The Story of Westminster Abbey

by Violet Brooke-Hunt

Before the feast he led them into the Abbey, which was "stuck with flambeaux everywhere that they might cast their eyes upon the stateliness of the church," while "the best finger of the age, Dr. Orlando Gibbons," played the organ for their entertainment.

You will see a memorial of this banquet in the carvings over the mantelpiece in the Jerusalem Chamber for on one side is Charles I. and on the other side his French bride.

But with the death of James I., Lord Keeper, Bishop and Dean Williams fell upon evil days, for he was disliked by the Duke of Buckingham and Laud, who entirely influenced the king, and was not even allowed to officiate on the coronation day.

JERUSALEM CHAMBER.

Under the Commonwealth the Abbey fared badly, for with a fanatical horror of anything that reminded them of royalty or of Rome, the Parliamentarians had not the smallest regard for it, and delighted in showing their contempt for its past. How far the soldiers were allowed to desecrate its walls and its altars it is difficult to clearly ascertain, and we may fairly believe that the story of how they pulled down the organ, pawned the pipes for ale, and played boisterous games up and down the church "to show their Christian liberty," is a great exaggeration, even if any such thing took place at all. Certainly the altar in Henry VII.'s chapel, under which lay buried Edward VI., was destroyed, the copes and vestments were sold, and many windows and monuments supposed to teach lessons of superstition and idolatry were demolished. No dean was appointed. The church being put under a Parliamentary Committee, Presbyterian preachers conducted morning exercises, which took the place of the daily services, and Bradshaw, the President of the court which tried and condemned to death Charles I., settled himself into the deserted deanery. A strange sight indeed it must have been to those who noted it to watch this man going backwards and forwards between Abbot Islip's house and the Hall of Westminster Palace, holding in the hollow of his hand the life of the king of England!

Westminster School, which, under Elizabeth, had been set on its new and enlarged footing, and since then had vigorously expanded under the various head-masters, alone continued to flourish. Its scholars naturally were closely connected with the life that centred round Westminster: they listened to the debates of Parliament, they flocked to hear the trials in Westminster Hall, they attended the services in the Abbey. Their feelings ran high during the Civil War. Pym, Cromwell, and Bradshaw they hated; the execution of Charles roused their deepest indignation, and they listened in awed horror as Bushby, their master, read solemnly the prayer for the king at the very moment when the scaffold was being erected at Whitehall. It was the strong personality of Bushby and his tactful management which saved the school from being seriously interfered with at the hands of the all-powerful Parliament, so that for fifty-five years this model for head-masters "ruled with his rod and his iron will, and successfully piloted this bark through very stormy seas." He was full of enthusiasm and energy and he was more anxious that his pupils should become men of action and character than accomplished scholars. His monument, which is near the Poets' Corner shows him, in the words of the inscription, "such as he appeared to human eyes;" and the words which follow tell how he "sowed a plenteous harvest of ingenious men; discovered, managed, and improved the natural genius in every one; formed and nourished the minds of youths, and gave to the school of Westminster the fame of which it boasts."

But the Abbey was a national institution, too firmly builded on the rocks to be more than shaken by the passing storms. It had weathered the earthquake of the Reformation, it had survived the tempests of the Revolution. With the Restoration came the calm, and quietly the old life was resumed. I have but little more to tell you of the inner story of the Abbey, nor from this time forward do kings and queens play any very important part in its story. It is the tombs and monuments which now begin, more closely even than before, to cement the tie between Westminster and the pages of English history. So I will only tell you in a few words how Dean Sprat busied himself with the restoration of the great buildings, the architect being Sir Christopher Wren, who, as you know, designed St. Paul's Cathedral, and rebuilt so many of the old London churches which the Great Fire had destroyed, and how Dean Atterbury carried on the work, including the rebuilding of the great dormitory, until his devotion to the Stuart cause and his opposition to George I. caused him to be sent first to the Tower, and afterwards as an exile to France. Atterbury loved well his Abbey, and his last request was that he might walk through it once more, especially to see the glass which was his own gift to it, and which still exists in the beautiful rose window over the north door. But the sad thing about these so-called restorations is that so much of the matchless old work was destroyed, and nobody seemed in the least concerned at this. That was an age when the glories of medieval architecture appear to have lost all their charm in men's eyes, when the love of beautiful things was at its lowest ebb. The Westminster boys played their games in the chapels, and were allowed to skip from tomb to tomb in the Confessor's shrine; hideous monuments were erected and crowded together, nothing old was reverenced, and we can only be thankful that more was not destroyed or hopelessly ruined. And yet, in spite of this apparent indifference, here and there were men who found themselves stirred when they came within those walls as they were stirred nowhere else, so that many a writer, including Addison, Steele, and Goldsmith, and earlier still, John Milton, has paid homage, even in those unimaginative days, to that fair place, "so far exceeding human excellence that a man would think it was knit together by the fingers of angels."

One more dean I must tell you of, and that is Dean Stanley, who, with his wife, lies in the south aisle of Henry VII.'s Chapel. For it was when he was appointed to Westminster in 1864 that once again the Abbey became something more than a great memory of former days. First of all he unfolded the storied past, clearing up many a mystery, setting right many an error, and then, impelled by a deep reverence for all its great associations, he consistently carried on its history. In every trace of his work we find this same wise spirit of sympathy and understanding. To him the Abbey was our greatest national treasure; his ideal was, not only so to keep it, but to make it a living influence among all English-speaking people. And thanks in no small degree to him, Westminster Abbey is to-day a very magnet in the heart of the empire, to which high and low rich and poor, learned and ignorant are drawn from far and near, to drink in, as they are able, its memories and its beauties, to do homage to those great souls whom it honours there to read as from a book stories of Englishmen who whether as kings or statesmen, abbots or deans, nobles or commoners, poets or patriots, added at least some stones to that other building, not fashioned by hands alone, which grew up side by side with Edward's church, and thus became the builders of our nation.

But we have gone forward, quickly, and I must take you back for a moment to Henry VII.'s Chapel, where still after the Restoration some royal funerals took place. With the outburst of loyal feeling, it was felt by many that Charles I., who had been buried at Windsor, ought to be brought here, and Christopher Wren was commanded to prepare a costly monument. But nothing further was done in the matter. Charles II. was buried at midnight most unceremoniously, close to the monument of General Monk, and one who was probably present adds, by way of comment, "he was soon forgotten." Ten children of James II. were laid in the spacious vault under Mary Queen of Scots monument, but he himself, having fled from his kingdom, died abroad and was buried in Paris. William and Mary, Queen Anne and her husband, Prince George of Denmark, all lie near Charles II., and the seventeen children of Anne are just behind in what is really the Children's Vault. One of these children, Prince William Henry, another Duke of Gloucester, though he only lived to be eleven, was such a quaint little boy that his tutor wrote a biography of him. He was always very delicate, but though his body was weak his mind was precocious and his spirits were unfailingly high. From the time he was two his craze was for soldiers, and he had a company of ninety boys from Kensington for his bodyguard, whom he drilled and ruled by martial law. These boys he called his horse-guards, and they wore red grenadiers' caps and carried wooden swords and muskets; but, however much they may have pleased the little prince, who lived at Camden House, they were somewhat of a terror to the people of Kensington, as, "presuming on being soldiers, they were very rude and challenged men in the streets, which caused complaints." This tutor of his, Jenkin Lewis, who entered thoroughly into the spirit of the little Duke, gives a delightful account of a visit paid to him by his uncle, the grave William III., who appears to have been very fond of him.