steps which lead to the chapel of Henry VII., in 1674,—the same year in which Milton died,—was laid under a nameless stone the body of the famous Earl of Clarendon, who was born in 1608-9, the same year in which the poet was born. This famous Tory, the historian of the Civil Wars and Restoration, was perhaps more responsible than any other man for creating that popular detestation of the name of Cromwell which prevailed until the present generation had been better instructed by less partisan critics. After two hundred years his name was inscribed upon the stone that covers his ashes. Within the Abbey rest twenty of his relatives and descendants, among them his royal granddaughters, Queen Mary and Queen Anne. Not far distant, in the north ambulatory was interred in 1643 the body of the redoubtable John Pym, nicknamed “King Pym” by the Royalists, for as Clarendon himself said: “He seemed to all men to have the greatest influence upon the House of Commons of any man, and in truth I think he was at that time (1640), and some months after, the most popular man and the most able to do hurt that hath lived in any time.”[2] Two years after Pym’s burial, there was laid close to his grave the body of William Strode, one of the five members demanded by Charles I. when he made his famous entry into the House of Commons with an armed force in 1641-2. The bodies of both were exhumed in 1661, and flung with others of their compatriots into a pit outside the Abbey walls. There is every reason to assume that Milton would have attended the funerals of both of these men. A man whom he must have known well by reputation, Doctor Peter Heylin, who died in 1662, is buried beneath the sub-dean’s seat in the north aisle of the choir. He was Laud’s chaplain, and wrote a life of the great archbishop; under Charles I. he had for a time supreme authority in the Abbey and superintended its repairs. During the Civil War he suffered and was deprived of his property, but on the accession of Charles II., he was reinstated in the Abbey. It is interesting to note that the coronation chair of oak, decorated with false jewels, which has been used at coronations since the time of Edward I., has never left the Abbey except when it was taken to Westminster Hall, when Oliver Cromwell was there installed as Lord Protector.
A few of the scenes that the great minster witnessed in Milton’s time may be alluded to. The funeral of James I. in 1625 was the most magnificent that England had ever seen. The hearse was fashioned by Inigo Jones. The sermon was two hours in length. Mourning cloaks were given to nine thousand persons, and the rest of the outlay was proportionate. No wonder that Charles I. within two months sent word to the Commons that “the ordinary revenue is clogged with debts, and exhausted with the late king’s funeral and other expenses of necessity and honour.” The Abbey suffered somewhat from the Puritan hatred of images and “idolatry,” during the Commonwealth. By order of Parliament the sacred vestments were seized and burned. Of the curious wax effigies of monarchs who antedated Milton’s death, only one is still preserved. It is that of Charles II. and is robed in red velvet with collar and ruffles of real point lace. For a long time it stood above his grave in the chapel of Henry VII. These waxworks used to be publicly exhibited, after which the cap was passed around for contributions. Milton, in his boyhood, may have gazed in wonder at the gorgeous figure of Elizabeth arrayed as a later one still is to-day, in her own jewelled stomacher and velvet robe embroidered with gold; doubtless he found a visit to the effigies of Westminster Abbey as entertaining as a modern boy finds a visit to Madame Tussaud’s to-day. From the time of Edward I. it was customary to make effigies of kings. Up to the time of Henry V. the embalmed bodies and not the effigies were displayed upon the funeral car. At first these figures were made of wood, with perhaps the faces and hands of plaster. These were set up in the church for a season, after which many of them were preserved in presses standing in a row, and shown as has been described. In Milton’s time it seems evident that the list included Edward I. and Eleanor, Edward III. and Philippa, Henry V. and Katherine, Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York, James I. and Anne of Denmark, and Henry, Prince of Wales.
It is probable that Sir Christopher Wren’s plan for the completion of the Abbey would have materially added to its beauty. His scheme is said to have included a graceful Gothic spire rising from the low central tower. The incongruous towers of the west front were chiefly due to Hawksmore.