The body of the queen was carried into Henry VII.’s chapel, and all night the Abbey was dimly lighted by the hundred wax torches which were held and kept alight by the soldiers of the Queen’s Guard. The next day she was buried, and the Catholic Bishop of Winchester preached before Elizabeth, who, although she hated the religion, did not refuse to come to the funeral of her sister, as Queen Mary had done years before on the death of their brother Edward, when, rather than come to a Protestant service in the Abbey, she ordered a separate funeral mass to be said before her in the Tower.
A little more than a month after this, Queen Elizabeth was crowned in the Abbey, and for the next forty-five years “good Queen Bess,” as she is often called, reigned over England, and did much that was wise and good. One thing she did, however, that was neither wise nor good, and that one thing I spoke about when I told you that two Queen Marys were buried here, one of whom was Mary Queen of Scots, the cousin of Elizabeth. The story of Mary Queen of Scots is a long and very sad one. You will some day read about her, if you have not already done so, and when you hear how she was imprisoned in Fotheringay Castle, and at last beheaded, you will perhaps feel that in some ways Elizabeth could be as cruel as her sister Mary.
These three queens are all buried in Henry VII.’s Chapel—Elizabeth and Mary together in a white marble tomb, on the outside of which lies the statue of Queen Elizabeth, and on which these words in Latin were written by James I.: “Consorts both in throne and grave, here rest we two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, in hope of our resurrection.” And not far from them lies Mary Queen of Scots. After she had been beheaded at Fotheringay Castle her body was buried in Peterborough Cathedral, and from there it was brought to Westminster by her son, James VI. of Scotland, who was also James I. of England, “that the like honour,” so he wrote, “might be done to his dearest mother” as had been done to Queen Elizabeth and the other Queen Mary.
We are now coming to the end of these stories, and I must only mention in a very few words some of the other graves in this chapel of Henry VII.
Oliver Cromwell[42] who, after Charles I. had been beheaded, made himself Protector of England, was buried here among the kings and queens. It is said that his funeral was more magnificent than any king’s had ever been, and that an immense sum of money was spent upon it. Close by him was buried Elizabeth Claypole, his favourite daughter, and many of his soldiers and followers.
Three years afterwards his body was dug up and taken to Tyburn. There his head was cut off, on the 30th of January, the anniversary of the day Charles I. had been beheaded, after which his body was buried under the gallows, instead of in Westminster Abbey.
“Here are also buried,” says Dean Stanley, “some of our young princes and princesses. There was that wonderfully gifted boy, Edward VI.”[43] (of whom we have already spoken), “who was only sixteen when he died, and who before that time had by his diligence and his honesty made himself beloved and trusted by all about him. There is the good Prince Henry, eldest son of James I., who when his foolish attendants provoked him to swear because a butcher’s dog had killed a stag that he was hunting, said, ‘Away with you! All the pleasure in the world is not worth a profane oath.’ Then there was, again, that other Henry, Duke of Gloucester, who sat on the knees of his father, Charles I., on the day before his execution, and who when his father said to him, ‘They will try to make you king instead of your elder brother,’ fired up like a little man, and said, ‘I will be torn in pieces first!’ Then there are two small tombs of the two infant daughters of James I. (one of which is made in the shape of a cradle). And to these tombs of these two little girls were brought, in after-days, by King Charles II., the bones of the two young murdered princes (Edward V. and Richard, Duke of York), which in his time were discovered at the foot of the staircase in the Tower. Well might all these princes be mourned and have a place in this Abbey, because many of them, though they died early, showed of what stuff they were made, and that they would have been fit to be kings and to be with kings.”
As I copied down these words of Dean Stanley’s, I was once more reminded of him, and once more I seemed to hear him telling the children gathered round him in the Abbey some of these stories which I have just been telling you. And as the last words in this book about the Abbey are his words, so the last grave which I want to tell you of is his, and when you some day go to the Abbey you must not forget to see (also in Henry VII.’s Chapel) the place where, together in one tomb, are buried Arthur Stanley,[44] Dean of Westminster, and his wife, Lady Augusta.
Dean Stanley knew more about Westminster Abbey than almost any other man; and not only did he know more, but by writing books and by telling stories to his friends as he showed them over the great church, he helped many other people, who but for him perhaps would not have thought much about the Abbey at all to know something of the Church of St. Peter on Thorney Isle.
And it is because I hoped that what interested us as children many years ago might interest others now, that I have tried to remember, and collect, and write down these tales from Westminster Abbey in something the same way as they were told to us by the Dean.