A Year in Europe

by Walter W. Moore

Interior of the Jerusalem Chamber.

We pass from the nave of the Abbey through a door on the south side into the ancient cloisters, and, turning to the right, ring at the door of the janitor. A cherry-cheeked woman appears, and, when we state that we wish to see the Jerusalem Chamber, she brings a key, turns with us again to the right, which brings us to the southwest corner of the Abbey, and ushers us through an ante-room into the celebrated meeting-place of the great Assembly, a rectangular room, running north and south, about forty feet in length by twenty in breadth, with a large double window in the western side opposite the spacious fireplace referred to by Baillie, and another fine window in the northern end, which, by the way, contains the finest stained glass in the whole Abbey.

A long table, covered with a plain green cloth, occupies the centre of the room, with chairs around it ready for convocation; for the room is still regularly used for the meetings of ecclesiastical functionaries, occasionally also for special gatherings of wider interest, the most notable of which, since the Westminster Assembly, was the series of sessions held here by the company of scholars who had been appointed to revise the common English version of the Scriptures, and who, in 1885, brought that immensely difficult and important work to a successful conclusion by their publication of the Revised Version of the Old Testament.

This room has been the scene of many other memorable events, as we shall presently see, but none of them, nor all of them, can equal in interest and importance the work of that great Assembly which two hundred and fifty years ago formulated that lofty ideal of human life so familiar to us in the answer to the first question of the Shorter Catechism: What is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever—a statement which has probably had a deeper and wider influence for good in the Anglo-Saxon world than any other twelve words ever written by uninspired men.

Exterior of the Jerusalem Chamber.

The Jerusalem Chamber, in which the Westminster Assembly of divines held its long sessions and did its immortal work, is a low building which runs along the southern half of the front of the Abbey, and is easily seen to the right of the main door in any picture of the great western facade. It strikes one at first as an architectural blunder, except as a foil to the lofty front of the main structure, but it has served many great practical uses. It was built about five hundred years ago, in the old days of monastery, as a guest chamber for the Abbot's house. I may pause here a moment to remind my younger readers of the fact that the word "minster," as in "Westminster," is equivalent to monastery, from the Latin monasterium, and the still more curious fact that the word has been preserved more nearly in its Latin form in the Monster Tavern and the Monster Omnibuses, well known in the immediate neighborhood of the Abbey, which derive their name from the same ancient monastery now known as Westminster.

Origin of its Name.

The name, Jerusalem Chamber, seems to have been derived from the tapestries with which the walls were originally hung, and which portrayed different scenes in the history of Jerusalem. Before the meeting of the Westminster Assembly, however, these had been replaced by another series of pictures representing the planets, and it is to these that Baillie refers when he tells us that the room was "well hung." To the same keen observer, whom nothing escaped, we are indebted for the information that the light from the great window was softened by "curtains of pale thread with red roses." But the curtains and tapestries that Baillie saw have in turn given place to those which the visitor now sees on the walls, and which do not call for special notice here.

Death of Henry IV.

The first tapestries, however, those which gave the room its name, are connected with one of the most memorable events that ever occurred in this historic apartment, the death of Henry IV., in fulfillment, as the King thought, of the prophecy that he should die in Jerusalem. In his old age Henry projected a visit to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, by way of penance for his usurpation, and when the galleys were already in port to bear him on his journey, he came to pay his parting devotions at the shrine of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey. There he was seized with a chill, and, as the old chronicler says, "became so sick that such as were about him feared that he would have died right there; wherefore they, for his comfort, bare him into the Abbot's place, and lodged him in a chamber, and there upon a pallet laid him before the fire, where he lay in great agony a certain time." When borne to the bed, which had meantime been prepared for him in another room, the scene occurred which is so graphically described by Shakespeare: