A Year in Europe

by Walter W. Moore

Mutilated Monuments.

The shrine of Edward the Confessor is raised upon a kind of platform mound, said to have been made of several shiploads of earth brought from the Holy Land, and is surrounded by the tombs of Edward I., the good Queen Eleanor, Richard II., Henry V., and others. Above the grand tomb of Henry V. are hung his shield, saddle and helmet. Upon it lies the headless effigy of the great king, which was cut from English oak and plated with silver-gilt. The head, which was of solid silver, with teeth of gold, was stolen from the Abbey centuries ago. Other tombs have suffered in the same way. The coffin of Edward the Confessor has been robbed of its funeral ornaments. The sceptre has been stolen from the hand of Queen Elizabeth. One of the beautifully modelled fingers of the recumbent marble statue of Mary, Queen of Scots, has been broken off, carried away as a souvenir, perhaps, by some conscienceless vandal.

In the two aisles on the opposite side of Henry VII.'s Chapel lie the remains of these two rival queens, Elizabeth and Mary, the one beheaded by the other,—a striking instance of the equality of the grave, and reminding us of Macaulay's description of the Abbey as "the great temple of silence and reconciliation, where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried."

I have only touched in the briefest manner a few of the many interesting monuments which throng the royal chapels. But there is one thing that I must write to you about before leaving the subject of Westminster Abbey finally, and that is the vacant space in the Central Eastern Chapel, where the body of the greatest man that ever ruled England once lay, and the story of why his body is not there now.

We have seen that Lord Macaulay speaks of Westminster Abbey as "the great temple of silence and reconciliation, where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried." In the same strain, Sir Walter Scott writes:

"Here, where the end of earthly things

Lays heroes, patriots, bards, and kings;

Where stiff the hand and still the tongue

Of those who fought, and spoke, and sung;