Tales from Westminster Abbey Told to Children

by Mrs. Frewen Lord; Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

But I must not stay to tell you more of him now, for there are many other people I want you to hear about. “This Abbey,” Dean Stanley used to say, “is full of the remembrances of great men and famous women. But it is also full of the remembrances of little boys and girls whose death shot a pang through the hearts of those who loved them, and who wished that they should never be forgotten.”

So now, not far from the monuments to these two great men, we come upon the tombs of two boys who are buried here: one Edward Mansell,[8] a boy of fourteen, who died as long ago as 1681; and another Edward, Edward de Carteret,[9] a little boy “seven yeares and nine months old,” who “dyed the 30th day of October, 1677.” His father and mother put nothing on his tomb to tell us about him except that he was a “gentleman;” but that one word tells us much, for it means, said Dean Stanley, that “they believed—and no belief can be so welcome to any father or mother—they believed that their little son was growing up truthful, manly, courageous, courteous, unselfish, and religious.” And if this little boy had tried to be a “gentleman” in this true and best sense of the word, it does not seem out of place that he should be buried in the Abbey among great men and famous women.

Close by little Edward de Carteret is buried Sir Isaac Newton.[10] There is on the floor a plain grey stone with these few words in Latin on it, “Hic depositum quod mortale fuit Isaaci Newtoni,” which means, “Here lies what was mortal of Isaac Newton.” Sir Isaac Newton was one of the most celebrated Englishmen who ever lived, and made wonderful discoveries in science, especially in astronomy, by which his name is known all over the world. He was born on Christmas Day, 1642, and lived to be seventy-five years old. In spite of being so learned and so famous, he was always modest about what he knew, and believed that what he had learned and discovered was only a very, very little bit of all there was to learn and discover in the world and about the world. When he was quite an old man, some one was saying to him one day how much he had done and how wonderful his discoveries were, and he answered, “To myself I seem to have been as a child picking up shells on the seashore, while the great ocean of truth lay unexplored before me.”

Just above the grey stone in the floor there is a large statue of Sir Isaac Newton, sitting with his head resting on his hands as though he were thinking, and a great pile of books by his side.

I have already told you about General Gordon. I now come to the story of another great soldier, Sir James Outram, who is buried in the Abbey. The graves of Sir James Outram and of David Livingstone, a great traveller and missionary, and of Lord Lawrence, who was the Governor-General of India, and who did a great deal for the natives while he lived among them, are all close together, and there is something interesting to tell you about all these three men, especially Sir James Outram and David Livingstone.

If you have read or heard anything of the story of the Indian Mutiny, when the native soldiers of India rebelled against the English who governed them, and killed hundreds of men, women, and children, you must, I think, have heard the names of Lord Lawrence and Sir James Outram.

During the years he had lived among them, the natives of India had grown so fond of Lord Lawrence,[11] that when the mutiny (or rebellion) broke out, the men of the Punjaub (which was the part of India he then governed) said they would be true to the man who had been good to them, and so they fought for England with the few English soldiers who were then in India, and helped us to conquer the rebels. Lord Lawrence has been called the “Saviour of India,” because he came to the help of his fellow-countrymen with these Indian soldiers just when he was most terribly needed.

Later on, in the same war, came the siege of Lucknow. Lucknow was one of the chief cities of India, but the streets were long and narrow and dirty, and most of the houses were poor and mean. Among them, however, were some magnificent palaces and temples. The Residency, the house where the English governor of Lucknow lived, was built on a hill above the river, and all round it were the offices and the bungalows of the English who were living there. When the mutiny broke out, it was soon seen that the native soldiers would attack the English in Lucknow, and the people at once set to work to make as many preparations against them as they could. To begin with, Sir Henry Lawrence, who was in command of the soldiers both English and Indian, and who was the brother of Lord Lawrence, of whom we spoke just now, ordered all the women and children to come and live in the Residency, which was supposed to be the safest place in Lucknow. Then guns, powder and shot, and food were brought in and stored in the cellars. At last, at nine o’clock on the evening of the 30th of May, 1857, when the officers were quietly at dinner, nearly all the native soldiers in Lucknow suddenly rose against the English. They loaded their guns, and fired at every one they could see; they broke into the houses, and, after stealing everything they could, set fire to them; and all night there was nothing to be heard save the savage yells of the rebels and the firing of the guns, and nothing to be seen but fighting men and burning houses. About five hundred of the native soldiers were true to the English, and they stayed with them and fought against their rebellious countrymen through all the long siege of Lucknow. For though the rebels were beaten at their first rising by the English, yet in a month or two they rose again, and then every one, including the soldiers, was driven by the enemy into the Residency, which was the last place of refuge.

Some day, perhaps, you will read a poem by Lord Tennyson called “Lucknow,” which describes all the terrible things that happened during the “eighty-seven” days the English and the faithful natives were shut up in the Residency, on the topmost roof of which, as he says, the “banner of England blew” during the whole siege, though it was shot through by bullets, and torn and tattered, and faded in the hot Indian summer sun.

One of the first things that happened was that Sir Henry Lawrence was killed. He was lying on his bed one morning talking to an officer, when a shell was fired from a cannon into his room. It burst as it fell, and some of its fragments wounded Sir Henry so terribly that he died the next day. Almost the last thing he said to the other officers was to beg them never to give in to the natives, but to fight as long as there was an English man left alive. Lord Lawrence, his brother, who died some years afterwards, was buried, as you remember, in Westminster Abbey; but Sir Henry Lawrence was carried out of the Residency while the fighting was going on, and the bullets were falling like rain, and buried side by side with some private soldiers who had also been killed by the rebels. On his gravestone they put these words, which he himself had asked should be written there, “Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty.”