had himself appropriated, his younger brother Henry arrived in hot haste
at Westminster, to urge that he should be chosen and crowned king before
his eldest brother, Robert, could get over from Normandy. He was better
known, and therefore better liked, than Robert, so it came about as he
wished; but as delay was thought to be dangerous, the ceremony was quite
simple, "good swords being more thought of than costly robes." The
fact, however, that Henry came to the council, asking for their support,
gave them a power over him which they were ready to seize, and before
the deed was finally done they obtained several important pledges from
him as they met him in Westminster Hall. This partly explains, too, the
reason why Henry sought to win the goodwill of the English nobles and
the English people, for if Robert had come over from Normandy to fight
for the crown, the Norman nobles could not all have been counted on. And
so, to please the English, he determined to marry a princess of their
race, the Princess Matilda, daughter of Malcolm of Scotland, and
great-grand-daughter of King Edmund Ironside. Only one obstacle stood
in the way, Matilda was a nun in the Abbey of Ramsey, but a nun against
her will, forced to take the veil by her aunt Christina. "In her
presence I wore the veil with grief and indignation," she said, "but as
soon as I could get out of her sight I did snatch it from my head, fling
it on the ground, and trample it under foot. That was the way, and none
other, in which I was veiled."
Anselm, the large-hearted Archbishop of Canterbury, declared that a vow
so taken was not binding, and to the great joy of the nation it was
decided that she should be married and crowned on the same day in the
Abbey. It was an English crowd which gathered to Westminster on that
great Sunday of November 11, and the shouts of Englishmen resounded the
heartfelt "Yea, yea," when Anselm from the pulpit asked them if they
would that this marriage should take place.
Matilda, who was "a very mirror of piety and humility," and who was,
moreover, shy at the sight of the "prodigious multitude" assembled to
gaze on her, blushed a rosy red, the colour of her crimson robes, and
was greatly overcome. She took up her residence at Westminster Palace,
and the fame of her good deeds cemented still more closely the affection
felt for her by her subjects. Henry loyally redeemed the promise he had
made before his coronation, and this was put down entirely to the
influence of his queen.
"Many are the good laws that were made in England through Matilda, the
good queen, as I understand," wrote the monk Robert of Gloucester.
To the Abbey adjoining her palace she was a generous benefactress. Each
day in Lent she went thither barefoot clothed in hair-cloth, and herself
waited on the poorest beggars who sought the charity of the monks, even
washing their feet.
"Madam, for Godde's love, is this well ado?" asked a courtier.
"Sir," answered the Queen, "our Lord Himself example gave for so to do."
Both Henry and his eldest son William were away in Normandy when this
good queen died at Westminster in the year 1115, after eighteen years of
happy married life "withouten strife," and she was buried close to her
great-uncle, Edward the Confessor, all people mourning her with sad
tears.
Henry died in the year 1135, leaving no son, as Prince William had been
drowned in making an heroic effort to save his sister Mary, and England
was still so much under foreign influence, that instead of his being
succeeded by his daughter Matilda or Maud, his nephew, Stephen of Blois,
was chosen king and crowned on St. Stephen's Day. In spite of this, a
constant struggle went on against the supporters of Maud, who were many,
and the whole reign was one of misery and misrule for England.
"King Henry had given peace to the realm and had been as a father to his
people, but now was the whole kingdom thrown into trouble and
confusion."
Westminster suffered many things at the king's hands, for he forced on
the monastery an Abbot, Gervase de Blois, who "managed very ill,
disposing of many Abbey lands, and being so lavish with the goods of the
monastery, that the monks were afraid he would have made away even with
the regalia," while many Abbey lands were ravished and laid bare as the
result of the civil warfare between the Empress Maud and Stephen.
At last a compact was made that Stephen should reign for his lifetime,
and that Maud's son, Henry of Anjou, should succeed him; and one year
after this had been agreed upon, Stephen died, lamented by no one. Henry
was a strong character, a great lover of justice and order; indeed, he
may be called the father of English law, and to him we owe the system of
trial by jury. He found two great powers in the land, the Church and the
Barons, and he determined to hold in check the influence of both.
Westminster was fortunate in having for Abbot, Lawrence, a man of much
learning, and what was even more important, of much tact, for he managed
to keep on excellent terms with the king, whom he persuaded to repair
and cover with lead the roofs of the building. It was he who gained for
the Abbey the great honour for which the whole nation had been longing,
and as the result of a sermon he preached before the king, the nobles,
and a great assembly of people, an embassy was sent to Rome, praying
that Edward the Confessor might be raised to the honour of a saint.
More than once had this appeal been made and refused, but now the Pope,
who feared Henry and had a great regard for Lawrence, decreed that "this
glorious light was to be no more hid from the world."
Perhaps, too, the large sum of money, willingly offered by pious
Englishmen, carried some little weight.
At midnight on October 13, 1163, Abbot Lawrence with the Archbishop
Thomas a Beckett opened the grave of Edward, and the "body of the
glorious king, who was henceforth to be honoured on earth as he was
glorified in heaven," was removed into a "precious coffin," made ready
by the order of Henry II. The celebrated "pilgrim ring" Lawrence drew
from his finger to keep in the monastery as a precious relic, and the
anniversary of this day was solemnly kept for many a long year.
The king was so anxious to make safe the succession of his eldest son,
Prince Henry, that he insisted on his being crowned during his lifetime.
But Prince Henry did not live to succeed to the throne, and it was
Richard Coeur de Lion who was crowned as the next English king. A very
vivid account has come down to us through the Chronicle of De Hoveden
describing the doings on this day, telling how from the Palace to the
Abbey the ground was covered with woollen cloth over which walked the
long procession as it wended its way to the ringing of bells, the
swinging of censers, lighted tapers shining everywhere. Then before the
altar Duke Richard swore that he would all the days of his life observe
peace, honour, and reverence towards God and the Holy Church, that he
would put an end to any bad laws or customs that were in his kingdom,
and confirm all good laws, in token of which Baldwin of Canterbury
anointed him with oil on his head, his breast, and his limbs to signify
glory, valour, and knowledge, afterwards placing the crown on his head.
But the people who were gathered together for the ceremony were filled
with great forebodings of evil at the sight of a bat who fluttered round
the king, though it was the bright part of the day, and at the sound of
a peal of bells which rang mysteriously. And when some among them
caught sight of a party of Jews, whose curiosity had overcome their
prudence, Jews and witches having been commanded by a royal proclamation
not to come near the Abbey or Palace lest they should work evil to the
king, they fell upon them and beat them to death, thus laying the train
for a series of horrible Jewish massacres throughout the country.
Richard, as you know, devoted himself to fighting the battles of the
Cross in Palestine, and England was left to the mercy and the conflicts
of the Barons.
When he fell in battle, his brother John succeeded in getting himself
elected king, though by this time a right of inheritance had been
established, and there was living Arthur, the son of John's elder
brother, and therefore the lawful heir. Never perhaps has a king been
crowned in Westminster who was so false to God, to man, and to his
people. Even on his coronation day he jeered and mocked during the
celebration of the Mass, and through the years which followed no gleam
of light breaks through his deeds of treachery, cruelty, and crime.
"Hell itself is defiled by his presence," wrote the uncompromising
chronicler of his reign.
Although the desperate Barons had forced him to sign the Great Charter,
they had no belief that he would abide by it, and certain of them
therefore entered into treaty with Louis, the Dauphin of France, who
came over to England prepared to accept the crown. Just at this moment,
however, John died, and the French Prince was too hasty in assuming that
the throne was his, for he began to divide up the kingdom and give lands
to his French followers in a manner which roused the indignation of the
stalwart Barons. John had left a little son of ten. Why not make him
king, they reasoned? The Council could rule the land, and for adviser
to the little Prince, who would be more likely to carry out the spirit
of the Great Charter than that wise and trusted noble, William, Earl of
Pembroke? So after a short struggle, Louis, who had taken possession of
the Abbey and many other places in London, went back to France, and the
boy king, who had been hurriedly crowned at Gloucester to make him
secure, was crowned again in Westminster with great rejoicings on the
Whit-Sunday of 1220. Once more the people of London felt that peace and
prosperity would now be theirs, and never before had a coronation day
been kept with such spontaneous joy.
The Abbot of Westminster was a certain Humez, a Norman, "the last of
that country," Widmore tells us with glee, and he was anxious that the
Abbey should not be behind the other great churches of the day through
not having a special chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary. For
everywhere cathedrals and abbeys were being enlarged, and the Lady
Chapel, stretching behind the high altar, held the place of honour.
Humez had obtained the necessary money from certain pious persons, and
with much wisdom begged that the boy king should lay the
foundation-stone of this new chapel on his coronation day. Henry, who
from his childhood was deeply religious, readily agreed; perhaps it was
on that day that the dream came to him of leaving behind him some such
memorial as this of King Edward. Certainly it was from watching the
building of this Lady Chapel, with its light pointed arches and its
graceful form, representing as it did the "new style," that his dream
took shape, so that twenty-five years later he commenced the work of
completely rebuilding Edward's massive Abbey on the beautiful Early
English lines. His reverence for the memory of Edward almost amounted
to worship, and like his ancestor--for he proudly claimed to be of
Edward's stock through Queen Matilda--his religion was more to him than
anything else, for he spent the greater part of his days praying or in
attending masses. But he was also a great lover of all that was costly
and beautiful, and having married a French Princess, he had become
familiar with many of the magnificent buildings of France. So he felt
that the Abbey with its stately simplicity was not splendid enough to
hold the shrine of the sainted king, and he determined to raise a
building which was to be "the most lovable thing in Christendom."
It is for giving us this most lovable thing that we owe to Henry III. a
deep measure of gratitude, and yet heavy was the price paid for it at
the time by those who, being weak and defenceless, were powerless to
resist the heavy taxes laid on them. The new Abbey was paid for by the
people: sometimes money was cruelly extorted from them; sometimes a
great fair was arranged in the fields near Westminster, and all the
shops in the neighbourhood were commanded to be closed for many days, so
that the crowds would be forced to flock round the Abbey and spend their
money there; sometimes large sums were extorted from the Jews; sometimes
the king was driven as a last resource to pawning the Abbey jewels and
treasures. At all costs money had to be found, and money in abundance,
for Henry's ideas were all on the most lavish scale, and could not be
carried out with less than L500,000 of our money.
So, in every sense of the word, the Abbey is the church of the nation,
built with the gold of the people. And there is another striking fact
to remember. Gradually the clear-headed and patriotic among the Barons
were beginning to realise that though they had made the king swear to
observe the Great Charter, they had no power of putting into laws which
had to be observed the different provisions of that Charter; and though
Henry was neither cruel nor tyrannical by nature, as his father had
been, he was weak, impulsive, changeable, and extravagant. His idea of
power lay in the carrying out of his magnificent ideas at Westminster,
regardless of the cost, till, says Matthew of Paris severely, "Oh shame!
his folly, by frequent repetition, came to be looked on as a matter of
course."
This is not the place to tell you at length how one of the barons, Simon
de Montfort by name, fought the good fight by means of which the Charter
became a living power in the land; you must read of him in other books,
and learn how he came to be called the father of English Parliaments.
What I want you to remember now is that it was he who determined to
check the unjust taxation which was being imposed by Henry in his
efforts to raise the money for the building of the Abbey. "Let the
king," he said, "call together the barons and citizens, and let him tell
them how much money it is that he wants, and what he wants it for, and
then it will be for the barons and people to say how much money they
will give, and how it shall be collected. If the king asks what is
right and just, then what he asks will be given to him."
There was only one way by which king and people could thus come face to
face--Henry must summon to Westminster a Parliament to discuss those
matters with him, and it must be a Parliament not made up of bishops and
barons only; all England must be represented.
So in the year 1265 the first real Parliament assembled at
Westminster--twenty-three barons, a hundred and twenty churchmen, two
knights from every county, and two burgesses from every town.
To-day the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey stand side by
side, a truly wondrous group of carved grey stone; but as you look at
them, I want you to remember how it was through the building of the
Abbey that the first Parliament which at all represented the people of
England came into being.
Can you not imagine some of the scenes which took place round
Westminster during those days? Can you not fancy the interest and
anxiety with which those knights and burghers, many of them perhaps in
London for the first time, walked around the nearly completed building,
struck with amazement that so fair a thing could be fashioned out of
stone? How closely they must have watched the workmen, some of them
foreigners of great skill, but many of them entirely English, masons,
carpenters, builders, carvers, all doing their part, all carrying out
the designs of that unknown architect, now held to be an English master
of the work, who had been sent by the king of France to learn there the
new style. How eagerly they must have chatted with the monks, who
during this rebuilding were living in the most uncomfortable manner, but
who nevertheless would be ready enough to take the strangers inside, and
point out to them one beauty after another. How their eyes must have
been dazzled by the wealth of colour and the exquisite carvings in
marble, stone, and oak. How they must have marvelled at the fairy
lightness of those arches, the delicate tracery of the windows, the
glint and glitter of the glass mosaic, the soft colours of the marble.
For in very truth this building of King Henry's exceeded everything they
had dreamt of or imagined. In every way the new Abbey was far larger
than the old, though a limit was set on its length by the Lady Chapel of
Abbot Humez, which is now known to you as the Chapel of Henry VII. The
old form of the Cross was kept, but a ring of chapels encircled the east
end, while transepts, aisles, and cloisters were all made longer and far
loftier. But the central point of magnificence was the shrine of Edward
the Confessor, which lay immediately behind the high altar, made to
stand even higher than the altar by a mound of earth said to have been
brought all the way from the Holy Land.
On the 13th of October 1269, the choir and east end being all complete,
the coffin of King Edward, which had been kept during the rebuilding,
first in the "quire where the monks do sing," and then in the Palace of
Westminster, was solemnly carried back to the Abbey by the king and his
brother, his two sons and many nobles, followed by a vast procession of
clergy and citizens, and placed with great pomp and ceremony in the
newly-made shrine.
The next time you go into Edward the Confessor's Chapel, you must wander
back in imagination for more than six hundred years, and picture to
yourself that solemn service of the "Translation of St. Edward."
[Illustration: THE CONFESSOR'S CHAPEL.]
The workmen had done their work right well, and we know at least the
names of some of them; for Peter, the Roman citizen who wrought the
mosaic, has left an inscription telling us that he finished the work in
1269; and among the Fabric Rolls of Westminster we can find accounts
sent in by Robert de Beverley, mason; Brother Ralph, the convert;
Alexander, the carpenter; and Adam Stretton, clerk of the works, "for
the wages of masons serving before the shrine, carpenters, painters,
plumbers, glaziers, inferior workmen, and workmen sent to divers
places."
The tomb of the Confessor was in the middle of the shrine, set on high
"as a light to the church," and was divided into three parts: the base,
in the niches of which sick people were to be laid, that the Saint might
heal them; the tomb itself, of soft Purbeck marble, rich with mosaic
work of coloured gems and stones, and above this a shrine of pure gold
set with all manner of costly jewels, sapphires, emeralds, and rubies,
whilst images in gold and silver of the Virgin and the Holy Child, John
the Evangelist and Peter, stood around as guardian spirits.
Much of the old magnificence has vanished; time has wrought its work,
but more deadly than time have been the ravages of covetous men who
longed to possess its treasure, or violent men who believed it to be
little better than an idol set up in their midst.
Yet it has a mellow beauty of its own, a dignity enhanced rather than
lessened by the traces everywhere apparent of its former glory, and we
see in it not only an exquisite piece of work, but also that shrine
which, like a magnet, drew so many of England's kings and queens to rest
beneath its shadow.
[Illustration: TOMBS OF EDWARD I. AND HENRY III.]
*CHAPTER V*
*WITH KINGS AND QUEENS IN EDWARD'S SHRINE*
As you stand in the Confessor's shrine, you will see all around you the
tombs of kings and queens, and in the next chapters I am going to tell
you something of those who were thought worthy to lie in a place of such
high honour.
Henry III. was not at first buried in this chapel, on which he had
lavished so much thought and wealth. He died in the November of 1272,
and was carried to Westminster, the Knights Templars, who had given some
precious gifts to the Abbey, undertaking to provide the coffin and to
pay all the expenses of the funeral, that it might be on a scale
befitting one who had been so princely in his dealings with the Church
and all matters concerning religion. There is something pathetic in the
ending of Henry's life, for though he had reigned nearly sixty years, he
had not won the love or trust of his people, and it has been truly said
that "in his time England did nothing great except against him." The
old king was alone when the end came, for his son Edward was away on a
Crusade, and his brother, Richard, had died the year before,
broken-hearted at the murder of his son Henry by a son of Simon de
Montfort. But the Templars spared nothing that could make the funeral
costly, so that, as the solemn procession passed along, men declared
that "the king shone more magnificent dead than he had appeared when
living."
He was laid before the altar, in the very place from which the coffin of
Edward the Confessor had been removed, for it was considered that
special virtues still hovered round that spot.
Very different must the new choir have looked, with its immense height,
its delicate work, and its mysterious flying buttresses, to the low,
simple choir of the Confessor's day. Round the High Altar itself was a
blaze of colour, for all the mosaic work on the floor, which you still
can see, was freshly brought from Rome by the Abbot Ware, who had gone
there to do homage to the Pope, the monks of Westminster having refused
to hold themselves subject to the Bishop of London, and it was dazzling
in its richness. Quarrels between the monks of Westminster and other
dignitaries seem to have occurred very often in those days, as the
monks, somewhat elated at the royal favours showered upon their church,
were inclined to be overbearing and to resent any authority; while once
at least during Henry's reign there had been a serious fracas between
the "citizens of London" and the "men of Westminster" on the occasion of
some sports. For when the "men of London" seemed to be getting the
mastery, the Baylif of Westminster, with some men, harnessed themselves
and fell to fighting, so wounding the citizens that they resolved to be
revenged. Spurred on by one Constantine Fitz-Henulfe, they issued forth
without any order, fought a civil battle round Westminster, and pulled
down as many houses as they could belonging to the Abbot and Baylif.
Nor when Constantine was captured would he express any sorrow for his
misdeeds. On the contrary, he affirmed gladly that "he had done it all,
and had done much less than he ought to have done." The fact that King
Henry, among other punishments, forced the citizens to pay many thousand
marks for this raid, did not tend to soften down the ill-feeling which
existed.
Even at Henry's funeral the dignity of the Abbot had to be asserted, for
he refused to allow the Archbishop to read the service until he had
signed a paper explaining that his so officiating was not to be made a
precedent, or to rob the Abbot of any privileges.
So, with quarrels going on around him to the end, King Henry was buried,
and the Earl of Gloucester, laying his hand on the coffin, solemnly
swore fealty to "Lord Edward," the lawful heir, then far away in
Palestine.
Edward I. was in a special sense a child of Westminster, for he had been
born in the Palace there, and had been christened Edward after the
Confessor. With all his faults, Henry was devoted to his wife and to
his children, and the young Edward spent much more of his boyhood with
his parents than was usual in those days. He was delicate too, and often
his mother had greatly upset the old monks in the monastery at Beaulieu
by going to nurse him there when he had fallen ill while on a visit. He
was kept during his boyhood under her watchful eye at Westminster.
Probably he was taught by one of the Westminster monks, and though we
hear that he was "fonder of actions than of books," he learned to speak
eloquently in French and English and to understand Latin. As he grew
stronger he showed a great liking for all outdoor sports, riding,
hawking, hunting, and sword exercises, and with his cousin Henry, the
son of Richard of Cornwall, his young French uncles, who had taken up
their abode at the Court, and the sons of Simon de Montfort, he played
many a game and had many a boyish adventure round Westminster. His
affection for the place never failed. Had not he watched it growing in
grace and beauty, and was there a single corner of it with which he was
not familiar? The deeply religious influence of King Henry, too, could
not fail to leave its mark on his son, who, in spite of being his
opposite in every other way, had always an intense reverence for sacred
things. Henry was the dreamer, Edward the doer, but among the many fine
qualities the young Prince possessed, one of the most charming was his
loyalty and patience towards his father, which had never wavered,
however sorely he had been tried by Henry's utter incapacity to hold the
reins of government.
It was nearly two years after the death of Henry before Edward was able
to reach England, and yet all had gone on quietly during the interval.
The new king had been proclaimed; the assembly of prelates, knights of
the shire and citizens had met, had solemnly bound themselves by the
same oath as that taken by the Earl of Gloucester at Henry's funeral,
and three men, the Archbishop of York, Robert Mortimer, Lord of the
Welsh Marches, and Robert Burnell, all trusty friends of Edward, were
appointed to carry on the government for the time being.
On August 1, 1272, Edward landed at Dover, and on August 19 he was
crowned with his dearly loved wife Eleanor, who had been at his side
through all the perilous years which were past. "Nothing ought to part
those whom God has joined, and the way to heaven was as near from
Palestine as from England," she had declared.