WHITEHALL.--WESTMINSTER ABBEY
Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, discloses in
its cramped and dingy quarters little if anything that remains of the time
when Milton lived within its precincts. In the days when he dwelt here and
assisted Cromwell as his Latin secretary, some remnants of the former
palace of the Scottish kings, which once had occupied this site, were
still to be seen. Hard by at one time lived both the greatest architects
of that age of building, Jones and Wren. From Scotland Yard to Cannon Row,
Westminster, there extended in Milton's lifetime the stately old palace of
Whitehall, built in the Tudor style of Hampton Court. A writer in the last
days of Queen Elizabeth tells us that it was truly royal; enclosed on one
side by the Thames, on the other by a park which connects it with St.
James's, another royal palace. He speaks of an immense number of
swans,--birds favoured by royalty then as now,--which floated on the salty
bosom of the tidal Thames as now they do upon its sweeter waters at
Runnymede and Windsor. He also mentions that deer were numerous. An open
way led through the palace grounds from Charing Cross to Westminster,
which, although shut in by gates at either end, was an open thoroughfare.
When Cardinal Wolsey owned Whitehall, it was known as "York Place," and
did not receive the former title until Henry VIII. had taken possession of
it. Here the voluptuous monarch visited his great rival in magnificence,
and at a masque within these walls cast covetous eyes upon fair Anne
Boleyn. Within these richly tapestried and stately halls a few months
later, the "little great lord cardinal" bade a long farewell to all his
greatness, and with a heavy heart entered his barge at the foot of
Whitehall stairs.
Henry added many features to his new possessions, among others a stately
gateway of three stories with mullioned windows and octagonal towers
designed by Holbein. Sir Thomas More at Chelsea had discovered the merits
of this artist, and there presented him to the king, who was a clever
connoisseur in art as well as wives. It was in Whitehall that Hans Holbein
painted the well-known portrait of the straddling monarch. From the advent
of that shrewd politician, great sovereign, yet vain and silly woman,
Elizabeth, Whitehall became definitely the seat of royalty, though the
Tower theoretically remained so. The library of this learned woman was
well filled with books, not only English, but French, Latin, Greek, and
Italian. Masques, tournaments, and every form of gorgeous entertainment,
from Wolsey's time to that of William III., made money flow like water in
Whitehall, except during the short domination of the Puritan party. James
I., upon the burning of the Banquet Hall in 1615, determined to commission
Inigo Jones, not only to build a new one, but to build a whole new palace,
of which this hall was but the fortieth part.
The Banquet Hall is in the Palladian style of architecture, and is 111
feet in length, and half as great in width and height. Its ceiling is
decorated with pictures by Rubens, painted on canvas and sent from abroad.
They represent the apotheosis of James I. and scenes from the life of
Charles I. The original plan, which was not carried out, was to have
included a number of mural paintings by Van Dyck, which should represent
the history and ceremonies of the Order of the Garter. The palace was
planned to cover the whole space from the Thames to St. James's Park, and
from Charing Cross to Westminster. In Milton's time of residence in
Whitehall upon the south was the Bowling Green, and north of it the Privy
Gardens. The front consisted of the existing Banquet Hall,--the only part
of the plan of Inigo Jones that ever materialised,--the gateways, and a
row of low gabled buildings. Behind these were three courts or
quadrangles. East of the Banquet Hall were a row of offices, the Great
Hall or Presence Chamber, and the Chapel and private rooms of the king and
queen. The art treasures and library were in the "Stone Gallery," which
ran along the east side of the Privy Garden. The magnificence which was
displayed at Whitehall in Milton's early boyhood may be perceived from the
pomp and luxury of George Villiers, afterward Duke of Buckingham, when he
came to make his fortune at the court of James I. "It was common with him
at any ordinary dancing to have his cloaths trimmed with great diamonds;
hatbands, cockades, and earrings to be yoked with great and manifold knots
of pearls--in short, to be manacled, fettered, and imprisoned in jewels,
insomuch that at his going over to Paris in 1625, he had twenty-seven
suits of cloaths made, the richest that embroidery, silk, velvet, gold,
and gems could contribute; one of which was a white, uncut velvet, set all
over, both suit and cloak, with diamonds valued at fourscore thousand
pounds, besides a great feather stuck all over with diamonds; as were also
his sword, girdle, hatband, and spurs." He drove in a coach with six
horses, and was carried sometimes in a sedan-chair, which mode of
conveyance then was new and caused much outcry against the using of men as
beasts of burden.
We have already alluded to the famous masque, which was planned by members
of the Inns of Court at Ely Place, and carried out in 1633 to please the
queen--an entertainment so unique in its splendour as to be referred to in
every account of Whitehall. But the palace is chiefly notable, not for
scenes of gaiety, but for that mournful sight which struck terror to the
breast of every European monarch, and horrified every believer in the
divine right of kings. On the 27th of January, 1648-49, the death sentence
was passed upon Charles I., of whom a few months later one of his
followers wrote:
"Great Charles, thou earthly god, celestial man,...
Thy heavenly virtues angels should rehearse,
It is a theam too high for human verse."
Cromwell hesitated long before he signed the death warrant. If banishment
of the king could have secured their rights to Englishmen, gladly would he
have urged a milder sentence. But with the king alive, he felt there was
no surety of peace or justice, and after painful hesitation he set his
seal to the death warrant. Says Masson: "At the centre of England was a
will that had made itself adamant, by express vow and deliberation
beforehand, for the very hour which now had arrived. Fairfax had relented
... Vane had withdrawn from the work ... there was an agony over what was
coming among many that had helped to bring it to pass. Only some fifty or
sixty governing Englishmen, with Oliver Cromwell in the midst of them,
were prepared for every responsibility and stood inexorably to their task.
_They_ were the will of England now, and they had the army with them. What
proportion of England besides went with them, it might be difficult to
estimate. One private Londoner, at all events, can be named who approved
thoroughly of their policy, and was ready to testify the same. While the
sentenced king was at St. James's, there was lying on Milton's
writing-table in his house in High Holborn at least the beginnings of a
pamphlet on which he had been engaged during the king's trial, and in
which in vehement answer to the outcry of the Presbyterians generally ...
he was to defend all the recent acts of the army, Pride's Purge included,
justify the existing governments of the army chiefs and the fragment of
Parliament that assisted them, inculcate republican beliefs in his
countrymen, and prove to them above all this proposition: '_That it is
lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for any who have the
power, to call to account a tyrant_, or wicked king, and, after due
conviction, to depose and put him to death, if the ordinary magistrate
have neglected or denied to do it.' The pamphlet was not to come out in
time to bear practically on the deed which it justified; but while the
king was yet alive, it was planned, sketched, and in part written."
Three days after his sentence the king bade farewell to his sobbing little
son and daughter at St. James's Palace, and walked across the park between
a line of soldiers to the stairs, which then were on the site of the
present Horse Guards. From thence he crossed the street by a gallery,
which led him past the scaffold draped in black, and into his own
bedchamber in the Banquet Hall. From there, a little later, he passed
through a window, or possibly an opening in the wall, upon the scaffold,
with his attendant and Bishop Juxon. Two unknown men in masks and false
hair had undertaken the grim and dangerous task of executioner. For among
the throngs that filled the streets from Charing Cross down to Westminster
there were many who would readily have torn them in pieces. The
"martyr-king," as Jacobins still call him, now that the end of his
arbitrary reign had come, behaved with dignity. His last words were: "To
your power I must submit, but your authority I deny." From the roof of a
neighbouring mansion, Archbishop Usher stood until he sickened at the
sight and swooned, and was carried to his bed. Andrew Marvell's well-known
lines upon this scene will be recalled:
"While round the armed bands,
Did clasp their bloody hands,
He nothing common did or mean,
Upon that memorable scene,
Nor called the gods with vulgar spite,
To vindicate his hopeless right;
But with his keener eye,
The axe's edge did try;
Then bowed his kingly head,
Down, as upon a bed."
Strangely enough, it was on this very spot where his death forecast the
dawning of that new principle of government of the people, by the people,
for the people, which his whole nature loathed, that London had seen the
beginnings of the civil strife. Here a company of the citizens, "returning
from Westminster, where they had been petitioning quietly for justice,
were set upon by some of the court as they passed Whitehall, in the which
tumult divers were hurt, and one or more slain just by the Banqueting
House."
The regicides, who felt their bloody deed to be a sad necessity for
England's safety, had no desire to wreak a mean revenge upon the body of
the king. Unlike those of many far nobler men who had died as "traitors,"
his body was not dishonoured, but was treated with due respect. It was
embalmed, and lay for days under a velvet pall at St. James's Palace,
where crowds came to see it. The authorities objected to his burial in
Westminster Abbey, as the place was too public, and crowds might gather
there. But they accorded him a burial in St. George's Chapel, Windsor,
whither his body was taken in a hearse drawn by six horses and followed by
four mourning coaches. His coffin was placed beside that of Henry VIII.
within the choir. The next month after the death of Charles, the
Parliament voted the use of a large part of Whitehall to Cromwell. Every
Monday he dined with all his officers above the captain's rank. Milton, as
his Latin secretary, and Andrew Marvell must have been often at his board,
and Waller, his kinsman, and perhaps the youthful Dryden. He was a great
lover of music and entertained those who were skilful in any form of art.
It is through Cromwell that England owns to-day the Raphael cartoons at
Kensington. He purchased many other of the paintings which had belonged
to the magnificent collection of Charles I. and had been sold. Here his
old mother died, and here in 1658, on a wild August day, amid the tumult
of a storm that raged and howled over a large part of England, the great
heart of the Protector ceased to beat. On the day that he lay dying, a lad
of fifteen years, named Isaac Newton, turned the violence of the storm to
his account by jumping first with the wind and then against it, and
computing its force by the difference of the distances.
As the dying Oliver approached his end, he was much in prayer; an
attendant has recorded some of these last utterances in which he commended
God's people to the keeping of the Almighty: "Give them," he prayed,
"consistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual love; and go on to deliver
them and with the work of reformation; and make the name of Christ
glorious in the world. Teach those who look too much on thy instruments,
to depend more upon thyself. Pardon such as desire to trample upon the
dust of a poor worm, for they are thy people too." Probably never by any
master of Whitehall was such a sincerely devout and magnanimous petition
raised to heaven. Of the decapitation of his dead body and its subsequent
history, when Charles II. was able to wreak his vengeance, we need not
speak. Neither need we rehearse the well-known record of the dissolute
monarch who on the Restoration set up his profligate court at Whitehall.
Of the last hours of Charles II. Evelyn paints a loathsome picture: "I can
never forget the inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gaming, and all
dissoluteness, and as it were total forgetfulness of God (it being Sunday
evening) which I was witness of: the king sitting and toying with his
concubines, a French boy singing love songs in that glorious gallery,
whilst about twenty of the great courtiers and other dissolute persons
were at basset around a large table, a bank of at least two thousand
pounds in gold before them.... Six days after all was in the dust." In the
reign of William III. two fires, in 1691 and 1697, consumed all of the
palace except the Banquet Hall of Inigo Jones.
[Illustration: WESTMINSTER ABBEY AS MILTON KNEW IT
_From an old engraving._]
The Westminster Abbey that Milton knew, unlike the old St. Paul's of his
day, was indeed a house of God, and was not defiled with the intrusion of
hucksters and dandies and the bustle of the Exchange. Its lofty walls,
ungrimed by smoke, rose fair and stately; the present towers of the west
front were then unbuilt, and its mass presented a long, unbroken,
horizontal sky-line. Under its high, embowered roof, Milton may have seen
less warmth of colour than we, for the stained glass is modern, but he
was spared the majority of the pretentious and tasteless monuments which
crowd the transepts and the side aisles to-day, and for the most part are
in bulk in inverse proportion to their artistic merit, and to the
importance of those whom they honour. Perhaps there was no man in England
to whose sensitive soul the solemn minster spoke more eloquently. With a
mind richly stored in history, and with the artist's eye and prophet's
soul, every stone of this most venerable and beautiful of English churches
must have been dear to him. It is not within the scope of this little
volume even to touch upon the romantic history of this centre of English
life or to examine its noble architecture, but only to indicate what may
most have touched the mind and heart of the great scholar and
patriot-reformer who often passed its portals on his walk from Petty
France to Whitehall.
In the south aisle of the nave are buried two ladies whom Milton probably
knew. They are the two wives of Cromwell's secretary--Sir Samuel Morland,
the inventor of the speaking trumpet and improver of the fire-engine. The
inscriptions by their husband appear in Hebrew, Greek, Ethiopic, and
English. In the north aisle is a curious monument of 1631 to Jane Hill. At
the rear of the lady's figure is a skeleton in a winding-sheet. Among the
memorials of his contemporaries which must have peculiarly interested
Milton was the little slab in the nave marked, "O rare Ben Jonson," which
slab was later removed to the Poets' Corner. Beneath a modern paving
stone, which now covers the spot, in an upright posture was placed the
coffin of the poet who in his last days of poverty, in 1637, asked Charles
I. for eighteen inches of square ground in Westminster Abbey. He died in a
house between the Abbey and St. Margaret's Church. Newton's tomb near by
Milton never saw, as the youth of the man of science covered only Milton's
later years. On entering the south transept, the first monument that must
have claimed his interest was that of Camden, the learned antiquary. Just
before going to Cambridge, in 1623, Milton may have attended the funeral
of this man, whose great work, "Britannia" added new lustre to Elizabeth's
glorious reign. Camden did for England what Stow did for London, and
preserved the knowledge of the nation of that day. His bust, in the rich
costume of his time, presents a speaking likeness, and with his portrait
in the National Gallery make the eminent scholar seem a personality as
real as Raleigh's. Ben Jonson, who was one of his pupils when he was head
master of Westminster School, lovingly ascribes to him the source of his
own inspiration:
"Camden, most reverend head, to whom I owe
All that I am in acts, all that I know."
Camden wrote in 1600 the first guide-book of the Abbey, which, being in
Latin, would have served Milton better than it would the modern visitor.
In an unmarked grave lies the body of Richard Hakluyt, the great
geographer, who died in 1616.
Just beyond Camden's tomb is that of the great scholar, Casaubon. On its
front are plainly scratched the initials of the gentle angler, Izaak
Walton, by himself, with the date, 1658. A few feet distant on the
pavement a slab marks the grave of the "old, old, very old" man who died
in 1635 at the reputed age of one hundred and fifty-two. "Old Parr," as he
was known, is said to have been born in 1483, and married his first wife
at the age of eighty, and his second in 1605, when he was one hundred and
twenty-two years of age. The Earl of Arundel, determined to exhibit this
"piece of antiquity," had him carried by litter from Shrewsbury and
presented to Charles I. On being questioned by the king about religious
matters he cautiously replied that he thought it safest to hold whatever
religion was held by the reigning monarch, "for he knew that he came raw
into the world, and thought it no point of wisdom to be broiled out of
it," an opinion quite to be expected of a man who had lived through the
reigns of all the Tudors.
Further on, within the Poets' Corner, two monuments especially must have
been dear to the author of "Comus" and "Lycidas." One marks the grave of
Chaucer, who lies under a beautiful Gothic canopy erected in 1558, after
the removal of his body to this spot; the other marks that of Edmund
Spenser, who died in 1598 in King Street, hard by, "for lacke of bread."
Yet Dean Stanley tells us that "his hearse was attended by poets, and
mournful elegies and poems, with the pens that wrote them, were thrown
into his tomb. What a funeral was that at which Beaumont, Fletcher,
Jonson, and, in all probability, Shakespeare, attended! What a grave in
which the pen of Shakespeare may be mouldering away!" Of the author of the
"Faerie Queene" Milton himself said: "Our sage and serious Spenser, whom I
dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas." Near by
to Spenser's tomb is the monument to Ben Jonson, at some distance from his
grave, as has just been said, and close at hand are the memorials to
Dryden, Drayton, Cowley, and Francis Beaumont, Milton's famous
contemporaries. If the poet could have looked forward two generations he
might have seen his own counterfeit presentment in marble upon these
walls. By that time the royalist feeling against him had abated, and when
in 1737 this belated recognition of his greatness was placed upon the
wall, Doctor Gregory remarked to Doctor Johnson: "I have seen erected in
the church a bust of that man whose name I once knew considered as a
pollution of its walls."
After Shakespeare's death there was a strong desire to remove his bones
from Stratford to the Abbey, upon which Milton and Jonson both protested.
The former wrote:
"What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones
The labour of an age in piled stones?"
and Jonson more emphatically exclaimed:
"My Shakespeare rise! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further on to make thee room;
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read and praise to give."
In St. Benedict's Chapel may be noted the graves of Bishop Bilson, Doctor
Tunson, Sir Robert Anstruther, and Sir Robert Ayton,--famous men of
Milton's time.
In St. Edmund's Chapel, farther on, Milton as a lad of fourteen may have
seen in 1622 the young man interred whose tomb is surmounted by a
beautiful figure of a youth in Roman armour. Hard by under a lofty canopy
lie two notable recumbent figures, which mark the grave of the Earl and
Countess of Shrewsbury, and show the style of costume of Milton's boyhood
years.
Among the monuments of his contemporaries in the chapel of Henry VII. that
must have awakened a sensation of disgust in the mind of the Puritan poet,
was that of the Duke of Buckingham, whose barbaric splendour of attire has
already been noted, and who was murdered in 1628. Near by his huge and
ostentatious tomb, so characteristic of the man whom it commemorates, lie
under the pavement the graves of his king, James I., and his consort.
We may be sure that the graves which most interested Milton here were
those of Oliver Cromwell, his mother and sister, and his daughter,
Elizabeth Claypole, his son-in-law, Ireton, and Bradshaw, who was
president of the tribunal which condemned Charles I. The Genoese envoy of
the time thus described Cromwell's death and burial in his despatch to the
Council of Genoa: "He left the world with unimaginable valour, prudence,
and charity, and more like a priest or monk than a man who had fashioned
and worked so mighty an engine so few years.... His body was opened and
embalmed, and little trace of disease found therein; which was not the
cause of his death, but rather the continual fever which came upon him
from sorrow and melancholy at Madame Claypole's death." Cromwell's body
lay in state at Somerset House, and was thence escorted to the tomb by an
immense throng of mourners, which included the city companies. "The effigy
or statue of the dead, made most lifelike in royal robes, crown on head,
in one hand the sceptre and in the other the globe, was laid out on a bier
richly adorned and borne hither in a coach made for the purpose, open on
every side, and adorned with many plumes and banners." It is said that
Cromwell especially loved the Abbey, and instituted the custom of
commemorating English worthies within its walls. Admiral Blake was the
first to receive this honour in 1657. "Cromwell caused him to be brought
up by land to London in all the state that could be; and to encourage his
officers to adventure their lives that they might be pompously buried, he
was with all solemnity possible interred in the Chapel of Henry VII.,
among the monuments of the kings." Who can doubt that Milton stood in
sightless grief beside these tombs, before the desecration of "Oliver's
Vault?" Only the body of Cromwell's daughter was left in peace, and still
remains. His mother and sister were reburied in the green, and the reader
already knows what was the vile treatment of the other bodies. It is said
that to the royalist dean of Westminster, Thomas Sprat, we owe the refusal
of interment in the Abbey to the "regicide" John Milton. Had he been
buried later where Cromwell's body had lain, he too might have been thrust
forth. It was this dean who esteemed Cowley as a superior poet to Milton,
and called the former the "Pindar, Horace, and Virgil of England." In the
south aisle lie General George Monck and Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia,
eldest daughter of James I., whose marriage we have seen was celebrated by
a merry masque within the Temple grounds. This was the English princess
for whom a part of Heidelberg Castle was built; she was mother of Prince
Rupert, whose strenuous efforts to save the fortunes of his uncle, Charles
I., did not endear him to Milton and his friends. In this chapel lies a
wretched victim of her cousin, James I. This is the Lady Arabella Stuart,
whose marriage so displeased the king that he immured her in the Tower,
where, bereft of reason by her miseries, she died when Milton was a boy.
At the eastern end of the north aisle of the chapel of Henry VII. is a
baby's cradle-tomb, which has been the frequent theme of verse. Standing
beside the little marble form of this daughter of James I., Milton may
have felt a pang of heart as he thought of his own little one buried in
St. Margaret's, but a stone's throw distant. Of those who were associated
with Milton's public work at Whitehall, was Admiral Edward Popham, general
of the Fleet of the Republic under Cromwell, who died in 1651. He was
buried at the state's expense in the chapel of Henry VII., but after the
Restoration his monument, on which is his figure full size in armour, was
removed to John the Baptist's Chapel and the inscription on it was erased.
Opposite his tomb is the grave of Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex,
son of Elizabeth's unhappy favourite, who, after serving King Charles,
became General-in-Chief of the Parliamentarian army in 1642. He died in
1646, and was buried with high honours by the Independents. In St. John's
Chapel rests the body of the wife of Colonel Scot, one of the judges of
Charles I., who was executed at Charing Cross.
At the foot of the steps which lead to the chapel of Henry VII., in
1674,--the same year in which Milton died,--was laid under a nameless
stone the body of the famous Earl of Clarendon, who was born in 1608-9,
the same year in which the poet was born. This famous Tory, the historian
of the Civil Wars and Restoration, was perhaps more responsible than any
other man for creating that popular detestation of the name of Cromwell
which prevailed until the present generation had been better instructed by
less partisan critics. After two hundred years his name was inscribed upon
the stone that covers his ashes. Within the Abbey rest twenty of his
relatives and descendants, among them his royal granddaughters, Queen Mary
and Queen Anne. Not far distant, in the north ambulatory was interred in
1643 the body of the redoubtable John Pym, nicknamed "King Pym" by the
Royalists, for as Clarendon himself said: "He seemed to all men to have
the greatest influence upon the House of Commons of any man, and in truth
I think he was at that time (1640), and some months after, the most
popular man and the most able to do hurt that hath lived in any time."[2]
Two years after Pym's burial, there was laid close to his grave the body
of William Strode, one of the five members demanded by Charles I. when he
made his famous entry into the House of Commons with an armed force in
1641-2. The bodies of both were exhumed in 1661, and flung with others of
their compatriots into a pit outside the Abbey walls. There is every
reason to assume that Milton would have attended the funerals of both of
these men. A man whom he must have known well by reputation, Doctor Peter
Heylin, who died in 1662, is buried beneath the sub-dean's seat in the
north aisle of the choir. He was Laud's chaplain, and wrote a life of the
great archbishop; under Charles I. he had for a time supreme authority in
the Abbey and superintended its repairs. During the Civil War he suffered
and was deprived of his property, but on the accession of Charles II., he
was reinstated in the Abbey. It is interesting to note that the coronation
chair of oak, decorated with false jewels, which has been used at
coronations since the time of Edward I., has never left the Abbey except
when it was taken to Westminster Hall, when Oliver Cromwell was there
installed as Lord Protector.
A few of the scenes that the great minster witnessed in Milton's time may
be alluded to. The funeral of James I. in 1625 was the most magnificent
that England had ever seen. The hearse was fashioned by Inigo Jones. The
sermon was two hours in length. Mourning cloaks were given to nine
thousand persons, and the rest of the outlay was proportionate. No wonder
that Charles I. within two months sent word to the Commons that "the
ordinary revenue is clogged with debts, and exhausted with the late king's
funeral and other expenses of necessity and honour." The Abbey suffered
somewhat from the Puritan hatred of images and "idolatry," during the
Commonwealth. By order of Parliament the sacred vestments were seized and
burned. Of the curious wax effigies of monarchs who antedated Milton's
death, only one is still preserved. It is that of Charles II. and is robed
in red velvet with collar and ruffles of real point lace. For a long time
it stood above his grave in the chapel of Henry VII. These waxworks used
to be publicly exhibited, after which the cap was passed around for
contributions. Milton, in his boyhood, may have gazed in wonder at the
gorgeous figure of Elizabeth arrayed as a later one still is to-day, in
her own jewelled stomacher and velvet robe embroidered with gold;
doubtless he found a visit to the effigies of Westminster Abbey as
entertaining as a modern boy finds a visit to Madame Tussaud's to-day.
From the time of Edward I. it was customary to make effigies of kings. Up
to the time of Henry V. the embalmed bodies and not the effigies were
displayed upon the funeral car. At first these figures were made of wood,
with perhaps the faces and hands of plaster. These were set up in the
church for a season, after which many of them were preserved in presses
standing in a row, and shown as has been described. In Milton's time it
seems evident that the list included Edward I. and Eleanor, Edward III.
and Philippa, Henry V. and Katherine, Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York,
James I. and Anne of Denmark, and Henry, Prince of Wales.
It is probable that Sir Christopher Wren's plan for the completion of the
Abbey would have materially added to its beauty. His scheme is said to
have included a graceful Gothic spire rising from the low central tower.
The incongruous towers of the west front were chiefly due to Hawksmore.