Westminster Abbey Part 4

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Coronation Chair]

THE CORONATION CHAIR

This chair, the ancient seat of kings, stands in the royal chapel of St.

Edward, backed by the fifteenth-century stone screen which closes the west end of the Chapel; within the wooden frame, which was constructed purposely to enclose it, is the famous stone called the Stone of Scone.

This piece of Scotch granite was brought from Scotland in the early fourteenth century by the conquering English King, Edward I., and given over to the safe custody of the Westminster monks. In the Abbey it has remained ever since, and all our sovereigns from that time until the present day have received the insignia of royalty seated in the chair upon the historic stone. The latter has been the subject of many an old-world legend: it is said to have been Jacob's pillow when he saw the vision of the angels ascending and descending between heaven and earth; after which it became the seat of kings in Spain, in Ireland, and finally in Scotland, where there is no doubt that the Scottish sovereigns used it as a coronation throne. The chair itself bears little trace of its former splendour; it was originally decorated with paintings. The lions were regilded at the last coronation.

Cut on the stones as we walk away down the chapel is the name of George II., the first Hanoverian king who was buried in England. With him lies his wife Caroline, a queen of good memory, and other members of their numerous family are in close vicinity. The later sovereigns of the Hanoverian stock gradually lost all sentiment for Westminster, and are interred at Windsor. Through the gates and round abruptly to the left is the southern aisle, where we find three royal ladies' tombs, and the names of many Stuart princes and princesses who were interred in the vaults. Margaret, Countess of Lennox, niece of Henry VIII., is the first we come to. Her marble altar tomb, with its rec.u.mbent effigy and the figures of her children round the sides, is a fair specimen of late Tudor art, but not comparable to the earlier ones by the Italian artist. Her elder son, Darnley, a broken crown above his head, kneels with his face turned towards the monument of his wife, Mary, Queen of Scots, whose fair fame must ever be blackened by her suspected complicity in his {99} murder. Of the second son, Charles, and his unhappy daughter Arabella, we cannot speak at length to-day. Arabella's coffin is next to that of Prince Henry, her cousin and fair-weather friend, but he made no effort to save her from the consequences of his royal father, James the First's wrath. The young Prince died three years before the distracted lady, who lost her reason and pined to death in the Tower. The body of their aunt, Mary Stuart, with its severed head, was already in this vault, brought here by her son's filial piety soon after his accession to the English throne. With these are other kinsfolk. Henry's sister Elizabeth, Queen nominally of Bohemia, but in her last days she was the sovereign of no tangible realm, only of the fragile kingdom of hearts. With his mother lies Prince Rupert, the das.h.i.+ng Cavalier and daring seaman; beside them are the coffins of Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and Mary, Princess of Orange, both the victims of smallpox--that terrible scourge which devastated rich and poor alike before the discovery of vaccination. They died at Whitehall Palace, where they had come to congratulate their brother, Charles II., whose troubles they had shared, on his peaceful restoration to the English realm. The heavy monument which James I.

erected {100} above this vault to the memory of his "dearest mother"

closely resembles that of her rival Elizabeth in the opposite aisle.

This one cost about 100 pounds more than the other, and is therefore somewhat more elaborately decorated. The white marble portrait effigy represents the Queen in her middle age, and gives no idea of her youthful beauty; at her feet is the Scotch lion, much mutilated. Against the wall is the original warrant, signed by James himself, ordering the removal of Mary's coffin from Peterborough to Westminster. We have already referred more than once to the tomb of Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby, mother of Henry VII., the foundress of two colleges at Cambridge and of a chair of divinity at both Universities. Now let us stand beside it for a few moments and look upon the face of this cultured, religious woman, who, after many trials in early life, ended her days in a holy peace, secluded from the world by her own choice, yet ever ready to return to her son's Court when he desired her presence. Notice especially the moulding of the delicate yet capable hands. Torrigiano's head of Lovell just above is worthy also of the closest attention, but we can pa.s.s by the inartistic statue of Horace Walpole's mother, and the ugly {101} monument of General Monck against the wall. Monck himself deserves far more recognition than he usually receives. His share in the restoration of Charles II. was by no means his sole achievement, and he had, although a landsman and a soldier by training, previously distinguished himself on the sea in company with Admiral Blake, and later on he co-operated with his former foe, Prince Rupert, in many an action with the Dutch fleet.

He died standing upright in his tent, refusing to be conquered even by death itself, and was buried with military honours. Charles II., who hated funerals and rarely attended one, walked behind the bier as chief mourner. Upon the step below are carved the names of Charles, of his nieces, Mary and Anne, and of their respective husbands. Their wax effigies, now in the Islip Chapel, used to stand here, and were the only monuments raised to the Stuart sovereigns--a fact which called forth much jesting comment from their political opponents. From this small chapel we pa.s.s to the one opposite, crossing once more the top of the steps. At the entrance is a stone which immediately arrests attention, for upon it is the touching epitaph dedicated by his admirer Tickell to the memory of Joseph Addison. We have seen Addison's statue {102} in Poets' Corner, where it was ultimately placed, after a proposal to put it up beside St.

Edward's shrine had met with the contumely it deserved. Here the great master of English prose "rests in peace," with his friend James Craggs, whose memorial we have already pointed out at the entrance to the nave.

Close to the grave is the mural monument of his "loved Montagu," the first Earl of Halifax, who was, like Sheffield, a patron of literature and literary men. Addison's memory must ever be dear to all who love the Abbey, for the sake of his reflections upon the church and its mighty dead; in connection notably with his creation of that genial knight, Sir Roger de Coverley. Buried beside Charles Montagu is his great-nephew, George Montagu Dunk, Earl of Halifax, who is chiefly remembered nowadays as the founder of the Colony of Nova Scotia; the capital, Halifax, was called after him. His monument is in the north transept. Beneath our feet, in General Monck's vault, lies their collateral ancestor, Admiral Edward Montagu, who was created Earl of Sandwich by Charles II. when Monck was made Duke of Albemarle, as a reward to the two Generals for their share in promoting the Restoration. Sandwich's tragic end and the battle {103} of Sole Bay are referred to on a double tablet, which we pa.s.sed near the entrance to the south choir aisle. For some real or fancied slight put upon him by Prince James, Duke of York, who was then in supreme command of the fleet. Sandwich refused to leave his s.h.i.+p when she was blown up by the Dutch, and involved two naval lieutenants in his own fate. The fidelity of the young men to their doomed chief, and their faithful friends.h.i.+p for one another, is commemorated upon this memorial, which was put up by the two bereaved fathers.

Raising our eyes from the floor we see at the end of this chapel the large monument, which was put up by her successor, James I., in honour of Queen Elizabeth. The white marble effigy rests under a heavy canopy; the face was moulded from a mask taken of the features after death and is therefore a likeness, but those who desire to see a more realistic portraiture of the great Tudor sovereign in her old age should visit the Islip Chapel, where is her wax figure. The touching Latin inscription, thus translated, "Consorts both in throne and grave, here rest we two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, in hope of one resurrection," reminds us that Mary Tudor lies {104} beneath her sister's tomb. For nearly half a century only a heap of stones from the broken altars marked the place of Mary's grave; beside the coffin is still a red velvet box, which contains the unfortunate woman's dried-up withered heart, which was broken at last, after many sorrows, with a final blow--the loss of our last piece of French territory. Perchance the word "Calais" is written upon it still in invisible ink. The children's tombs behind were made by the sculptor who was then (1607) at work on Elizabeth's monument. They mark the grief of James I. and his wife for the loss of their two daughters: the baby Sophia only lived three days, but her sister Mary had reached the fascinating age of two years when a slow fever carried her off.

Between the two little sisters, his own aunts, Charles II. placed a heavy stone sarcophagus, containing some bones found in the Tower, near the room where the boy princes, Edward V. and Richard of York, are said to have been smothered, and which are most probably their remains. Edward was born in the precincts, where his mother took sanctuary from her husband's Lancastrian opponents, and was christened in the Abbey, the Abbot and the Prior standing as his sponsors. In later days the young {105} Prince marked his grat.i.tude to the monks by contributing small sums of money, supplemented by gifts from the Queen, towards the building of the nave.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The North Ambulatory, showing the Steps which lead up to Henry VII.'s Chapel]

THE NORTH AMBULATORY, SHOWING THE STEPS WHICH LEAD UP TO HENRY VII.'S CHAPEL

This view shows the carvings upon the north side of the Chantry Chapel of Henry V., where the King's coronation is repeated, and those upon the arch which connects Henry VII.'s Chapel with the rest of the church.

Above this arch we see the figure of Henry V. on horseback, fording a stream, and to the left below is the tomb of Ludovick Robsert, a gallant soldier who carried the King's standard at Agincourt and was knighted after the battle. The banners hanging inside St. Paul's Chapel belong to the old family of Delavel, and the metal bust which is seen over the screen is that of Lady Cottington, the wife of Charles I.'s treasurer, whose tomb is underneath it; the bust is the work of the well-known sculptor Hubert le Soeur. The Dean and his verger are here seen descending the steps from Henry VII.'s Chapel, where baptisms, weddings, and other special services take place.

We have lingered long amongst the royal tombs; it is time to complete our circle of the church by pa.s.sing back along the north ambulatory. Just beyond the bottom of the steps upon the right we see the Chapel of St.

Paul, into which we looked before from the chantry above. A tiny stone image, believed to be that of St. Anne, may be pointed out, as it is part of the ancient wall arcading; it is now almost concealed by the huge renaissance tomb of Sir John Puckering. Puckering was Keeper of the Great Seal in Elizabeth's reign, and the figures of the purse and mace-bearer standing above it are particularly noteworthy, for they are good examples of the costume of the period. We spoke of Pulteney, whose ugly monument takes the place of the screen on one side, in connection with his burial in the Islip Chapel, when Edward the First's canopy was destroyed. Sixteen years later a similar disgraceful scene took place at the funeral of a d.u.c.h.ess of Northumberland (the family vault is in St.

Nicholas's Chapel), when the crowd, climbing {106} upon the screen in order to get a better view of the great lady's interment, smashed to pieces John of Eltham's beautiful canopy, not without some damage to their own heads and limbs. From here we get a good view of the grille which protects Eleanor's effigy, and on sunny mornings the outlines of an ancient picture can be traced on the stone panel below. The painting was done by Master Walter of Durham, the same artist who decorated the Coronation Chair, and represented, it is thought, one of the miracles attributed to the Virgin. In the eighteenth century a knight, a woman with a child in her arms, and a sepulchre were still clearly visible.

From this side also one gets a better idea of Henry the Third's tomb in its original state than from the royal chapel, for the mosaic work has remained untouched on the upper part, where the arm of the relic hunter could not reach. We turn from the King's monument to a stone in the floor which marks the place where a very different sovereign, Pym, the King of the Commons, lay for a brief while. The coffin was buried under the bra.s.s of a famous warrior, Sir John Windsore, who fought for Henry IV. at Shrewsbury, a battle familiar to us in Shakespeare's historic play. The bodies of Pym {107} and of his friend Strode, the "Parliament driver," were disinterred and ejected with those of the other Commonwealth magnates after the Restoration. On our right is the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, called the Abbots' Chapel, for here are buried four of our mitred abbots, two of whose tombs form the screen. The original doorway is closed by that of Ruthall, Bishop of Durham, sometime private secretary to Henry VII.; a wealthy man ruined by his riches, which drew down upon him the cupidity of Henry VIII. and Wolsey,--not, however, before Ruthall had spent part of his vast wealth in the public service by building many bridges, notably one at Newcastle-on-Tyne. The present entrance was cut through a little chapel, where were once an altar and an image of St. Erasmus, which were originally given by Queen Elizabeth Woodville, and removed here when the old Lady Chapel was destroyed. Next to this is the chapel where Abbot Islip used to lie in solitary splendour, before the vaults were invaded by other coffins. A black marble table tomb, with an alabaster figure of the Abbot on the lower slab, stood formerly in the centre. Above, in the chamber where prayers were offered for the dead man's soul, are now the wax effigies.

We {108} have referred before to most of these, except to the more modern ones of Nelson, a particularly attractive representation of the hero, and of Lord Chatham. In a locked cupboard are remains of the so-called ragged regiment, the earlier effigies, which were carried at the funerals of our kings and queens, or other exalted persons. Outside, the chapel is decorated with Islip's quaint device, a play upon his name Islip: an eye with a hand holding a slip or branch, and a man slipping from a tree.

In the ambulatory, not far from his successor Islip, lies another Abbot, Esteney, to whom we have referred in connection with the completion of the nave. His altar tomb has been lowered, and the fine bra.s.s is now only slightly raised from the floor; it was originally in the adjacent chapel of St. John the Baptist, but was moved, and thus mutilated, in the eighteenth century to make way for the colossal monument of General Wolfe. We avert our eyes with a shudder from the marble group which represents Wolfe's death above, and divert our party's attention to the bronze bas-relief below, where the British troops are depicted landing on the river bank, then scaling the heights of Abraham, and finally drawn up on the plain before Quebec. {109} In an unmarked grave near this lies the Admiral, Sir Charles Saunders, without whose co-operation even the young hero, James Wolfe himself, could not have taken the city, for the sailors not only transported the soldiers to the foot of the cliffs, but protected their base and also cut off the supplies from the besieged town above. Just inside the first of these three little chapels, which technically belong to the north transept, a beautiful renaissance tomb attracts attention. Four kneeling warriors support a slab of black marble, upon which are the armour and accoutrements of the dead General, whose alabaster figure sleeps below. Sir Francis Vere was a member of a famous family, "the fighting Veres," and himself did good service for his queen and country in the Netherlands. The effigy without armour marks the fact that Vere died in his bed, not upon the field of battle. At the extreme end of St. Andrew's Chapel a large and somewhat heavy monument, after the pattern of a four-post bed with a canopy, commemorates "a brood of martial-spirited men," the Norrises, who, like Vere, spent their lives in the service of the Maiden Queen. All, father and sons, were famed in war or distinguished at the council board; four were killed {110} in battle, one died of a broken heart, and the youngest only survived his parents. While all the rest bow their heads in prayer, he alone looks cheerfully upwards. Behind this are the statues of Mrs. Siddons and her brother, John Kemble, to whom we alluded before in connection with the earlier actors and actresses, and other comparatively modern memorials of more or less interest. In the middle chapel, that dedicated to St.

Michael, the theatrical monument to Lady Elizabeth Nightingale, a grotesque _tour de force_ of Roubiliac's, is sure to call forth some remarks, but we prefer to pa.s.s to a curious tablet on the wall beyond it, which commemorates a certain Mrs. Ann Kirton, with a large eye above it (presumably that of the widower), whence tears pour over the inscription.

Hidden away, at the back of another monument on the opposite side, is a tablet in the worst style of the eighteenth century. Above a small sinking s.h.i.+p the large and material soul of a gallant seaman is seen ascending to heaven, and we remind our party of Cowper's well-known poem on the wreck of the _Royal George_ and Admiral Kempenfelt's untimely end.

His sword was in its sheath, His fingers held the pen, When Kempenfelt went down, With twice four hundred men.

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To the right as we pa.s.s back again is a mural memorial to Sir John Franklin, the discoverer of the North-West Pa.s.sage. The loss of himself and of his brave crew amidst impenetrable walls of snow and ice is portrayed upon it; beneath is an oft-quoted epitaph by Tennyson--lines which stir the hearts of all who pause to read them.

The circle of the apse has now been completed, and we pa.s.s through the iron gate into the Statesmen's Aisle. Around us on every side are the graves and statues of British politicians, whose names are for the most part household words at home and still remembered abroad. With these are also the memorials of soldiers, sailors, lawyers, and a few others, to some of which we shall allude in pa.s.sing. Conspicuous against the first column is Sir Robert Peel's statue, inappropriately draped in a Roman toga. Beyond his was placed in 1903 Brock's figure of William Ewart Gladstone, who is represented in an att.i.tude familiar to those who have heard him speak, when addressing the House of Commons, or at a political meeting. Gladstone's Life has already been in the hands of the reading public, but the official biography of Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, the leader of the opposite party, is only now being written, although {112} twenty-five years have elapsed since his death.

Beaconsfield's statue stands by the next pillar, and, if it be a day in late April, we should see primrose wreaths arranged around the feet, a homage from those who cherish the imperialist ideas which were inaugurated by Disraeli. Before very long a memorial, also voted by Parliament, to Robert Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury, Beaconsfield's successor as head of the Tory party, is also to be placed with his compeers in this temple of silence and reconciliation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Interior of the North Transept]

INTERIOR OF THE NORTH TRANSEPT

The north transept is called the Statesman's Aisle, and is filled with the statues of ministers of State and of other politicians; besides these we find lawyers, soldiers, and sailors. From this point there is a good view of Sir Robert Peel's statue in the right foreground, with Gladstone and Beaconsfield prominent behind him. We look down the aisle and see the rose window, which was filled with painted gla.s.s in the eighteenth century under Dean Atterbury's rule, and the fine early wall arcadings below. In the spandrels are two beautiful stone angels, which are just visible in the ill.u.s.tration.

Beyond are the tombs of the first and third Dukes of Newcastle. The first, William Cavendish, was a loyal supporter of Charles I., in whose service he lost his estates and fortune, but he returned to prosperity after the Restoration. His wife shared his troubles and his rewards.

Her reputation as a literary woman and an auth.o.r.ess is marked by the pen and inkhorn beside her effigy; in her hands is an open book. The third Duke, John Holles, married their grand-daughter, and was reputed the richest subject in the kingdom by his contemporaries. He lived in the reign of Queen Anne, when the standard of wealth was far less high than it is in these days. One of the slender columns in St. Michael's Chapel behind still {113} retains the original polish, and gives us some idea what the whole church looked like before our London atmosphere had corroded and blurred the surface of the Purbeck marble. Statues of the three Cannings stand between these two tombs. The nearest to our generation, he died in 1880, is Stratford Canning, better known by his t.i.tle of the Viscount de Redcliffe, who was for fifty years British Amba.s.sador in the East. His cousin, Earl Canning, Viceroy of India during the Mutiny, was succeeded in that post, after the outbreak was quelled, by Lord Lawrence, whose grave and bust we saw in the nave. From the third statue, that of George Canning, Prime Minister in 1827, we look across the transept to his colleague in his last Cabinet, Lord Palmerston, a statesman who must ever be a.s.sociated with our foreign policy for the first half of Queen Victoria's reign. Further to the left we see another Tory politician, Viscount Castlereagh, with whom George Canning once actually fought a duel; but the two men made up their quarrel, and Canning afterwards succeeded his former foe at the Foreign Office. Castlereagh was unfortunate in his end and unpopular during his life. He committed suicide while temporarily insane, and his burial here was the {114} occasion of a great outburst of feeling, when the indignant mob outside hammered on the doors of the church while the funeral service proceeded inside. The huge monument, which fills up the last arch on the western side, was erected by Parliament, at the cost of 6000 pounds, as a tribute to the fame of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. Bacon was guilty of this enormity, while Westmacott perpetrated the equally tasteless allegorical group over the west door, which commemorates the younger Pitt. Father and son lie together in this aisle. Not far from theirs are the graves of two other statesmen, Henry Grattan, the eloquent Irish orator, and his dear friend, Charles James Fox, "near whom in death it would have been his pride to lie." We saw the monuments of Pitt and Fox on our first entrance into the nave. Chatham's name must ever recall the severance of the United States from the Mother Country, while his son, "the great Commoner," is a.s.sociated with our struggle to break the power of Napoleon, whose downfall Pitt did not live to see. Between the last columns further south is the statue of Chatham's brilliant legal adversary, Lord Mansfield. Behind him stands another distinguished lawyer, who belonged to a later generation, Sir William Webb Follett, {115} Attorney-General in Peel's last Ministry. Before turning the corner into the western aisle it is impossible not to notice the two Admirals, Vernon and Wager, whose memorials unfortunately cover the wall arcading on either side of the north door. Their very names are unknown to the average person nowadays, but they did good service on the high seas for England's glory in their own time, the eighteenth century.

Vernon owes a posthumous fame amongst sea-faring men to the fact that the sailor's drink, a mixture of rum and water first introduced by the Admiral, was called grog in his honour; he was familiarly known as "Old Grog" on board s.h.i.+p, a nickname inspired by his grogram boat-cloak.

In another place we have already dwelt at some length upon these makers of our Empire in war and peace alike, whose names may be seen upon the walls on every side. While the tariff question is the topic of the hour, and Cobden, the original champion of free trade, is constantly appealed to by our modern politicians, we must not omit to look at that statesman's bust, which will be found, with a number of other interesting memorials, at the back of Chatham's monument. Near this the tablet to Warren Hastings records a page in the history of {116} our Indian Empire which it is best to leave unturned, for it is stained with the life-blood of a man's broken heart, a heart broken by a trial dragged out interminably till the culprit, whether he were innocent or guilty, was punished far beyond his deserts. Macaulay's famous description of Hastings's trial is well known, and we are reminded of his no less familiar essay on Lord Clive by the monuments of two men, a soldier and a sailor, who co-operated with Clive in the foundation of our Indian Empire. The East India Company is responsible for the inartistic, grotesque erections which traduce the memory of these gallant men, Admiral Watson and Sir Eyre Coote, while they also perpetrated the scarcely less offensive, although smaller monument which commemorates Major Stringer Lawrence, Clive's intimate friend and valued comrade, the hero of Trichinopoly, which is near the west end of the nave. The Admiral sits unclothed, save for a Roman toga, amongst palm-trees and allegorical figures above the ancient doorway, while his chief achievements are recorded in the inscriptions "Calcutta freed,"

"Ghereah," and "Chandernagore taken," with the dates 1756 and 1757.

Coote expelled the French from the Coromandel coast in 1761, and twenty years later {117} defeated them again with their ally, Hyder Ali, in the Carnatic. The General masquerades as a Roman warrior, with a native captive and a figure of Victory on either hand. Such was, in fact, the taste of the period when these preposterous groups were all the fas.h.i.+on.

We turn from this with pleasure to the fine bust of Richard Kane, which is against the opposite wall, and single him out for a pa.s.sing mention on account of his connection, as Governor, with the Island of Minorca, one of "the lost possessions" of England.

Facing us now, as we make our way westward, is the seated figure of Sir Fowell Buxton, and a little further to the left Joseph's extraordinarily vivid but unpleasing figure of William Wilberforce. Both men are indissolubly connected in our minds with the abolition of Slavery. With them are a.s.sociated the pioneer of the anti-slavery agitation, Granville Sharp, and their fellow-worker, Zachary, father of Lord Macaulay.

Sharp's tablet is not far from the latter's bust in the south transept, and we have already noticed the elder Macaulay in the Whigs' Corner.

Between the philanthropists is Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore, a man no less zealous than they in the struggle for the suppression of slavery. To us Londoners his name {118} must ever be dear, for we owe the Zoological Gardens to his initiative.

We are standing now in the aisle dedicated to the memory of that great English composer, Henry Purcell, and thus often called the "Musicians'

Aisle," although the memorials to musicians are comparatively few.

Purcell's modest tablet with the well-known epitaph, "Here lyes Henry Purcell, Esq., who left this life, and is gone to that blessed place, where only his harmony can be exceeded," hangs against the pillar near Raffles. We pa.s.sed a modern one hard by to Balfe, a composer of many popular ballads; while on the north wall are the monuments of Purcell's master, Dr. Blow, who first preceded and then succeeded his young pupil at the Abbey organ, and Dr. Croft, who followed after Blow. Stones in the floor mark the graves of Dr. Samuel Arnold, another Abbey organist, and Sterndale Bennett, who is considered by some authorities worthy to rank with Purcell as a musical composer. A tablet to Dr. Burney detains us for a moment, while we remind the lovers of literature in our party of his daughter, the novelist, f.a.n.n.y Burney, and of their friends.h.i.+p with Dr. Johnson, whose grave we saw in Poets' Corner. Other memorials, chiefly those to sailors, are upon this {119} wall, but we cannot tarry much longer, our friends are craving mercy for tired brains and aching limbs. Just before the iron gate the portrait medallion of Charles Darwin, which is closely companioned by tablets to three other modern scientists, Joule, Adams, and Stokes, attracts notice, and the next moment we tread upon the graves of Darwin and Herschel, all placed purposely in the vicinity of Sir Isaac Newton. Doctors of medicine as well as men of science will be found in the nave. We have already referred to the fas.h.i.+onable Dr. Mead, and his no less popular intimate, Dr. Freind, is also here. Freind's brother was headmaster of Westminster School, and many of the Latin inscriptions on contemporary monuments were written by him, including the one under his brother's bust; so many in fact that Pope, whose own pen was ever busy commemorating his cronies with fulsome laudations, such as those on Kneller and Craggs, wrote the following mocking lines:--

Freind, for your epitaphs I'm grieved Where still so much is said, One half will never be believed, The other never read.

The jibing prophecy has been literally fulfilled, for these Latin epitaphs are most certainly never read, {120} while Pope's verses, which are usually in English, stand a better chance. Close to us on the right-hand wall is the bust of a great modern geologist, Sir Charles Lyell, which stands above the monument of his distinguished forerunner, Woodward, who is often called the founder of English geology. Opposite is that of Dean Buckland, who was twice President of the Geological Society and a distinguished authority in that science. The windows along the north side commemorate celebrated civil engineers, Stephenson, Locke, Brunel, and Trevithick. To the genius of these men and to James Watt, whose statue we saw in St. Paul's Chapel, the wonderful railway and steams.h.i.+p system of modern days was, in the first instance, due. Few, indeed, are the arts, crafts, and sciences of the last two centuries which cannot claim some representative in the Abbey. Thus, as we cross over to the west cloister door on our way out, we tread upon the graves of the father of English watchmakers, Thomas Tompion, and his clever apprentice, George Graham; near them lies Telford, the builder of the Menai Bridge; close to him is Robert Stephenson, the designer of the tubular bridge across the Menai Straits, who was buried beside Telford, twenty-five years later, at his own request.

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We have brought our walk round the inside of the church to a conclusion, but in order to complete the circuit of the outside, such of the monastic buildings which are still extant must be visited on the way out. A narrow doorway opposite Telford's grave leads immediately into the cloisters, which formed the central part of the monastery. Here it was that the busy daily life of a Benedictine brotherhood was carried on: in this, the west walk, the monks kept a school, where the novices and boys from the neighbourhood received the only education obtainable in England before the grammar schools were founded. The adjacent north walk was used as a library in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and divided off by screens at either end. In this part used to be the Prior's seat, and around him were bookcases containing parchment rolls and illuminated missals, to which, after Caxton's time, printed volumes were added. The Consuetudines of Abbot Ware, the Litlington Missal, the Liber Regalis, and the Islip Roll are still extant, but most of the precious ma.n.u.scripts which the Westminster brethren illuminated and copied with such loving care in this library, each scribe seated in his own alcove, were destroyed or carelessly lost after the Dissolution, when the monks had all been {122} dispersed, and printed books were rapidly superseding the written folios. In the eastern walk beyond this the Abbot sat enthroned on special days, in order to hear complaints and redress grievances.

There also it was that he held his Maundy on the Thursday before Good Friday, and washed the feet of beggars. Towards the west in the southern part, which completes the square and was used as a pa.s.sage-way, is the entrance to the great refectory where the brethren dined. Nothing of the hall is left save the ancient wall, but outside the door are remains of the niches which were used for towels; the lavatory itself was round the corner in the west cloister. The cloisters, and the monastic buildings which surround them, were built at different periods, chiefly by the generosity and energy of the Abbots. The Norman monastery remained intact long after Henry the Third's time, but the new cloister, which was begun by Abbot Byrcheston, was gradually built as the church progressed, and the north end of the eastern arm was practically part of the south transept. Both the east and north walks were completed under Edward I.

in the same style, the Early English; but the other two were not begun till Langham's abbacy in the fourteenth century, {123} and the cloister was not entirely finished till the fifteenth. To Langham's generous bequest and Litlington's talent for architectural design the monks owed the completion of this most important part of their monastery. We shall see as we go out the head of Litlington, carved on the archway in Dean's Yard after his death, for he did not live to see the whole work which he had planned carried out. In walking round the cloisters it must be remembered, however, that successive restorations and remodellings of the window traceries have in many instances destroyed all traces of the earlier style, and the more ancient portions are now in so decayed a state that a fresh restoration must soon be undertaken.