[Illustration: ST. ALBANS, FROM VERULAM.]
The railway running from London to Edinburgh, and on which the
celebrated fast train the "Flying Scotchman" travels between the two
capitals, is the longest in Britain. Its route northward from the
metropolis to the Scottish border, with occasional digressions, will
furnish many places of interest. On the outskirts of London, in the
north-western suburbs, is the well-known school founded three hundred
years ago by John Lyon at Harrow, standing on a hill two hundred feet
high. One of the most interesting towns north of London, for its
historical associations and antiquarian remains, is St. Albans in
Hertfordshire. Here, on the opposite slopes of a shelving valley, are
seen on the one hand the town that has clustered around the ancient
abbey of St. Albans, and on the other the ruins of the fortification of
Verulam, both relics of Roman power and magnificence. On this spot stood
the chief town of the Cassii, whose king, Cassivelaunus, vainly opposed
the inroads of Caesar. Here the victorious Roman, after crossing the
Thames, besieged and finally overthrew the Britons. The traces of the
ancient earthworks are still plainly seen on the banks of the little
river Ver, and when the Romans got possession there arose the
flourishing town of Verulam, which existed until the British
warrior-queen. Boadicea, stung by the oppressions of her race, stormed
and captured the place and ruthlessly massacred its people. But her
triumph was short lived, for the Romans, gaining reinforcements,
recaptured the city. This was in the earlier days of the Christian era,
and at a time when Christian persecutions raged. There then lived in
Verulam a prominent man named Alban, a young Roman of good family. In
the year 303 a persecuted priest named Amphibalus threw himself upon the
mercy of Alban, and sought refuge in his house. The protection was
granted, and in a few days the exhortations of Amphibalus had converted
his protector to Christianity. The officials, getting word of
Amphibalus' whereabouts, sent a guard to arrest him, whereupon Alban
dismissed his guest secretly, and, wrapping himself in the priest's robe
and hood, awaited the soldiers. They seized him, and took him before the
magistrates, when the trick was discovered. He was given the alternative
of dying or sacrificing to the gods of Rome, but, preferring the crown
of martyrdom, after cruel torments he was led to his doom. He was to be
taken across the Ver to be beheaded, but miracles appeared. The stream,
which had been a-flood, quickly dried up, so that the multitude could
pass, and this so touched the executioner that he refused to strike the
blow and declared himself also a convert. The executioner's head was
quickly stricken off, and another headsman obtained. Alban meanwhile was
athirst, and at his prayer a spring broke from the ground for his
refreshment. The new executioner struck off Alban's head, but in doing
so his eyes dropped from their sockets. On the spot where Alban died the
abbey was afterwards built. His martyrdom did not save Amphibalus, who
was soon captured and put to death at Redburn, a few miles away, where
his relics were afterwards discovered and enshrined, like those of his
pupil, in the abbey.
[Illustration: OLD WALL AT VERULAM.]
[Illustration: MONASTERY GATE.]
[Illustration: THE TOWER OF THE ABBEY.]
[Illustration: STAIRCASE TO WATCHING-GALLERY.]
The sacrifice of the protomartyr brought its fruits. Verulam became
Christian, and within a century was paying him the honors of a saint. In
the eighth century King Offa of Mercia, having treacherously murdered
King Ethelbert, became conscience-stricken, and to propitiate Heaven
founded the abbey. He built a Benedictine monastery, which was richly
endowed, and gradually attracted the town away from Verulam and over to
its present site. This monastery existed until the Norman Conquest, when
it was rebuilt, the ruins of Verulam serving as a quarry. Thus began the
great abbey of St. Albans, which still overlooks the Ver, although it
has been materially altered since. It prospered greatly, and the close
neighborhood to London brought many pilgrims as well as royal visits.
The abbots were invested with great powers and became dictatorial and
proud, having frequent contests with the townsfolk; and it is recorded
that one young man who applied for admission to the order, being refused
on account of his ignorance, went abroad and ultimately became Pope
Adrian IV. But he bore the abbot no ill-will, afterwards granting it
many favors. Cardinal Wolsey was once the abbot, but did not actively
govern it. In 1539 its downfall came, and it surrendered to King Henry
VIII. The deed of surrender, signed by thirty-nine monks, is still
preserved, and the seal is in the British Museum. The abbey is now in
ruins; the church and gateway remain, but the great group of buildings
that composed it has mostly disappeared, so that the old monastery is
almost as completely effaced as Verulam. But the church, by being bought
for $2000 for the St. Albans parish church, is still preserved, and is
one of the most interesting ecclesiastical structures in England; yet
its great length and massive central tower are rather unfavorable to its
picturesqueness, though the tower when seen from a distance impresses by
its grandeur and simplicity. In this tower, as well as in other parts of
the church, can be detected the ancient bricks from Verulam. The
ground-plan of St. Albans Church is a Latin cross, and it is five
hundred and forty-eight feet long. The western part was erected in the
twelfth, and the greater portion of the nave and choir in the thirteenth
century. The floor of the choir is almost paved with sepulchral slabs,
though of the two hundred monuments the church once contained barely a
dozen remain. At the back of the high altar was the great treasury of
the abbey, the shrine enclosing St. Alban's relics, but this was
destroyed at the Reformation: some fragments have been since discovered,
and the shrine thus reproduced with tolerable completeness. On the side
of the chapel is a wooden gallery, with cupboards beneath and a
staircase leading up to it. In the shrine and cupboards were the abbey
treasures, and in the gallery the monks kept watch at night lest they
should be despoiled. This vigilance, we are told, was necessary, for
rival abbeys were by no means scrupulous about the means by which they
augmented their stores of relics. This quaint gallery, still preserved,
is five hundred years old. Near the shrine is the tomb of Duke Humphrey
of Gloucester, brother of King Henry V. and regent during the minority
of Henry VI., who was assassinated at Windsor. The tomb was opened in
1703, and the skeleton found buried among spices and enclosed in two
coffins, the outer of lead. The vault remained opened, and visitors
purloined good Humphrey's bones till nearly all had disappeared, when
the authorities concluded it was better to close up the vault and save
what remained. The massive gatehouse, which still exists, was built in
Richard II.'s reign, and was used for a jail until not long ago they
determined to put a school there. In front of it the martyr Tankerfield
was burnt, and buried in 1555 in a little triangular graveyard which
still exists. Fox, in his _Book of Martyrs_, relates that he endured the
pain with great constancy, and testified to the last against the errors
of his persecutors.
[Illustration: THE SHRINE AND WATCHING-GALLERY.]
[Illustration: CLOCK-TOWER, ST. ALBANS.]
[Illustration: BARNARD'S HEATH.]
In the town of St. Albans, near the abbey and at the junction of two
streets, stands the ancient clock-tower, built in the early part of the
fifteenth century, and mainly of flint. It occupies the site of an
earlier one said to have been erected by two ladies of Verulam, who,
wandering alone in the woods and becoming lost, saw a light in a house,
sought refuge there, and erected the tower on the site as a memorial of
their deliverance. The bell in this tower was in former days used to
ring the curfew. The town itself has little to show. In the church of
St. Peter, among the monumental brasses, is the one to a priest often
quoted, that reads:
"Lo, all that here I spent, that some time had I;
All that I gave in good intent, that now have I;
That I neither gave nor lent, that now abie[A] I;
That I kept till I went, that lost I."
Edward Strong, the mason who built St. Paul's Cathedral in London under
the direction of Wren, is also buried in this church. Its chief tenants,
however, are the slain at the second battle of St. Albans in the Wars of
the Roses. At the first of these battles, fought in 1455 on the east
side of the town, Henry of Lancaster was wounded and captured by the
Duke of York. The second battle, a much more important contest, was
fought on Shrove Tuesday, February 17, 1461, at Barnard's Heath, north
of the town, and near St. Peter's Church. Queen Margaret of Lancaster
led her forces in person, and was victorious over the Yorkists under the
Earl of Warwick, liberating the captive king, who was in the enemy's
camp, and following the battle by a ruthless execution of prisoners.
King Henry, who had gone to St. Alban's shrine in tribulation when
captured in the earlier contest, also went there again in thanksgiving
when thus liberated six years later. The town of St. Albans, by the
growth of time, has stretched across the Ver, and one straggling suburb
reaches into the north-western angle of the ruins of ancient Verulam,
where it clusters around the little church of St. Michael within the
Roman city. This is a plain church, built in patches, parts of it nearly
a thousand years old, and is the burial place of Francis Bacon, who was
Baron of Verulam and Viscount St. Albans. Within a niche on the side of
the chancel is his familiar effigy in marble, where he sits in an
arm-chair and contemplatively gazes upward. From these ruins of Verulam
is obtained the best view of St. Alban's Abbey, with the town in the
background, overlooked by its clock-tower.
[Illustration: ST. MICHAEL'S, VERULAM.]
[Footnote A: This word means _expiate_.]