FOOTNOTES:

Sometimes, if they were of higher rank, they established their quarters in the great Northern Porch of the Abbey, with tents pitched, and guards watching round, for days and nights together.[26]

Thieves or malefactors would often break away from their captors, as they were being led by the winding "Thieven Lane" outside to their prison in the gatehouse, and darting into the consecrated ground would defy all attempts to lure them forth.

Rich men run thither with poor men's goods. There they build, there they spend and bid their creditors go whistle for them. Men's wives run thither with their husband's plate, and say they dare not abide with their husbands for beating. Thieves bring thither their stolen goods, and there live thereon. There devise they new robberies: nightly they steal out, they rob and reave, and kill, and come in again as though these places gave not only a safeguard for the harm they have done, but a license also to do more.[27]

The results of this state of things were felt long after the right of Sanctuary ceased to exist in James the First's reign. The district outside the precincts of Westminster has always been one of the very worst in London. The writer remembers some twenty years ago walking home with her relative, Mr. Froude, from Sunday afternoon service at the Abbey, through Great Peter street, and being told to take care of her purse as every house was a thieves' den. In many of them there was a dressed-up manikin hung with bells, on which little children were given lessons in stealing. If they picked the manikin's pockets without ringing the bells they were rewarded: but if a bell tinkled they were beaten. Happily this street and many others like it were swept away by the great new thoroughfare, Victoria street, and its branches; and noble men and women are working day and night to civilize and christianize the slums which lie to the south of the Abbey. But it will be many a year before that Augean stable is cleaned out, which originated with those who "took Westminster."

Only twice was Sanctuary broken at Westminster. On August 11, 1378, two knights named Hawle and Shackle, escaped from the Tower of London where they had been imprisoned by John of Gaunt, and fled to the Abbey. For greater security they took refuge in the Choir itself, during the celebration of High Mass. Alan Boxall, constable of the Tower, and Sir Ralph Ferrers with fifty armed men were close behind them, and burst in upon the service "regardless of time or place." Shackle escaped. But Hawle, chased round and round the Choir, at last fell dead in front of the Prior's Stall, pierced with twelve wounds. His servant and one of the monks who had tried to save him, were killed with him; and the stone on which he lay dead may be seen to this day with the effigy traced upon it. The Abbey—profaned by the horrible crime—was shut up for four months, and "Parliament was suspended, lest its assembly should be polluted by sitting within the desecrated precincts."[28]

The second outrage took place during Wat Tyler's rebellion, when, by his orders, one John Mangett, Marshal of the Marshalsea, was torn from one of the slender pillars of the Confessor's Shrine to which he clung for safety.

But to us, "Sanctuary" is specially interesting, as it is intimately connected with the short and tragic lives of Edward the Fifth and Richard, Duke of York, his brother.

In 1470, Edward the Fourth—betrayed by his brother Clarence, and by that terrible and splendid personage Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, "The Kingmaker"—fled over seas with a small following to the court of his brother-in-law, Charles the Bold, in Flanders. His Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, was then living in the Tower, where Henry the Sixth, the deposed king, was imprisoned; and thus by a strange conjunction, the Yorkist Queen and the Lancastrian King were within that grim building at the same time. When Elizabeth heard that her husband had taken flight, and that Henry was to be restored to the throne, she came secretly by water from the Tower, and took Sanctuary at Westminster, with her three daughters and Lady Scroope "in greate penurieforsaken of all her friends." Here Thomas Millyng, the abbot, received her with kindness, sending her provisions—"half a loaf and two muttons"—daily. And here on the fourth of November was born her

faire son, called Edward, which was with small pompe like a poore man's child christened, the godfathers being the Abbot and the Prior of Westminster, and the godmother the Ladie Scroope.[29]

The Queen remained in Sanctuary until the spring of the next year, when her husband returned in triumph to the capital two days before the great battle of Barnet. There Warwick the Kingmaker, was slain, the Lancastrian forces were broken up, and Edward was once more king of England. The Queen has given in her own words an account of her joyful meeting at Westminster.

When my lord and husband returned safe again and had the victory, then went I hence to welcome him home, and from hence I brought my babe the Prince unto his father, when he first took him in his arms.[30]

Edward was not ungrateful to Westminster for the refuge it had afforded his queen in her sore distress. Abbot Millyng became a favorite at court, and was made Bishop of Hereford. The king gave at different times "fourscore oaks and about two hundred and fifty pounds[31]in money towards the new building of the nave." The Queen gave one hundred and seventy pounds, and built the Chapel of St. Erasmus on part of the present site of Henry the Seventh's chapel, and endowed it with the manors of Cradeley and Hagley in Worcestershire. And the young prince during the last eight years of his father's life gave twenty marks yearly towards the completion of the nave, which work had been begun by Henry the Fifth.

But the poor Queen was destined to fly again to Sanctuary, in yet more sore distress. In April, 1483, Edward the Fourth died. Edward, Prince of Wales—the babe born in Westminster—was twelve and a half years old, and was living in some state at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire. He had acouncil of his own, composed chiefly of his mother's relations and friends; foremost among whom was Earl Rivers, his mother's brother, and his own half brother Lord Grey (son of the Queen by her first marriage to Sir John Grey). Shortly before his death the king had drawn up ordinances for Prince Edward's daily conduct,

which prescribe his morning attendance at mass, his occupation "at his school," his meals, and his sports. No man is to sit at his board but such as earl Rivers shall allow; and at this hour of meat it is ordered "that there shall be read before him noble stories, as behoveth a prince to understand; and that the communication at all times, in his presence, be of virtue, honour, cunning (knowledge), wisdom, and deeds of worship, and of nothing that shall move him to vice."[32]

From this quiet, happy life the little boy was rudely awakened by his father's death. He was proclaimed King of England under the title of Edward the Fifth; and a fortnight later set out for London with his uncle Lord Rivers, Lord Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan and a large retinue. All went well until they reached Stony Stratford, a little distancefrom Northampton. There the young king stayed for the night with his attendants, while Lord Rivers returned to Northampton to meet the late king's brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who was hurrying down from the Scotch marches—ostensibly to pay homage to his nephew.

A struggle had been long impending between two rival parties in the state. On one hand the Queen, with her relations, who had been raised to wealth and power by her marriage. On the other, Gloucester, with many of the old nobility, whose jealousy had been roused by the sudden advance of the Woodville family. The king's death and his successor's tender age would inevitably bring about a collision. It was now merely a question which faction could out-manœuvre the other. Richard of Gloucester struck the first blow. Rivers was arrested at his inn.

Gloucester and the duke of Buckingham then rode on to Stony Stratford, where they found the poor little king with his company "ready to leap on horseback, and depart forward." But it was too late. The dukes arrested Vaughan and Grey,and brought the frightened boy back to Northampton. "He wept, and was nothing content, but it booted not."[33]Richard himself took his nephew to London; and at the young king's public entry on the fourth of May he bore himself "in open sight most reverently to the prince, with all semblance of lowliness."[34]The peers also took the oath of fealty. But it was only "a semblance." Able and unscrupulous, Richard of Gloucester had long been meditating a scheme of daring ambition. The first step was accomplished. He had possession of his young nephew's person. Now he was appointed "Protector of England." And during poor little King Edward's short reign his signature was used as an instrument for the ruin of his mother's kindred and friends, and for the aggrandizement of his uncle Gloucester's party.

The Queen, meanwhile, saw only too clearly whither these events tended. Terrified at Richard's successful blow, seeing that her own faction was utterly undone, and fearing for the lives of herself and her children, she flew again to her well-known refuge. She left the Palace of Westminster at midnight with her youngest son, Richard Duke of York, and her five daughters, and lodged in the Abbot's Place.

It was in one of the great chambers of the house, probably the Dining-hall (now the College Hall) that she was received by Abbot Esteney.[35]The Queen sate alow on the rushes all desolate and dismayed, and all about her much heaviness, rumble, haste and business; carriage and conveyance of her stuff into Sanctuary; chests, coffers, packers, fardels, trussed all on men's backs; no man unoccupied—some lading, some going, some discharging, some coming for more, some breaking down the walls to bring in the next (nearest) way.[36]

It was in one of the great chambers of the house, probably the Dining-hall (now the College Hall) that she was received by Abbot Esteney.[35]

The Queen sate alow on the rushes all desolate and dismayed, and all about her much heaviness, rumble, haste and business; carriage and conveyance of her stuff into Sanctuary; chests, coffers, packers, fardels, trussed all on men's backs; no man unoccupied—some lading, some going, some discharging, some coming for more, some breaking down the walls to bring in the next (nearest) way.[36]

In the midst of all this dismay and confusion the Archbishop of York, Thomas Rotheram, Chancellor of England, brought the Queen the Great Seal, trying to comfort and encourage her with a message from the Lord Chamberlain Hastings, who thought matters were not so hopeless as she imagined. But she mistrusted Hastings as "one of those that laboreth to destroy me and my blood." The Archbishop left the Great Seal with her,

and departed home again, yet in the dawning of the day. By which time, he might in his chamber window (his palace was on the site of the present Whitehall) see all the Thames full of boats of the Duke of Gloucester's servants, watching that no man should go to Sanctuary; nor none could pass unsearched.

The Queen seems to have withdrawn into her old quarters in the fortress of the Sanctuary itself, where she had before found safety; and the Protector, determined to get possession of both his nephews, proposed at his council in the Star Chamber, that if she would not give up the Duke of York to keep his brother company he should be taken from thence by force. But this proposition only served to show in what respect the privilege of Sanctuary was held. The archbishops and spiritual lords promptly refused their consent to such a sacrilegious measure. Said the Archbishop of Canterbury,

God forbid that any man should for anything earthly, enterprise or break the immunity and liberty of the sacred Sanctuary,that hath been the safeguard of so many a good man's life.[37]

The Protector then tried to show that as the child was incapable of such crimes as needed sanctuary, so he was incapable of receiving it. This ingenious bit of casuistry convinced some of the listeners; and the archbishop and several lords went at once to Westminster to try to persuade the Queen to give up her boy. But she resisted "with all the force of a woman's art and a mother's love."[38]

In what place could I reckon him sure, if he be not sure in this Sanctuary, whereof was there never tyrant yet so devilish that durst presume to break....If examples be sufficient to obtain privilege for my child I need not far to seek;for in this place in which we now be(and which is now in question whether my child may take benefit of it)mine other son, now King, was born and kept in his cradle, and preserved to a more prosperous fortune....And I pray God that my son's palace may be as great a safeguard unto him now reigning, as this place was sometime unto the king's enemy.

Gallantly had the poor mother fought for her child's liberty; and at last wearied out she ended with a fierce and terrible denunciation of her persecutors:

I can no more, butwhosoever he be that breaketh this holy sanctuary, I pray God shortly to send him need of sanctuary where he may not come to it. For taken out of sanctuary would I not my mortal enemy were.[39]

At length, pledging both "body and soul," the archbishop prevailed; and the Queen determined to deliver up Prince Richard as a sacred trust. Then turning to the child she took leave of him in those well-known and most pathetic words:

"Farewell mine owne sweete sonne, God send you good keeping; let me kisse you yet once ere you go, for God knoweth when we shall kisse togither againe." And therewith she kissed him and blessed him, turned her back and wept and went her way, leaving the child weeping as fast.[40]

Poor mother! Her fears were only too well founded. She never saw her sons again. When little Richard was taken into the Star Chamber, the Protector took him in his arms and kissed him saying, "Now welcome, my Lord, even with all my heart." The boy was then conveyed to the Bishop of London's palace, where his brother, the young king, met him with delight. This was in the beginning of June; and the two children were next removed to the Tower (under pretext of preparing for the coronation fixed for the twenty-second), "out of the which," says Sir Thomas More, "after that day they never came abroad."

Richard Duke of Gloucester's policy had been developing fast since the day he took possession of the young king at Stony Stratford. The Queen's party were all in prison—many of them awaiting execution. Shakespeare has vividly described how Richard ridded himself of Lord Hastings,[41]the late king's favorite adviser, who was the only remaining check on his plans. After Hastings' execution the Protector declared that Edward the Fourth's marriage was invalid, and that his children could not therefore succeed to the crown. After a faint show of reluctance he allowed himself to be proclaimed king, under the title of Richard the Third, and was crowned at Westminster on the sixth of July.

Every one knows the tragic end to the story. While the little boys lived their uncle's throne was insecure. They were still in the Tower. Rivers their uncle was beheaded; so were their half-brother Grey and many more of their mother's kinsmen and friends. A mystery must always hang over this dreadful deed. Whether by Richard's direct order, or simply in accordance with his known but half-expressed wishes, the two children suddenly disappeared—murdered, as it was alleged, by their uncle. Sir James Tyrell, when tried for high treason in Henry the Seventh's reign, only eight years after, confessed to the murder. And it was commonly supposed that the boys were "buried in a great heap of rubbish near the footstairs of their lodging; where is now the raised terrace."[42]But the priest of the Tower having died shortly after, "left the world in dark as to the place."

For nearly two hundred years nothing more was known. In Charles the Second's reign, however, orders were given to rebuild some offices in the Tower. In taking away the stairs going from the King's Lodging into the Chapel of the White Tower, the workmen found a wooden chest buried ten feet deep in the ground, which contained the bones of two boys, about eleven and thirteen years of age. Charles the Second hearing of this discovery ordered the bones to be carefully collected and put in a marble urn, which he placed in Westminster Abbey, with an inscription in Latin of which the following is a translation:

Here lieThe Reliquesof Edward the Fifth King ofEngland, and Richard, Dukeof York.These brothers being confined in the Tower,and there stifled with Pillows,Were privately and meanly buried,By order ofTheir perfidious UncleRichardthe usurper;Whose bones, long enquired after and wished for,After two hundred and one yearsIn the Rubbish of the Stairs (i. e. those lately leading tothe Chapelof theWhite Tower)Were on the 17th day ofJuly, 1674, by undoubted Proofsdiscovered,Being buried deep in that Place.Charles the Second, a most compassionate Prince, pityingtheir severe fate,Ordered these unhappy Princes to be laidAmongst the monuments of their Predecessors,Anno Dom1678, in the 30th year of his Reign.

The mean and ugly little urn, which was the only monument that "most compassionate Prince" could afford to the memory of these two children, stands at the end of the north aisle of Henry the Seventh's Chapel, close to Queen Elizabeth's tomb.

But let us turn from this dismal theme to something much more cheerful. While little Richard Duke of York was in Sanctuary with his mother, he must have often run across under the shadow of the great elms that stood before the Abbots House, to the Almonry, a small building near by. For to the Almonry eight years before a wise man had come with a strange new invention. He hung a red pole at the door for a sign; and soon all the learned men in the kingdom began to gather at theAlmonry of Westminster, and talk to William Caxton, the printer of books. For he it was who had come from Bruges in Flanders, bringing with him the first printing press that had ever been seen in England. And at Westminster he worked away for fifteen years, translating and printing with ceaseless industry. It was a hard task that the industrious printer had undertaken, for the English language was in a state of transition. The tongue of each shire varied so as to be hardly intelligible to men of the next county; and Caxton says that the old-English Charters which the Abbot of Westminster fetched him as models seemed "more like to Dutch than to English." In his translations he had to choose between two schools—French affectation, and English pedantry. "Some honest and great clerks," he says, "have been with me and desired me to write the most curious terms I could find;" and others blamed him, saying that in his translations he "had over many curious terms which could not be understood of common people, and desired me to use old and homely terms." "Fain would I please every man," the good-tempered printer exclaims. But, happily for his successors, Caxton's excellent sense inclined him to good, plain English, "to the common terms that be daily used"—and he therefore left a far more lasting mark on English literature than can be gauged by the number and importance of the books he printed.

MEMORIAL URN IN HENRY THE SEVENTH'S CHAPEL.MEMORIAL URN IN HENRY THE SEVENTH'S CHAPEL.

The Almonry soon became a centre for all that was most cultivated in England. Lord Arundel pressed the printer to take courage when the length of the Golden Legend made him "half desperate to have accomplisht it," and ready to "lay it apart;" and promised him a yearly fee of a buck in summer and a doe in winter if it were done. Noble ladies lent him their precious books. Churchmen brought him their translations. A mercer of London prayed him to undertake the "Royal Book" of Philip le Bel. The Queen's brother, the hapless Lord Rivers, chatted with him over his own translation of the "Sayings of the Philosophers." His "Tully" was printed under the patronage of Edward the Fourth. And among his chief supporters was Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to whom his "Order of Chivalry" was dedicated.

It is therefore no mere flight of fancy, but a supposition founded on good evidence, that little Prince Richard may have beguiled some of the weary hours of his captivity by visits to the Almonry, watching the curious presses which struck off sheet after sheet of printing, and talking to the good-natured printer, who must, by all accounts, have been the cheeriest and busiest of men.

The Almonry is gone.

Bareheaded boys from Westminster School play foot-ball under the few remaining descendants of the old elms in Dean's Yard, and hurry in and out of the gateway with their school books under their arms. All that remains of the ancient Sanctuary is that blue plate with white letters. But within the great Abbey, the two little princes are in Sanctuary once more; never again to leave it while the fabric stands. And William Caxton sleeps in St. Margaret's Church close by, while his memory lives in every printed page of the English tongue.

FOOTNOTES:[26]"Memorials of Westminster Abbey." p. 405. Dean Stanley.[27]Speech of Duke of Buckingham in Sir T. More's "Life of Richard the Third."[28]"Memorials of Westminster Abbey." p. 408. Dean Stanley.[29]Holinshed's Chronicle. Vol. 3. p. 300.[30]Sir Thomas More's History of Edward the Fifth, and Richard the Third.[31]Equal to about £2500 in the present day.[32]C. Knight's History of England. Vol. 2. p. 176.[33]More.[34]More.[35]"Memorials of Westminster Abbey," Dean Stanley. p. 411.[36]More's Life of Edward the Fifth. p. 40.[37]More.[38]"Memorials of Westminster Abbey." p. 412.[39]More.[40]More.[41]"King Richard the Third." Act III., Scene IV.[42]Dart. Vol. I. p. 170.

[26]"Memorials of Westminster Abbey." p. 405. Dean Stanley.

[27]Speech of Duke of Buckingham in Sir T. More's "Life of Richard the Third."

[28]"Memorials of Westminster Abbey." p. 408. Dean Stanley.

[29]Holinshed's Chronicle. Vol. 3. p. 300.

[30]Sir Thomas More's History of Edward the Fifth, and Richard the Third.

[31]Equal to about £2500 in the present day.

[32]C. Knight's History of England. Vol. 2. p. 176.

[33]More.

[34]More.

[35]"Memorials of Westminster Abbey," Dean Stanley. p. 411.

[36]More's Life of Edward the Fifth. p. 40.

[37]More.

[38]"Memorials of Westminster Abbey." p. 412.

[39]More.

[40]More.

[41]"King Richard the Third." Act III., Scene IV.

[42]Dart. Vol. I. p. 170.

Between the death of Edward the Fifth and the coronation of another boy-king, Edward the Sixth, Westminster Abbey saw momentous changes. Its fabric and its constitution were alike altered by the stupendous transformation through which England passed in those seventy years.

Henry the Seventh's reign marks a great break in English History. It is the close of the Middle Ages. And the Abbey tells the story of this break in a strangely vivid and emphatic fashion. As we walk up the wide flight of steps beyond the Confessor's Chapel at the extreme east end of the Abbey, we find ourselves in a new world. The grave, stately, mediæval church is left behind. And, entering Henry the Seventh's matchless chapel, a sense of fervor and richness in the architectureseizes on us. Our eyes feast on the bayed windows with their innumerable little diamond panes; the traceries and mouldings on the walls—not a foot left unwrought—the niches with figures of saint and martyr; the grand bronze gates with their Tudor arms—the rose and portcullis, the falcon and fetterlock—the rich dark wood carving of the stalls, with the banners of the Knights of the Bath hanging motionless above each; and then the roof, that marvelous stone cobweb, with its bosses, carvings and coats of arms, its vaultings springing from the slenderest pillars imaginable like graceful palm stems, and spreading out into the exquisite fan-tracery that covers the whole—a network of stone lace. As Washington Irving says in his unrivalled description of Westminster,

Stone seems, by the cunning labor of the chisel, to have been robbed of its weight and density, suspended aloft as if by magic; and the fretted roof achieved with the wonderful minuteness and airy security of a cobweb.

INTERIOR OF THE CHAPEL OF HENRY THE SEVENTH.INTERIOR OF THE CHAPEL OF HENRY THE SEVENTH.

Those prodigious pendants of stone, richly carved over their whole surface, which hang poised aloft in airy splendor, may well fill the mind with wonder almost akin to terror. How do they hold together? How has the cunning of man been able to counteract the force of gravity? What keeps them from falling on us as we stand gazing up at the stone miracle, and grinding us to powder? Not only we, but many wise architects have marvelled at that "prodigy of art,"—at the "daring hardihood" which keyed that roof together, every block depending on the next, and the whole structure cohering by the perfection of each minutest part. The very richness of the work, the seemingly lavish tracery, the perforated ornaments behind the spring of the main arches, all help to weld it into one abiding whole. It is a fit type of the noble strength of perfect unity. For, so say the masons, if one stone were to give away, if one pendant were to fall, the whole roof would collapse.

Nothing gives one a just idea of the awful weight of stone in that roof until one has climbed above it. Would that I could take you, my readers, as I have taken more than one American child, for a wander about the roofs of the Abbey. It is a worldwithin a world. Do not fancy it is all dark and dirty and terrific. Not at all. I know few more charming excursions. A little door in the corner of the north transept lets us into a turret staircase. Up and up it winds, round the solid smooth shaft of stone, till we reach the Triforium. This is the row of double trefoil-headed arches that runs all around the Abbey above the great pier-arches. From below you think, how frightful to be up on that narrow ledge, clinging to the wall. But when you get up to it you find it anything but a narrow ledge. It is a grand gallery twenty feet wide, large enough to drive a coach and four along it, and lighted at many points by rose-windows in the outer walls. The double arches and slender pillars which look so beautiful from the ground, are just as interesting when seen close. Hardly two of them are alike; the builders of those days did their work in no grudging spirit: but lavished fresh designs upon every yard.

It is a strange sensation up aloft in this wide gallery, looking down a sheer sixty feet into the Abbey, peeping at the stalls of the choirpeering down the pipes of the organ, watching the people wandering like flies over the pavement below us. But the strangest experience of all is an excursion such as I am describing at night. One such wandering is specially impressed on my memory. Some American friends were with us; and lighted by one little lantern we threaded our way through the darkness, through the solemn stillness of the wonderful building, and came out into the Triforium. Then suddenly three or four clear rich voices, one of which is well-known to all who frequent the services at Westminster, came floating up from the gulf of gloom beneath us, singing,

Lift thine eyes, oh! lift thine eyes to the mountains, whence cometh help.

I do not think any one of us will ever forget the startling, overpowering effect; or listen again to Mendelssohn's trio without a thrill.

But we must go on. In only one place is the way perilous—just under the great window in the north transept; for there the passage does narrow to a ledge; and the Clerk of the Works, who alwaysaccompanies these wanderings in high places, bids the untried hands be careful. Once past the window all is plain sailing again. We make our way round, above the Confessor's Chapel, and see his coffin lying in his shrine. We pass great rooms where all sorts ofdébrisfrom the building are kept—old oaken chairs, bits of stone carving, paraphernalia for the coronation or for any great ceremony. We walk under the painted glass windows that we have watched, shining like jewels at the end of the apse, when we are at service in the choir. Then comes another door, another narrow stair, and we find ourselves in the strangest place of all. We are on the roof of Henry the Seventh's chapel. Overhead the great rafters are piled, supporting the outer roof; and as we advance a whirr and a rush of wings startle our nerves which are perhaps a little on edge by this time. There is nothing to alarm us however, for it is we who have startled some of the flock of pigeons who live up in the roofs of the Abbey. Hundreds of them congregate here, and get their living down in the great restless city below, especially in Palace Yard. The cabmen on the cabstand there, waiting for the members to come out of the House of Parliament, are greatly attached to the Abbey pigeons. I have often watched a rough, gruff "cabby" fetch a pailful of water and set it down near his hansom for the pretty birds, who flutter fearlessly, bridling and cooing, on to the edge, and dip their pink bills in the cool water, and then hop down and peck up the oats the cab-horse has dropped from his nose-bag. One would think that nowhere could birds be safer than in the sanctuary of Westminster. But alas! they have enemies who respect sanctuary far less than King Richard the Third. The vast roofs of the Abbey are infested by a breed of fierce half-wild cats. They have lived up there for years, and cannot be exterminated; and not only are they a perfect pest and plague to all dwellers in the cloisters, but they get their living by preying on the poor dear Abbey pigeons.

EXTERIOR OF THE CHAPEL OF HENRY THE SEVENTH.EXTERIOR OF THE CHAPEL OF HENRY THE SEVENTH.

However, we did not climb all this height to talk of cats and pigeons; and if you once find yourselves in this strange place you will give them but little thought. For under our feet is a great stone sea—vast circular pits and troughs of solid stone—a very maelstrom of rock. Each of those great wells narrowing towards the bottom represents one of the gigantic pendants below. And here one's wonder is I think increased sevenfold, and we ask how was it possible to poise this prodigious weight on those slender walls. If we want an answer to our question we must look outside the chapel, and observe the graceful Flying Buttresses, which hold roof and walls together, springing from the upperpart of the windows, and ending in tall turrets which run down and bury themselves in the ground. The buttresses are so light, and so richly carved, and the turrets look so completely ornamental, with their crockets, and the delicate canopies over the niches—empty alas! and their string-course formed of the Tudor arms, that one thinks of them merely as a lovely part of a lovely whole. So they are. But they are one of the chief means of binding that splendid roof together—of keeping the walls from being pulled inward by the mass of stone they have to support. They act like the guy-ropes which keep a flagstaff upright.

Thus far we have seen how by Edward the Sixth's time the mediæval architecture has given place to the Tudor, the feudal Gothic to the more domestic Perpendicular. But in the constitution of the Abbey a far more momentous change had taken place. In Henry the Eighth's reign the Reformation shook the life of England to its very foundation. It is not my intention to enter upon that vast and deeply important subject. I only wish to show you some of its effects on WestminsterAbbey. The Abbey and Monastery of Westminster shared in the general Dissolution of Monasteries in 1539. The last Abbot of Westminster was converted into a Dean, and "the Monks were succeeded by twelve Prebendaries, each to be present daily in the Choir, and to preach once a quarter."[43]The "Abbot's Place" was to be known henceforth as the "Deanery." And for us, who have known that Deanery in the brilliant days of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, what memories does the name awake. But more. All the relics in the Abbey that had been given, as we have seen, by successive kings, and with them Llewellyn's golden crown, and the banners and statues around the shrine of St. Edward, all these were swept away as worthless or worse than worthless. Even the bones of the Confessor were not respected; but were moved and buried apart, until Queen Mary brought them back and laid them once more in the shrine where they had reposed so long, and where they rest to this day. Then robbers broke into the Abbey and carried off, among other treasures, the silver head from Henry the Fifth's monument. And in Edward the Sixth's reign, when the spirit of iconoclasm was at its height, the Protector Somerset even talked of demolishing the Abbey Church, and was only deterred from such an act of vandalism by the rising, some say, of the inhabitants of Westminster, or, by the sacrifice of seventeen manors belonging to the Chapter for the needs of the protectorate.

A boy king was once more head of the English nation. When Henry the Eighth died in January, 1547, Prince Edward was not quite ten years old, his sister Elizabeth nearly fourteen, while Mary, the elder sister, was thirty-one. In less than a month after his father's death, Edward was crowned at Westminster, and very curious the accounts are of the ceremony. As was usual, the prince spent the few days before his coronation at the Tower; and the procession from thence to Westminster was of extreme magnificence. The little boy was delighted by an Arragonese sailor who "capered on a tight-rope down from the battlements of St. Paul's to a window at the Dean's Gate."[44]

An old man in a chair, with crown and sceptre, represented the state of King Edward the Confessor. St. George would have spoken, but that His Grace made such speed for lack of time he could not.[45]

The service at which Archbishop Cranmer, the king's godfather, officiated, was still that of the Church of Rome: but it was greatly shortened,

partly "for the tedious length of the same," and "the tender age" of the King—partly for "that many points of the same were such as, by the laws of the nation, were not allowable."[46]

And there were various other differences in matters of detail, into which we have no space to enter, which showed that a radical change had taken place in England since Henry the Eighth's coronation. Even shortened as it was, the service was so long and exhausting that the poor little king was carried out fainting before it was over.

EDWARD THE SIXTH.—From a Painting by Holbein.EDWARD THE SIXTH.—From a Painting by Holbein.

A "marvellous boy," "monstrificus peullus" as an Italian physician described him, must King Edward have been. When other boys have their heads full of bats and balls, of bird'snesting and fishing, this little lad was writing a diary of political events, the history year by year of his own reign—a strange document when one thinks of the author's youth. In it he gravely set down all manner of questions which usually trouble only old heads. And King Edward's journal is still one of the most valuable records of the time. Although it does not exhibit any very original views, this diary shows a strangely impartial spirit. It shows too a good deal of the coldness of the Tudor nature; for one is unpleasantly impressed at finding the young king recording the executions of his two uncles—Somerset and Seymour—with the most stoical indifference; and setting aside the right of his sisters Mary and Elizabeth to the crown, with a hard cold remark that they are "unto us but of the half-blood."

Edward held very strong and decided opinions on all points connected with the Reformed Church of England.

He was the first sovereign to whom the Bible had been presented at his coronation,

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