From Dean's Yard we get the best view of the south transept and the group
of buildings which surround it. Thus we see the Chapter House behind the
roof of the ancient dormitory, now the Chapter library and the great
school, while at the back of the old houses to the left are the leads
which cover the cloisters. To the right is the small arch which leads
into Little Dean's Yard, and the immediate foreground is filled by the
green, where the Westminster boys are allowed to play football between
school in winter. The elm trees, themselves of some antiquity, are
interesting, for their forerunners were planted by Feckenham, the last
Abbot of Westminster, and gave the name of the Elms to the whole square
which is now called Dean's Yard.
* * * * * *
From the west door we pass down the north walk, pausing to observe a
modern tablet which recalls the Boer War: it commemorates seven of the
Queen's Westminster Volunteers who fell in South Africa, fighting side by
side with their civic comrades the C.I.V.'s. Some round holes in the
stone bench below are said to be the marks of an old English game, called
"nine men's morris," which was popular in mediaeval times; and if this be
so, we can only suppose that even the more studious brethren in the
library had their lighter {124} moments, or that the novices were allowed
to play here. The lover of quaint epitaphs in our party is sure to stop
a little further on in order to decipher an almost obliterated rhyming
inscription, which tells how faithfully William Lawrence served a
Prebendary, and "gained this remembrance at his master's cost." Our feet
are treading now upon the graves of Garrick's contemporaries, Spranger
Barry, his wife Ann Crawford, and Mrs. Cibber. As we turn into the east
walk we see the names of two other lights of the eighteenth-century
stage, Betterton and Mrs. Bracegirdle, cut in the pavement; the mural
tablet close by to "Jane Lister, deare child," by its very simplicity is
sure to attract the child-lover. Before moving on, let us look up at the
east cloister door with its delicate thirteenth-century moulding, which
is far more beautiful than the later Perpendicular work of Abbot
Litlington's time above the west door. Lower down a grand portal with a
double doorway, of the same earlier date, leads through a dark vestibule
into that incomparable specimen of Early English architecture, the
Chapter House. In one of the outer arches are fragments of figures and
foliage representing a tree of Jesse, and in the tympanum above we see
two decaying but still beautiful {125} stone angels. The centre was once
filled by a group of the Virgin with the infant Saviour in her arms, no
trace of which now remains. The Chapter House, which was built at the
same time as Henry the Third's church, ranks as one of the finest in
England, but it has suffered much damage at various periods from the
hands of careless guardians and from the well-meaning efforts of
successive restorers. It was originally designed for the use of the
convent, but ever since the dissolution of the monastery it has been in
the possession of the Government, and has never been under the
jurisdiction of the Dean and Chapter. Here it was that the monks used to
assemble in conclave, under the presidency of the Abbot, about once a
week, to discuss their affairs, and summary justice was administered to
such of the elder brethren who had broken the rules of the Order. These
were flogged near the central pillar, under the eyes of the other monks,
who sat round on the stone benches against the wall; the younger
offenders were chastised in the cloisters. Quite early in the reign of
the first Edward, however, the kings began to use this council chamber of
the monastery for their own purposes, and would often hold synods of the
clergy within its walls, usually with the purpose of {126} extorting
subsidies. About the middle of the fourteenth century the Abbot lent the
Chapter House to the Crown for the use of the Commons, who met henceforth
in the monastic precincts till they were removed by an edict of Edward
VI.'s to the old chapel of St. Stephen's. The wise head of the
monastery, Abbot Henley, made a stipulation at the same time that the
Government should bear the expense of all future repairs. Whether this
compact was faithfully carried out at first we do not know, but after the
Dissolution, when the building lapsed finally to the Crown, it fell into
a shocking state of ruin, and was used as a kind of lumber-room for State
documents. In the eighteenth century it was fitted up as a record
office, and the architecture ruthlessly maltreated. The original roof,
which was in a ruinous condition, was removed altogether; wooden shelves,
galleries, and staircases concealed the painted walls; a boarded floor
was added half-way up, and rolls of dusty and inflammable parchments
increased the constant risk of fire. In 1834 when the houses of
Parliament hard by were burnt, watchers were stationed on the roof of the
Chapter House, ready to remove the Doomsday Book and other valuable
records should the conflagration spread and the safety of {127} this
historic building be seriously threatened. So urgent did the danger from
fire appear long afterwards to Sir Gilbert Scott, when he was Surveyor of
the Abbey fabric, that he prevailed on the Government of 1865 to remove
the records, and obtained a grant of money from Parliament for the
purpose of restoring the place as far as possible to its original aspect.
Altered as it must have been by this restoration, yet Scott did his work
well, and as we look around us we see traces of its ancient splendour,
although irreparable damage from neglect and misguided attempts to repair
the ravages of former generations has been wrought at various times. The
very interesting mural paintings, for instance, which date from the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, have been slowly yet surely fading
ever since the wooden panelling was removed forty years ago, and
well-meant modern experiments, which were intended to preserve the
colour, seem only to have added to their destruction. Above the inner
door are two graceful stone figures, one of which is said to represent
St. John the Baptist; the central medallion of Christ is by Sir Gilbert
Scott, but does not compare favourably with the thirteenth-century
sculptures. The tracery of the windows was restored after the pattern of
{128} the only one which Scott found intact, but the ancient painted
glass had long disappeared, and the present glass, the work of Messrs.
Clayton and Bell, was inserted at the end of the last century as a
memorial to Dean Stanley. Part of one window is still unfinished,
waiting until sufficient funds are forthcoming, but the remainder have
now been filled up. The east window was given by the generosity of Queen
Victoria as a token of her admiration for her old friend, while the cost
of the one next to it was defrayed entirely by American subscribers.
Historical scenes closely connected with the Abbey are here represented;
above them are figures of those sovereigns and abbots who rank as
benefactors to the foundation. We passed just now in the vestibule a
small medallion portrait with a modern window above it, both of which
were put there as a memorial to James Russell Lowell, who was for many
years the United States Minister in London, and whose brilliant speech in
this very place, when he supported Dean Bradley's appeal for funds to
worthily commemorate Dean Stanley, will never be forgotten by those
present on that occasion. Railed off in the centre of the floor are
remnants of the ancient encaustic tiles, with which the whole was once
paved, and {129} round about them are glass cases containing many
interesting documents, seals, and other relics, which should be studied
at leisure by the antiquarian members of our party. These are already
admiring the famous Litlington Missal and the Liber Regalis, an
illuminated book containing the order of the Coronation Service, which
was prepared for the use of Richard II., and is probably the actual
volume which the boy King held in his hands during the long and, to a
child, tedious ceremony. There is also a fine manuscript containing an
agreement between Henry VII. and the Bermondsey convent. Others are
attracted to the skeletons of rats, mice, and sparrows which were found
when cleaning out the old organ pipes. In the vestibule as we go out we
see a curious old doorway, which was originally the entrance to the royal
treasury, now called the Pyx Chapel. Upon the other side hang strips of
the human skin with which it was once entirely covered, like the door
which used to divide the chapels of St. Faith and St. Blaise, in the
south transept. The latter was taken down long ago, but in Scott's time
the frame, which still had some skin adhering to it, was extant, but it
was then carried off by the Abbey master-mason and has been since
entirely lost sight {130} of. The gruesome relics on the south transept
door were traditionally supposed to be the skins of the Danes, but the
one here was said to be that of a man flayed alive for robbing the royal
treasury in the time of Edward I., which was fixed upon the treasury
entrance as a warning to the monks, who were implicated in the crime.
Sir Gilbert Scott, however, believed the skins to have been those of men
who were executed for sacrilege. Beneath the Chapter House itself is a
crypt, which was also used as a depository for treasure, and formed part
of the King's wardrobe in Edward the First's reign. It is still a
moot-point as to which strong room was broken into by the robbers, but
this need not detain us now. The door leads nowhere at present; but in
the Confessor's day, when the chamber was built, and for long afterwards,
it admitted at once into the treasury chamber. Behind it now there is
only an empty space beneath the library stairs, within which, late in the
eighteenth and early in the nineteenth century, one of the Chapter
officials seems to have kept his wine, for the names of different wines
and the dates are written upon the stones. Beyond the fourteenth-century
staircase, which led up to the monks' dormitory, a wall, probably of the
same period, divides this part of {131} the treasury from the rest, and
one of the Norman columns has been built into the middle of it. In
Scott's day a modern door led to the Chapter library from the vestibule,
but he restored the original staircase with the entrance into the east
cloister, which is on our left when we emerge. The spacious chamber
above was originally the dormitory, whence the monks passed to and fro
into the church over this vestibule by a covered passage-way, which
crossed the end of St. Faith's Chapel and descended by stone steps, some
of which remain, into the chapel of St. Blaise in the south transept.
After having been occasionally used as a library under different Deans,
part of this dormitory (the rest is incorporated in the schoolroom) was
restored and fitted up by Dean Vincent in the seventeenth century, and is
now the Chapter library. In the cloister beyond the library entrance a
heavy oak door, clamped with iron bars, leads into the chamber or chapel
of the Pyx. Behind this is another equally formidable-looking door, and
upon each are three complicated locks, only two of which are used at the
present time. There is little doubt that these locks date from the
seventeenth century and are not the original ones belonging to the
Treasury, of which the Keeper of the Royal {132} Wardrobe and the Abbot
had duplicate keys; for we know that when Parliament sent Sir Robert
Harley to seize the regalia in 1643, no keys were produced by the Dean,
the locks were therefore broken, and new ones were put on by order of the
House. The whole question of the Pyx Chapel is one of vast interest, and
much of its history is still an insoluble riddle. It is enough to tell
our party that the regalia and Crown jewels were kept here for many
centuries, and that in later times the pyx, a box containing the standard
pieces of gold and silver money, took the place of the ancient treasure.
The pyx is now in the Mint, and quite recently the treasury chamber,
which is at present under the control of the Board of Works, has been
cleared out after centuries of neglect, and most of the old chests have
been temporarily removed. Now that the chapel is empty, it is possible
to appreciate the fine proportions of its architecture. This vaulted
chamber and a few other substructures beyond it, including the dark
cloister, belong to the Norman monastery, and were built during and after
the Confessor's time. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries most of
the old monastic buildings were gradually pulled down to make way for
more airy and convenient {133} new structures, but these remained
untouched when the rest were destroyed. The Pyx Chamber appears to have
been a chapel at one time, there are traces of an altar and a
thirteenth-century holy-water basin at the east end, as there are also in
the Chapter-House crypt, but both were used as royal treasuries, and the
regalia was kept in the former until the Commonwealth. After the
Restoration the new regalia was deposited in the Tower, and ever since it
has been brought to the Abbey the night before the coronation. The
Romanesque round arches and plain short pillars with fluted mouldings
date from the eleventh century, while on the floor are ancient tiles of
various periods, some of which have been identified as Roman. Two large
and solid chests on which are written the names of different countries,
such, for instance, as Scotland, Burgundy, and Navarre, seem to have held
treaties and possibly tribute money. We cannot visit either the Library
or the Pyx Chapel to-day, nor the small vaulted chamber which leads into
the school gymnasium, but we must spare a few moments to see the only
portion of the original Norman cloister which is still standing, a dark
round arch, beneath which we pass into a modernised court called the
Little Cloister. The {134} monks' infirmary, an Early English building,
was formerly here, and a few arches of the infirmary chapel, which was
dedicated to St. Catherine, are still to be seen behind one of the
Canon's houses; a small locked door in the other corner leads into the
"College Garden," where the sick brethren used to take the air. We stop
to notice a tablet against the wall, near the choir boys' practice-room,
which is a favourite with all our parties, on account of the quaint
conceit about the man who, "through the spotted veil of the smallpox,
rendered a pure and unspotted soul to God." Returning by the dark arch
we look into Little Dean's Yard, around which are the school buildings,
but Westminster School is too vast a subject to be tackled at the end of
a long morning, so we merely point out the gateway leading to the great
schoolroom, where are carved the names of many a distinguished old
Westminster, and advise our friends to visit Ashburnham House and see
Inigo Jones's famous staircase on another occasion. The south walk is
the direct way to Dean's Yard. The wall all along the side most probably
formed part of the Norman cloister, and was utilised by Litlington for
the new one; behind it was the great refectory, to which we have referred
before. So closely connected in {135} style is the late Decorated and
early Perpendicular that it is impossible to define the exact date of
this part of the monastery, but, roughly speaking, we may attribute the
rest of the buildings which we are now about to visit to the energy of
Abbot Litlington, although some were finished after his death. The tombs
of the early Abbots against this wall were probably originally inside the
Norman church; in any case they have certainly been brought here from
elsewhere. The names we see now were cut in the eighteenth century, and
are so strangely transposed that scarcely one tomb is correctly
inscribed. A large blue stone called Long Meg was long believed to cover
the remains of twenty-eight monks stricken by the plague, but like many
another Abbey legend this is scarcely credible when we recall the busy
monastic life which went on in these cloisters, and the fact that the
cemetery was outside the Lady Chapel. Our goal at present is the famous
Jerusalem Chamber, where the Abbots used to entertain their guests. To
reach this we pass beneath another archway after leaving the cloisters,
and enter a picturesque courtyard; on one side is the College Hall, which
was formerly the Abbot's dining-room, and was used for the same purpose
by the earlier Deans; on {136} the other three sides of the court are the
Abbot's lodgings, now the Deanery. The Hall was built by Litlington at
the same time as the Chamber, and although it was remodelled in the
Elizabethan period, when the roof was restored and the minstrels' gallery
added, much of the fourteenth-century work remains. The Abbot's
initials, N. L., with his arms are seen on pieces of painted glass and on
the bosses of the roof, while the primitive fireplace in the centre of
the floor, with a hole above for the smoke to escape, was in use until
the middle of last century. On the dais, raised two steps above the rest
of the Hall, the Abbot, and afterwards his successor the Dean, had his
place of honour; the ancient oak tables are supposed to have been made
out of the wrecks of the Spanish Armada, and undoubtedly date from
Elizabeth's reign, when the newly founded Queen's scholars used to dine
with the Dean and Prebendaries. A small door in the corner admits us, by
a passage-way, into the Jerusalem Chamber, but here we look round in vain
for traces of our friend Litlington, for the room has been so modernised
and restored that practically only the cedar wood and the architectural
details belong to his time. More fragments of ancient glass, dating from
the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, {137} remind us that once not
only these but the church windows were filled with painted glass, most of
which was destroyed by the early Protestants, and all that was left was
broken by the Puritans. The tapestry was brought here from the choir and
from the great school in 1821, when the Chamber was restored. The tiles
and fireplace were added in Queen Victoria's reign, while the overmantel
was put up by Dean Williams, to commemorate the marriage of Charles I. to
Henrietta Maria--on either side are grotesque heads of the bride and
bridegroom; Williams entertained the French Ambassador at a banquet in
this room while the negotiations were proceeding. Dean Stanley placed
the busts of Henry IV. and Henry V. against the wall, and thus all who
visit this historic chamber are reminded that a king died on the spot
before the hearth where we now stand. Shakespeare has made the scene of
Henry the Fourth's death very familiar, and we remember the King's words
when he recovered consciousness after his swoon. Henry was taken ill
when praying at St. Edward's shrine, before starting for the Holy Land;
the dying man asked the name of the room into which he was carried from
the church, and receiving the reply "Hierusalem," he broke out into
thanksgiving:--
{138}
Laud be to God! even there my life must end.
It hath been prophesied to me many years
I should not die but in Jerusalem;
Which vainly I suppos'd the Holy Land.
But bear me to that chamber; there I'll lie;
In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.
* * * * * *
[Illustration: The Abbot's Courtyard and the Entrance to the Jerusalem
Chamber]
* * * *