Henry VII.’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey.
Other Sovereigns also took a share; but it was left to Henry VII. to give us the body of the Abbey mainly in the shape we know. At enormous expense he erected the famous Perpendicular chapel, called by his name—one of the most beautiful and magnificent chapels in the whole world.
When we stand in the subdued light in this exquisite building, and examine the beautifully fretted stone-work of its amazing roof—a “dream in stone,” its “walls wrought into universal ornament,” the richly carved, dark-oak stalls of the Knights of the Bath with the banners of their Order drooping overhead—we find it hard to recall that this miserly man was one of the least popular of England’s Kings.
In this spot lie, in addition to the remains of Henry himself, those of most of our later Kings and Queens. Here side by side the sisters Mary and Elizabeth “are at one; the daughter of Catherine of Aragon and the daughter of Anne Boleyn repose in peace at last.” Here, too, rests that tragic figure of history, Mary Queen of Scots; and James I., Charles I., William III., Queen Anne, and George II.
For numbers of us one of the most interesting parts of the Abbey will always be “Poets’ Corner,” in the south transept. Here rest all that remains of many of our mightiest wielders of the pen, from Chaucer, the father of English poetry, down to Tennyson and Browning. Many of the names on the monuments which cluster so closely together are forgotten now, just as their works are never read; but the tablets to the memory of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Dryden, Dickens, Tennyson, and Browning, will always serve to remind us of the mighty dead. The north transept is devoted largely to the monuments to our great statesmen and our great warriors.
Westminster Abbey.
In the Choir we come upon the Coronation Chairs. The Confessor in building his church had in mind that the Abbey should be the place of coronation of England’s Sovereigns; and down through the centuries this custom has been observed. Indeed, certain parts of the regalia worn by the King or Queen on Coronation Day are actually the identical articles presented to the Abbey by Edward himself. The old and battered chair is that of Edward I., the “hammer of the Scots,” who lies buried with his fellow Plantagenets in the Confessor’s Chapel. Just under the seat of the chair is the famous “stone of destiny,” brought from Scone by Edward, to mark the completeness of the defeat. Its removal to Westminster sorely troubled our northern neighbours, for they believed that the Supreme Power travelled with that stone. Since those days every English Sovereign has been crowned in this chair. Its companion was made for Mary, wife of William III.
In the Nave lies one of the most frequently visited of all the tombs—the last resting-place of the Unknown Warrior, who, brought over from France and buried with all the grandeur and solemnity of a Royal funeral, typifies for us the thousands of brave lads who made the great sacrifice—who died that we might live.