cloister westminster abbey

STORIES TOLD IN WESTMINSTER
ABBEY.

By Edwin Hodder ("Old Merry").

I.—HOW THE ABBEY WAS BUILT.

O
ne day some children came to me, and said, "Oh, do please take us out somewhere on our half-holiday, and show us some of the great sights of London." Remembering how it had once been my privilege to be one of a party invited to go over Westminster Abbey, under the guidance of the late Dean Stanley, and how, from his graphic descriptions, the Abbey had ever since had an additional wealth of interest to me, I proposed to these young people that they should meet me some Saturday afternoon, and I would take them over the Abbey, and tell them all I could remember or read up about its history. They were delighted with the proposal, and so to the Abbey we went.

I should like to take all the readers of Little Folks in the same way, but I remember the story of the British Princess, named St. Ursula, who undertook to "personally conduct" eleven thousand young maidens to Rome, and how she came to grief on the return journey, as any one may see who goes to Cologne, where all their bones are preserved in a church; and as I should have a great many more followers than she, I think it will be better if I try in the next six numbers to tell you what I told the young people who went with me on that Saturday afternoon and on other afternoons, and as nearly as I can in the same words.

Now, girls and boys, before we enter the portals of Westminster Abbey, I want you first to come with me and walk round about it, so as to see it well from the outside; and first of all, we will post ourselves near to the great hall built by William Rufus as a portion of his intended palace. It was upon this spot that Edward the Confessor dwelt, and for fifteen years watched the erection of the Abbey. But you must not imagine that the beautiful building that rises so grandly before us as we stand here to-day is the same that the Confessor reared, for of his famous church only one or two columns and low-browed arches are now in existence. Of the edifice we now behold, the central portions were built by Henry III., the nave was added under the Edwards and Henry V., the gorgeous eastern chapel was raised by Henry VII., and bears his name, and the western towers rose when George III. was king.

But I shall have more to say to you presently about these various additions. Let us cross over now to St. Margaret's Churchyard, and as we stroll round the Abbey, I will tell you how it came to be built at all. To get at the very beginning, we shall have to go back to a time long before Edward the Confessor sat watching his workmen—to the days when London was a Roman city, and when the site of modern Westminster was a marshy tract of ground, crossed by various streams and channels. At that time the river Thames and one of these channels enclosed an island about a quarter of a mile long and somewhat less in breadth. It was a marshy wilderness, and had the character of being "a terrible place," and amongst its swamps and thickets the huge red deer, with his immense antlers, and the wild ox found a refuge. When it received a name, it became known as Thorn-Ey, that is, Isle of Thorns; in later days people called it Thorney Island. Tradition says that in the midst of the wilderness there was erected, in the year 154 A.D., a Temple of Apollo. We are next told that King Lucius, who was said to have been the founder of a great many English churches, turned the temple into a Christian sanctuary. Then we hear that in 616 A.D., Sebert, King of Essex, founded an Abbey here, and dedicated it to St. Peter, "in order to balance the compliment he had made to St. Paul on Ludgate Hill." All this is very doubtful, but from the earliest times in history there has been shown a grave of Sebert as that of the founder of the Abbey.

Twelve monks of the Benedictine order were placed here by Dunstan, and suffered a great deal from the Danes, who in these times did much mischief in England. The last of the Saxon kings who kept up the long struggle with these pagans was Edward, who by his exile to escape from their tyranny won the title of Confessor. He was a very strange man, who seemed never thoroughly happy except when he was sitting in church or when he was hunting in the woods. He had milk-white hair and beard, rosy cheeks, "thin white hands, and long transparent fingers." He was sometimes gentle, sometimes furious; sometimes very grave, going about with eyes fixed on the ground, sometimes bursting out into wild fits of laughter.

Edward returned from his exile accompanied by Norman courtiers and Norman priests, and full of Norman ideas. He appears to have been very much delighted with his visits to the great continental cathedrals, so different from the simple structures of the Saxons. During his troubles he had vowed to make a pilgrimage to Rome; but the Pope gave him leave to build an Abbey to St. Peter instead. Edward accordingly resolved to restore the monastery on the Isle of Thorns, on a very different scale from anything that had been before attempted in England.