Westminster Abbey

A large mural monument close by recalls a happy marriage and records the grief of the heart-broken husband. Elizabeth's trusted Minister, the great Lord Burleigh, is here depicted in his robes of state, kneeling above the recumbent effigies of his wife, a lady noted for her learning and for her active benevolence, and of their unhappy daughter, Anne, Countess of Oxford. At his mother's feet is the figure of Robert Cecil, the first Lord Salisbury of that name, who succeeded his father as confidential adviser to their sovereign. Neither father nor son is buried here. Lord Burleigh lies at Stamford, his country place, and on the day of the funeral a stately service was held in the Abbey, a mark of respect repeated recently (August 1903) when his descendant, the late Lord Salisbury, was laid to rest at Hatfield.

Returning into the ambulatory we should look at this side of the royal tombs before passing round the corner into the chapel itself. From here the nearest is that of Richard II., which is raised too high above us to see well. The lower part was formerly in a very bad state of repair, and through the holes in the wooden chest which contained the royal remains the bones of Richard and his wife Anne could be clearly seen. Indeed, the schoolboys used to amuse themselves by flipping marbles into the sepulchre. The jawbone of the King is said to have been picked out by one bold youth; smaller bones and such-like curiosities were the easy prey of the less venturesome. Edward the Third's, on the other hand, which comes next, has never been thus tampered with, although a few shields have been carried off. But we can still see the six gilt brass images of his children on this side, those on the other have been stolen long ago; these are headed by Richard's father, the warlike Black Prince, whose tomb some of us know at Canterbury Cathedral. Queen Philippa's monument, the third in order, has been stripped bare of all the "sweetly carved niches" and little alabaster figures, not to speak of the gilt angels and other beautiful decorations, which once adorned it. The same sad tale of spoliation and vanished splendour must be repeated when we reach the top of the wooden steps which lead up into St. Edward's Chapel. The battered oak effigy of Henry V. need not detain us now, we speak of that great monarch later. Standing before the shrine itself the oft-told tale of our Saxon founder must not be omitted—the fascinating legend of his strange visions, one of which led him to select Thorneye as the favoured site of his monastic foundation. The story of his life and death are illustrated by the stone pictures on the screen, which divides the chapel from the high altar, and was probably put up by the pious Henry VI. One of the favourite scenes is the remission of the Dane-gelt, which may have taken place in the old Treasury, the Pyx Chapel; here we see the King pointing to the casks which contain his people's hard-earned money; upon them formerly danced a demon Dane, thus thwarted of his due. Edward lies upon his bed in another, calmly watching the scullion who rifles his treasure-chest, and escapes with a mild admonition from the gentle King. Further on we see him seated at dinner between his wife and her father, Earl Godwin, while in front her brothers Tostig and Harold are disputing, as they quarrelled years afterwards over the crown, and Edward is roused to a prophetical burst of wrath. The most significant are the last ones, which recall the famous legend of the ring and the consecration of the Abbey. St. John, who, disguised as a beggar, received the ring from Edward, is shown delivering it into the hands of two pilgrims, who are bidden to return with it to England and deliver it back to the King, with a message intimating his approaching end. This ring, taken from the incorruptible finger of the royal saint a century after his death by Abbot Laurence, was deposited amongst the relics, and no doubt the wedding ring of England, which is still placed upon the finger of the sovereign after he has received the insignia of royalty, had its origin in this sacred ring. We turn to the shrine itself, and try to picture it in all its pristine beauty before the sacrilegious hand of the despoiler had touched it. West of the shrine is a modern altar, the ancient one was destroyed long since, but hitherto a wooden table was temporarily placed here at coronations, for which this marble altar was substituted on the last occasion. The modern gilt group over it and the gilded cornice sorely afflict the eye, and are sadly out of keeping with the artistic work of the Roman artisans, Odericus and Peter. The wooden top, of no merit in itself, but dating from Mary Tudor's reign, is now covered by a velvet pall, which unfortunately conceals the saint's coffin, formerly visible from the chantry. On either side of St. Edward's altar were once golden pillars presented by Edward II.; the golden image of St. John the Evangelist stood upon one, that of the Confessor himself upon the other. The stone basement was entirely covered with elaborate decorations, glass mosaic, precious stones, and enamels; and the twisted pillars, also richly decorated, remind the Italian traveller of those in the cloister at St. John Lateran. Within the niches sick persons used to crouch all the long night, believing that this mere proximity to the dead saint would cure their diseases. The coffin itself is above, raised high, as the old writers tell us, "on a candlestick, to enlighten the world." It was originally encased in a wonderful feretory, made of pure gold and decorated with golden and jewelled images of kings and queens, of saints and angels. This was melted down, and all the valuable ornaments were sold, when Henry VIII. suppressed the monastery. The last Abbot, John Feckenham, did his best to restore some of its former glory to St. Edward's Chapel. He rebuilt the basement of the shrine, which the monks had concealed before they fled, and painted over the gaps left by the theft of the mosaic work. He also rewrote the inscriptions on all the royal tombs, probably in most cases restoring the ancient words.

Neither Feckenham nor Queen Mary could afford to pay for a new golden top, and the present plain wooden one was perforce substituted. The only wonder is that the royal chapel was not stripped entirely bare of its treasures long before our time. The relics, no doubt, were taken at the suppression of the monastery. The silver head and armour of Henry V. were stolen in the reign of Henry VIII., after the monks, those careful custodians of the Abbey, had been dispersed. The silver cradle on the tomb of Edward IV.'s little daughter vanished later. We look around and see the empty places on Henry III.'s tomb whence the mosaics and jewels have been picked out; the arms of Richard II. and his queen are missing; that once wonderful work of art, Philippa's monument, so well described by Sir Gilbert Scott, is a ruin. The Coronation Chair, now raised safely out of harm's way, is actually covered with the names of tourists. Yet neither Henry VIII. nor the Protestant Protector Somerset, not even those scapegoats the Puritan soldiers, are altogether to blame for these and other acts of vandalism. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries people seem to have roamed about the Abbey, occasionally accompanied by a verger, usually free to write their names or to break off relics. The glass cases of the wax effigies, which are covered with such records, bear witness to the careless guardianship of the church in former days.

Fortunately there is still much left, and nothing can touch the historical interest even of these mutilated tombs. One little pillar on the shrine itself is practically intact, and from the north ambulatory, above the reach of a man's arm, we shall see some of the mosaic decoration which once adorned the whole of the tomb of Henry III. Thanks to their grilles, the silver-gilt effigies of Henry and his daughter-in-law, Eleanor of Castile, were secure from the despoiler's hand, and remain as examples of the skill of an English artist, one William Torel. The exceedingly interesting iron grille which guards Eleanor's image is also by an English hand, that of Master Thomas of Lewes, a Sussex smith, and we inform our friends that Sussex was in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, probably till much later, an iron-smelting county—a fact which is recalled by the hammer ponds at the present day. Beneath our feet, protected by the linoleum, are fragments of the ancient pavement, and north and south of the shrine lie two Saxon queens whose bodies were removed here from the Confessor's church, when it was pulled down by Henry III. Both were called by the old English name of Editha. The elder is connected with the first historic foundation of the Abbey, for she, the Confessor's wife, was present at the consecration (Innocents' Day, 1066) of the choir and transepts, when her husband lay helpless on his deathbed. Her niece changed the Saxon name of Editha for the Norman Matilda or Maud when, by her marriage with Henry I., the two rival races were united in one family. It is pleasant here to turn to the foreigners amongst us and remind them that while we speak of English sovereigns who were continually at war with their ancestors, yet the discord was more apparent than real. For these very men, the sworn enemies of France and of Spain for many a long generation, were the husbands or the sons of French, Spanish, and other foreign princesses. Not only were they blood relations, but the language of their courts and of their legal documents was French, and when they wasted the fair lands of France, or fought against Spain, Flanders, and Holland, they believed themselves to be striving to regain their lost heritages and the dowries brought them by their brides. Long after England and France were completely severed, Mary Tudor, herself the daughter of a Spanish mother, and the wife of a Spanish king, clung so fiercely to the last link which gave the English kings a claim to the fleurs-de-lis in their quarterings that her heart broke when Calais fell. We have already referred to the central tomb on the north of the shrine, which contains the body of our second founder, Henry III., himself by the way the husband of a French wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. To him we owe the present beautiful church, and not even the memory of the money ground out of the oppressed Jews, or gathered in the form of unjust taxes from his wretched subjects, can damp our enthusiastic gratitude. The slabs of porphyry and jasper upon both sides were brought by Henry's son, Edward I., from Italy or France, when he returned across the Continent from the Crusades a year after his father's death. The coffin itself is, like that of the Confessor, in the upper part of the tomb, and, unlike those of Edward himself and Richard II., has never been tampered with; there is no doubt that the embalmed body of the King still rests here, untouched by the ravages of eight centuries. As we look upon the lovely face of Henry's daughter-in-law, who lies at his feet, we forget that this is no portrait but a conventional and ideal queen. We think only of the young Spanish princess in the early days of her married life, before the birth of thirteen children in quick succession, the loss of many of these little ones, and the privations she suffered in the Holy Land had marred her beauty. Vainly did the old King try to keep Eleanor at home when his son, Prince Edward, went off to the Crusade. She continued to urge her wifely duty in answer to his fatherly solicitations, and to repeat that the way to heaven is as near from Palestine as from England. By the time she returned her kind father-in-law was dead, and her restless warlike husband was henceforth rarely by her side. Years afterwards when the Queen died, Edward seems to have remembered her wifely devotion with remorse, for never did any former English queen-consort have so magnificent a burial nor so costly a tomb. Two other monuments (which no longer exist), containing her viscera and her heart, were put up at Lincoln and Blackfriars. At every stage where the funeral procession rested between Lincolnshire and Westminster the King raised a memorial cross in his wife's honour. All have been destroyed save three, but the last was at one time a conspicuous object in Charing village, and a modern copy of it has been placed in the station-yard at "Charing Cross." Eleanor herself bequeathed money towards the expenses of her funeral, and Edward gave large sums to the three convents, chiefly to Westminster, in order to provide for anniversary services at his wife's tombs, where wax tapers were always to be kept burning, and prayers constantly offered to Heaven for the repose of her soul. Edward's son and successor was strangely lacking in filial obedience. With his dying breath the warrior King, who had hammered the Scots and harassed the Turks, gave orders that his body was to remain unburied till Scotland was subdued, the flesh boiled, and the bones borne at the head of the victorious English army. His heart was to be taken out and confided to a band of knights, who were to fight for the Holy Sepulchre, carrying the casket in their midst. These commands were disobeyed, and the plain tomb, without effigy or monument, is a silent witness to the second Edward's failure to "keep troth." The embalmed corpse was buried here soon after the King's death, but the upper slab remained loose, and for many a long year the cere-cloth was kept waxed, perhaps with the idea of carrying out the dead sovereign's behests at some future time. In any case the cover was left as it was till the eighteenth century, when some antiquaries were allowed to raise it, and looking in they beheld the body of Longshanks lying there in royal state, wrapped in the coronation robes, with orb and sceptre in either hand, a linen cloth concealing the features. We cannot forgive the wanton destruction which ensued. Boiling pitch was poured in, and the lid hermetically sealed after these vandals had satisfied their curiosity and taken notes of every detail. Havoc also was wrought to the outside about the same period, when the canopy was destroyed during a riot which broke out at the patriot Pulteney's burial in the ambulatory below, and the iron grille, upon which were two little heads of the King, disappeared at the same time. The words "Scotorum Malleus" and "Pactum Serva" were painted by Abbot Feckenham's orders, but may have formed part of the original inscription. The most important trophy which the English conqueror brought from Scotland was the stone of Scone, a reminder now of the union of the two kingdoms, but then a constant source of irritation to the Scots, who tried in vain to get it back. The chair which encloses the stone was made in Edward's time, and has ever since been used as the seat of our sovereigns at their coronations. Once and once only a man not of royal birth was privileged to receive the insignia of government seated in the Coronation Chair, when Oliver Cromwell was installed Lord Protector in Westminster Hall. The huge sword behind the chair, carried before Edward III. on his warlike expeditions into France and Scotland, was probably used on the memorable occasion when he entered Calais in state after the siege, and his wife Philippa begged her stern lord for the lives of the twelve burgesses who brought him the keys of the captured town. We turn to the left round the shrine and approach the despoiled tomb of that good Flemish lady, who endeared herself to the hearts of her English subjects by her wise and kindly rule during Edward's frequent absences abroad and in Scotland. The face, a portrait this time, shows us a homely countenance with full cheeks and rather prominent eyes, but pleasant withal and full of character. The design of the whole was by a Flemish artist, but English stone-masons worked on the details, and a certain John Orchard, the artist of the copper-gilt angels, which formerly adorned the canopy, and probably also of the figures on the King's tomb, made the little alabaster figures of Philippa's two children in St. Edmund's Chapel for the sum of twenty shillings. The white stone canopy with the wrought-metal tabernacle work and gilt angels was actually removed as insecure in the eighteenth century. The thirty alabaster niches, each containing the statuette of a royal mourner, and the alabaster angels with gilt wings have all gone, except the fragments of one, which was put together by Sir Gilbert Scott, and is in a safe but dark corner. No trace remains of the iron grille which Edward bought for his queen from a bishop's monument in St. Paul's Cathedral. The King's own tomb is next to that of his wife: he thus kept the promise which he made to her as she lay dying, and lies beside her in the "Cloister" at Westminster. Froissart tells a touching story of the scene between the royal couple, when Philippa held the hand of the husband who had so often been faithless to her, and asked this, her last boon. Near her bed stood Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, the only one of her fourteen children able to be present at his mother's deathbed; he is buried close to her tomb. Thomas was murdered by order of his nephew, Richard II.—who was himself destined to come to an untimely end at the hands of a relative—and the grave of the victim is not far from Richard's own monument. We saw in St. Edmund's Chapel the fourteenth-century brass which marks the last resting-place of the Duke's widow, Eleanor de Bohun, who retired to a nunnery after her husband's tragic fate. We have looked at the tombs of Edward III. and of Richard II. from the ambulatory side; both are of English workmanship. That of the elder monarch is finer and more elaborate than the other, which Richard raised in his own lifetime to receive the remains of his beloved first wife, Anne of Bohemia, and destined for his own corpse. Edward's effigy is purely a conventional one, but the long hair and beard have often been pointed out as a mark of his neglected lonely deathbed. True enough this once powerful King died alone save for the ministrations of an old priest, saddened in his last hours by the loss of his heir, the Black Prince. But his end was less tragic than that of his successor and grandson twenty years later, over the details of which a veil of mystery still hangs. We only know that his cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, usurped the throne, and that the deposed Richard died in prison; his body was obscurely buried at King's Langley, and re-interred here long afterwards, with the honour due to a king, by his supplanter's own son, Henry V.

We see here the portrait effigy of the effeminate young King, whose hand used to be clasped in that of his young foreign bride, but the arms are both gone. The robes are stamped with Richard's badges, the rising sun of Crecy and Poictiers, which was his father's favourite emblem, the broomscods of the Plantagenets, the fleurs-de-lis of France, symbolic of the constant claim of our sovereigns to the French crown, and many others. Beneath the canopy are traces of the two-headed eagle, the arms of Bohemia, and also of the imperial eagle, for Anne was a sister of Wenceslaus, the good King of Bohemia, and a daughter of the Emperor Charles IV.; at her feet is the Austrian leopard. As we look at this royal couple, that fateful day of Anne's funeral is recalled to our memory, when her bereaved husband in a fit of ungovernable rage struck one of the powerful nobles, who came late for the ceremony, such a fierce blow that for the second time in Richard's unfortunate reign the pavement was stained with blood. On the first occasion a knight, who had taken sanctuary here, was slain by John of Gaunt's servants. And in each case the Abbey was placed under an interdict for a time, till by priest and bell the church was cleansed from pollution. There is another brass, hidden beneath the linoleum near Edward the First's tomb, which connects Richard with the Abbey, and marks the burial of a commoner within the chapel of the kings—the only person not of royal blood ever interred here. A storm of popular indignation burst out when Richard commanded the Abbot to grant a grave for his favourite, John of Waltham, Bishop of Salisbury, within these sacred precincts, and the King was forced to resort to bribery before he could gain his point.

The circle of kingly tombs, which include those of two small princesses, is completed at the eastern end by the memorial of Henry V. The chantry chapel above is apparently in the shape of the King's initial, but this proves to be a mere coincidence, as the letter H was made after a different pattern in the fifteenth century. Henry IV. was taken ill when saying his prayers before the shrine, and died in the Abbot's withdrawing-room, the Jerusalem Chamber; but the son erected no tomb here for his father's remains, rather the first act of his reign after the coronation was, as we have already pointed out, to bring his murdered cousin's body from King's Langley, and to inter it with royal pomp in the tomb which Richard had prepared for himself years before. In the Jerusalem Chamber we shall see the busts of the two Lancastrian kings. Here is only a bare and headless effigy to recall the victor of Agincourt, and a dilapidated helmet, saddle, and shield, on the bar above, all of which were carried at Henry's funeral. Henry's own will provided for the erection of this large memorial, which encroaches on the eastern part of both Eleanor and Philippa's monuments. We reach the chantry chapel above his tomb by stone steps worn by countless pilgrims, who painfully climbed them on their knees when they came here to pray for the dead hero's soul. Looking down from this chapel before the pall covered the shrine we used to see the Confessor's coffin, and can still enjoy the most striking view that exists of the church from east to west. On either side just below are the apsidal chapels. Facing the north ambulatory and forming part of the screen to St. Paul's Chapel is the monument of Henry's standard-bearer, Lord Robsert, who received this coveted post as a reward for his valour at Agincourt. Amongst the now defaced shields round the tomb ancient students of heraldry believed that they discovered the quarterings of Chaucer's father-in-law, Sir Payne Roet of Hainault, and Robsert's crest was even identified with his. Inside, the chapel itself is blocked up by the huge statue of James Watt, one of the inventors of the steam-engine, but there are many fine old monuments against the walls. From here we have a good view of an altar tomb in the centre of the same chapel, the alabaster effigies upon which are in the costume of the early Tudor period, and represent Sir Giles Daubeney, the friend and Lord Chamberlain of Henry VII., with his wife Magdalen. Above them are suspended the banners of the Delavel family, which are over two hundred years old.

Standing on the south side we are now directly above the tomb of that masterful Countess of Buckingham, mother of Charles the First's favourite, whose own pompous monument will be found in Henry VII.'s Chapel. In the vault beneath lay for more than a century the withered mummy of a French princess, the coquettish Kate, whom Henry V. courts so ardently in Shakespeare's play. Katherine lost her prestige at her son Henry VI.'s Court by her second marriage with a Welsh gentleman of no rank, but she thus became the ancestress of the great Tudor dynasty, which was destined to supplant both her royal husband's line, the Lancastrians, and their rivals, the house of York. Yet it was in the reign of her own Tudor grandson that Katherine's original sepulchre in the old Lady Chapel was destroyed, and her embalmed body in its broken wooden coffin placed by the side of Henry V.'s effigy. Possibly Henry VII. intended to suitably re-inter his noble grandame's corpse in his new chapel, but after his death nobody stirred in the matter, and there the remains lay, a curiosity for all visitors to the Abbey to stare at, till at last Dean Zachary Pearce buried them under the Countess of Buckingham's tomb. Dean Stanley removed the coffin and placed it in this chantry chapel against the east wall, where an altar dedicated to the Virgin used to stand. The ancient altar slab, found concealed beneath the step, now forms the cover of the Queen's tomb. On the wall behind are the badges of Henry V. The antelope and the swan, which he inherited from his mother's family, the de Bohuns, are each chained to a tree, between them is burning the cresset light, an emblem taken by the young King at his coronation as a proof of his desire to be "a light and a guide to his people to follow him in all virtue and honour." The badges are repeated all over the stone-work inside and out, while the niches are filled with numerous statues, representing royal personages, mitred abbots, and saints, notably the patron saints of England and France, St. George and St. Denis—the latter carries his head in his hand. Upon the arch over the ambulatory is depicted Henry's coronation in the Abbey. His figure armed cap-à-pié is shown on the eastern side, crossing a raging torrent, while a castle, with troops drawn up in front of it, is carved in the background. The shields of England and France, to which kingdom Henry was, as son-in-law to the French king and by right of conquest, the acknowledged heir, are also prominent. We return below the chantry arch and descend into the ambulatory, whence we have a good view of the carvings alluded to, besides many others. Before us is a flight of stone steps which leads directly up to the other royal chapel, the mausoleum of the Tudors and Stuarts. Beneath our feet is the family vault of the Royalist historian of the civil wars, Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, who was closely connected with the Stuarts, and shared the exile of his young master, afterwards Charles II. In later days the powerful Lord Chancellor fell from his high position at Court, and was sentenced to lifelong banishment by that same prince whom he had served so faithfully in his youth. Clarendon's daughter married James II., then Duke of York, and thus by the irony of fate the disgraced favourite was destined to be the grandfather of two Stuart queens, Mary and Anne.

At the top of the steps a triple portico leads into the centre of Henry VII.'s Chapel; on each side narrow doorways admit to the north and south aisles. The arch overhead is most elaborately carved and decorated with the same badges which we see on the bronze gates, and all over the inside of the chapel. Chief amongst these are the Tudor rose, the flower of York and Lancaster alike, and the portcullis, which was the emblem of Henry's maternal relations, the Beauforts, who traced their descent from John of Gaunt. This badge, originally a castle protected by a portcullis, was a symbol of Henry's undisputed (although not really flawless) title to the throne, and he added the proud motto "Altera securitas." A crowned fleur-de-lis is constantly repeated on the walls, and on the gates the shield of France is to be seen next to the lions of England; for our English sovereigns continued to assert their right to the French succession. The other badges on the gates include the crown on a bush, which recalls Bosworth Field, when Lord Derby took the golden circlet from the hawthorn bush, where it fell when Richard was slain, and placed it on his step-son's head. The daisy root belongs to Derby's wife and Henry's mother, Lady Margaret, whose tomb we shall see in the south aisle. The falcon with a fetter-lock was a badge of Edward IV., which his daughter Elizabeth adopted after her marriage to the young Tudor king.

We pass through the middle gate and emerge into that beautiful chapel so extravagantly praised by old writers as the "orbis miraculum," the miracle of the world, so unfairly decried since by narrow-minded adherents of the Gothic style. Here, a contrast to the rest of the church, is pure Perpendicular of the Tudor period. The stone-work is decorated in every corner, and the details are elaborately carved, leaving no vacant space anywhere; no less than 130 stone figures, 95 of which remain, contributed to the rich effect of the whole. Angels and archangels, saints and martyrs, apostles and evangelists, the hierarchy of heaven and the sainted ones of earth, all had places on these walls. Above our heads the fan tracery of the stone roof seems literally to hang from the sky, so delicate and light is the workmanship. The Cambridge graduate in our party, and those indefatigable sightseers our American friends, compare it with King's College Chapel, which was built about this period by the same King's munificence, and probably by the same architect. The windows were once all filled with painted glass, only a few fragments of which, notably the founder's figure at the east end, are left. The altar was dedicated to the Virgin, and had upon it her statue made of pure gold, but both were destroyed in the time of Henry's grandson, Edward VI., by order of the Protector Somerset, when the side altars were also swept away and the glass broken in a fury of Protestant zeal. Long afterwards the tomb of Edward VI. himself, which then took the place of the high altar, was broken in pieces by the Puritan zealots, who were unaware that they thus desecrated the monument of the first Protestant king.

The present altar was reconstructed, under Dean Stanley's supervision, from such pieces of the old Italian pilasters and frieze as could be found; one was actually discovered at Oxford in the Ashmolean Museum. Upon it stands the cross which was presented by the Ras Makonnen, Envoy from Abyssinia, as a votive offering for the present King's recovery from his sudden illness, when the Coronation was postponed in the summer of 1902. The stalls next claim our attention, and it must be pointed out that only part of these date from the sixteenth century, but the ancient seats are easily distinguished from the later ones by their quaintly carved misereres. The rest were added when the Order of the Knights of the Bath was reconstituted by George I. in 1725, and the banners above, as well as the coats of arms at the back of the top stalls, belong to the Knights. The Dean was made Chaplain of the Order, a post which he has held ex officio ever since. At that time, and for a long period, the installations of the Knights were held here. Upon one of the original stalls at the west end is a crowned figure of the founder, Henry VII., his face turned towards the east. So familiar has the name of this chapel become to us, that we are apt to forget that it was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and replaced the Early English Lady Chapel, which had stood on the same spot ever since the beginning of Henry the Third's reign. Henry VII. first intended to consecrate his new chapel to the memory of Henry VI., and arrangements were made for removing the saintly King's bones to Westminster from Windsor, but, owing partly to quarrels between the two convents, the scheme fell through and was abandoned by the royal founder. The stone was laid in 1503, and, although the building was not completed till 1519, before he died Henry had practically settled every detail with the Abbot as to the endowment. His wife's body already lay at the east end, and Henry arranged for his own interment in the same place, and for the memorial services, which were afterwards to be held in their honour. Some of the indentures between the King and Convent can be seen at the Record Office, others are in the custody of the Dean and Chapter. Sir Reginald Bray, head of the royal masons, is often spoken of as if he were the architect, but his death took place soon after the laying of the foundation stone, and the chapel was not finished for another sixteen years, long after Henry VIII.'s accession, when the monasteries were tottering to their fall. Abbot Islip supervised the building, and it is more than likely that Sir Thomas Lovell, whose bust has lately been placed near Lady Margaret's tomb, had, as executor to both the King and his mother, a share in designing their monuments. In any case, Lovell was a patron of Torrigiano, the famous Italian sculptor, who was employed to make the beautiful effigies of the King, his wife, and his mother, as well as the rich altar tombs upon which the figures lie. A fine bronze grille, which is, like the gates, of English workmanship, preserves the founder's tomb from injury. The whole is decorated with roses and fleurs-de-lis, while upon the screen itself are the Welsh dragon of Cadwallador, the last British king, from whom the Tudors claimed descent, and the greyhound, a crest belonging to the Nevilles, who were relatives of Henry's wife. Nearly all the statuettes upon the outside have been stolen; but within, round the black marble altar tomb, are still intact twelve medallions, six on either side, each of which encloses two silver-gilt images. The saints represented are St. George of England, St. Denis of France, St. Edward and St. Peter, the patrons of the Abbey, as well as the King's own special guardians. Amongst these perhaps the most charming are the burly form of St. Christopher, with the tiny infant Christ upon his shoulder, and the very graceful figure of St. Barbara with her tower in her hand, who is thus easily distinguishable from the conventional Mary Magdalene beside whom she stands. Finely moulded cherubs, also in gilt brass, support the royal arms, and we may trace the master hand of Michael Angelo's great rival in these as in all the other accessories. The effigies themselves are unique specimens of Torrigiano's art, equalled only by his other masterpiece, the recumbent figure of Lady Margaret in the adjacent aisle. The King's thin face and strongly marked features bear a striking resemblance to the ascetic lined countenance of his mother, but are in strong contrast with those of the youthful wife by his side, whose long flowing hair escapes under her close head-dress. In the vacant space to the east, within the grille, an altar used to stand, where precious relics, which included the leg of St. George, were kept. In the vaults below, Dean Stanley found the coffins of James I. and of Anne, his Danish queen. Close at hand is the altar tomb, with a white marble effigy by Boehm, of the Dean himself; behind it is the memorial window which he dedicated to his wife, Lady Augusta, whose own portrait is delineated there as well as various familiar scenes from the life of her famous ancestor, Robert Bruce, including the well-known story of the spider. The coronation chair at the extreme east end of the chapel was made for Mary II., a queen regnant in her own right. Her husband, William III., whose claim to the crown was considered equal to his wife's, sat in St. Edward's chair. The vault in front of it is now filled up with a miscellaneous collection of bodies, including some of Charles the Second's illegitimate descendants, whose names were cut upon the pavement, as were those of the other persons interred in this chapel, by Dean Stanley's care. Within this vault once rested some of "the chief men of the Parliament by land and sea," notably the regicides Cromwell, Ireton, Bradshaw, a few of Cromwell's relatives, and the famous Admiral, Robert Blake. These, as well as all the other persons buried in the Abbey during the Commonwealth who were in any way connected with the republican party, were disinterred by order of Charles II., shortly after his restoration, and thrown into a pit in St. Margaret's churchyard, with the exception, that is, of the three arch offenders, the regicides. Charles wreaked a futile vengeance upon their mouldering corpses, which received the treatment usually meted out to living traitors, and were hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn; the heads were chopped off and fixed up, as a warning to their admirers, outside Westminster Hall. A few steps to the left we see the stone which marks the grave of Cromwell's charming daughter, Elizabeth Claypole, whose untimely death broke her father's heart. The body was left undisturbed, probably out of respect for the memory of a woman who had been a favourite with Royalist and Roundhead alike. In the reign of Queen Anne a great General, the Duke of Marlborough, was temporarily buried in the Cromwell vault, but after many years the body was removed to his own mausoleum at Blenheim. Amongst the many soldiers' memorials in the nave and choir aisles will be found two, those of Creed and Bringfield, which recall Marlborough's famous victories, Ramillies and Blenheim. The right-hand chapel is filled up by the heavy monuments of the Richmond and Lennox family, and here, close to the old Duke's tomb, used to stand the wax figure of Frances, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox, now removed to the Islip Chapel. This lady was a noted beauty, and is said to have been the model for the figure of Britannia on the coins. Her cousin, Charles II., much admired her, and might even have made her his queen had not "La belle Stuart" eloped with her other relative, the young Duke. On the opposite side is the costly monument which was raised by his widowed Duchess over the body of Charles the First's unpopular favourite, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who was cut off in his prime by an assassin's knife. The white marble effigies of the Duke and Duchess, and the group of their children above, are not without merit. The elder of these chubby boys succeeded to his father's dukedom and was notorious at the Restoration Court, while the younger was slain, bravely fighting for his king, in a skirmish with the Parliamentary troopers at Hampton, and buried below this tomb. Close by, a later and most unattractive monument records the name of a patron of poets, a literary man himself, Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire. He built Buckingham House, where is now the palace, and there his wife, who was a left-handed descendant of the Stuart king, used to sit dressed in weeds on the anniversary of Charles the First's execution, and thus call attention to the royal blot upon her escutcheon. In the choir aisle another ugly memorial perpetuates her want of taste and the forgotten fame of her pet doctor, one Chamberlain. Near his is a tablet to her other medical friend, the really notable royal physician, Dr. Mead, one of the first inoculators for smallpox.