This chair, the ancient seat of kings, stands in the royal chapel of St.
Edward, backed by the fifteenth-century stone screen which closes the
west end of the Chapel; within the wooden frame, which was constructed
purposely to enclose it, is the famous stone called the Stone of Scone.
This piece of Scotch granite was brought from Scotland in the early
fourteenth century by the conquering English King, Edward I., and given
over to the safe custody of the Westminster monks. In the Abbey it has
remained ever since, and all our sovereigns from that time until the
present day have received the insignia of royalty seated in the chair
upon the historic stone. The latter has been the subject of many an
old-world legend: it is said to have been Jacob's pillow when he saw the
vision of the angels ascending and descending between heaven and earth;
after which it became the seat of kings in Spain, in Ireland, and finally
in Scotland, where there is no doubt that the Scottish sovereigns used it
as a coronation throne. The chair itself bears little trace of its
former splendour; it was originally decorated with paintings. The lions
were regilded at the last coronation.
* * * * * *
Cut on the stones as we walk away down the chapel is the name of George
II., the first Hanoverian king who was buried in England. With him lies
his wife Caroline, a queen of good memory, and other members of their
numerous family are in close vicinity. The later sovereigns of the
Hanoverian stock gradually lost all sentiment for Westminster, and are
interred at Windsor. Through the gates and round abruptly to the left is
the southern aisle, where we find three royal ladies' tombs, and the
names of many Stuart princes and princesses who were interred in the
vaults. Margaret, Countess of Lennox, niece of Henry VIII., is the first
we come to. Her marble altar tomb, with its recumbent effigy and the
figures of her children round the sides, is a fair specimen of late Tudor
art, but not comparable to the earlier ones by the Italian artist. Her
elder son, Darnley, a broken crown above his head, kneels with his face
turned towards the monument of his wife, Mary, Queen of Scots, whose fair
fame must ever be blackened by her suspected complicity in his {99}
murder. Of the second son, Charles, and his unhappy daughter Arabella,
we cannot speak at length to-day. Arabella's coffin is next to that of
Prince Henry, her cousin and fair-weather friend, but he made no effort
to save her from the consequences of his royal father, James the First's
wrath. The young Prince died three years before the distracted lady, who
lost her reason and pined to death in the Tower. The body of their aunt,
Mary Stuart, with its severed head, was already in this vault, brought
here by her son's filial piety soon after his accession to the English
throne. With these are other kinsfolk. Henry's sister Elizabeth, Queen
nominally of Bohemia, but in her last days she was the sovereign of no
tangible realm, only of the fragile kingdom of hearts. With his mother
lies Prince Rupert, the dashing Cavalier and daring seaman; beside them
are the coffins of Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and Mary, Princess of
Orange, both the victims of smallpox--that terrible scourge which
devastated rich and poor alike before the discovery of vaccination. They
died at Whitehall Palace, where they had come to congratulate their
brother, Charles II., whose troubles they had shared, on his peaceful
restoration to the English realm. The heavy monument which James I.
erected {100} above this vault to the memory of his "dearest mother"
closely resembles that of her rival Elizabeth in the opposite aisle.
This one cost about 100 pounds more than the other, and is therefore
somewhat more elaborately decorated. The white marble portrait effigy
represents the Queen in her middle age, and gives no idea of her youthful
beauty; at her feet is the Scotch lion, much mutilated. Against the wall
is the original warrant, signed by James himself, ordering the removal of
Mary's coffin from Peterborough to Westminster. We have already referred
more than once to the tomb of Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby,
mother of Henry VII., the foundress of two colleges at Cambridge and of a
chair of divinity at both Universities. Now let us stand beside it for a
few moments and look upon the face of this cultured, religious woman,
who, after many trials in early life, ended her days in a holy peace,
secluded from the world by her own choice, yet ever ready to return to
her son's Court when he desired her presence. Notice especially the
moulding of the delicate yet capable hands. Torrigiano's head of Lovell
just above is worthy also of the closest attention, but we can pass by
the inartistic statue of Horace Walpole's mother, and the ugly {101}
monument of General Monck against the wall. Monck himself deserves far
more recognition than he usually receives. His share in the restoration
of Charles II. was by no means his sole achievement, and he had, although
a landsman and a soldier by training, previously distinguished himself on
the sea in company with Admiral Blake, and later on he co-operated with
his former foe, Prince Rupert, in many an action with the Dutch fleet.
He died standing upright in his tent, refusing to be conquered even by
death itself, and was buried with military honours. Charles II., who
hated funerals and rarely attended one, walked behind the bier as chief
mourner. Upon the step below are carved the names of Charles, of his
nieces, Mary and Anne, and of their respective husbands. Their wax
effigies, now in the Islip Chapel, used to stand here, and were the only
monuments raised to the Stuart sovereigns--a fact which called forth much
jesting comment from their political opponents. From this small chapel
we pass to the one opposite, crossing once more the top of the steps. At
the entrance is a stone which immediately arrests attention, for upon it
is the touching epitaph dedicated by his admirer Tickell to the memory of
Joseph Addison. We have seen Addison's statue {102} in Poets' Corner,
where it was ultimately placed, after a proposal to put it up beside St.
Edward's shrine had met with the contumely it deserved. Here the great
master of English prose "rests in peace," with his friend James Craggs,
whose memorial we have already pointed out at the entrance to the nave.
Close to the grave is the mural monument of his "loved Montagu," the
first Earl of Halifax, who was, like Sheffield, a patron of literature
and literary men. Addison's memory must ever be dear to all who love the
Abbey, for the sake of his reflections upon the church and its mighty
dead; in connection notably with his creation of that genial knight, Sir
Roger de Coverley. Buried beside Charles Montagu is his great-nephew,
George Montagu Dunk, Earl of Halifax, who is chiefly remembered nowadays
as the founder of the Colony of Nova Scotia; the capital, Halifax, was
called after him. His monument is in the north transept. Beneath our
feet, in General Monck's vault, lies their collateral ancestor, Admiral
Edward Montagu, who was created Earl of Sandwich by Charles II. when
Monck was made Duke of Albemarle, as a reward to the two Generals for
their share in promoting the Restoration. Sandwich's tragic end and the
battle {103} of Sole Bay are referred to on a double tablet, which we
passed near the entrance to the south choir aisle. For some real or
fancied slight put upon him by Prince James, Duke of York, who was then
in supreme command of the fleet. Sandwich refused to leave his ship when
she was blown up by the Dutch, and involved two naval lieutenants in his
own fate. The fidelity of the young men to their doomed chief, and their
faithful friendship for one another, is commemorated upon this memorial,
which was put up by the two bereaved fathers.
Raising our eyes from the floor we see at the end of this chapel the
large monument, which was put up by her successor, James I., in honour of
Queen Elizabeth. The white marble effigy rests under a heavy canopy; the
face was moulded from a mask taken of the features after death and is
therefore a likeness, but those who desire to see a more realistic
portraiture of the great Tudor sovereign in her old age should visit the
Islip Chapel, where is her wax figure. The touching Latin inscription,
thus translated, "Consorts both in throne and grave, here rest we two
sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, in hope of one resurrection," reminds us
that Mary Tudor lies {104} beneath her sister's tomb. For nearly half a
century only a heap of stones from the broken altars marked the place of
Mary's grave; beside the coffin is still a red velvet box, which contains
the unfortunate woman's dried-up withered heart, which was broken at
last, after many sorrows, with a final blow--the loss of our last piece
of French territory. Perchance the word "Calais" is written upon it
still in invisible ink. The children's tombs behind were made by the
sculptor who was then (1607) at work on Elizabeth's monument. They mark
the grief of James I. and his wife for the loss of their two daughters:
the baby Sophia only lived three days, but her sister Mary had reached
the fascinating age of two years when a slow fever carried her off.
Between the two little sisters, his own aunts, Charles II. placed a heavy
stone sarcophagus, containing some bones found in the Tower, near the
room where the boy princes, Edward V. and Richard of York, are said to
have been smothered, and which are most probably their remains. Edward
was born in the precincts, where his mother took sanctuary from her
husband's Lancastrian opponents, and was christened in the Abbey, the
Abbot and the Prior standing as his sponsors. In later days the young
{105} Prince marked his gratitude to the monks by contributing small sums
of money, supplemented by gifts from the Queen, towards the building of
the nave.
* * * * * *
[Illustration: The North Ambulatory, showing the Steps which lead up to
Henry VII.'s Chapel]
* * * *
THE NORTH AMBULATORY, SHOWING THE STEPS WHICH LEAD UP TO HENRY VII.'S
CHAPEL
This view shows the carvings upon the north side of the Chantry Chapel of
Henry V., where the King's coronation is repeated, and those upon the
arch which connects Henry VII.'s Chapel with the rest of the church.
Above this arch we see the figure of Henry V. on horseback, fording a
stream, and to the left below is the tomb of Ludovick Robsert, a gallant
soldier who carried the King's standard at Agincourt and was knighted
after the battle. The banners hanging inside St. Paul's Chapel belong to
the old family of Delavel, and the metal bust which is seen over the
screen is that of Lady Cottington, the wife of Charles I.'s treasurer,
whose tomb is underneath it; the bust is the work of the well-known
sculptor Hubert le Soeur. The Dean and his verger are here seen
descending the steps from Henry VII.'s Chapel, where baptisms, weddings,
and other special services take place.
* * * * * *
We have lingered long amongst the royal tombs; it is time to complete our
circle of the church by passing back along the north ambulatory. Just
beyond the bottom of the steps upon the right we see the Chapel of St.
Paul, into which we looked before from the chantry above. A tiny stone
image, believed to be that of St. Anne, may be pointed out, as it is part
of the ancient wall arcading; it is now almost concealed by the huge
renaissance tomb of Sir John Puckering. Puckering was Keeper of the
Great Seal in Elizabeth's reign, and the figures of the purse and
mace-bearer standing above it are particularly noteworthy, for they are
good examples of the costume of the period. We spoke of Pulteney, whose
ugly monument takes the place of the screen on one side, in connection
with his burial in the Islip Chapel, when Edward the First's canopy was
destroyed. Sixteen years later a similar disgraceful scene took place at
the funeral of a Duchess of Northumberland (the family vault is in St.
Nicholas's Chapel), when the crowd, climbing {106} upon the screen in
order to get a better view of the great lady's interment, smashed to
pieces John of Eltham's beautiful canopy, not without some damage to
their own heads and limbs. From here we get a good view of the grille
which protects Eleanor's effigy, and on sunny mornings the outlines of an
ancient picture can be traced on the stone panel below. The painting was
done by Master Walter of Durham, the same artist who decorated the
Coronation Chair, and represented, it is thought, one of the miracles
attributed to the Virgin. In the eighteenth century a knight, a woman
with a child in her arms, and a sepulchre were still clearly visible.
From this side also one gets a better idea of Henry the Third's tomb in
its original state than from the royal chapel, for the mosaic work has
remained untouched on the upper part, where the arm of the relic hunter
could not reach. We turn from the King's monument to a stone in the
floor which marks the place where a very different sovereign, Pym, the
King of the Commons, lay for a brief while. The coffin was buried under
the brass of a famous warrior, Sir John Windsore, who fought for Henry
IV. at Shrewsbury, a battle familiar to us in Shakespeare's historic
play. The bodies of Pym {107} and of his friend Strode, the "Parliament
driver," were disinterred and ejected with those of the other
Commonwealth magnates after the Restoration. On our right is the Chapel
of St. John the Baptist, called the Abbots' Chapel, for here are buried
four of our mitred abbots, two of whose tombs form the screen. The
original doorway is closed by that of Ruthall, Bishop of Durham, sometime
private secretary to Henry VII.; a wealthy man ruined by his riches,
which drew down upon him the cupidity of Henry VIII. and Wolsey,--not,
however, before Ruthall had spent part of his vast wealth in the public
service by building many bridges, notably one at Newcastle-on-Tyne. The
present entrance was cut through a little chapel, where were once an
altar and an image of St. Erasmus, which were originally given by Queen
Elizabeth Woodville, and removed here when the old Lady Chapel was
destroyed. Next to this is the chapel where Abbot Islip used to lie in
solitary splendour, before the vaults were invaded by other coffins. A
black marble table tomb, with an alabaster figure of the Abbot on the
lower slab, stood formerly in the centre. Above, in the chamber where
prayers were offered for the dead man's soul, are now the wax effigies.
We {108} have referred before to most of these, except to the more modern
ones of Nelson, a particularly attractive representation of the hero, and
of Lord Chatham. In a locked cupboard are remains of the so-called
ragged regiment, the earlier effigies, which were carried at the funerals
of our kings and queens, or other exalted persons. Outside, the chapel
is decorated with Islip's quaint device, a play upon his name Islip: an
eye with a hand holding a slip or branch, and a man slipping from a tree.
In the ambulatory, not far from his successor Islip, lies another Abbot,
Esteney, to whom we have referred in connection with the completion of
the nave. His altar tomb has been lowered, and the fine brass is now
only slightly raised from the floor; it was originally in the adjacent
chapel of St. John the Baptist, but was moved, and thus mutilated, in the
eighteenth century to make way for the colossal monument of General
Wolfe. We avert our eyes with a shudder from the marble group which
represents Wolfe's death above, and divert our party's attention to the
bronze bas-relief below, where the British troops are depicted landing on
the river bank, then scaling the heights of Abraham, and finally drawn up
on the plain before Quebec. {109} In an unmarked grave near this lies
the Admiral, Sir Charles Saunders, without whose co-operation even the
young hero, James Wolfe himself, could not have taken the city, for the
sailors not only transported the soldiers to the foot of the cliffs, but
protected their base and also cut off the supplies from the besieged town
above. Just inside the first of these three little chapels, which
technically belong to the north transept, a beautiful renaissance tomb
attracts attention. Four kneeling warriors support a slab of black
marble, upon which are the armour and accoutrements of the dead General,
whose alabaster figure sleeps below. Sir Francis Vere was a member of a
famous family, "the fighting Veres," and himself did good service for his
queen and country in the Netherlands. The effigy without armour marks
the fact that Vere died in his bed, not upon the field of battle. At the
extreme end of St. Andrew's Chapel a large and somewhat heavy monument,
after the pattern of a four-post bed with a canopy, commemorates "a brood
of martial-spirited men," the Norrises, who, like Vere, spent their lives
in the service of the Maiden Queen. All, father and sons, were famed in
war or distinguished at the council board; four were killed {110} in
battle, one died of a broken heart, and the youngest only survived his
parents. While all the rest bow their heads in prayer, he alone looks
cheerfully upwards. Behind this are the statues of Mrs. Siddons and her
brother, John Kemble, to whom we alluded before in connection with the
earlier actors and actresses, and other comparatively modern memorials of
more or less interest. In the middle chapel, that dedicated to St.
Michael, the theatrical monument to Lady Elizabeth Nightingale, a
grotesque _tour de force_ of Roubiliac's, is sure to call forth some
remarks, but we prefer to pass to a curious tablet on the wall beyond it,
which commemorates a certain Mrs. Ann Kirton, with a large eye above it
(presumably that of the widower), whence tears pour over the inscription.
Hidden away, at the back of another monument on the opposite side, is a
tablet in the worst style of the eighteenth century. Above a small
sinking ship the large and material soul of a gallant seaman is seen
ascending to heaven, and we remind our party of Cowper's well-known poem
on the wreck of the _Royal George_ and Admiral Kempenfelt's untimely end.
His sword was in its sheath,
His fingers held the pen,
When Kempenfelt went down,
With twice four hundred men.
{111}
To the right as we pass back again is a mural memorial to Sir John
Franklin, the discoverer of the North-West Passage. The loss of himself
and of his brave crew amidst impenetrable walls of snow and ice is
portrayed upon it; beneath is an oft-quoted epitaph by Tennyson--lines
which stir the hearts of all who pause to read them.
The circle of the apse has now been completed, and we pass through the
iron gate into the Statesmen's Aisle. Around us on every side are the
graves and statues of British politicians, whose names are for the most
part household words at home and still remembered abroad. With these are
also the memorials of soldiers, sailors, lawyers, and a few others, to
some of which we shall allude in passing. Conspicuous against the first
column is Sir Robert Peel's statue, inappropriately draped in a Roman
toga. Beyond his was placed in 1903 Brock's figure of William Ewart
Gladstone, who is represented in an attitude familiar to those who have
heard him speak, when addressing the House of Commons, or at a political
meeting. Gladstone's Life has already been in the hands of the reading
public, but the official biography of Benjamin Disraeli, Lord
Beaconsfield, the leader of the opposite party, is only now being
written, although {112} twenty-five years have elapsed since his death.
Beaconsfield's statue stands by the next pillar, and, if it be a day in
late April, we should see primrose wreaths arranged around the feet, a
homage from those who cherish the imperialist ideas which were
inaugurated by Disraeli. Before very long a memorial, also voted by
Parliament, to Robert Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury, Beaconsfield's
successor as head of the Tory party, is also to be placed with his
compeers in this temple of silence and reconciliation.
* * * * * *
[Illustration: Interior of the North Transept]
* * * *