The Children of Westminster Abbey Part 5

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 world within 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 choir peering 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 pa.s.sage does narrow to a ledge; and the Clerk of the Works, who always accompanies 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 pa.s.s great rooms where all sorts of _debris_ from 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 gla.s.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 b.u.t.tresses, which hold roof and walls together, springing from the upper part of the windows, and ending in tall turrets which run down and bury themselves in the ground. The b.u.t.tresses 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 ma.s.s 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 mediaeval architecture has given place to the Tudor, the feudal Gothic to the more domestic Perpendicular. But in the const.i.tution 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 Westminster Abbey. 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 G.o.dfather, 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 s.p.a.ce 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 doc.u.ment 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,

an act which may perhaps have suggested to the young King the subst.i.tution, which he had all but effected, of the Bible for St. George in the insignia of the Order of the Garter.

By the time he was fourteen his precocious mind became aware of the manner in which his uncle Somerset, had abused his power and taken advantage of his childhood. He saw how the exchequer had been emptied by the rash wars with France and Scotland into which the Protector's ambition had dragged England. How the coinage was debased. How crown lands worth five million of English money of the present day, had been granted away to the Protector's friends. All this the boy-king saw. He felt the shame of his debts; and although he could do little to stop such scandals, he did what he could. According to a schedule he devised, we find him diminishing the garrisons of the forts and the Irish army; ordering greater economy in his household; cutting down the wardrobe charges, and disallowing various claims for fees.

Edward now took part regularly in public business, and began to inquire into the daily transactions of the Council. "He required notice beforehand of the business with which the council was to be occupied, and an account was given in to him each Sat.u.r.day of the proceedings of the week." There is a rough draft of his will, dictated to Sir William Petre the year before his death, which shows how his mind had dwelt silently on the events of his boyhood. "Should his successor like himself, be a minor, his executors, unlike his father's, should meddle with no wars unless the country was invaded." But of all the writings he left, the most interesting and important is an unfinished fragment on the condition of England. Although it was written three hundred years ago by a boy of fifteen, some of it is such fine and wholesome reading for us nowadays, that I must quote part of Mr. Froude's account of it.

"A king who at fifteen could sketch the work which was before him so distinctly, would in a few years have demanded a sharp account of the Stewardship of the Duke of Northumberland."

Looking at England, ... as England was, the young king saw "all things out of order." "Farming gentlemen and clerking knights" neglecting their duties as overseers of the people, "were exercising the gain of living." ... Artificers and clothiers no longer worked honestly; the necessaries of life had risen in price, and the labourers had raised their wages, "whereby to recompense the loss of things they bought." The country swarmed with vagabonds; and those who broke the laws escaped punishment by bribery or through foolish pity. The lawyers and even the judges were corrupt.

Peace and order were violated by religious dissensions and universal neglect of the law. Offices of trust were bought and sold; benefices impropriated, tillage-ground turned to pasture, "not considering the sustaining of men." The poor were robbed by the enclosures; and extravagance in dress and idle luxury of living were eating like ulcers into the State. These were the vices of the age; nor were they likely, as Edward thought, to yield in any way to the most correct formula of justification. The "medicines to cure these sores" were to be looked for in good education, good laws, and "just execution of the laws without respect of persons, in the example of rulers, the punishment of misdoers, and the encouragement of the good." Corrupt magistrates should be deposed, seeing that those who were themselves guilty would not enforce the laws against their own faults; and all gentlemen and n.o.blemen should be compelled to reside on their estates, and fulfil the duties of their place.[47]

Boys and girls in all countries are apt to say "as happy as a king." I wonder if they ever think of the meaning of that phrase. Certainly a less enviable position than that of this young king cannot well be imagined. Holbein's portraits show him to us a delicate, precocious looking boy, with fine features, small mouth, and odd narrow eyes which glance with a keen penetration from under the sleepy lids. If he had been the son of some country squire he would have been living out of doors, making his frail little body strong and healthy, doing ordinary lessons, riding and leaping and playing tennis like any other lad of his age. But instead of this, we find him a mere tool in the hands of unscrupulous advisers, who are filling their own pockets and ruining the kingdom at his expense. He is pondering on matters of state when he ought to have been playing at marbles. Sitting for long hours in the council chamber, when he should have been riding about the forest with his hawks and hounds. Galloping all the night through, from Hampton Court to Windsor, when his uncle Somerset carried him off to serve his own ends, and thereby did the king's delicate chest an injury which it never recovered. And at length, after six years of a miserable, troublous reign, dying at Greenwich before he was sixteen, with the lords in council and the judges quarreling about his death bed. Poor boy! surely no one would be tempted to envy his fate.

He was buried at Westminster in the splendid chapel that his grandfather built and that his father finished under "the matchless altar" which stood at the head of Henry the Seventh's tomb. This sumptuous "touchstone altar, all of one piece," with its "excellent workmanship of bra.s.s," was the work of Torregiano, the rival who broke Michael Angelo's nose in the gardens of St. Mark at Florence. He came to England to complete the adornment of Henry the Seventh's chapel, and lived for twenty years in the precincts of the Abbey, where he kept up his Florentine reputation by sundry fighting feats against the "bears of Englishmen."

The Altar was "by the hot-brained zealots in 41 (1641) demolished; so that not the least footsteps now remain;" and only a gray stone slab marks the resting place of the last male heir of the Tudors. But when in 1868 Dean Stanley made the memorable search in the vaults of the Abbey to discover where James the First was buried--a mystery unsolved till then--a beautiful piece of a carved white marble frieze was found at the entrance of Edward the Sixth's grave. This fragment, three feet eight inches long, seven inches high, and six inches thick, is the only relic which exists of Torregiano's altar. It is now restored as far as possible to its original position, under the present altar in Henry the Seventh's Chapel.

King Edward's funeral, like his coronation, was remarkable in many ways.

It was the first service of the Reformed Church of England ever used over an English sovereign; and this concession was made by the King's Roman Catholic sister, Queen Mary. She was not present; being at the requiem sung in the Tower under the direction of Gardiner, her chief adviser. Archbishop Cranmer conducted the service at Westminster. Thus "the last and saddest function of his public ministry which he was destined to perform," was the burial of his G.o.dson, this young king, whom he had both baptized and crowned.

"The one admirable thing which the unhappy reign produced," must however never be forgotten. While King Edward's uncle Somerset was ruining the kingdom, and paying with his head for his ambition--while the Duke of Northumberland was plotting to set aside Henry the Eighth's will, and to place his own daughter-in-law, the hapless Lady Jane Grey, on the throne of England--Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, was working on quietly in the midst of all the uproar of war and treason, plot and counter-plot, at the English prayer book.

As the translation of the Bible bears upon it the imprint of the mind of Tyndal, so, while the Church of England remains, the image of Cranmer will be seen reflected on the calm surface of the Liturgy. The most beautiful portions of it are translations from the Breviary; yet the same prayers translated by others would not be those which chime like church-bells in the ears of the English child. The translations, and the addresses which are original, have the same silvery melody of language, and breathe the same simplicity of spirit.

One other admirable memory has the reign of Edward left in England. If you stand on Westminster Bridge near the houses of Parliament, and look across the Thames, you see several huge piles of red brick and white stone rising on the Lambeth sh.o.r.e. This is the modern St. Thomas's Hospital, one of the finest in England, built on the foundation which Edward made. Ridley in a sermon preached before the young king, urged the rich to be merciful to the poor and to comfort and relieve them by charitable works. The sermon so impressed the boy that he founded St.

Thomas's--St. Bartholomew's Hospital, in Smithfield, where a few years later the martyrs were to suffer at the stake under his ruthless sister Mary--and Christ's Hospital, which we all know as the "Bluecoat" school, where Charles Lamb, and Coleridge, and Thackeray and many another learned man spent their schooldays. But the boy-king did yet more. In eighteen towns of England he founded the famous Grammar Schools which "throw a l.u.s.tre over the name of Edward," although he did not live to see the fruit of his n.o.ble thought.

FOOTNOTES:

[43] Memorials, 464.

[44] "Memorials of Westminster Abbey." p. 81.

[45] Memorials. p. 81.

[46] Leland. p. 324.

[47] (Froude. Vol. V. p. 441.)

CHAPTER VI

MISS ELIZABETH RUSSELL.

On the 27th of October, 1575, there was a grand christening at Westminster. The tiny baby, wrapped in a mantle of crimson velvet, was carried with royal pomp into the Abbey. Some of the most splendid and famous personages of the day attended to do honor to the child, and the queen's majesty was G.o.dmother.

Who was this baby? Why was all this display and ceremony expended on an infant only five days old?

The little girl was of n.o.ble birth. She was daughter of John, Baron Russell, second son of the Earl of Bedford, one of that famous family which has given England some of her best statesmen for hundreds of years. Her mother was a daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, of Gildea Hall in Ess.e.x, "a man of the ancient equanimity and worship," well known for his goodness and learning. Sir Anthony brought up his daughters to follow in his own footsteps. They were n.o.ble and accomplished gentlewomen and learned withal, for they could write easily in Greek, Latin and Italian, as well as in their own tongue. One of them, Mildred, married Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh, Queen Elizabeth's famous councillor and adviser. Anne was wife of Sir Nicholas, afterwards Lord Chancellor Bacon, whose son was the great philosopher, Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam. Elizabeth, Lady Russell, the mother of our "child of Westminster," had been married before to Sir Thomas Hobby, amba.s.sador to France. And when he died in 1566, Queen Elizabeth wrote a letter full of affection and esteem to his widow. In this letter she praises the dead Sir Thomas; and then goes on:

And for yourself, we cannot but let you know that we hear out of France such singular good reports of your duty well accomplished toward your husband, both living and dead, with other your sober, wise and discreet behaviour in that court and country, that we think it a part of great commendation to us and commendation to our country, that such a gentlewoman hath given so manifest a testimony of virtue in such hard times of adversity. And therefore, though we thought very well of you before, yet shall we hereafter make a more a.s.sured account of your virtues and gifts; and where-insoever we may conveniently do you pleasure, you may be thereof a.s.sured. And so we would have you rest yourself in quietness, with a firm opinion of our special favour towards you. Given under our signet, at our city of Oxford, the ---- of September, 1566, the eighth year of our reign.

Your loving friend,

ELIZABETH R.

It was "at our city of Oxford" that we chanced upon this letter. Reading in the Bodleian Library, at the end of the great cross gallery lined with rows of books, tier upon tier, we sat in the month of September, 1884, at a quiet table beside a huge stone-mullioned window. One of its cas.e.m.e.nts of leaded panes, guarded with brown rusty iron bars, was open.

In the acacia-tree outside a bird was singing. Beyond the delicate green foliage, untouched by any thought of autumn, the towers and spires of the glorious city rose above red and gray roofs. The silence about us was only broken by the crisp turning of leaves or the stealthy foot-fall of the attendants bringing fresh heaps of books to the half-dozen busy workers. There was a fragrant smell of old books--of leather bindings--so dear to the student's heart. The warm, sweet outer air and hot sunshine streamed in at the open window. "The merry, merry Christ Church bells--one, two, three, four, five, six," chimed the quarters; and "Mighty Tom" tolled the hours as the morning stole by only too quickly.