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WESTMINSTER
BY
SIR WALTER BESANT, M. A., F. S. A.
AUTHOR OF “LONDON,” ETC.
[Illustration]
_WITH 130 ILLUSTRATIONS BY WILLIAM PATTEN AND OTHERS_
New York
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1894 and 1895, by
Walter Besant.
Copyright, 1895, by
Frederick B. Stokes Company.
_All rights reserved._
TO
MRS. WILLIAM PATTEN
IN MEMORY OF HER
MANY WANDERINGS IN WESTMINSTER WITH HER HUSBAND
WHILE HE WAS ADORNING THESE PAGES
AND IN MEMORY OF
A STAY IN ENGLAND FAR TOO SHORT FOR HER MANY FRIENDS
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED
BY ONE OF THOSE FRIENDS
THE AUTHOR
PREFACE.
These papers in their original form first appeared in the _Pall Mall
Magazine_. Additions have been made in some of the chapters, especially
in the three chapters entitled “The Abbey.” As in the book entitled
“London,” of which this is the successor, I do not pretend to offer a
History of Westminster. The story of the Abbey Buildings; of the Great
Functions held in the Abbey; of the Monuments in the Abbey; may be found
in the pages of Stanley, Loftie, Dart, and Widmore. The History of the
Houses of Parliament belongs to the history of the country, not that of
Westminster. It has been my endeavor, in these pages, (1) to show,
contrary to received opinion, that the Isle of Bramble was a busy place
of trade long before London existed at all. (2) To restore the vanished
Palaces of Westminster and Whitehall. (3) To portray the life of the
Abbey, with its Services, its Rule, its Anchorites, and its Sanctuary.
(4) To show the connection of Westminster with the first of English
printers. And, lastly, to present the place as a town and borough, with
its streets and its people.
I hope that, with those who have made my “London” a companion, my
“Westminster” may also be so fortunate as to find equal favor.
I must not omit my acknowledgments to the Editors of the _Pall Mall
Magazine_ for the costly manner in which they presented these pages.
Nor must I forget to record my sense of the pains and thoroughness
brought to the work of its illustration by my friend Mr. William Patten;
nor my sense of the assistance rendered me by Mr. Loftie for many
consultations and suggestions; nor my thanks to the Benedictine Fathers
of Downside, near Bath, who kindly received Mr. Patten and myself as
their guests and showed us what a modern Benedictine House really means,
and how the House at Westminster may have been during its five centuries
of existence, even such as their own, a Home of Religion and Learning.
UNITED UNIVERSITY CLUB, _September, 1895_.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE BEGINNINGS, 1
II. THE KING’S PALACE OF WESTMINSTER, 38
III. THE ABBEY--I., 98
IV. THE ABBEY--II., 145
V. THE ABBEY--III., 165
VI. SANCTUARY, 173
VII. AT THE SIGN OF THE RED PALE, 211
VIII. THE VANISHED PALACE, 248
IX. THE CITY, 291
X. THE STREETS AND THE PEOPLE, 325
APPENDIX:
THE COURT OF CHARLES II., 381
INDEX, 395
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
ARMS OF THE ABBEY OF WESTMINSTER, _Vignette_
WESTMINSTER, 1
SOME COATS OF ARMS, 5
SARCOPHAGUS OF VALERIUS AMANDINUS, 9
MAP SHOWING THE POSITION OF THE ABBEY, 13
SHIELD OF CELTIC WORK, FOUND IN THE THAMES, 1857, 17
A ROMAN ROAD, 19
BRITISH HELMET, FOUND IN THE THAMES, 1868, 21
TOMB OF KING SEBERT, WESTMINSTER ABBEY, 25
THE FUNERAL PROCESSION OF KING EDWARD THE CONFESSOR
TO WESTMINSTER ABBEY, 28, 29
_From the Bayeux Tapestry._
EAST END OF THE PRINCE’S CHAMBER, 41
SOUTH SIDE OF THE PRINCE’S CHAMBER, 43
A BIT OF THE OLD WALL FROM BLACK DOG ALLEY, 47
PLAN OF WESTMINSTER PALACE IN 1834, 48
COLLEGIATE SEAL OF ST. STEPHEN’S, 50
INTERIOR OF THE CRYPT CALLED THE “POWDER PLOT
CELLAR,” BENEATH THE OLD PALACE OF WESTMINSTER,
LOOKING TOWARD CHARING CROSS. TAKEN DOWN IN
JUNE, 1883, 51
WEST END OF THE PAINTED CHAMBER AS IT APPEARED AFTER
THE FIRE OF 1834, 55
CURIOUS NEWEL STAIRCASE AT THE SOUTHEAST ANGLE OF
PAINTED CHAMBER, 57
GUY FAWKES’ DOOR, 58
VAULT UNDER THE PAINTED CHAMBER, 59
EAST FRONT OF ST. STEPHEN’S CHAPEL AS IT APPEARED
AFTER THE FIRE OF 1834, 63
PASSAGE FROM ST. STEPHEN’S CHAPEL TO THE CLOISTER, 65
CLOISTER COURT AS IT APPEARED AFTER THE FIRE, 67
THE STAR CHAMBER. DEMOLISHED IN 1834, 71
NORTH PORCH, 83
LAURENTIUS, 98
ARMS OF THE ABBEY OF WESTMINSTER, 99
PLAN OF THE BENEDICTINE ABBEY OF WESTMINSTER, 101
HABIT OF A NOVICE OF THE ORDER OF ST. BENEDICT, 104
ENTRANCE TO CHAPTER HOUSE, 107
WALL OF THE REFECTORY, FROM ASHBURNHAM HOUSE, 109
THE ABBOT’S DINING HALL AT WESTMINSTER; NOW USED AS
THE DINING ROOM OF THE SCHOOL, 111
TOWEL AUMBRIES IN THE SOUTH WALK, 113
CHAPEL OF THE PYX, 115
DOOR TO THE CHAPEL OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR; NOW
PYX OFFICE, 119
TREASURE CHEST IN THE CHAPEL OF PYX, USED IN THE
TRANSPORTATION OF THE KING’S EXCHEQUER, 123
A PILLAR NOW STANDING IN MR. THYNNE’S GARDEN AND
FORMING PART OF THE RUINED CHAPEL OF ST. CATHERINE, 126
JERUSALEM CHAMBER. ABBOT’S RESIDENCE, WESTMINSTER, 127
ABBOT’S PEW (SHOWING THE MEDALLION OF CONGREVE
BELOW), 129
SQUARE WINDOW (NOW WALLED UP) USED BY THE ABBOT
TO MAINTAIN SURVEILLANCE OF THE MONKS AT NIGHT, 131
MONK OF THE ORDER OF ST. BENEDICT, 133
ABBOT ISLIP’S CHAPEL, 137
THE WESTMINSTER SCHOOLROOM, FORMERLY THE ABBOT’S
DORMITORY, 140
TOMBS OF VITALIS, GERASMUS DE BLOIS, AND CRISPINUS,
ABBOTS OF WESTMINSTER, 142
TALLY FOR 6_s._ 8_d._ ISSUED BY TREASURER TO KING EDWARD
I. TO THE SHERIFF OF LINCOLNSHIRE ABOUT 1290, 143
THE KING STREET GATE, WESTMINSTER, DEMOLISHED 1723, 175
SOUTHWEST VIEW OF THE ENTRANCE TO THE LITTLE SANCTUARY
FROM KING STREET, 177
VIEW OF LITTLE SANCTUARY FROM THE WEST, AS IT APPEARED
ABOUT A. D. 1800, 179
THE SANCTUARY. PULLED DOWN IN 1775, 181
THE BOAR’S HEAD INN, KING STREET, 183
THE COCK, TOTHILL STREET, 187
ROOM IN THE KING’S ARMS, TOTHILL STREET, 189
THE GATE HOUSE, 192
THE HOLBEIN GATE, 199
BROKEN CROSS WITHIN THE ABBEY PRECINCTS, 201
PICKERING CUP, BELONGING TO THE BURGESSES OF WESTMINSTER, 204
THE SOUTHERN EXTREMITY OF THIEVING LANE, A. D. 1800, 205
BUTTRESSES OF KING HENRY VII.’S CHAPEL, 209
CAXTON’S DEVICE, 212
SUPPOSED PORTRAIT OF CAXTON. FROM BLADES’ “PENTATEUCH
OF PRINTING,” 213
THE “DOMUS ANGLORUM,” BRUGES, 223
CAXTON’S HOUSE IN THE ALMONRY, WESTMINSTER, 231
FACSIMILE OF THE “RECUYELL OF THE HISTORYES OF
TROIE,” 235
FACSIMILE OF THE “GAME AND PLAYE OF THE CHESSE,” 236
FACSIMILE OF THE “DICTES OR SAYINGS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS,” 241
CAXTON’S MEMORIAL WINDOW IN ST. MARGARET’S, WESTMINSTER, 243
FACSIMILE OF CAXTON’S HANDWRITING, FROM THE PEPYSIAN
LIBRARY, 245
INIGO JONES, 1614, 251
HOLBEIN’S GATE AND THE BANQUETING HALL, 255
_From the Original Picture by Samuel Scott._
THE WATERSIDE ELEVATION OF INIGO JONES’ PALACE, 260, 261
ST. JAMES’S PALACE, 263
KENSINGTON PALACE, 266
BUCKINGHAM PALACE, 267
THE HORSE GUARDS, 268
OLD SCOTLAND YARD, 271
ROSAMOND’S POND, ST. JAMES’S PARK, 275
THE WATER GATE, NEW PALACE YARD, 278
A REDUCED COPY OF FISHER’S GROUND PLAN OF THE ROYAL
PALACE OF WHITEHALL, TAKEN IN THE REIGN OF
CHARLES II., 1680, 280
THE MACE, 291
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AND WESTMINSTER HALL FROM
THE RIVER IN 1798, 293
_From a Contemporary Drawing._
OAK DOORWAY DISCOVERED IN THE SPEAKER’S DINING ROOM
AFTER THE FIRE, 295
THE HOUSE OF LORDS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CENTURY, 297
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CENTURY, 299
THE ENTRANCE TO SPEAKER’S YARD AS IT APPEARED BEFORE
THE FIRE, 301
“THEMISTOCLES” (LORD HOOD), FROM “THE RIVAL CANDIDATES,” 304
“DEMOSTHENES” (CHARLES JAMES FOX), FROM “THE RIVAL
CANDIDATES,” 305
“JUDAS ISCARIOT” (SIR CECIL WRAY), FROM “THE RIVAL
CANDIDATES,” 307
“THE WESTMINSTER MENDICANT” (SIR CECIL WRAY), 309
“PROCESSION TO THE HUSTINGS AFTER A SUCCESSFUL
CANVASS,” 315
_After a Print_, A.D. 1784.
THE SPEAKER’S COURT AS IT APPEARED BEFORE THE FIRE, 319
GRIFFINS FROM THE ROOF OF HENRY VII.’S CHAPEL, 326
GRIFFINS FROM THE ROOF OF HENRY VII.’S CHAPEL, 329
GRIFFIN FROM THE ROOF OF HENRY VII.’S CHAPEL, 330
ROOM IN THE KING’S ARMS, TOTHILL STREET, WESTMINSTER, 333
GRIFFINS FROM THE ROOF OF HENRY VII.’S CHAPEL, 337
WOOD CARVING AND ORIGINAL SIGN OF THE COCK INN,
TOTHILL STREET, WESTMINSTER, 339
ORIGINAL SIGN, COCK INN, 341
MILTON’S HOUSE IN PETTY FRANCE, 343
EMANUEL HOSPITAL, LATELY DEMOLISHED, 345
THE GRILLE, EMANUEL HOSPITAL, 347
GREY COAT HOSPITAL: THE ENTRANCE, 351
GREY COAT BOY, } 353
GREY COAT GIRL,}
_From the Statue in front of the Hospital._
GREY COAT HOSPITAL FROM THE GARDEN, 354
CARVING FROM THE DOORWAY OF EMANUEL HOSPITAL, 355
MEDAL WORN BY THE CAPTAIN OF THE GREY COAT BOYS, 356
BLUE COAT SCHOOL, CAXTON STREET, 357
BLUE COAT SCHOOL, FROM THE GARDEN, 361
LOVING CUP PRESENTED TO THE GUARDIANS OF ST. MARGARET’S,
WESTMINSTER, BY SAMUEL PIERSON, IN 1764, 365
OLD PYE STREET AND THE RAGGED SCHOOL, 367
BLACK DOG ALLEY, WESTMINSTER, 369
THE WESTMINSTER SNUFFBOX, 373
THE WESTMINSTER TOBACCO BOX, 379
[Illustration: WESTMINSTER.]
CHAPTER I.
THE BEGINNINGS.
He who considers the history of Westminster presently observes with
surprise that he is reading about a city which has no citizens. In this
respect Westminster is alone among cities and towns of the
English-speaking race; she has had no citizens. Residents she has
had,--tenants, lodgers, subjects, sojourners within her boundaries,--but
no citizens. The sister city within sight, and almost within hearing,
can show an unequaled roll of civic worthies, animated from the
beginning by an unparalleled tenacity of purpose, clearly seeing and
understanding what they wanted, and why, and how they could obtain their
desire. This knowledge had been handed down from father to son.
Freedom, self-government, corporations, guilds, brotherhoods,
privileges, safety, and order--all have been achieved and assured by
means of this tenacity and this clear understanding of what was wanted.
Westminster has never possessed any of these things. For the City of
London these achievements were rendered possible by the existence of one
single institution: the Folk’s Mote--the Parliament of the People.
Westminster never possessed that institution. The history of London is a
long and dramatic panorama, full of _tableaux_, animated scenes,
dramatic episodes, tragedies, and victories. In every generation there
stands out one great citizen, strong and clear-eyed, whom the people
follow: he is a picturesque figure, lifted high above the roaring,
turbulent, surging crowd, whom he alone can govern. In Westminster there
is no such citizen, and there is no such crowd. Only once in its
history, until the eighteenth century, do we light upon the Westminster
folk. Perhaps there have been, here and there, among them some mute
inglorious Whittington--some unknown Gresham. Alas! there was no Folk’s
Mote,--without a Folk’s Mote nothing could be done,--and so their
possible leaders sank into the grave in silence and oblivion. Why was
there no Folk’s Mote? Because the land on which Westminster stood, the
land all around, north, west, south,--how broad a domain we shall
presently discover,--belonged to the Church, and was ruled by the Abbot.
Where the Abbot was king there was no room for the rule of the people.
Nor could there be any demand in Westminster for free institutions,
because there were no trades and no industries. A wool staple there was,
certainly, which fluctuated in importance, but was never to be compared
with any of the great city trades. And Westminster was not a port; she
had no quays or warehouses: neither exports nor imports--save only the
wool--passed through her hands. There was no necessity at any time for
the people who might at that time be her tenants to demand corporate
action. Westminster has never attracted or invited immigrants or
settlers.
Again, a considerable portion of those who lived in Westminster were
criminals or debtors taking advantage of sanctuary. The privilege of
sanctuary plays an important part in the history of Westminster. It is
not, however, from sanctuary birds that one would expect a desire for
order and free institutions. Better the rule of the Abbot with safety,
than freedom of government and the certainty of gallows and
whipping-post therewith.
We may consider that for five hundred years the Court and the Church,
the Palace and the Abbey, divided between them the whole of Thorney
Island. Until, therefore, the swamps were drained, there was no
place--or a very narrow place--for houses and inhabitants on the south
and west. Toward the north, between New Palace Yard and Charing Cross,
houses began and grew, but quite slowly. Even so recently as the year
1755 the parish of St. Margaret’s had extended westward no farther than
to include the streets called Pye Street, Orchard Street, Tothill
Street, and Petty France, now York Street. King Street was the main
street connecting Westminster with London by way of Charing Cross; and
east and west of King Street, at the Westminster or southern end, was a
network of narrow streets, courts, and slums, a few of which still exist
to show what Westminster of the Tudors and the Stuarts used to be.
After the Dissolution--though the Dean succeeded the Abbot--there was
some concession in the direction of popular government. The Dean still
continued to be the over-lord. He appointed a High Sheriff, who in his
turn appointed a Deputy; the city was divided into wards, in imitation
of London, with a burgess to represent each ward. The court thus formed
possessed considerable powers of police; but neither in authority, nor
in power, nor in dignity, could such a chamber be compared with the
Court of Aldermen of London. Edward VI. granted two members of
Parliament to the City of Westminster.
Another reason which hindered the advance of the city in the last
century was that the Dean and Chapter would neither sell their lands nor
grant long leases. Therefore no one would build good houses, and the
vicinity of the Abbey remained covered with mean tenements and populated
by the scum and refuse.
For these reasons Westminster has had residents of all conditions--from
king and noble to criminal and debtor. But it has had no citizens, no
corporate life, no united action, no purpose. The City of London is a
living whole: one would call its history the life of a man--the progress
of a soul; the multitudinous crowd of separate lives rolls together and
forms but one as the corporation grows greater, stronger, more free,
with every century. But Westminster is an inert, lifeless form. Round
the stately Abbey, below the noble halls, the people lie like sheep--but
sheep without a leader. They have no voice; if they suffer, they have no
cry; they have no aims; they have no ambition; without crafts, trades,
mysteries, enterprise, distinctions, posts of honor, times of danger,
liberties to defend, privileges to maintain, there may be thousands of
men living in a collection of houses, but they are not citizens. In the
pages that follow, therefore, we shall have little to do with the people
of Westminster.
[Illustration]
The following is Bardwell’s account of the original site of Westminster
(“Westminster Improvements,” p. 8):
“Thorney Island is about 470 yards long and 370 yards broad, washed on
the east side by the Thames, on the south by a rivulet running down
College-street, on the north by another stream wending its way to the
Thames down Gardener’s-lane: this and the College-street rivulet were
joined by a moat called Longditch, forming the western boundary of
Thorney Island, along the present line of Prince’s and De la Hay
streets. This Island was the Abbey and Palace precinct, which, in
addition to the water surrounding it, was further defended by lofty
stone walls (part of which still remain in the Abbey gardens): in these
walls were four noble gates, one in King-street, one near New
Palace-yard (the foundations of which I observed in this month, Dec.,
1838, in excavating for a new sewer), one opening into Tothill, or as it
was called by William the First Touthull-street, and one at the mill by
College-street. The precinct was entered by a bridge, erected by the
Empress Maud, at the end of Gardener’s-lane in King-street, and by
another bridge, still existing, though deep below the present pavement,
at the east end of College-street.”
The beginning of city and abbey is an oft-told tale, but, as I shall try
to show, a tale never truly and properly told. Antiquaries, or rather
historians who have to depend on antiquaries, are apt to follow each
other blindly. Thus, we are informed by everyone who has treated of this
beginning, that the place on which Westminster Abbey stands was chosen
deliberately as a fitting place for a monastic foundation, because of
its seclusion, silence, and remoteness. “This spot,” writes the most
illustrious among all the historians of the Abbey, when he has described
the position of Thorney, “thus intrenched, marsh within marsh, forest
within forest, was indeed _locus terribilis_--the terrible place, as it
was called, in the first notices of its existence; yet, even thus early,
it presented several points of attraction to the founder of whatever was
the original building which was to redeem it from the wilderness. It had
the advantages of a Thebaid as contrasted with the stir and tumult of
the neighboring forest of London.”[1] And the same theory is adopted by
Freeman, when he speaks of the site as “so near to the great city, and
yet removed from its immediate throng and turmoil.” There is no doubt as
to the meaning of both writers. The idea in their minds was of a place
deliberately chosen by the founders of the first abbey, and adopted by
Edward the Confessor as a wild, deserted, secluded place, difficult of
access, remote from the ways of men, where in silence and peace the holy
men might work and meditate. Let us examine into this assumption. The
result, I venture to think, will upset many cherished opinions.
In the examination of ancient sites there are five principal things to
ascertain before any conclusion is attempted--that is to say, before we
attempt to restore the place as it was, or to identify it. The method
which I began to learn twenty years ago, while following day by day
Major Conder’s Survey of Palestine, and studying day by day his plans
and drawings, his arguments and identifications, of a land which is one
great field of ruins, I propose to apply to Thorney Island and the site
of Westminster Abbey. These five points are: (1) the evidence of
situation; (2) the evidence of excavation; (3) the evidence of ancient
monuments, ruins, foundations, fragments; (4) the evidence of tradition;
and (5) the evidence of history.
Let us take these several points in order.
1. _Evidence of Situation._
The river Thames, which narrowed at London Bridge, began to widen out
west of the mouth of the stream called the Fleet. There was a cliff or
rising bank along the Strand, which confined the stream on its north
bank as far as Charing. At this village the course of the river turned
south, and, after half a mile, southwest. Here it formerly broadened
into a vast marsh or lagoon, quite shallow to east and west, in parts
only covered with water at high tide, and in parts rising above even the
highest tides. This great marsh covered all the land known later as St.
James’s Park, Tothill Fields, the Five Fields, Victoria, Earl’s Court,
and part of Chelsea: on the other bank the marsh extended from
Rotherhithe over Bermondsey, Southwark, Lambeth, Vauxhall, and part of
Battersea. The places which here and there rose above the reach of flood
were called islands; Bermond’s-ea--the Isle of Bermond; Chels-ea--the
Isle of Shingle (Chesil); Thorn-ea--the Isle of Bramble; Batters-ea--the
Isle of Peter. You may find little islands (eyots--aits) just like these
higher up the river, such as Monkey Island, Eelpie Island, and so many
others. No doubt, in very remote times, these little river islets were
secluded places indeed; if any people lived upon them, they lived like
the lake dwellers of Glastonbury, each family in its cottage planted
down in the sedge and mud of the foreshore, resting on piles, with its
floor of hard clay pressed down on timber, its walls of clay and wattle,
its roof of rushes, its boat floating before the door. They trapped elk
and deer and boar, they shot the wild fowl with their slings, they
caught the salmon that swarmed in the river. Thorney, then, the site of
the future abbey, the Isle of Bramble, was an islet entirely surrounded
by the waters of a broad and shallow river. It was so broad that the
backwater extended as far as the present site of Buckingham Palace. It
was so shallow that at low tide a man could wade across from the rising
ground of the west to the island, and from the island to the opposite
shore, where is now St. Thomas’s Hospital.
This is the evidence of the natural situation, and so far all would be
agreed.
2. _Evidence of Excavation._
[Illustration: SARCOPHAGUS OF VALERIUS AMANDINUS.]
The kindly earth covers up and preserves many precious
secrets,--“underground,” says Rabelais, “are all great treasures and
wonderful things,”--to be revealed at some fitting time, when men’s
minds shall be prepared to receive them. The earth preserves, for
instance, the history of the ancient world--witness the revelations in
our own time of the cuneiform tablets and the vast extension of the
historic age: the arts of the ancient world, and their houses, and their
manner of life--witness the revelations of Pompeii. Applied to Thorney,
excavation has shown--what we certainly never could have known
otherwise--that here, of all places in the world, in this little
secluded islet in the midst of marshes (the most unlikely spot, one
would think, in the whole of Britannia), there was a Roman station, and
one of considerable importance. The first hint of this fact was
suggested when there was dug up in the North Green of the Abbey, in the
year 1869, a fine Roman sarcophagus inscribed with the name of Valerius
Amandinus. The lid has a cross upon it, from which it has been
conjectured that the sarcophagus was used twice, its second occupant
having been a Christian. What reason, however, is there for supposing
that Valerius Amandinus himself was not a Christian?--for, at least a
century before the withdrawing of the Legions, Roman Britain was wholly
Christian. For more than two centuries Christians had been numerous.
During the fourth century the country was covered with monastic
foundations for monks and nuns. Christian or not, there stands the
sarcophagus of Valerius Amandinus, for all the world to see, at the
entrance of the Chapter-house; and why a Roman cemetery should be
established in Thorney no one could guess. But some ten years ago there
was a second discovery. In digging a grave under the pavement of the
nave, there was found a mosaic floor in very fair condition. This must
have belonged to a Roman villa. But, if one villa, why not more? The
question has been settled by the discovery, of late years, wherever the
ground on Thorney has been opened, of Roman bricks and fragments of
Roman buildings. It is now impossible to doubt the existence here of a
Roman station.
That is, so far, the (unfinished) evidence of excavation.
But why did the Romans place a station, an important station, on this
bit of a bramble-covered eyot, with a shallow river in front and a
marshy backwater behind? What strategic importance could be attached to
such a spot? The next branch of evidence will serve to answer the
question.
3. _Evidence of Ancient Monuments._
There are here none of those shapeless mounds of ancient ruins which are
found elsewhere--as in Egypt. Nor are there any foundations above
ground, as at Silchester. Yet there is one fact of capital importance,
which not only serves to explain why the Romans established a station on
Thorney, but also illustrates, as we shall see, many other facts in the
history of the island. It is this:
The river from Thorney to the opposite shore, as we have seen, was
fordable at low tide. The marsh, from Thorney to the rising ground on
the west, was fordable probably at all tides--certainly at low tide.
This ford, the only one across the river for many miles up stream,
belonged from time immemorial to the highway, a road or beaten track
leading from the north of England to the south, and “tapping” the
midland country on the way. The road which the Saxons called Watling
Street, when it reached this neighborhood, ran straight down Park Lane,
or Tyburn Lane, as it was formerly called, to the edge of the marsh.
There it ended abruptly. If you will draw this line on any map, you will
find that it ended at the western extremity of St. James’s Park, just
about Buckingham Palace, where the marsh began. At this point the
traveler plunged into the shallow waters, and guided by stakes,
waded--at low tide there were, haply, stepping-stones--across the swamp
to Thorney. Here, if the tide served, he again trusted himself to the
guidance of stakes; and so, breast high, it may be, waded through the
river till he reached the opposite shore, where another high road,
“Dover Street,” which also broke off abruptly at this point, awaited
him. Later on, when London Bridge was built, Watling Street was diverted
at the spot where now stands the Marble Arch, was carried along the
present Oxford Street and Holborn, and passed through the City to the
Bridge. This alternative route probably took away a great deal of the
traffic: but for those who had business in the south or the southwest,
or for those who were bound for the port of Dover, the ford was still
preferred as the shorter way. A bridge was convenient, but the traveler
of the fourth century was accustomed to a ford. Those who had no
business in London were not likely to be turned out of their way by
another ford, after they had crossed so many.
The highroad between the north and south, the great highway into which
were poured streams from all the other ways, passed through this double
ford, and over the Isle of Bramble. This was not a highway passing
through a wild and savage country; on the contrary, Britain was a
country, in the two latter centuries of the Roman occupation, thickly
populated, covered with great cities and busy towns. No one who has
stood within the walls of Silchester, and has marked the foundations of
its great hall, larger than Westminster Abbey, the remains of its
corridors and courts and shops, the indications of wealth and luxury
furnished by its villas, the extent of its walls, can fail to understand
that the vanished civilization of Roman Britain was very far superior to
anything that followed for a good deal more than a thousand years. It
was more artistic, more luxurious, than the Saxon or the Norman life.
But it was essentially Roman. Civilized Rome could not be understood by
Western Europe until the fifteenth century. Roman Britain is only
beginning to
[Illustration]
be understood by ourselves. We have not as yet realized how much was
swept away and lost when, after two centuries of fighting, the Britons
were driven to their mountains, with the loss of the old arts and
learning. All over the country were the great houses, the stately
villas, of a rich, cultured, and artistic class; all over the country
were rich cities, filled with people who desired, and had, all the
things that made life tolerable in Rome herself. The condition of
Bordeaux in the fourth century, her schools, her professors, her poets,
her orators, her lawyers, may suggest the condition of London, and in a
less degree that of many smaller cities.
If we bear these things in mind, I think we shall understand that the
roads must have been everywhere crowded and thronged by the long
processions of packhorses and mules engaged in supplying the various
wants of this people, bringing food supplies to the cities, wines and
foreign luxuries to the unwarlike people who were doomed before long to
fall before the ruder and stronger folk of the Frisian speech. For our
purpose it is sufficient to note that it was a country where the wants
of the better sort created, by themselves, a vast trade; where, in
addition, the exports were large and valuable; and where the traffic of
the highways was very great and never-ending.
In other words, this wild and desolate spot, chosen, we are told, as a
fitting site for a monastery because of its remoteness and its
seclusion, was, long before a monastery was built here, the scene of a
continual procession of those who journeyed south and those who
journeyed north. It was a halting-and resting-place for a stream of
travelers who never stopped all the year around. By way of Thorney
passed the merchants, with their hides bestowed upon their packhorses,
going to embark them at Dover: London had not yet gathered in all the
trade of the country. By way of Thorney they drove the long strings of
slaves to be sold in Gaul. By way of Thorney passed the legions on their
way north; craftsmen, traders, mimes, actors, musicians, dancers,
jugglers, on their way to the towns of Glevum, Corinium, Eboracum, and
the rest. Always, day after day, even night after night, there was the
clamor of those who came and those who went: such a clamor as used to
belong, for instance, to the courtyard of an old-fashioned inn, in and
out of which there lumbered the loaded wagon, grinding heavily over the
stones; the stage-coach, the post-chaise, the merchant’s rider on his
nag--all with noise. The Isle of Bramble was like that courtyard:
outside the Abbey it was a great inn, a halting-place, a bustling,
noisy, frequented place; the center, before London, the mart of
Britannia; no “Thebaid” at all; no quiet, secluded, desolate place, but
the center of the traffic of the whole island. And it remained a busy
place long after London Bridge was built, long after the Port of London
had swallowed up all the other ports in the country. When the river, by
means of embankments, was forced into narrower and deeper channels, the
ford disappeared.
By this time the backwater and the marsh had been dried, and the
traveler could walk dry-shod from the end of Watling Street to the Isle
of Bramble. Perhaps, it may be objected, solitude descended upon the
island, and the silence of desertion, with the deepening of the channel.
Not so; for now another highway had been created--the highway up the
river. The growth of London created the necessity for this
[Illustration: SHIELD OF CELTIC WORK, FOUND IN THE THAMES, 1857.]
highway. From the western country all the exports came down the river to
the Port of London: from the Port of London all the import trade went up
the river to the west of England. At the flow of the tide the deeply
laden barges, like our own, but narrower, went up the river; at the ebb
they went down. Going up, the barges carried spices, wines, silks,
glass, candles, lamps, hangings, pictures, statuary, books, church
furniture, and all the foreign luxuries that were now necessary in the
British city; going down they were laden with pelts and wool. The
slaves, which formed so large a part of British export, not only at this
period, but later, under the Saxons, were marched along the highway.
There were also the barges laden with fruit, vegetables, grain, poultry,
wild birds, carcasses, for that wide London mouth which continually
devoured and daily called for more. And there were the fishermen casting
their nets for the salmon in the season, and for the other fish with
which the river, its waters clean and wholesome, teemed all the year
round. Full and various was the life upon the river. Always there was
traffic, always movement, always activity, and always noise--much noise.
A great noise: where boatmen are there is always noise; they exchange
the joke Fescennine, they laugh, they quarrel, they fight, they sing. To
the Benedictine monks the river presented the spectacle of a procession
as noisy and as animated as that which in the old days had made a
stepping-stone of the island from one ford to the other. In short, there
was never any time, from the beginning of the Roman occupation to the
present day, when the Isle of Bramble was a quiet, secluded, desolate
spot. Always crowded, bustling, and noisy. Why should not a Benedictine
monastery be planted in the midst of the people? The Rule of Benedict
was not the Rule of Robert of Citeaux. Two hundred years later, when the
Priory of the Holy Trinity was founded, did they place the monastery in
the wilds of Sheppey, or in the marshes of the Isle of Dogs, or on
lonely Canvey? Not at all: they placed it within London Wall--at
Aldgate, the busiest place in the City. And the Franciscans, were they
exiled to some remote quarter? Not at all: they were established within
the walls. So were Austin Friars and the Crutched Friars; while White
Friars and Black Friars were close to the City wall. And even the
austere Carthusians were within hearing of the horse fairs, the races,
the tournaments, and the sports of the citizens upon the field called
Smooth. Nor does it ever appear that the monks were dissatisfied with
their position, and craved for solitude; they preferred the din and roar
of the noisiest city in the habitable world.
[Illustration: A ROMAN ROAD.]
So that, by the evidence of natural situation, by the evidence of
excavation, and by the evidence of ancient monuments, we understand that
the Isle of Bramble was a Roman station, the point where the highway of
the north met the highway of the south--the very heart of Britannia, the
center of all internal communication, the place by which, until London
gathered all into her lap, the whole traffic of the island must pass.
Before London existed, Thorney had become a place of the greatest
importance; long after London had become a rich and busy port, Thorney,
the stepping-stone in the middle of the ford, continued its old
importance and its activity. Never a place of trade, but always a place
of passing traffic, its population was great, but as ephemeral as the
May-fly: its people came, rested a night, a day, an hour, and were gone
again.
4. We have next the _Evidence of Tradition_.
According to this authority we learn that the first Christian king was
one Lucius, who in the year 178 addressed a letter to the then Pope,
Eleutherius, begging for missionaries to instruct his people and himself
in the Christian faith. The Pope sent two priests named Ffagan and
Dyfan, who converted the whole island. Bede tells this story; the old
Welsh chroniclers also tell it, giving the British name of the king,
Lleurwg ap Coel ap Cyllin. He it was who erected a church on the Isle of
Bramble, in place of a temple of Apollo formerly standing there. We
remember also that St. Paul’s was said to have been built on the site of
a temple of Diana.
This church continued in prosperity until the arrival, two hundred and
fifty years later, of the murderous Saxons. First, news came up the
river that the invader was on the Isle of Rum, which we call Thanet;
next, that he held the river; that he had overrun Essex; that he had
overrun Kent. And then the procession of merchandise stopped suddenly.
The ports of Kent were in the hands of the enemy. There was no more
traffic on Watling Street. The travelers grew fewer daily; till one day
a troop of wild Saxons came across the ford, surprised the priests and
the fisher-folk who remained, and left the island as desolate and silent
as could be desired for the meditation of holy men. This done, the
Saxons went on their way. They overran the midland country; they drove
the Britons back--still farther back, till they reached the mountains.
No more news came to Thorney, for, though the ford continued, the
island, like so many of the Roman stations, remained a waste Chester.
In fullness of time the Saxon king himself settled down, became a man of
peace, obeyed the order of
[Illustration: BRITISH HELMET, FOUND IN THE THAMES, 1868.]
the convert king to be baptised and to enter the Christian faith; and
when King Sebert had been persuaded to build a church to St. Paul on the
highest ground of London, he was further convinced that it was his duty
to restore the ruined church of St. Peter on the Isle of Thorney beside
the ford. Scandal indeed would it be, were the throng that daily passed
through the ford and over the island to see, in a Christian country, the
neglected ruins of this Christian church. Accordingly the builders soon
set to work, and before long the church rose tall and stately. The
Miracle of the Hallowing, often told, may be repeated here. On the eve
of the day fixed by the Bishop of London for the hallowing and
dedication of the new St. Peter’s, one Edric, a fisherman, who lived in
Thorney, was awakened by a loud voice calling him by name. It was
midnight. He rose and went forth. The voice called him again, from the
opposite side of the river, which is now Lambeth, bidding him put out
his boat to ferry a man across the river. He obeyed. He found on the
shore a venerable person whose face and habilaments he knew not. The
stranger bore in his hands certain vessels which Edric knew could only
be intended for church purposes. However, he said nothing, but received
this mysterious visitor into his boat and rowed him across the river.
Arrived in Thorney, the stranger directed his steps to the church, and
entered the portal. Straightway--lo! a marvel!--the church was lit up as
by a thousand wax tapers, and voices arose chanting psalms--sweet voices
such as no man, save this rude fisherman, had ever heard before. He
stood and listened. The voices, he perceived, could be none other than
those of angels come down from heaven itself to sing the first service
in the new church. Then the voices fell, and he heard one voice, loud
and solemn; and then the heavenly choir uplifted their voices again.
Presently all was still; the service was over, the lights went out as
suddenly as they had appeared, and the stranger came forth.
“Know, O Edric,” he said, while the fisherman’s heart glowed within him,
“know that I am Peter. I have hallowed the church myself. To-morrow I
charge thee that thou tell these things to the Bishop, who will find a
sign and token in the church of my hallowing. And for another token, put
forth again, upon the river, cast thy nets, and thou shalt receive so
great a draught of fishes that there will be no doubt left in thy mind.
But give one-tenth to this, my holy church.”
So he vanished; and the fisherman was left alone upon the river bank.
But he put forth as directed, cast his net, and presently brought ashore
a draught miraculous.
In the morning the Bishop with his clergy, and the King with his
following, came up from London in their ships to hallow the church. They
were received by Edric, who told them this strange story. And within the
church the Bishop found the lingering fragrance of incense far more
precious than any that he could offer; on the altar were the drippings
of wax candles (long preserved as holy relics, being none other than the
wax candles of heaven), and written in the dust certain words in Greek
character. He doubted no longer. He proclaimed the joyous news; he held
a service of thanksgiving instead of a hallowing. Who would not hold a
service of praise and humble gratitude for such a mark of heavenly
favor? And after service they returned to London and held a banquet,
with Edric’s finest salmon lying on a lordly dish in the midst.
How it was that Peter, who came from heaven direct, could not cross the
river except in a boat, was never explained or asked. Perhaps we have
here a little confusion between Rome and heaven. Dover Street, we know,
broke off at the edge of the marsh, and Dover Street led to Dover, and
Dover to Rome.
5. We are now prepared for the _Evidence of History_, which is not
perhaps so interesting as that of tradition. Clio, it must be confessed,
is sometimes dull. One misses the imagination and the daring flights of
her sister, the tenth Muse--the Muse of Fiction. The earliest document
which refers to the Abbey is a conveyance by Offa, King of Mercia, of a
manor called Aldenham, to “St. Peter and the people of the Lord dwelling
in Thorney, that ‘terrible’--_i. e._, sacred--place which is called at
Westminster.” The date of this ancient document is A.D. 785; but Bede,
who died in 736, does not mention the foundation. Either, therefore,
Bede passed it over purposely, or it was not thought of importance
enough to be mentioned. He does relate the building of St. Paul’s; but,
on the other hand, he does not mention the hundreds of churches which
sprang up all over the country. So that we need not attach any
importance to the omission. My own opinion is that the church--a rude
country church, perhaps a building like that of Greenstead, Essex, the
walls of split trees and the roof of rushes--was restored early in the
seventh century, and that it did succeed an earlier church still. The
traditional connection of King Sebert with the church is as ancient as
anything we know about it, and the legend of Lucius and his church is at
least supported by the recent discoveries of Roman remains, and the
certainty that the place was always of the greatest importance.
There is another argument--or an illustration--in favor of the antiquity
of some church, rude or not, upon this place. I advance it as an
illustration, though to myself it appears to be an argument: I mean the
long list of relics possessed by the Abbey at the Dedication of the year
1065. We are not concerned with the question whether the relics were
genuine or not, but merely with the fact that they were preserved by the
monks as having been the gifts of various benefactors--Sebert, Offa,
Athelstan, Edgar, Ethelred, Cnut, Queen Emma, and Edward himself. A
church of small importance and of recent building would not dare to
parade such pretensions. It takes time even for forgeries to gain
credence and for legends to grow. The relics ascribed to Sebert and Offa
could easily have been carried away on occasion
[Illustration: TOMB OF KING SEBERT, WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]
of attack. As for the nature of these sacred fragments, it is pleasant
to read of sand and earth brought from Mounts Sinai and Olivet, of the
beam which supported the holy manger, of a piece of the holy manger, of
frankincense presented by the Magi, of the seat on which our Lord was
presented at the Temple, of portions of the holy cross presented by four
kings at different times, of bones and vestments belonging to apostles
and martyrs and the Virgin Mary and saints without number, whose very
names are now forgotten. In the cathedral of Aix you may see just such a
collection as that which the monks of St. Peter displayed before the
reverent eyes of the Confessor. We may remember that in the ninth and
tenth centuries the rage for pilgrimizing extended over the whole of
Western Europe: pilgrims crowded every road; they marched in armies, and
they returned laden with treasures--water from the Jordan, sand from
Sinai, clods of earth from Gethsemane, and bones and bits of sacred wood
without number. When Peter the Hermit arose to preach it was but putting
a match to a pile ready to be fired. But for such a list as that
preserved by history, there was need of time as well as credulity.
Then the same thing happened to the Saxon church which had been done by
Saxon arms to the British church. It was destroyed, or at least
plundered, by the Danes. The priests, who perhaps took refuge in London,
saved their relics. After a hundred years of fighting, the Dane, too,
came into the Christian fold. As soon as circumstances permitted, King
Edgar, stimulated by Dunstan, rebuilt or restored the church, and
brought twelve monks from Glastonbury. He also erected the monastic
buildings after the Benedictine Rule; and, as Stanley has pointed out,
since in the monastery the church or chapel is built for the monks, the
monastic buildings would be finished before the church.
[Illustration: THE FUNERAL PROCESSION OF KING EDWARD THE CONFESSOR]
Next, Edgar gave the monks a charter in which these lands are described
and the boundaries laid down. You shall see what a goodly foundation--on
paper--was this Abbey of St. Peter when it left the King’s hands. Take
the map of London: run a line from Marble Arch along Oxford Street and
Holborn--the line of the new Watling Street--till you reach the church
of St. Andrew’s, Holborn; then follow the Fleet river to its mouth--you
have the north and east boundaries. The Thames is a third boundary. For
the fourth, draw a line from the spot where the Tyburn falls into the
Thames, to Victoria Station;
[Illustration: TO WESTMINSTER ABBEY. FROM THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY.]
thence to Buckingham Palace; thence north to Marble Arch. The whole of
the land included belonged to the Abbey. A little later the Abbey
acquired the greater part of Chelsea, the manor of Paddington, the manor
of Kilburn, including Hampstead and Battersea,--in fact, what is now the
wealthier half of modern London formerly belonged to the Benedictines of
Westminster. At the time of Edgar’s charter, however, they had the area
marked out above. More than half of it was marsh land. In Doomsday Book
there are but twenty-five houses on the whole estate. Waste land lying
in shallow ponds, sometimes flooded by high tides, only the rising
ground between what is now St. James’s Park and Oxford Street could then
be farmed. The ground was reclaimed and settled very slowly; still more
slowly was it built upon. Almost within the memory of man snipe were
shot over South Kensington; a hundred years ago the whole of that
thickly populated district west and southwest of Mayfair was a land of
open fields.
So that, notwithstanding the great extent of their possessions, the
monks were by no means rich, nor were Edgar’s buildings, one imagines,
very stately. Yet the later buildings replaced the older on the same
sites. A plan of the Abbey of Edgar and Dunstan would show the
Chapter-house and the Church where they are now; the common dormitory
over the common hall, as it was afterward; the refectory where it was
afterward; the cloisters, without which no Benedictine monastery was
complete, also where are those of Henry III. But the buildings were
insignificant compared with what followed.
Roman Britain, we have said, was Christian for at least a hundred and
fifty years; the country was also covered with monasteries and
nunneries. Therefore it would be nothing out of the way or unusual to
find monastic buildings on Thorney in the fourth century. There was as
yet no Benedictine Rule. St. Martin of Tours introduced the Egyptian
Rule into Gaul--whence it was taken over to England and to Ireland. It
was a simple Rule, resembling that of the Essenes. No one had any
property; all things were in common; the only art allowed to be
practiced was that of writing; the older monks devoted their whole time
to prayer; they took their meals together,--bread and herbs, with
salt,--and, except for common prayer and common meals, they rarely left
their cells: these were at first simple huts constructed of clay and
bunches of reeds; their churches were of wood; they shaved their heads
to the line of the ears; they wore leather jerkins, probably because
these lasted longer than cloth of any kind; many of them wore hair
shirts. The wooden church became a stone church; the huts became cells
built about a cloister; the cells themselves were abolished, and a
common dormitory was substituted. Then came the Saxons, and the monks
were dispersed or fled into Wales, where they formed immense
monasteries, as that of Bangor, with its three thousand monks. All had
to be done over again, from the beginning. But monasticism, once
introduced, flourished exceedingly among the Saxons, until the long war
with the Danes destroyed the safety of the convent and demanded the
service of every man able to carry a sword, and there were no more monks
left in the land. All of which is necessary to explain why Dunstan had
to people his Abbey with monks brought from Glastonbury. For Glastonbury
and Abingdon, into which the Benedictine Rule had been introduced, were
then the only monasteries surviving the long Danish troubles.
These are the beginnings of the Abbey and the Church, and of life upon
the Island of Bramble. This the foundation of the history that follows.
A busy place before London Bridge was built; a place of throng and
turmoil far back in the centuries before the coming of the Roman; a
church built in the midst of the throng; monks in leather jerkins living
beside the church; a ruined church lying in ruins for two hundred years,
while the Saxon infidel daily passed beside it across the double ford;
then a rebuilding--why not by Sebert? Another destruction, and another
rebuilding.
This view is often taken by Loftie in his “Westminster Abbey.” He does
not, however, defend it and insist upon it so strongly. He says, to
quote his exact words: “The hillock on which we stand is called
Thorn-Ey. There are some Roman remains on it, and there may have been
the ruins of a little monastery and chapel, of which floating traditions
were afterward gathered and exaggerated. The paved causeway to the
westward is the Watling Street. On both sides of it runs the Tyburn, of
which Thorn-Ey is a kind of delta. The road rises to Tot Hill, which is
a conspicuous landmark here, and goes straight on over the ‘Bulunga Fen’
till it reaches another, the ‘road to Reading,’ which has just crossed
the Tyburn at Cowford, where Brick Street is now in Piccadilly. From
Thorney, then, looking northward and westward, we see what remains of
the great Middlesex forest, if the Danes have not burnt it all, and the
paved Watling Street running straight on toward the distant Chester,
keeping to the left of the lofty hill which is now crowned by the town
of Hampstead. It is interesting to trace this ancient road through the
modern streets, the more so as its existence determined the site and
early importance of Westminster. When it emerged from the wild woods of
Northern Middlesex and came down toward the ford of the Thames, it
followed what we call the Edgeware Road, Edgeware being the name of the
first stopping-place on the road, near the edge of the forest. Passing
down the Edgeware Road in a straight line, it is interrupted at the
Marble Arch by a corner of the Park, which crosses the direct road
toward Westminster. We know, however, that this corner is a
comparatively recent addition to the Park, and the Watling Street soon
resumes its course in Park Lane, which, keeping well on the high ground
above the brook, nevertheless derived the name it was known by for many
centuries from the Tyburn. Tyburn Lane reached the road to Reading at
what we call Hyde Park Corner, and then ran straight through what was
once called ‘Brookshott,’--a little wood, where now is the Green Park
and the gardens of Buckingham Palace,--and on, right through the site of
the palace itself, where the brook approached it very closely. So it
descended to Tothill, the name of which has been plausibly explained to
mean a place where the traveler ‘touted’ for a guide or a boat, as the
case might be, for the dangerous ford of the Thames below. This is
rather conjectural, but is not to be rejected until a better explanation
has been offered. One thing more had to be stated about this ancient
highway--the Watling Street. How is it that we find the same name in the
City? To answer this question we must look back to a period so remote
that we cannot accurately date it, yet so definite, in one way, that
there can be no mistake about it. This is the time at which London
Bridge was built. When that great event took place Watling Street was
diverted from Tyburn Lane, and instead of going to Westminster in order
to ford the Thames, it turned to the left, along the modern Oxford
Street and Holborn, and, entering the City at Newgate, went on to the
bridge. Only a small part of the road still bears the ancient name, but
that any of it does so is a most interesting and significant fact.
“We may conclude, therefore, if we wish to do so, that in a sense
Westminster is older than London itself. What name it was called by we
know not; but the Romans certainly had a station here, as I have said,
and the importance of the place before the making of London Bridge may
have been considerable.”
In course of time the river was embanked, and ran in a deeper channel;
then the ford, as has been stated above, vanished, and the marshes were
partly reclaimed, only pools remaining on both sides of the river--the
Southwark pools remained till the beginning of this century. But
Thorney, after the drying of the marsh, continued to be an island. On
the north, the west, and the south sides it was bounded by streams; on
the east by the Thames. If you will take the map, and draw a line
through Gardener’s Lane across King Street to the river, you will be
tracing the exact course of the rivulet which ran into the Thames and
formed the northern boundary of the island; another line, down Great
College Street, marks the course of a second stream; while a third line,
down De la Hay and Prince’s Streets, joining the other two, marks the
lie of a connecting canal called Long Ditch. It is interesting to walk
along the narrow Gardener’s Lane, one of the few remaining old streets
of Westminster, and to mark how the road presents a certain unmistakable
look of having been the bed of a stream; it bends and curves exactly
like a stream. The same thing may be imagined--by a person of
imagination--concerning Great College Street.
The island thus formed covered an area of four hundred and seventy yards
long from north to south, and three hundred and seventy yards broad from
east to west. At some time or other--after the disappearance of the
ford--the Abbey precinct was surrounded by a wall. In the same way St.
Paul’s, in the midst of the City, was surrounded by a wall with
embattled gates. A portion of this wall is perhaps still standing. The
wall was pierced by four gates. One of these was in King Street, where
the rivulet crossed; one was at the east end of Tothill Street; a third
was in Great College Street, and its modern successor still stands on
the spot with no ancient work in it; the last was in New Palace Yard. In
front of the riverside wall lived the population of Thorney,--the town
of Westminster, such as it was,--decayed indeed since the deepening of
the river: fisher-folk mostly, who plied their trade on the river. But
of town or village, in the time of Edward the Confessor, there was
little or none.
When the old Palace of Westminster was founded, another wall was erected
round its buildings. Then the island was completely surrounded by a
fortification; the fisher-folk removed northward and settled somewhere
lower down the river, where afterward arose the New Palace and
Whitehall; not higher up, where the ground continued to be a marsh for
many centuries to come. We have seen the beginnings of the Church and of
the Abbey. What were the beginnings of the Palace? When did a king begin
to live on Thorney Island? And why?
Since neither tradition nor history speaks to the contrary, we may
suppose that Cnut was the first to build some kind of palace or
residence in this place. His buildings are said to have been burned in
the time of Edward; therefore he must have built something. His
residence on Thorney was neither continuous nor at any time of long
duration. The court of the kings for many generations to come was a
Court Itinerant. King Cnut traveled perpetually from place to place,
followed by his regiment of house carles, though one knows not how many
accompanied him. He stayed at Thorney because he loved the conversation
of the Abbot Wolfstan. It was at Thorney that, according to the
familiar story, he rebuked the courtiers in the matter of the rising
tide; and it was in the concluding years of his reign, when that
marvelous change, graphically described by Freeman, fell upon him, and
he became exactly the opposite of what he had before shown himself; when
he founded and endowed and augmented churches and monasteries. His heart
was changed: the stately services of the minster, the rolling of the
organ, the chanting of the monks, the splendor of the altar, the story
of the Gospel, the legends and the acts of the Saints, the pilgrimage to
Rome,--these things pleased him more than the clash of steel on shield,
the war cry, and the glorious madness of the fight. The beginner of the
old Palace was the great King Cnut the Dane.
We write under the shadow of the Abbey: the bells peal out over our
heads; the organ swells and dies; within the walls are the coffins and
the bones of dead kings and princes and nobles. The air is ecclesiastic:
we may talk of changed hearts and repentant age. The age of civil wars,
intestine wars,--the worst wars of all, the wars of those who speak the
same language,--lasted for five hundred years after the death of King
Cnut. We who belong to a generation which has learned some self-control,
cannot realize the intensity, the strength of the passions which
devoured and maddened the kings of old. The things which make history
dreadful: the murders, the cry to arms at the least provocation; the
cruel disregard of innocent suffering; the wasting, pillaging,
destroying of lands and fields and villages and towns, in blind revenge;
the blinding and torturing and maiming of which every page is full,
these things mean the rage of kings, the revenge of kings upon their
enemies. Cnut in his last years had no enemies; he had killed them all.
Then there were no more rages; he suffered his head to dwell upon nobler
things--in modern language, he “got religion.” And so, at the end of
this Prologue to the Westminster Play, we see the King taking off his
blood-stained ermine, laying down the sword which has set free so many
unwilling souls, and walking in meditation and godly discourse under the
quiet cloisters of the Abbey. Outside, the noisy court and camp; within,
the calm and peace of the religious life. The picture strikes a note of
what is to follow when we pass into the period of history written from
day to day, and draw up the curtain for the Pageant, Mystery, or Play of
Westminster.