Tales from Westminster Abbey Told to Children

by Mrs. Frewen Lord; Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

1. Lord Shaftesbury.
2. General Gordon.
3. Edward Mansell.
4. Edward de Carteret.
5. Sir Isaac Newton.
6. Lord Lawrence.
7. Sir James Outram.
8. David Livingstone.
9. Henry Fawcett.
10. Sir John Franklin.
11. Geoffrey Chaucer.
12. Alfred Tennyson.
13. Shakespeare.
14. Handel.
15. Lord Beaconsfield.
16. George Canning.
17. Earl Canning.
18. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe.
19. Lord Chatham and William Pitt.
20. Wilberforce.
21. Henry III.
22. Queen Eleanor.
23. Edward I.
24. Edward III.
25. Richard II.
26. Henry V.
27. Henry VII. and Queen.
28. Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary Tudor.
29. Mary Queen of Scots.
30. Oliver Cromwell.
31. Edward VI.
32. Dean Stanley.

And now, if you look at the plan, you will see exactly where everything is. The whole Abbey is built on a piece of land which has the shape of a cross laid upon the ground. The nave and choir represent the stem of the cross, and the two transepts form the two arms.

In the part of the choir beyond the communion table are the chapels. Altogether there are eleven, and they are arranged like a wreath round the shrine of Edward the Confessor. They are marked on the plan by the letters A, B, C, etc., and their names you will find on the plan, beginning with A, which is the Chapel of Edward the Confessor.

One last thing I must explain before we begin the stories, and that is—how this great church came to be called an Abbey, and not a Cathedral. It is not at all difficult to remember when you have once been told.

The Church of St. Peter did not stand, as you may have supposed, all by itself on Thorney Isle, but was only one part of a mass of buildings called the Monastery of St. Peter.

A monastery, as you very likely already know, was a kind of college for monks. Here they lived under the rule of an abbot; and the church belonging to the monastery—for every monastery had a church, as well as a school and hospital or infirmary, belonging to it—was called an Abbey.

In early days the life of the monks was a very busy one. They did all the rough work, such as cooking, and cleaning pots and pans; for although many of them had been great soldiers or great nobles, they did not think any work done for the monastery was beneath them. They ploughed the land and planted seeds; they cut down trees for firewood; they nursed the sick; they fed and looked after the poor who lived round about them; and they taught in the school, and watched over the boys who were sent there to be educated.

Many boys—not only those who intended to become monks when they grew up, but those also who were to go out into the world, or become soldiers—went to the monastery schools to be taught. Here the sons of great nobles sat to learn their lessons side by side with the children of the poorest people, who were allowed to come and have as good an education as the rich without paying any school fees. The schools were open to all who wished to learn.

Of course, Scripture was the chief thing that they were taught, but the monks did not think that alone was enough, and the boys often learnt, besides reading and writing, grammar, poetry, astronomy, and arithmetic. Latin many of the monks talked almost as easily as their own language, and very often music and painting were added to all this. In the cloisters, or covered walks belonging to the monastery, the boys learned their lessons, always with a master near by, and sitting one behind another, so that no signals or jokes were possible. And very hard it must have been to keep their attention on their work in summer time when, if they looked up, they could see through the open archways the sun shining on the grass in the centre of the cloisters, and inviting them to come and play there. Something was always going on in the cloisters. Sometimes the schoolboys were tempted to waste their time watching the monks shaving. Once a fortnight in summer, and once in three weeks in winter, the monks came out here with hot water and soap, and the important business of shaving went on, while on “Saturdays the heads and feet of the brethren were duly washed.” If while all these things were going on the abbot appeared, every one stood up and bowed, and the lessons and the shaving and the washing stopped until he had passed by.

Perhaps the most important part of every monastery was the library, and an abbot who cared much for the monastery over which he ruled tried to collect and preserve and buy as many books as he could. In those days printing was not invented, and so every book of which many copies were wanted had to be written out by the monks. And this they did in a most wonderful way, copying them, so we are told,[4] “on parchment of extreme fineness prepared by their own hands,” and ornamenting them with “the most delicate miniatures and paintings.” The monks at that time loved their books more than anything else, and there was a saying among them that a cloister without books was like a fortress without an arsenal. Often they took long and difficult journeys to see or to copy the books in other monasteries. “Our books,” said a monk, “are our delight and our wealth in time of peace, ... our food when we are hungry, and our medicine when we are sick.”