THE PRECINCTS OF THE ABBEY.—WESTMINSTER PALACE.—ST. MARGARET’S
uring the Civil War, the spot within Westminster which most interested every reformer was that where, for over five years, the famous Westminster Assembly gathered. During that time this body of one hundred and forty-nine prelates and learned men held over fifteen hundred sessions, at first in the chapel of Henry VII., and later in the warmer and cosier apartment known as the “Jerusalem Chamber.” This room was in the present generation occupied by the scholars who for years laboured together on the revised version of the Bible. The Assembly was called by Parliament “to be consulted with by them on the settling of the government and liturgy of the Church, and for the vindicating and clearing of the doctrine of the Church of England from false aspersions and interpretations.” In that age, when religious questions were paramount, the work that devolved upon these men demanded insight, honesty, and great courage. The members, for the most part, were elected from the different counties and merely confirmed by Parliament; but to these, ten members of the House of Lords and twenty members of the House of Commons were added. Only those questions could be considered that should be proposed by either or both houses of Parliament. Four shillings a day for his expenses was allowed each clerical member, with freedom from all other duties except attendance on the Assembly. Among the one hundred and forty-nine were several members, like Archbishop Usher, who were defenders of Episcopacy. In that age no modern questions as to inspiration disturbed the minds of devout men, but church government was to them a matter of such serious moment as the modern mind can scarcely understand. As the results of these prolonged and serious conferences, Dean Stanley says we have the “Directory, the Longer and Shorter Catechism, and that famous Confession of Faith which, alone within these Islands, was imposed by law on the whole kingdom; and which, alone of all Protestant Confessions, still, in spite of its sternness and narrowness, retains a hold on the minds of its adherents to which its fervour and its logical coherence in some measure entitle it.”
During Milton’s lifetime the Chapter House, which had become public property after the Dissolution, was used for storing public documents, and here he may have seen the ancient Domesday Book, which until within fifty years was treasured there. At the time of the Commonwealth, the ancient chamber close by the Chapter House, and known as the “Pyx,” held the regalia, and was broken open by the officers of the House of Commons, in order to make an inventory, when the Church authorities refused to surrender the keys. The Pyx no longer holds the regalia, which, after the Restoration, was transferred to the Tower. The keys of its double doors are seven, and are deposited with seven distinct officers of the Exchequer. The door is lined with human skins. Within the cloisters Henry Lawes, the musician, was buried in 1662.
Near by the Abbey stands Westminster School, founded early in the sixteenth century upon the site of the ancient monastery. The dormitory has been turned into a noble schoolroom ninety-six feet in length. Camden, the famous antiquary, was once master of the school, and among its famous pupils whose lives touched Milton’s, were the poets, George Herbert, Cowley, who published poems while he was at school here, and Dryden. Among men famous in other walks of life were the great geographer, Hakluyt, and Sir Christopher Wren. Hakluyt, who died the same year that Shakespeare died, in 1616, tells us that his interest in discovery and in naval science began when he was a Queen’s Scholar in “that fruitful nurserie.” At Oxford he pursued his favourite studies, and read “whatsoever printed or written discoveries or voyages he found extant in Greeke, Latine, Italian, Spanish, Portugall, French, or Englishe languages.” Evelyn says in his “Diary:” On “May 13th, 1661, I heard and saw such exercises at the election of scholars at Westminster Schools to be sent to the university, in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, in themes and extempry verses, as wonderfully astonished me in such youths, with such readiness and wit, some of whom not above twelve or thirteen years of age.” Here Milton may have witnessed, on a Christmas-tide, a play of Plautus or of Terence, given by the boys of Westminster according to their annual custom, which is still maintained.
In the seventeenth century, the double Gatehouse of Westminster, which once stood on the site of the Royal Aquarium of to-day, held as prisoner Sir Walter Raleigh, who passed the last night of his life here. The night before his execution his cousin called on him; Raleigh tried to relieve his sadness with pleasantry, when his cousin remonstrated with the words, “Sir, take heed you go not too much upon the brave hand, for your enemies will take exceptions at that.” “Good Charles,” replied Raleigh, “give me leave to be merry, for this is the last merriment that ever I shall have in this world, but when I come to the last part, thou shalt see I will look on it like a man,” and even so he did. When he had reached the scaffold in Palace Yard the next day, and had taken off his gown and doublet, he asked the executioner to show him his axe. When he had taken it in his hands he felt along the edge, and smiling said: “This is a sharp medicine, but it is a physician for all diseases.” Then he granted his forgiveness to the sheriff who knelt before him. When his head was on the block, before the fatal blow, he said: “So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lies.” So perished the bold discoverer and coloniser, the author and gallant knight, when ten-year-old John Milton lived in Bread Street. Near the spot where his body rests in the church of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, now rises a memorial window presented by Americans and inscribed by Lowell in remembrance of Raleigh’s connection with America:
“The New World’s sons, from England’s breasts we drew
Such milk as bids remember whence we came;
Proud of her past, wherefrom our future grew,
This window we inscribe with Raleigh’s name.”
In this prison, afterward, John Hampden and Sir John Eliot were confined, and Richard Lovelace, who was imprisoned for his devotion to Charles I., wrote the well-known lines:
“Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage.”
Where Westminster Palace Hotel now stands, in the ancient Almonry of the Abbey, Caxton set up his press, and in 1474 printed his first book—the “Game and Play of Chess.”