These are the beginnings of the Abbey and the Church, and of life upon the Island of Bramble. This the foundation of the history that follows. A busy place before London Bridge was built; a place of throng and turmoil far back in the centuries before the coming of the Roman; a church built in the midst of the throng; monks in leather jerkins living beside the church; a ruined church lying in ruins for two hundred years, while the Saxon infidel daily passed beside it across the double ford; then a rebuilding—why not by Sebert? Another destruction, and another rebuilding.
This view is often taken by Loftie in his “Westminster Abbey.” He does not, however, defend it and insist upon it so strongly. He says, to quote his exact words: “The hillock on which we stand is called Thorn-Ey. There are some Roman remains on it, and there may have been the ruins of a little monastery and chapel, of which floating traditions were afterward gathered and exaggerated. The paved causeway to the westward is the Watling Street. On both sides of it runs the Tyburn, of which Thorn-Ey is a kind of delta. The road rises to Tot Hill, which is a conspicuous landmark here, and goes straight on over the ‘Bulunga Fen’ till it reaches another, the ‘road to Reading,’ which has just crossed the Tyburn at Cowford, where Brick Street is now in Piccadilly. From Thorney, then, looking northward and westward, we see what remains of the great Middlesex forest, if the Danes have not burnt it all, and the paved Watling Street running straight on toward the distant Chester, keeping to the left of the lofty hill which is now crowned by the town of Hampstead. It is interesting to trace this ancient road through the modern streets, the more so as its existence determined the site and early importance of Westminster. When it emerged from the wild woods of Northern Middlesex and came down toward the ford of the Thames, it followed what we call the Edgeware Road, Edgeware being the name of the first stopping-place on the road, near the edge of the forest. Passing down the Edgeware Road in a straight line, it is interrupted at the Marble Arch by a corner of the Park, which crosses the direct road toward Westminster. We know, however, that this corner is a comparatively recent addition to the Park, and the Watling Street soon resumes its course in Park Lane, which, keeping well on the high ground above the brook, nevertheless derived the name it was known by for many centuries from the Tyburn. Tyburn Lane reached the road to Reading at what we call Hyde Park Corner, and then ran straight through what was once called ‘Brookshott,’—a little wood, where now is the Green Park and the gardens of Buckingham Palace,—and on, right through the site of the palace itself, where the brook approached it very closely. So it descended to Tothill, the name of which has been plausibly explained to mean a place where the traveler ‘touted’ for a guide or a boat, as the case might be, for the dangerous ford of the Thames below. This is rather conjectural, but is not to be rejected until a better explanation has been offered. One thing more had to be stated about this ancient highway—the Watling Street. How is it that we find the same name in the City? To answer this question we must look back to a period so remote that we cannot accurately date it, yet so definite, in one way, that there can be no mistake about it. This is the time at which London Bridge was built. When that great event took place Watling Street was diverted from Tyburn Lane, and instead of going to Westminster in order to ford the Thames, it turned to the left, along the modern Oxford Street and Holborn, and, entering the City at Newgate, went on to the bridge. Only a small part of the road still bears the ancient name, but that any of it does so is a most interesting and significant fact.
“We may conclude, therefore, if we wish to do so, that in a sense Westminster is older than London itself. What name it was called by we know not; but the Romans certainly had a station here, as I have said, and the importance of the place before the making of London Bridge may have been considerable.”
In course of time the river was embanked, and ran in a deeper channel; then the ford, as has been stated above, vanished, and the marshes were partly reclaimed, only pools remaining on both sides of the river—the Southwark pools remained till the beginning of this century. But Thorney, after the drying of the marsh, continued to be an island. On the north, the west, and the south sides it was bounded by streams; on the east by the Thames. If you will take the map, and draw a line through Gardener’s Lane across King Street to the river, you will be tracing the exact course of the rivulet which ran into the Thames and formed the northern boundary of the island; another line, down Great College Street, marks the course of a second stream; while a third line, down De la Hay and Prince’s Streets, joining the other two, marks the lie of a connecting canal called Long Ditch. It is interesting to walk along the narrow Gardener’s Lane, one of the few remaining old streets of Westminster, and to mark how the road presents a certain unmistakable look of having been the bed of a stream; it bends and curves exactly like a stream. The same thing may be imagined—by a person of imagination—concerning Great College Street.
The island thus formed covered an area of four hundred and seventy yards long from north to south, and three hundred and seventy yards broad from east to west. At some time or other—after the disappearance of the ford—the Abbey precinct was surrounded by a wall. In the same way St. Paul’s, in the midst of the City, was surrounded by a wall with embattled gates. A portion of this wall is perhaps still standing. The wall was pierced by four gates. One of these was in King Street, where the rivulet crossed; one was at the east end of Tothill Street; a third was in Great College Street, and its modern successor still stands on the spot with no ancient work in it; the last was in New Palace Yard. In front of the riverside wall lived the population of Thorney,—the town of Westminster, such as it was,—decayed indeed since the deepening of the river: fisher-folk mostly, who plied their trade on the river. But of town or village, in the time of Edward the Confessor, there was little or none.
When the old Palace of Westminster was founded, another wall was erected round its buildings. Then the island was completely surrounded by a fortification; the fisher-folk removed northward and settled somewhere lower down the river, where afterward arose the New Palace and Whitehall; not higher up, where the ground continued to be a marsh for many centuries to come. We have seen the beginnings of the Church and of the Abbey. What were the beginnings of the Palace? When did a king begin to live on Thorney Island? And why?
Since neither tradition nor history speaks to the contrary, we may suppose that Cnut was the first to build some kind of palace or residence in this place. His buildings are said to have been burned in the time of Edward; therefore he must have built something. His residence on Thorney was neither continuous nor at any time of long duration. The court of the kings for many generations to come was a Court Itinerant. King Cnut traveled perpetually from place to place, followed by his regiment of house carles, though one knows not how many accompanied him. He stayed at Thorney because he loved the conversation of the Abbot Wolfstan. It was at Thorney that, according to the familiar story, he rebuked the courtiers in the matter of the rising tide; and it was in the concluding years of his reign, when that marvelous change, graphically described by Freeman, fell upon him, and he became exactly the opposite of what he had before shown himself; when he founded and endowed and augmented churches and monasteries. His heart was changed: the stately services of the minster, the rolling of the organ, the chanting of the monks, the splendor of the altar, the story of the Gospel, the legends and the acts of the Saints, the pilgrimage to Rome,—these things pleased him more than the clash of steel on shield, the war cry, and the glorious madness of the fight. The beginner of the old Palace was the great King Cnut the Dane.
We write under the shadow of the Abbey: the bells peal out over our heads; the organ swells and dies; within the walls are the coffins and the bones of dead kings and princes and nobles. The air is ecclesiastic: we may talk of changed hearts and repentant age. The age of civil wars, intestine wars,—the worst wars of all, the wars of those who speak the same language,—lasted for five hundred years after the death of King Cnut. We who belong to a generation which has learned some self-control, cannot realize the intensity, the strength of the passions which devoured and maddened the kings of old. The things which make history dreadful: the murders, the cry to arms at the least provocation; the cruel disregard of innocent suffering; the wasting, pillaging, destroying of lands and fields and villages and towns, in blind revenge; the blinding and torturing and maiming of which every page is full, these things mean the rage of kings, the revenge of kings upon their enemies. Cnut in his last years had no enemies; he had killed them all. Then there were no more rages; he suffered his head to dwell upon nobler things—in modern language, he “got religion.” And so, at the end of this Prologue to the Westminster Play, we see the King taking off his blood-stained ermine, laying down the sword which has set free so many unwilling souls, and walking in meditation and godly discourse under the quiet cloisters of the Abbey. Outside, the noisy court and camp; within, the calm and peace of the religious life. The picture strikes a note of what is to follow when we pass into the period of history written from day to day, and draw up the curtain for the Pageant, Mystery, or Play of Westminster.
CHAPTER II.
THE KING’S PALACE OF WESTMINSTER.
The kings of England held their Court in the Old Palace, the Palace of Westminster, for five hundred years. Of all the buildings which formed that Palace, there remain at this day nothing but a Hall, greatly altered, a Crypt, and a single Tower. Sixty years ago, before the last of the many fires which attacked the Palace, there was left, much disfigured, a single group of buildings which formerly contained the heart of the Palace, the king’s House. This group, however, was so much shut in and surrounded with modern houses, courts, offices, taverns, and stores, that the ancient parts could be with difficulty detached. Fortunately this task was accomplished before the fire: one can therefore restore one part, at least, of the Palace.