[Illustration: WEST FRONT OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
_After a Photograph by the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Co.,
Ltd._]
TALES
FROM
WESTMINSTER ABBEY
TOLD TO CHILDREN BY
MRS. FREWEN LORD.
WITH
VIGNETTE PORTRAIT OF DEAN STANLEY, PLAN OF THE ABBEY
AND GENERAL VIEW OF WEST FRONT OF ABBEY.
_SECOND EDITION._
LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & COMPANY
_LIMITED_,
St. Dunstan’s House,
Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, E.C.
1894.
[_All rights reserved._]
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
[Illustration: DEAN STANLEY.
_From a Photograph by the London Stereoscopic Company._]
DEDICATED
to the memory of
DEAN STANLEY,
whose walks and talks with children
in Westminster Abbey
can never be effaced from the
grateful recollection of one who as a child
had the happiness of enjoying them.
TALES
FROM
WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
CHAPTER I.
A great many years ago, when I was quite a small child, I was taken
with some other children over Westminster Abbey by Dean Stanley, who
was then the Dean of Westminster.
Some of you may have read a book called “Tom Brown’s School Days,”
and if so you will remember Tom’s great friend, Arthur, who began his
school life a lonely and home-sick little boy, but who as the years
went on came to be looked up to and liked almost more than any other
boy at Rugby. “George Arthur” this boy is called in the book, but
his real name was Arthur Stanley, and when he grew up he became a
clergyman, and was for many years Dean of Westminster. He wrote a great
many books, and one all about Westminster Abbey; for he knew every
corner and part of this great church, and was full of stories about the
great people who are buried here, and the kings and queens who were
crowned here. There was nothing he liked better than taking people over
the Abbey, and any one who had the happiness of going with him, as I
did, and of hearing him, would always remember some, at any rate, of
the stories he told.
He died in 1881, and as none of you can ever see or hear him, standing
in the Abbey surrounded by children, and telling them all that he
thought would interest them, I am going to take out of my memory, and
out of this book of his,[1] just as much of what he used to say as I
hope will help you to enjoy what you will see there.
When one goes to visit any place for the first time, there is always
a great deal that one wants to have explained; and what I myself most
enjoy is to read or be told beforehand something about what I am going
to see, and then I understand it much better--I do not waste so much
time in asking questions, and have all the more time to look about.
If we go and stand at the great West Door, as it is called, of
Westminster Abbey, and look down Victoria Street, it is difficult to
believe that this very same place was, hundreds of years ago, quite
wild country. Where there are now houses and streets and churches,
there used to be only marshy land and forests. Where there are now
endless streams of carriages, carts, and omnibuses, and people
hurrying along, there were in the far-off time, when the Abbey Church
of Westminster was first begun, only wild oxen or huge red deer with
towering antlers which strayed from the neighbouring hills and roamed
about in this jungle. It used to be called “the terrible place,” so
wild and so lonely was it.
Dotted about in the marsh were many little islands, one of which was
called Thorney Isle, because there were so many wild thorn trees
growing there, and on this spot Westminster Abbey now stands.
For as the forests in this part of London were gradually cut down,
this island looked so pretty and quiet with the water flowing all
round it, and nothing to be seen from it but sunny green meadows,
that King Edward the Confessor chose it as the place to build a great
church, which he called the Church of St. Peter. At that time there
were not many large churches in England, and the Church of St. Peter
was thought to be one of the most splendid that was ever seen. It took
fifteen years to build, but at last it was finished, and on Christmas
Day, 1065, King Edward the Confessor, wearing his crown, as was the
custom in those days on great occasions, came with all his bishops and
nobles to the first great service in the Abbey Church which he himself
had built. He was then a very old man, and a few days after the great
service he was taken ill and died, and was buried in his own church. He
is called the Founder of the Abbey, and you will see, when you go round
it, the shrine of King Edward and of his queen, who was afterwards
buried at his side.
Now, there is only one more thing to be remembered before we begin to
look round inside and decide what are the most interesting things to
see, and that is that this Abbey we are in to-day is _not_ the actual
Church of St. Peter which King Edward the Confessor built. Of that
church there is now left only a little bit of one pillar, which perhaps
a guide will show you, within the altar-rail, in what is called the
“Sacrarium.” I do not mean that the church was pulled down all at once,
and this Abbey built instead, but bit by bit, as years went on, it was
added to and altered. New parts were built on by different kings--for
Westminster Abbey is a church that has been all built by kings and
princes--and as the new parts were added, the old were gradually pulled
down.
Of all the kings who helped to build and beautify the Abbey, Henry III.
was the one who did most, and he spent on it such enormous sums of
money that he is often spoken of as one of the most extravagant kings
England ever had. He made up his mind that the Abbey of Westminster was
to be the most beautiful church in the world, and he used to invite the
best foreign artists and sculptors to come and help to make plans and
paintings and carvings for it. He it was who built the shrine where
Edward the Confessor is now buried, in the part of the choir behind
where the communion table (formerly the high altar) now stands. It was
when he was growing to be an old man that he thought the founder of
the Abbey ought to be treated with special honour and respect, and so
almost the last thing he did in his life was to build this shrine,
which stands in what is called Edward the Confessor’s Chapel.
The king sent all the way to Rome--and in those days the journey was a
very much longer and more difficult one than it is now--for the mosaics
and enamels which are still to be seen on the shrine; the workmen who
made it came from Rome, where the best workmen were then to be found;
and the twisted columns round the shrine were made in imitation of the
columns on some of the tombs in the great churches in Rome.[2]
When it was finished, in 1269, the old king himself, his brother
Richard, and his two sons, Edward and Edmund, carried the coffin of
Edward the Confessor on their shoulders from the place where it had
been buried in 1065 to the new chapel, and there it has rested to this
very day.
Years afterwards a great and magnificent chapel was added by Henry
VII. at the east end of the Abbey, which was called after him. He was
buried there when he died, and so were his grandson, Edward VI., and
Queen Elizabeth, and Mary Queen of Scots, and many others whose tombs
you must look at by-and-by.
It was in the year 1509 that Henry VII. was buried in Westminster
Abbey, just four hundred and forty-four years after the burial of King
Edward the Confessor. But in these four hundred and forty-four years
the Abbey had been so much altered, the old parts so pulled down and
rebuilt, that King Edward, could he have seen it again, would hardly
have believed that this great Abbey, as we see it to-day, had grown up
from his first Church of St. Peter on Thorney Isle.
And now, as I have said enough about the building of the Abbey, we can
go inside and begin to see some of the monuments and tombs of which it
is full.