The River at Thorney Island.
In pre-Roman days Lambeth and Westminster, Belgravia and Chelsea, were simply reedy marshes. Out of them rose a number of gravelly islands of various sizes, and one of these, larger and more solid than the rest—Thorney or Bramble Island—became in due course the site of the city which for centuries was second only to London itself; for though the building of the Bridge and the rapid growth of the Port meant the diversion of the Kentish Watling Street to a new route through London, the Thorney Island settlement grew just as steadily as that of the bluff lower down the stream, till eventually it held England’s most celebrated Abbey and Royal Palace, and its Houses of Parliament.
As so often happened in early days, the settlement developed round a religious house. Probably it originated in a British fortress. Certainly it comprised a considerable Roman station and market. But all that lies in the misty past. The legend remains that in the year 604 Sebert, King of the East Saxons, there founded a minster of the west (St. Peter’s) to rival the minster of the east (St. Paul’s) which was being erected within the City of London; and indeed we are still shown in the Abbey the tomb of this traditional founder.
When we come to the reign of Edward the Confessor we begin to get to actual definite things. Edward, as we know from our history books, was a very religious man, almost as much a monk as a King; and he took special delight in rebuilding ruined churches. While he was in exile in Normandy he made a vow to St. Peter that he would go on pilgrimage to Rome if ever he came into his kingdom. When, in the passage of time, he became King, and proposed to carry out his vows, his counsellors would not hear of such a journey; and, in the end, the Pope of Rome released him from his vow on condition that he agreed to build an Abbey to the glory of St. Peter.
This Edward did. His own particular friend, Edwin, presided over the small monastery of Thorney, so Edward determined to make this the site of his new Abbey. Pulling down the old place, he devoted a tenth part of his income to the raising of the new “Collegiate Church of St. Peter of Westminster.” Commenced in the year 1049, it became the King’s life-work, and was consecrated only eight days before his death.
In order that he might see the builders at work on his favourite project, he built himself a palace between the Abbey and the River, and for fifteen years he watched the rising into being of such an Abbey as England had never known. He endowed it lavishly with estates, and gave it the right of sanctuary, whereby all men should be safe within its walls.
Of course, the fine structure we see as we stand in the open space known as Broad Sanctuary is not the Confessor’s building. Of that, all that now remains is the Chapel of the Pyx, the great schoolroom of Westminster School, which was the old monks’ dormitory, and portions of the walls of the south cloister. The rest has been added from time to time by the various Sovereigns. Henry III., in 1245, pulled down large portions of the old structure, and erected a beautiful chapel to contain the remains of the Abbey’s founder, and this chapel we can visit to-day. In it lies the sainted Confessor, borne thither on the shoulders of the Plantagenet nobles whose humbler tombs surround the shrine; also his Queen, Eleanor; Edward III., and that Queen who saved the lives of the burghers of Calais; also the luckless Richard II.
