It was in the year 1509 that Henry VII. was buried in Westminster Abbey, just four hundred and forty-four years after the burial of King Edward the Confessor. But in these four hundred and forty-four years the Abbey had been so much altered, the old parts so pulled down and rebuilt, that King Edward, could he have seen it again, would hardly have believed that this great Abbey, as we see it to-day, had grown up from his first Church of St. Peter on Thorney Isle.
And now, as I have said enough about the building of the Abbey, we can go inside and begin to see some of the monuments and tombs of which it is full.
CHAPTER II.
This chapter on the geography of the Abbey, as I call it, has nothing to do with the stories which begin in the next chapter, and the only reason that I have written it at all is this. In the days when I first heard many of the stories which I am going to tell you now, they were told to us by Dean Stanley in the Abbey. As we walked about with him he explained to us what part of the church we were in, and pointed out the tomb or monument of the man, or woman, or child about whom he was telling us. But some of you may read this little book before you have ever been to Westminster Abbey, and others may have been there, but may not know the names of the different parts of the church, or where any particular monument or tomb is.
So, instead of trying to explain at the beginning of every story whereabouts we are supposed to be standing, I am putting all such explanations in this chapter; and this will, I hope, help you to find your way about in the Abbey for yourselves. If you only want to hear the stories, you must miss this chapter and go on to the next one.
Just as we have maps to understand the geography of countries, so we have maps, which are called plans, to understand the geography of churches and houses, and the drawing you see on the opposite page is a map or plan of the inside of Westminster Abbey. The picture at the beginning of this book is a view of the outside.
We will now suppose we have just come into the Abbey at the great west door, the door between the two towers (see frontispiece). The name is marked on the plan.[3] We should then be standing in what is called the nave, and right in front of us and through those iron gates underneath the organ is the choir. That is where service is held every morning and every afternoon, and where all the Westminster School boys sit on Sundays when they come to church, for as Westminster school has no chapel of its own, the boys have all their services in the Abbey. Through the choir gates you can see the communion table in front of you, and behind that, again, are all the chapels where the kings and queens are buried. The nave and transepts are full of the monuments and graves of great men. The numbers 1, 2, 3, etc., on the plan mark those about which you will find stories later on.
PLAN OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
A. Chapel of Edward Confessor.
B. Chapel of St. Benedict.
C. Chapel of St. Edmund.
D. Chapel of St. Nicholas.
E. Henry VII. Chapel.
F. Chapel of St. Paul.
G. Chapel of St. John Baptist.
H. Chapel of St. Erasmus.
I. Chapel of Abbot Islip.
J. Chapel of St. John Evangelist.
K. Chapel of St. Michael.
L. Chapel of St. Andrew.