WESTMINSTER

BY
SIR WALTER BESANT, M. A., F. S. A.
AUTHOR OF “LONDON,” ETC.

Copyright, 1894 and 1895, by Walter Besant.
Copyright, 1895, by
Frederick B. Stokes Company.
All rights reserved.
TO
MRS. WILLIAM PATTEN
IN MEMORY OF HER
MANY WANDERINGS IN WESTMINSTER WITH HER HUSBAND
WHILE HE WAS ADORNING THESE PAGES
AND IN MEMORY OF
A STAY IN ENGLAND FAR TOO SHORT FOR HER MANY FRIENDS
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED
BY ONE OF THOSE FRIENDS
THE AUTHOR

PREFACE.

These papers in their original form first appeared in the Pall Mall Magazine. Additions have been made in some of the chapters, especially in the three chapters entitled “The Abbey.” As in the book entitled “London,” of which this is the successor, I do not pretend to offer a History of Westminster. The story of the Abbey Buildings; of the Great Functions held in the Abbey; of the Monuments in the Abbey; may be found in the pages of Stanley, Loftie, Dart, and Widmore. The History of the Houses of Parliament belongs to the history of the country, not that of Westminster. It has been my endeavor, in these pages, (1) to show, contrary to received opinion, that the Isle of Bramble was a busy place of trade long before London existed at all. (2) To restore the vanished Palaces of Westminster and Whitehall. (3) To portray the life of the Abbey, with its Services, its Rule, its Anchorites, and its Sanctuary. (4) To show the connection of Westminster with the first of English printers. And, lastly, to present the place as a town and borough, with its streets and its people.

I hope that, with those who have made my “London” a companion, my “Westminster” may also be so fortunate as to find equal favor.

I must not omit my acknowledgments to the Editors of the Pall Mall Magazine for the costly manner in which they presented these pages. Nor must I forget to record my sense of the pains and thoroughness brought to the work of its illustration by my friend Mr. William Patten; nor my sense of the assistance rendered me by Mr. Loftie for many consultations and suggestions; nor my thanks to the Benedictine Fathers of Downside, near Bath, who kindly received Mr. Patten and myself as their guests and showed us what a modern Benedictine House really means, and how the House at Westminster may have been during its five centuries of existence, even such as their own, a Home of Religion and Learning.

United University Club, September, 1895.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

CHAPTER I.
THE BEGINNINGS.

He who considers the history of Westminster presently observes with surprise that he is reading about a city which has no citizens. In this respect Westminster is alone among cities and towns of the English-speaking race; she has had no citizens. Residents she has had,—tenants, lodgers, subjects, sojourners within her boundaries,—but no citizens. The sister city within sight, and almost within hearing, can show an unequaled roll of civic worthies, animated from the beginning by an unparalleled tenacity of purpose, clearly seeing and understanding what they wanted, and why, and how they could obtain their desire. This knowledge had been handed down from father to son. Freedom, self-government, corporations, guilds, brotherhoods, privileges, safety, and order—all have been achieved and assured by means of this tenacity and this clear understanding of what was wanted. Westminster has never possessed any of these things. For the City of London these achievements were rendered possible by the existence of one single institution: the Folk’s Mote—the Parliament of the People. Westminster never possessed that institution. The history of London is a long and dramatic panorama, full of tableaux, animated scenes, dramatic episodes, tragedies, and victories. In every generation there stands out one great citizen, strong and clear-eyed, whom the people follow: he is a picturesque figure, lifted high above the roaring, turbulent, surging crowd, whom he alone can govern. In Westminster there is no such citizen, and there is no such crowd. Only once in its history, until the eighteenth century, do we light upon the Westminster folk. Perhaps there have been, here and there, among them some mute inglorious Whittington—some unknown Gresham. Alas! there was no Folk’s Mote,—without a Folk’s Mote nothing could be done,—and so their possible leaders sank into the grave in silence and oblivion. Why was there no Folk’s Mote? Because the land on which Westminster stood, the land all around, north, west, south,—how broad a domain we shall presently discover,—belonged to the Church, and was ruled by the Abbot. Where the Abbot was king there was no room for the rule of the people.

Nor could there be any demand in Westminster for free institutions, because there were no trades and no industries. A wool staple there was, certainly, which fluctuated in importance, but was never to be compared with any of the great city trades. And Westminster was not a port; she had no quays or warehouses: neither exports nor imports—save only the wool—passed through her hands. There was no necessity at any time for the people who might at that time be her tenants to demand corporate action. Westminster has never attracted or invited immigrants or settlers.

Again, a considerable portion of those who lived in Westminster were criminals or debtors taking advantage of sanctuary. The privilege of sanctuary plays an important part in the history of Westminster. It is not, however, from sanctuary birds that one would expect a desire for order and free institutions. Better the rule of the Abbot with safety, than freedom of government and the certainty of gallows and whipping-post therewith.

We may consider that for five hundred years the Court and the Church, the Palace and the Abbey, divided between them the whole of Thorney Island. Until, therefore, the swamps were drained, there was no place—or a very narrow place—for houses and inhabitants on the south and west. Toward the north, between New Palace Yard and Charing Cross, houses began and grew, but quite slowly. Even so recently as the year 1755 the parish of St. Margaret’s had extended westward no farther than to include the streets called Pye Street, Orchard Street, Tothill Street, and Petty France, now York Street. King Street was the main street connecting Westminster with London by way of Charing Cross; and east and west of King Street, at the Westminster or southern end, was a network of narrow streets, courts, and slums, a few of which still exist to show what Westminster of the Tudors and the Stuarts used to be.

After the Dissolution—though the Dean succeeded the Abbot—there was some concession in the direction of popular government. The Dean still continued to be the over-lord. He appointed a High Sheriff, who in his turn appointed a Deputy; the city was divided into wards, in imitation of London, with a burgess to represent each ward. The court thus formed possessed considerable powers of police; but neither in authority, nor in power, nor in dignity, could such a chamber be compared with the Court of Aldermen of London. Edward VI. granted two members of Parliament to the City of Westminster.

Another reason which hindered the advance of the city in the last century was that the Dean and Chapter would neither sell their lands nor grant long leases. Therefore no one would build good houses, and the vicinity of the Abbey remained covered with mean tenements and populated by the scum and refuse.

For these reasons Westminster has had residents of all conditions—from king and noble to criminal and debtor. But it has had no citizens, no corporate life, no united action, no purpose. The City of London is a living whole: one would call its history the life of a man—the progress of a soul; the multitudinous crowd of separate lives rolls together and forms but one as the corporation grows greater, stronger, more free, with every century. But Westminster is an inert, lifeless form. Round the stately Abbey, below the noble halls, the people lie like sheep—but sheep without a leader. They have no voice; if they suffer, they have no cry; they have no aims; they have no ambition; without crafts, trades, mysteries, enterprise, distinctions, posts of honor, times of danger, liberties to defend, privileges to maintain, there may be thousands of men living in a collection of houses, but they are not citizens. In the pages that follow, therefore, we shall have little to do with the people of Westminster.

The following is Bardwell’s account of the original site of Westminster (“Westminster Improvements,” [p. 8]):

“Thorney Island is about 470 yards long and 370 yards broad, washed on the east side by the Thames, on the south by a rivulet running down College-street, on the north by another stream wending its way to the Thames down Gardener’s-lane: this and the College-street rivulet were joined by a moat called Longditch, forming the western boundary of Thorney Island, along the present line of Prince’s and De la Hay streets. This Island was the Abbey and Palace precinct, which, in addition to the water surrounding it, was further defended by lofty stone walls (part of which still remain in the Abbey gardens): in these walls were four noble gates, one in King-street, one near New Palace-yard (the foundations of which I observed in this month, Dec., 1838, in excavating for a new sewer), one opening into Tothill, or as it was called by William the First Touthull-street, and one at the mill by College-street. The precinct was entered by a bridge, erected by the Empress Maud, at the end of Gardener’s-lane in King-street, and by another bridge, still existing, though deep below the present pavement, at the east end of College-street.”

The beginning of city and abbey is an oft-told tale, but, as I shall try to show, a tale never truly and properly told. Antiquaries, or rather historians who have to depend on antiquaries, are apt to follow each other blindly. Thus, we are informed by everyone who has treated of this beginning, that the place on which Westminster Abbey stands was chosen deliberately as a fitting place for a monastic foundation, because of its seclusion, silence, and remoteness. “This spot,” writes the most illustrious among all the historians of the Abbey, when he has described the position of Thorney, “thus intrenched, marsh within marsh, forest within forest, was indeed locus terribilis—the terrible place, as it was called, in the first notices of its existence; yet, even thus early, it presented several points of attraction to the founder of whatever was the original building which was to redeem it from the wilderness. It had the advantages of a Thebaid as contrasted with the stir and tumult of the neighboring forest of London.”[1] And the same theory is adopted by Freeman, when he speaks of the site as “so near to the great city, and yet removed from its immediate throng and turmoil.” There is no doubt as to the meaning of both writers. The idea in their minds was of a place deliberately chosen by the founders of the first abbey, and adopted by Edward the Confessor as a wild, deserted, secluded place, difficult of access, remote from the ways of men, where in silence and peace the holy men might work and meditate. Let us examine into this assumption. The result, I venture to think, will upset many cherished opinions.

In the examination of ancient sites there are five principal things to ascertain before any conclusion is attempted—that is to say, before we attempt to restore the place as it was, or to identify it. The method which I began to learn twenty years ago, while following day by day Major Conder’s Survey of Palestine, and studying day by day his plans and drawings, his arguments and identifications, of a land which is one great field of ruins, I propose to apply to Thorney Island and the site of Westminster Abbey. These five points are: (1) the evidence of situation; (2) the evidence of excavation; (3) the evidence of ancient monuments, ruins, foundations, fragments; (4) the evidence of tradition; and (5) the evidence of history.

Let us take these several points in order.

1. Evidence of Situation.

The river Thames, which narrowed at London Bridge, began to widen out west of the mouth of the stream called the Fleet. There was a cliff or rising bank along the Strand, which confined the stream on its north bank as far as Charing. At this village the course of the river turned south, and, after half a mile, southwest. Here it formerly broadened into a vast marsh or lagoon, quite shallow to east and west, in parts only covered with water at high tide, and in parts rising above even the highest tides. This great marsh covered all the land known later as St. James’s Park, Tothill Fields, the Five Fields, Victoria, Earl’s Court, and part of Chelsea: on the other bank the marsh extended from Rotherhithe over Bermondsey, Southwark, Lambeth, Vauxhall, and part of Battersea. The places which here and there rose above the reach of flood were called islands; Bermond’s-ea—the Isle of Bermond; Chels-ea—the Isle of Shingle (Chesil); Thorn-ea—the Isle of Bramble; Batters-ea—the Isle of Peter. You may find little islands (eyots—aits) just like these higher up the river, such as Monkey Island, Eelpie Island, and so many others. No doubt, in very remote times, these little river islets were secluded places indeed; if any people lived upon them, they lived like the lake dwellers of Glastonbury, each family in its cottage planted down in the sedge and mud of the foreshore, resting on piles, with its floor of hard clay pressed down on timber, its walls of clay and wattle, its roof of rushes, its boat floating before the door. They trapped elk and deer and boar, they shot the wild fowl with their slings, they caught the salmon that swarmed in the river. Thorney, then, the site of the future abbey, the Isle of Bramble, was an islet entirely surrounded by the waters of a broad and shallow river. It was so broad that the backwater extended as far as the present site of Buckingham Palace. It was so shallow that at low tide a man could wade across from the rising ground of the west to the island, and from the island to the opposite shore, where is now St. Thomas’s Hospital.

This is the evidence of the natural situation, and so far all would be agreed.

2. Evidence of Excavation.

SARCOPHAGUS OF VALERIUS AMANDINUS.

The kindly earth covers up and preserves many precious secrets,—“underground,” says Rabelais, “are all great treasures and wonderful things,”—to be revealed at some fitting time, when men’s minds shall be prepared to receive them. The earth preserves, for instance, the history of the ancient world—witness the revelations in our own time of the cuneiform tablets and the vast extension of the historic age: the arts of the ancient world, and their houses, and their manner of life—witness the revelations of Pompeii. Applied to Thorney, excavation has shown—what we certainly never could have known otherwise—that here, of all places in the world, in this little secluded islet in the midst of marshes (the most unlikely spot, one would think, in the whole of Britannia), there was a Roman station, and one of considerable importance. The first hint of this fact was suggested when there was dug up in the North Green of the Abbey, in the year 1869, a fine Roman sarcophagus inscribed with the name of Valerius Amandinus. The lid has a cross upon it, from which it has been conjectured that the sarcophagus was used twice, its second occupant having been a Christian. What reason, however, is there for supposing that Valerius Amandinus himself was not a Christian?—for, at least a century before the withdrawing of the Legions, Roman Britain was wholly Christian. For more than two centuries Christians had been numerous. During the fourth century the country was covered with monastic foundations for monks and nuns. Christian or not, there stands the sarcophagus of Valerius Amandinus, for all the world to see, at the entrance of the Chapter-house; and why a Roman cemetery should be established in Thorney no one could guess. But some ten years ago there was a second discovery. In digging a grave under the pavement of the nave, there was found a mosaic floor in very fair condition. This must have belonged to a Roman villa. But, if one villa, why not more? The question has been settled by the discovery, of late years, wherever the ground on Thorney has been opened, of Roman bricks and fragments of Roman buildings. It is now impossible to doubt the existence here of a Roman station.

That is, so far, the (unfinished) evidence of excavation.

But why did the Romans place a station, an important station, on this bit of a bramble-covered eyot, with a shallow river in front and a marshy backwater behind? What strategic importance could be attached to such a spot? The next branch of evidence will serve to answer the question.

3. Evidence of Ancient Monuments.

There are here none of those shapeless mounds of ancient ruins which are found elsewhere—as in Egypt. Nor are there any foundations above ground, as at Silchester. Yet there is one fact of capital importance, which not only serves to explain why the Romans established a station on Thorney, but also illustrates, as we shall see, many other facts in the history of the island. It is this:

The river from Thorney to the opposite shore, as we have seen, was fordable at low tide. The marsh, from Thorney to the rising ground on the west, was fordable probably at all tides—certainly at low tide.

This ford, the only one across the river for many miles up stream, belonged from time immemorial to the highway, a road or beaten track leading from the north of England to the south, and “tapping” the midland country on the way. The road which the Saxons called Watling Street, when it reached this neighborhood, ran straight down Park Lane, or Tyburn Lane, as it was formerly called, to the edge of the marsh. There it ended abruptly. If you will draw this line on any map, you will find that it ended at the western extremity of St. James’s Park, just about Buckingham Palace, where the marsh began. At this point the traveler plunged into the shallow waters, and guided by stakes, waded—at low tide there were, haply, stepping-stones—across the swamp to Thorney. Here, if the tide served, he again trusted himself to the guidance of stakes; and so, breast high, it may be, waded through the river till he reached the opposite shore, where another high road, “Dover Street,” which also broke off abruptly at this point, awaited him. Later on, when London Bridge was built, Watling Street was diverted at the spot where now stands the Marble Arch, was carried along the present Oxford Street and Holborn, and passed through the City to the Bridge. This alternative route probably took away a great deal of the traffic: but for those who had business in the south or the southwest, or for those who were bound for the port of Dover, the ford was still preferred as the shorter way. A bridge was convenient, but the traveler of the fourth century was accustomed to a ford. Those who had no business in London were not likely to be turned out of their way by another ford, after they had crossed so many.

The highroad between the north and south, the great highway into which were poured streams from all the other ways, passed through this double ford, and over the Isle of Bramble. This was not a highway passing through a wild and savage country; on the contrary, Britain was a country, in the two latter centuries of the Roman occupation, thickly populated, covered with great cities and busy towns. No one who has stood within the walls of Silchester, and has marked the foundations of its great hall, larger than Westminster Abbey, the remains of its corridors and courts and shops, the indications of wealth and luxury furnished by its villas, the extent of its walls, can fail to understand that the vanished civilization of Roman Britain was very far superior to anything that followed for a good deal more than a thousand years. It was more artistic, more luxurious, than the Saxon or the Norman life. But it was essentially Roman. Civilized Rome could not be understood by Western Europe until the fifteenth century. Roman Britain is only beginning to

be understood by ourselves. We have not as yet realized how much was swept away and lost when, after two centuries of fighting, the Britons were driven to their mountains, with the loss of the old arts and learning. All over the country were the great houses, the stately villas, of a rich, cultured, and artistic class; all over the country were rich cities, filled with people who desired, and had, all the things that made life tolerable in Rome herself. The condition of Bordeaux in the fourth century, her schools, her professors, her poets, her orators, her lawyers, may suggest the condition of London, and in a less degree that of many smaller cities.

If we bear these things in mind, I think we shall understand that the roads must have been everywhere crowded and thronged by the long processions of packhorses and mules engaged in supplying the various wants of this people, bringing food supplies to the cities, wines and foreign luxuries to the unwarlike people who were doomed before long to fall before the ruder and stronger folk of the Frisian speech. For our purpose it is sufficient to note that it was a country where the wants of the better sort created, by themselves, a vast trade; where, in addition, the exports were large and valuable; and where the traffic of the highways was very great and never-ending.

In other words, this wild and desolate spot, chosen, we are told, as a fitting site for a monastery because of its remoteness and its seclusion, was, long before a monastery was built here, the scene of a continual procession of those who journeyed south and those who journeyed north. It was a halting-and resting-place for a stream of travelers who never stopped all the year around. By way of Thorney passed the merchants, with their hides bestowed upon their packhorses, going to embark them at Dover: London had not yet gathered in all the trade of the country. By way of Thorney they drove the long strings of slaves to be sold in Gaul. By way of Thorney passed the legions on their way north; craftsmen, traders, mimes, actors, musicians, dancers, jugglers, on their way to the towns of Glevum, Corinium, Eboracum, and the rest. Always, day after day, even night after night, there was the clamor of those who came and those who went: such a clamor as used to belong, for instance, to the courtyard of an old-fashioned inn, in and out of which there lumbered the loaded wagon, grinding heavily over the stones; the stage-coach, the post-chaise, the merchant’s rider on his nag—all with noise. The Isle of Bramble was like that courtyard: outside the Abbey it was a great inn, a halting-place, a bustling, noisy, frequented place; the center, before London, the mart of Britannia; no “Thebaid” at all; no quiet, secluded, desolate place, but the center of the traffic of the whole island. And it remained a busy place long after London Bridge was built, long after the Port of London had swallowed up all the other ports in the country. When the river, by means of embankments, was forced into narrower and deeper channels, the ford disappeared.

By this time the backwater and the marsh had been dried, and the traveler could walk dry-shod from the end of Watling Street to the Isle of Bramble. Perhaps, it may be objected, solitude descended upon the island, and the silence of desertion, with the deepening of the channel. Not so; for now another highway had been created—the highway up the river. The growth of London created the necessity for this

SHIELD OF CELTIC WORK, FOUND IN THE THAMES, 1857.

highway. From the western country all the exports came down the river to the Port of London: from the Port of London all the import trade went up the river to the west of England. At the flow of the tide the deeply laden barges, like our own, but narrower, went up the river; at the ebb they went down. Going up, the barges carried spices, wines, silks, glass, candles, lamps, hangings, pictures, statuary, books, church furniture, and all the foreign luxuries that were now necessary in the British city; going down they were laden with pelts and wool. The slaves, which formed so large a part of British export, not only at this period, but later, under the Saxons, were marched along the highway. There were also the barges laden with fruit, vegetables, grain, poultry, wild birds, carcasses, for that wide London mouth which continually devoured and daily called for more. And there were the fishermen casting their nets for the salmon in the season, and for the other fish with which the river, its waters clean and wholesome, teemed all the year round. Full and various was the life upon the river. Always there was traffic, always movement, always activity, and always noise—much noise. A great noise: where boatmen are there is always noise; they exchange the joke Fescennine, they laugh, they quarrel, they fight, they sing. To the Benedictine monks the river presented the spectacle of a procession as noisy and as animated as that which in the old days had made a stepping-stone of the island from one ford to the other. In short, there was never any time, from the beginning of the Roman occupation to the present day, when the Isle of Bramble was a quiet, secluded, desolate spot. Always crowded, bustling, and noisy. Why should not a Benedictine monastery be planted in the midst of the people? The Rule of Benedict was not the Rule of Robert of Citeaux. Two hundred years later, when the Priory of the Holy Trinity was founded, did they place the monastery in the wilds of Sheppey, or in the marshes of the Isle of Dogs, or on lonely Canvey? Not at all: they placed it within London Wall—at Aldgate, the busiest place in the City. And the Franciscans, were they exiled to some remote quarter? Not at all: they were established within the walls. So were Austin Friars and the Crutched Friars; while White Friars and Black Friars were close to the City wall. And even the austere Carthusians were within hearing of the horse fairs, the races, the tournaments, and the sports of the citizens upon the field called Smooth. Nor does it ever appear that the monks were dissatisfied with their position, and craved for solitude; they preferred the din and roar of the noisiest city in the habitable world.

A ROMAN ROAD.

So that, by the evidence of natural situation, by the evidence of excavation, and by the evidence of ancient monuments, we understand that the Isle of Bramble was a Roman station, the point where the highway of the north met the highway of the south—the very heart of Britannia, the center of all internal communication, the place by which, until London gathered all into her lap, the whole traffic of the island must pass. Before London existed, Thorney had become a place of the greatest importance; long after London had become a rich and busy port, Thorney, the stepping-stone in the middle of the ford, continued its old importance and its activity. Never a place of trade, but always a place of passing traffic, its population was great, but as ephemeral as the May-fly: its people came, rested a night, a day, an hour, and were gone again.

4. We have next the Evidence of Tradition.

According to this authority we learn that the first Christian king was one Lucius, who in the year 178 addressed a letter to the then Pope, Eleutherius, begging for missionaries to instruct his people and himself in the Christian faith. The Pope sent two priests named Ffagan and Dyfan, who converted the whole island. Bede tells this story; the old Welsh chroniclers also tell it, giving the British name of the king, Lleurwg ap Coel ap Cyllin. He it was who erected a church on the Isle of Bramble, in place of a temple of Apollo formerly standing there. We remember also that St. Paul’s was said to have been built on the site of a temple of Diana.

This church continued in prosperity until the arrival, two hundred and fifty years later, of the murderous Saxons. First, news came up the river that the invader was on the Isle of Rum, which we call Thanet; next, that he held the river; that he had overrun Essex; that he had overrun Kent. And then the procession of merchandise stopped suddenly. The ports of Kent were in the hands of the enemy. There was no more traffic on Watling Street. The travelers grew fewer daily; till one day a troop of wild Saxons came across the ford, surprised the priests and the fisher-folk who remained, and left the island as desolate and silent as could be desired for the meditation of holy men. This done, the Saxons went on their way. They overran the midland country; they drove the Britons back—still farther back, till they reached the mountains. No more news came to Thorney, for, though the ford continued, the island, like so many of the Roman stations, remained a waste Chester.

In fullness of time the Saxon king himself settled down, became a man of peace, obeyed the order of

BRITISH HELMET, FOUND IN THE THAMES, 1868.

the convert king to be baptised and to enter the Christian faith; and when King Sebert had been persuaded to build a church to St. Paul on the highest ground of London, he was further convinced that it was his duty to restore the ruined church of St. Peter on the Isle of Thorney beside the ford. Scandal indeed would it be, were the throng that daily passed through the ford and over the island to see, in a Christian country, the neglected ruins of this Christian church. Accordingly the builders soon set to work, and before long the church rose tall and stately. The Miracle of the Hallowing, often told, may be repeated here. On the eve of the day fixed by the Bishop of London for the hallowing and dedication of the new St. Peter’s, one Edric, a fisherman, who lived in Thorney, was awakened by a loud voice calling him by name. It was midnight. He rose and went forth. The voice called him again, from the opposite side of the river, which is now Lambeth, bidding him put out his boat to ferry a man across the river. He obeyed. He found on the shore a venerable person whose face and habilaments he knew not. The stranger bore in his hands certain vessels which Edric knew could only be intended for church purposes. However, he said nothing, but received this mysterious visitor into his boat and rowed him across the river. Arrived in Thorney, the stranger directed his steps to the church, and entered the portal. Straightway—lo! a marvel!—the church was lit up as by a thousand wax tapers, and voices arose chanting psalms—sweet voices such as no man, save this rude fisherman, had ever heard before. He stood and listened. The voices, he perceived, could be none other than those of angels come down from heaven itself to sing the first service in the new church. Then the voices fell, and he heard one voice, loud and solemn; and then the heavenly choir uplifted their voices again. Presently all was still; the service was over, the lights went out as suddenly as they had appeared, and the stranger came forth.

“Know, O Edric,” he said, while the fisherman’s heart glowed within him, “know that I am Peter. I have hallowed the church myself. To-morrow I charge thee that thou tell these things to the Bishop, who will find a sign and token in the church of my hallowing. And for another token, put forth again, upon the river, cast thy nets, and thou shalt receive so great a draught of fishes that there will be no doubt left in thy mind. But give one-tenth to this, my holy church.”

So he vanished; and the fisherman was left alone upon the river bank. But he put forth as directed, cast his net, and presently brought ashore a draught miraculous.

In the morning the Bishop with his clergy, and the King with his following, came up from London in their ships to hallow the church. They were received by Edric, who told them this strange story. And within the church the Bishop found the lingering fragrance of incense far more precious than any that he could offer; on the altar were the drippings of wax candles (long preserved as holy relics, being none other than the wax candles of heaven), and written in the dust certain words in Greek character. He doubted no longer. He proclaimed the joyous news; he held a service of thanksgiving instead of a hallowing. Who would not hold a service of praise and humble gratitude for such a mark of heavenly favor? And after service they returned to London and held a banquet, with Edric’s finest salmon lying on a lordly dish in the midst.

How it was that Peter, who came from heaven direct, could not cross the river except in a boat, was never explained or asked. Perhaps we have here a little confusion between Rome and heaven. Dover Street, we know, broke off at the edge of the marsh, and Dover Street led to Dover, and Dover to Rome.

5. We are now prepared for the Evidence of History, which is not perhaps so interesting as that of tradition. Clio, it must be confessed, is sometimes dull. One misses the imagination and the daring flights of her sister, the tenth Muse—the Muse of Fiction. The earliest document which refers to the Abbey is a conveyance by Offa, King of Mercia, of a manor called Aldenham, to “St. Peter and the people of the Lord dwelling in Thorney, that ‘terrible’—i. e., sacred—place which is called at Westminster.” The date of this ancient document is A.D. 785; but Bede, who died in 736, does not mention the foundation. Either, therefore, Bede passed it over purposely, or it was not thought of importance enough to be mentioned. He does relate the building of St. Paul’s; but, on the other hand, he does not mention the hundreds of churches which sprang up all over the country. So that we need not attach any importance to the omission. My own opinion is that the church—a rude country church, perhaps a building like that of Greenstead, Essex, the walls of split trees and the roof of rushes—was restored early in the seventh century, and that it did succeed an earlier church still. The traditional connection of King Sebert with the church is as ancient as anything we know about it, and the legend of Lucius and his church is at least supported by the recent discoveries of Roman remains, and the certainty that the place was always of the greatest importance.

There is another argument—or an illustration—in favor of the antiquity of some church, rude or not, upon this place. I advance it as an illustration, though to myself it appears to be an argument: I mean the long list of relics possessed by the Abbey at the Dedication of the year 1065. We are not concerned with the question whether the relics were genuine or not, but merely with the fact that they were preserved by the monks as having been the gifts of various benefactors—Sebert, Offa, Athelstan, Edgar, Ethelred, Cnut, Queen Emma, and Edward himself. A church of small importance and of recent building would not dare to parade such pretensions. It takes time even for forgeries to gain credence and for legends to grow. The relics ascribed to Sebert and Offa could easily have been carried away on occasion

TOMB OF KING SEBERT, WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

of attack. As for the nature of these sacred fragments, it is pleasant to read of sand and earth brought from Mounts Sinai and Olivet, of the beam which supported the holy manger, of a piece of the holy manger, of frankincense presented by the Magi, of the seat on which our Lord was presented at the Temple, of portions of the holy cross presented by four kings at different times, of bones and vestments belonging to apostles and martyrs and the Virgin Mary and saints without number, whose very names are now forgotten. In the cathedral of Aix you may see just such a collection as that which the monks of St. Peter displayed before the reverent eyes of the Confessor. We may remember that in the ninth and tenth centuries the rage for pilgrimizing extended over the whole of Western Europe: pilgrims crowded every road; they marched in armies, and they returned laden with treasures—water from the Jordan, sand from Sinai, clods of earth from Gethsemane, and bones and bits of sacred wood without number. When Peter the Hermit arose to preach it was but putting a match to a pile ready to be fired. But for such a list as that preserved by history, there was need of time as well as credulity.

Then the same thing happened to the Saxon church which had been done by Saxon arms to the British church. It was destroyed, or at least plundered, by the Danes. The priests, who perhaps took refuge in London, saved their relics. After a hundred years of fighting, the Dane, too, came into the Christian fold. As soon as circumstances permitted, King Edgar, stimulated by Dunstan, rebuilt or restored the church, and brought twelve monks from Glastonbury. He also erected the monastic buildings after the Benedictine Rule; and, as Stanley has pointed out, since in the monastery the church or chapel is built for the monks, the monastic buildings would be finished before the church.

THE FUNERAL PROCESSION OF KING EDWARD THE CONFESSOR TO WESTMINSTER ABBEY. FROM THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY.

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Next, Edgar gave the monks a charter in which these lands are described and the boundaries laid down. You shall see what a goodly foundation—on paper—was this Abbey of St. Peter when it left the King’s hands. Take the map of London: run a line from Marble Arch along Oxford Street and Holborn—the line of the new Watling Street—till you reach the church of St. Andrew’s, Holborn; then follow the Fleet river to its mouth—you have the north and east boundaries. The Thames is a third boundary. For the fourth, draw a line from the spot where the Tyburn falls into the Thames, to Victoria Station;

thence to Buckingham Palace; thence north to Marble Arch. The whole of the land included belonged to the Abbey. A little later the Abbey acquired the greater part of Chelsea, the manor of Paddington, the manor of Kilburn, including Hampstead and Battersea,—in fact, what is now the wealthier half of modern London formerly belonged to the Benedictines of Westminster. At the time of Edgar’s charter, however, they had the area marked out above. More than half of it was marsh land. In Doomsday Book there are but twenty-five houses on the whole estate. Waste land lying in shallow ponds, sometimes flooded by high tides, only the rising ground between what is now St. James’s Park and Oxford Street could then be farmed. The ground was reclaimed and settled very slowly; still more slowly was it built upon. Almost within the memory of man snipe were shot over South Kensington; a hundred years ago the whole of that thickly populated district west and southwest of Mayfair was a land of open fields.

So that, notwithstanding the great extent of their possessions, the monks were by no means rich, nor were Edgar’s buildings, one imagines, very stately. Yet the later buildings replaced the older on the same sites. A plan of the Abbey of Edgar and Dunstan would show the Chapter-house and the Church where they are now; the common dormitory over the common hall, as it was afterward; the refectory where it was afterward; the cloisters, without which no Benedictine monastery was complete, also where are those of Henry III. But the buildings were insignificant compared with what followed.

Roman Britain, we have said, was Christian for at least a hundred and fifty years; the country was also covered with monasteries and nunneries. Therefore it would be nothing out of the way or unusual to find monastic buildings on Thorney in the fourth century. There was as yet no Benedictine Rule. St. Martin of Tours introduced the Egyptian Rule into Gaul—whence it was taken over to England and to Ireland. It was a simple Rule, resembling that of the Essenes. No one had any property; all things were in common; the only art allowed to be practiced was that of writing; the older monks devoted their whole time to prayer; they took their meals together,—bread and herbs, with salt,—and, except for common prayer and common meals, they rarely left their cells: these were at first simple huts constructed of clay and bunches of reeds; their churches were of wood; they shaved their heads to the line of the ears; they wore leather jerkins, probably because these lasted longer than cloth of any kind; many of them wore hair shirts. The wooden church became a stone church; the huts became cells built about a cloister; the cells themselves were abolished, and a common dormitory was substituted. Then came the Saxons, and the monks were dispersed or fled into Wales, where they formed immense monasteries, as that of Bangor, with its three thousand monks. All had to be done over again, from the beginning. But monasticism, once introduced, flourished exceedingly among the Saxons, until the long war with the Danes destroyed the safety of the convent and demanded the service of every man able to carry a sword, and there were no more monks left in the land. All of which is necessary to explain why Dunstan had to people his Abbey with monks brought from Glastonbury. For Glastonbury and Abingdon, into which the Benedictine Rule had been introduced, were then the only monasteries surviving the long Danish troubles.

These are the beginnings of the Abbey and the Church, and of life upon the Island of Bramble. This the foundation of the history that follows. A busy place before London Bridge was built; a place of throng and turmoil far back in the centuries before the coming of the Roman; a church built in the midst of the throng; monks in leather jerkins living beside the church; a ruined church lying in ruins for two hundred years, while the Saxon infidel daily passed beside it across the double ford; then a rebuilding—why not by Sebert? Another destruction, and another rebuilding.

This view is often taken by Loftie in his “Westminster Abbey.” He does not, however, defend it and insist upon it so strongly. He says, to quote his exact words: “The hillock on which we stand is called Thorn-Ey. There are some Roman remains on it, and there may have been the ruins of a little monastery and chapel, of which floating traditions were afterward gathered and exaggerated. The paved causeway to the westward is the Watling Street. On both sides of it runs the Tyburn, of which Thorn-Ey is a kind of delta. The road rises to Tot Hill, which is a conspicuous landmark here, and goes straight on over the ‘Bulunga Fen’ till it reaches another, the ‘road to Reading,’ which has just crossed the Tyburn at Cowford, where Brick Street is now in Piccadilly. From Thorney, then, looking northward and westward, we see what remains of the great Middlesex forest, if the Danes have not burnt it all, and the paved Watling Street running straight on toward the distant Chester, keeping to the left of the lofty hill which is now crowned by the town of Hampstead. It is interesting to trace this ancient road through the modern streets, the more so as its existence determined the site and early importance of Westminster. When it emerged from the wild woods of Northern Middlesex and came down toward the ford of the Thames, it followed what we call the Edgeware Road, Edgeware being the name of the first stopping-place on the road, near the edge of the forest. Passing down the Edgeware Road in a straight line, it is interrupted at the Marble Arch by a corner of the Park, which crosses the direct road toward Westminster. We know, however, that this corner is a comparatively recent addition to the Park, and the Watling Street soon resumes its course in Park Lane, which, keeping well on the high ground above the brook, nevertheless derived the name it was known by for many centuries from the Tyburn. Tyburn Lane reached the road to Reading at what we call Hyde Park Corner, and then ran straight through what was once called ‘Brookshott,’—a little wood, where now is the Green Park and the gardens of Buckingham Palace,—and on, right through the site of the palace itself, where the brook approached it very closely. So it descended to Tothill, the name of which has been plausibly explained to mean a place where the traveler ‘touted’ for a guide or a boat, as the case might be, for the dangerous ford of the Thames below. This is rather conjectural, but is not to be rejected until a better explanation has been offered. One thing more had to be stated about this ancient highway—the Watling Street. How is it that we find the same name in the City? To answer this question we must look back to a period so remote that we cannot accurately date it, yet so definite, in one way, that there can be no mistake about it. This is the time at which London Bridge was built. When that great event took place Watling Street was diverted from Tyburn Lane, and instead of going to Westminster in order to ford the Thames, it turned to the left, along the modern Oxford Street and Holborn, and, entering the City at Newgate, went on to the bridge. Only a small part of the road still bears the ancient name, but that any of it does so is a most interesting and significant fact.

“We may conclude, therefore, if we wish to do so, that in a sense Westminster is older than London itself. What name it was called by we know not; but the Romans certainly had a station here, as I have said, and the importance of the place before the making of London Bridge may have been considerable.”

In course of time the river was embanked, and ran in a deeper channel; then the ford, as has been stated above, vanished, and the marshes were partly reclaimed, only pools remaining on both sides of the river—the Southwark pools remained till the beginning of this century. But Thorney, after the drying of the marsh, continued to be an island. On the north, the west, and the south sides it was bounded by streams; on the east by the Thames. If you will take the map, and draw a line through Gardener’s Lane across King Street to the river, you will be tracing the exact course of the rivulet which ran into the Thames and formed the northern boundary of the island; another line, down Great College Street, marks the course of a second stream; while a third line, down De la Hay and Prince’s Streets, joining the other two, marks the lie of a connecting canal called Long Ditch. It is interesting to walk along the narrow Gardener’s Lane, one of the few remaining old streets of Westminster, and to mark how the road presents a certain unmistakable look of having been the bed of a stream; it bends and curves exactly like a stream. The same thing may be imagined—by a person of imagination—concerning Great College Street.

The island thus formed covered an area of four hundred and seventy yards long from north to south, and three hundred and seventy yards broad from east to west. At some time or other—after the disappearance of the ford—the Abbey precinct was surrounded by a wall. In the same way St. Paul’s, in the midst of the City, was surrounded by a wall with embattled gates. A portion of this wall is perhaps still standing. The wall was pierced by four gates. One of these was in King Street, where the rivulet crossed; one was at the east end of Tothill Street; a third was in Great College Street, and its modern successor still stands on the spot with no ancient work in it; the last was in New Palace Yard. In front of the riverside wall lived the population of Thorney,—the town of Westminster, such as it was,—decayed indeed since the deepening of the river: fisher-folk mostly, who plied their trade on the river. But of town or village, in the time of Edward the Confessor, there was little or none.

When the old Palace of Westminster was founded, another wall was erected round its buildings. Then the island was completely surrounded by a fortification; the fisher-folk removed northward and settled somewhere lower down the river, where afterward arose the New Palace and Whitehall; not higher up, where the ground continued to be a marsh for many centuries to come. We have seen the beginnings of the Church and of the Abbey. What were the beginnings of the Palace? When did a king begin to live on Thorney Island? And why?

Since neither tradition nor history speaks to the contrary, we may suppose that Cnut was the first to build some kind of palace or residence in this place. His buildings are said to have been burned in the time of Edward; therefore he must have built something. His residence on Thorney was neither continuous nor at any time of long duration. The court of the kings for many generations to come was a Court Itinerant. King Cnut traveled perpetually from place to place, followed by his regiment of house carles, though one knows not how many accompanied him. He stayed at Thorney because he loved the conversation of the Abbot Wolfstan. It was at Thorney that, according to the familiar story, he rebuked the courtiers in the matter of the rising tide; and it was in the concluding years of his reign, when that marvelous change, graphically described by Freeman, fell upon him, and he became exactly the opposite of what he had before shown himself; when he founded and endowed and augmented churches and monasteries. His heart was changed: the stately services of the minster, the rolling of the organ, the chanting of the monks, the splendor of the altar, the story of the Gospel, the legends and the acts of the Saints, the pilgrimage to Rome,—these things pleased him more than the clash of steel on shield, the war cry, and the glorious madness of the fight. The beginner of the old Palace was the great King Cnut the Dane.

We write under the shadow of the Abbey: the bells peal out over our heads; the organ swells and dies; within the walls are the coffins and the bones of dead kings and princes and nobles. The air is ecclesiastic: we may talk of changed hearts and repentant age. The age of civil wars, intestine wars,—the worst wars of all, the wars of those who speak the same language,—lasted for five hundred years after the death of King Cnut. We who belong to a generation which has learned some self-control, cannot realize the intensity, the strength of the passions which devoured and maddened the kings of old. The things which make history dreadful: the murders, the cry to arms at the least provocation; the cruel disregard of innocent suffering; the wasting, pillaging, destroying of lands and fields and villages and towns, in blind revenge; the blinding and torturing and maiming of which every page is full, these things mean the rage of kings, the revenge of kings upon their enemies. Cnut in his last years had no enemies; he had killed them all. Then there were no more rages; he suffered his head to dwell upon nobler things—in modern language, he “got religion.” And so, at the end of this Prologue to the Westminster Play, we see the King taking off his blood-stained ermine, laying down the sword which has set free so many unwilling souls, and walking in meditation and godly discourse under the quiet cloisters of the Abbey. Outside, the noisy court and camp; within, the calm and peace of the religious life. The picture strikes a note of what is to follow when we pass into the period of history written from day to day, and draw up the curtain for the Pageant, Mystery, or Play of Westminster.

CHAPTER II.
THE KING’S PALACE OF WESTMINSTER.

The kings of England held their Court in the Old Palace, the Palace of Westminster, for five hundred years. Of all the buildings which formed that Palace, there remain at this day nothing but a Hall, greatly altered, a Crypt, and a single Tower. Sixty years ago, before the last of the many fires which attacked the Palace, there was left, much disfigured, a single group of buildings which formerly contained the heart of the Palace, the king’s House. This group, however, was so much shut in and surrounded with modern houses, courts, offices, taverns, and stores, that the ancient parts could be with difficulty detached. Fortunately this task was accomplished before the fire: one can therefore restore one part, at least, of the Palace.

In considering the Palace of Westminster, we have the choice, as regards time, of any year we please between the accession of Edward the Confessor and the removal of Henry VIII. to York House. Let us take the close of the fourteenth century; let us attempt to restore the Palace as it was in the reign of Richard II. It was a time when that shadowy, intangible force called Chivalry was most active. Yet at best it was never stronger than its successor, which we now call Honor. Chivalry taught loyalty, even unto death; protection of the weak; respect for women; fidelity in love; mercy to the conquered; charity to the poor; obedience to the Church; fidelity to the spoken word—you may find these teachings in the pages of Froissart. Knights who obey these precepts are greatly extolled by poets; yet the opposites of these things are continually reported by historians. I think that we may roughly, but certainly, ascertain the chief besetting sins of any age by looking for the contraries, which will be the things which preachers and poets do mostly extol.

It has been remarked that antiquarians are prone to fall into the incurable vice of looking at the past through the wrong end of the telescope. This comes from constantly endeavoring to reconstruct the past out of an insufficient number of fragments. Of course the result is that everything is reduced in size. Thus, many antiquarians, being afflicted with this disease, have found themselves unable to see anything but a collection of miserable hovels in that London of the fourteenth century which was a city of nobles’ palaces, merchants’ stately houses, splendid churches, monastic buildings, beautiful and lofty, side by side with warehouses, wharves, ships riding at anchor, crowded streets, and rich shops. No antiquary, however, is wrong in showing that Westminster was, at this time, nothing more than a City—as yet not called a City—gathered round the Church and the Court. To those who journeyed thither from London by the river highway, a line of noble houses faced the river, each with its stairs, its barges, and its water gate. Thus, taking boat at Queenhithe, the traveler passed, among others, Baynard’s Castle, Blackfriars’ Abbey, Bridewell Palace, Whitefriars, the Temple, Durham House, the Savoy, York House, before he reached the King’s Stairs at Westminster. At the back of these houses, where is now Fleet Street and the Strand, there were no houses in the fourteenth century, except just outside Ludgate. As late as 1543, according to the map of Anthony van den Wyngreede, the houses of Westminster were all gathered together in that little triangle opposite Westminster Hall, whose northern boundary was the stream running down Gardener’s Lane and cutting off Thorney. All beyond was open country lying in fields and meadows.

It is impossible to ascertain what, and of what kind, were the buildings of Edward the Confessor: tradition always assigned to him the Painted Chamber and the group of buildings which survived to the year 1835. Let us, however, consider what were the actual requirements of a Royal Palace under the Plantagenets. It will be seen very soon that this group of buildings could have formed only a very small portion of the whole Palace. It will also be found that the Palace grows in the mind as we consider it. At first the Court was itinerant. Edward the Confessor was constantly traveling into different parts of his realm: he kept every Christmas, except his last, at Gloucester; his Easter he kept at Winchester; he resided a good deal at Westminster; we hear of him at Worcester; at Sandwich; he hunted in Wiltshire. Henry II., whose actual itinerary has been recovered and published, seldom remained more than a few days in one place; he was sometimes in France for three or four years at a time; during the whole of his long reign he was only in Westminster on seventeen occasions, and then often for a night or two only. Until the Tudors began a stationary Court, the kings of England traveled a great deal, and, in case of war, always went out with the army. Whether they traveled or whether they stayed in one place, there was always with them a following greater than that of any baron. Warwick rode into London with seven hundred knights and men at arms; that was but a slender force compared with the company which rode after the king. Cnut, who perhaps began this first standing army, had three thousand “hus-carles”; Richard II. had four thousand archers always with him.

EAST END OF THE PRINCE’S CHAMBER.

First, then, for the people, the service, the officers, necessary for the Court. There were, to begin with, the artificers and craftsmen. Everything wanted for the Court had to be done or made within the precincts of the Palace. There were no Court tradesmen; no outside shops. The king’s craftsmen were the king’s servants; they had quarters of some kind, houses or chambers, allotted to them in the Palace; they received wages, rations, and liveries. Thus, in Richard II.’s Palace of Westminster there were retained for the king’s service a little army of three hundred and forty-six artificers—viz., carpenters, coopers, blacksmiths, whitesmiths, goldsmiths, jewelers, “engineers,” pavilioners, armorers, “artillers,” gunners, masons, tilers, bowyers and fletchers, furriers, “heaumers,” spurriers, brewers, every kind of “making” trade: everything that was wanted for the king’s service was made in the king’s Palace—except, of course, the fruits and harvest of the year, the wine, spices, and silks, and costly things that came from the far East through the markets of Bruges and Ghent. These craftsmen were all married—we are not, remember, in a monastery. Give them an average of each five children, and we have, to begin with, a little population of about two thousand five hundred. Take next the commissariat branch: one begins already to realize the stupendous task of feeding so many, and the order and system which must have grown up to meet these wants with certainty and regularity. Thus we find that every branch of the commissariat had its officers: clerks, ushers, and serjeants—a responsible service, with individual and clearly defined duties—for pantry, buttery, spicery, bakehouse, chandlery, brewery, cellars, and kitchen. Of these officers there were two hundred and ten. How many servants they had it is impossible to tell. But if we multiply the number of officers by three only, for the servants, we get a total of six hundred. If these men were also married, they, with their wives and

SOUTH SIDE OF THE PRINCE’S CHAMBER.

children, would give us another company of four thousand. But some of the servants in the kitchen might be women. Then we have the gardeners, the barbers, who were also blood-letters, the bonesetters (a very necessary body), the trumpeters, messengers, bedesmen, grooms, and stable-boys—no one can reckon up their number. Add to these the lavenders or laundry-women who embroidered, did fine needlework, made and mended, weaved and spun—many of these were doubtless the wives and daughters of the servants. A step higher brings us to the chaplains, the College of St. Stephen, the minstrels, the clerks and accountants, the scribes and illuminators, the heralds and pursuivants. Another step, and we come to the judges and the head officers, with all their staff, clerks, and servants. Next the archbishops, bishops and abbots, some of whom were always with the king. Then we come to the great officers of state: viz., the Grand Seneschal Dapifer Angliæ or Lord High Steward, who was head and chief of every department, next to the king; the High Justiciary or Lord Chief Justice; the Seneschal, Dapifer Regis, or Steward of the Household; the Constable, the Marshal, the Chamberlain, the Chancellor, and the Treasurer.[2] Lastly, there was the royal household with its officers: the Clerks of the Wardrobe, the King’s Remembrancer, the Keeper of the Palace, the Queen’s Treasurer, the Maids of Honor (domicellæ), the Gentlemen Ushers and the pages, and (which we must again set down) the King’s regiment of four thousand archers.

I think it is now made plain that the people attached to a stationary Court numbered not hundreds, but many thousands; it is not too much to estimate the number of inhabitants within the walls of Westminster Palace in the reign of Richard II. at twenty thousand—all of whom had “bouche of court” (i. e., rations, pay, arms, lodging, and living). It was, therefore, a crowded city, complete in itself, though it produced nothing and carried on no trade; there were workshops and forges and the hammering of armorers and blacksmiths, but there were no stalls, no chepe, no clamor of those who shouted their goods and invited the passengers to “buy, buy, buy.” This city produced nothing for the country; it received and devoured everything—it was not an idle city, because the people earned their daily bread; but for all their labor they never increased the wealth of the country. Listen to the voice of the poet—it is Harding who speaks of King Richard’s Court:

Truly I herd Robert Ireliffe say,
Clerk of the Green Cloth, that to the household
Came every daye, for moost partie alwaye,
Ten thousand folke by his messe is told,
That followed the hous, aye, as thei would;
And in the kechin three hundred servitours,
And in eche office many occupiours.
And ladies faire, with their gentilwomen,
Chamberers also and lavenders,
Three hundred of them were occupied there:
Ther was greate pride among the officers,
And of all menne far passing their compeers,
Of riche arraye, and muche more costious
Than was before or sith, and more precious.

The ten thousand do not include the women and children.

We have ceased to desire a Court magnificent with outward splendor and lavish expenditure. There has been, in fact, no such Court among us since that of Charles II.; and the splendor of his Court was but a poor thing compared with the splendor of the Third Edward, who was magnificent—or of Richard II., who was profuse. Let us remember that in our time we cannot make any show, or festival, or pageant—we have lost the art of pageantry—which can compare with the shows which our forefathers saw daily: the shows of magnificent trains, queens and princesses in such raiment as the greatest lady of these times would be afraid to put on, lords and knights and gentlemen of the livery, streets with their gabled houses hung with crimson and scarlet cloth; minstrels and music everywhere; mysteries and pageants and allegories, with fair maidens and giants, angels and devils; lavish feasts at which conduits ran with wine for long hours and all the world could get drunk if it pleased. And there was never anything more splendid than Richard II. himself. The time of great shows vanished, like the spirit of Chivalry, during the Wars of the Roses.

What kind of quarters were given to the king’s courtiers and his army and his servants? This is a question to which one can give no satisfactory answer. We hear of many rooms and buildings, but there does not exist any description or plan of the palace as it was. It must certainly have contained a vast number of buildings for the accommodation of so many thousands. The fact that these buildings existed was proved after the fire of 1834, when a most extensive range of cellars and vaults was found to exist under the burned buildings round St. Stephen’s. The old buildings had long before been destroyed and modern houses had taken their places; but the vaults and cellars remained, showing by their strength and solidity the importance of the halls and chambers that had been built upon them.

It was the first duty of the mediæval builder to provide a wall of defense. This was done at Westminster. The wall, as indicated on the plan, entirely surrounded the Palace; it was provided with a water gate at the King’s Bridge or King’s Stairs; a postern at the Queen’s Stairs; a gate leading into the Abbey precinct east of St. Margaret’s Church; a subway by which the king could enter the Abbey, at Poet’s Corner; and a gate opposite the Great Hall leading into the Wool Staple.

A BIT OF THE OLD WALL FROM BLACK DOG ALLEY.

Thus fortified, the Palace assumed something of the usual plan of a Norman castle. The Outer Bailly was represented by the New Palace Yard, with its Clock Tower and place for martial exercises, ridings, and tournaments. Westminster Hall faced the Outer Bailly; to right and to left, to east and to west, stood buildings; on the south were other buildings which inclosed the Inner Bailly, now Old Palace Yard; south of these were gardens and stables with less important houses, offices, and barracks. The great mass of the Palace buildings was between Westminster Hall and the river.

PLAN OF WESTMINSTER PALACE IN 1834.

Of the old Palace there survived, long after the removal of the Court to Whitehall, and until the fatal fire of sixty years ago, a group of its most interesting and most historical buildings. Changes had been made in them; their roofs were taken down and replaced, their windows were altered, the very walls in some had been rebuilt; yet they were the rooms in which Edward the Confessor and all the kings and queens of England lived up to the time of the Eighth Henry. Beneath them the solid substructures of the Confessor remained after the fire, and, for all I know, remain to this day.

The plan shows the position of these buildings. Beginning with the south, there is first of all the Prince’s Chamber, afterward the Robing Room of the old House of Lords. It was forty-five feet long and twenty feet wide; it ran east and west. The chamber had five beautiful lancet windows on the south side and three each on the east and west. On the north side it opened into the old House of Lords. It was in this room that Queen Elizabeth hung up the tapestry celebrating the defeat of the Spanish Armada. This excellent piece of work was afterward transferred to the Court of Requests, where it was burned in the last fire.

The hall adjoining the old House of Lords formed, with the Painted Chamber and the Court of Requests, Edward the Confessor’s living rooms. Under the House of Lords was the King’s kitchen, afterward the cellar where Guy Fawkes and his friends placed the barrels of gunpowder. After the Lords removed to the Court of Requests this room was called the Royal Gallery.

The third room, perhaps the most beautiful, was the Painted Chamber. This hall, certainly that in which the Confessor breathed his last, was eighty feet long, twenty broad, and fifty high—a lofty and narrow room, perhaps too narrow for its length. The meaning of its name had long been forgotten, until the year 1800, when, on taking down the tapestry, which had hung there for centuries, the walls were found to be covered with paintings, representing on one side of the room the wars of the Maccabees, and on the other side scenes from the life of Edward the Confessor. It was then remembered, or discovered, that in an itinerary of two Franciscan pilgrims in the year 1322, preserved among the manuscripts of Corpus Christi, Cambridge, these paintings are mentioned. In the year 1477 the hall was called St. Edward’s Chamber; Sir Edward Coke calls it the Chamber Depeint or St. Edward’s Chamber.

COLLEGIATE SEAL OF ST. STEPHEN’S.

The fourth of these groups of ancient buildings was the Council Room of King Edward, called afterward the White Hall, the Little Hall, the Court of Requests, and the House of Lords.

In the midst of this stately group of noble buildings rose the most stately and most noble chapel of

INTERIOR OF THE CRYPT CALLED THE “POWDER PLOT CELLAR,” BENEATH THE OLD PALACE OF WESTMINSTER, LOOKING TOWARD CHARING CROSS. TAKEN DOWN IN JUNE, 1883.

St. Stephen. It was founded, according to tradition, by King Stephen, on the site, it has been sometimes said, of the Confessor’s oratory; but this seems not true, for the oratory was on the east of the Painted Chamber. The chapel was rebuilt, as a thank-offering for his victories, by Edward I., who then endowed it with large revenues. His foundation was large enough to maintain a college, consisting of dean, twelve secular canons, and twelve vicars; it was, in fact, a rich foundation planted in the middle of the Palace, over against the Abbey. Was there any desire on the part of the King to separate the Court from the Abbey? Perhaps not; but there arose perpetual quarrels between the College and the Abbey. The masses said in St. Stephen’s for the past and present kings might just as well have been said, one supposes, in the Abbey. So rich was the foundation that at the Dissolution its revenues were a third of those of St. Peter’s. By that time the College buildings contained residences or chambers for thirty-eight persons. These buildings consisted, first, of the exquisite Chapel, which afterward became the House of Commons; the Chapel of our Lady de la Pieu, standing somewhere to the south of St. Stephen’s (in this Chapel Richard heard mass before going out to meet Wat Tyler); the Crypt, which happily still remains; the exquisite cloisters, long since vanished; with the Chantry Chapel, and the said residences of the dean, canons, and vicars, and King Richard’s Belfry. The Chapel was smaller than some other royal Chapels,—Windsor, for instance, and King’s, Cambridge,—but it was beautiful exceedingly, and in its carved work and decorations perhaps more finished than any other Church or Chapel in the country. Details of the Chapel have been preserved for us by J. T. Smith (“Antiquities of Westminster”), and by Brayley and Britton’s “Houses of Parliament.” The beauty of the cloisters of the Chantry Chapel, and of the Chapel itself, makes the fire of 1834, on this account alone, a great national disaster. Such work can never again be equaled. At the same time, the Chapel had been so much altered and cut about for the accommodation of the Commons that it was irretrievably spoiled.

The next of this group of ancient buildings was Westminster Hall. On this monument and its historical associations many have enlarged. Let it suffice in this place to remind ourselves that William Rufus built it, Richard II. enlarged it and strengthened it, and that George IV. repaired and new-fronted it.

On the east side of the Hall was the Court of Exchequer, built by Edward II. This hall was seventy-four feet long and forty-five broad. The traditions of the chamber are full of curious stories. It was the breakfast room, it was said (one knows not why), of Queen Elizabeth; a chamber adjoining was her bedchamber. She at least reformed the Court of Exchequer. There were two cellars under the Court of Exchequer, called “Hell” and “Purgatory.” As their names denote, they were prisons. The former name was also applied to a tavern in the Palace precinct.

The notorious Star Chamber was on the east side of New Palace Yard. The room was probably rebuilt in the time of Queen Elizabeth. It was used afterward as the Lottery office.

One more “bit” of the Palace still remains. If you turn to the left on reaching the eastern end of Great College Street, after passing through stables and mews,

WEST END OF THE PAINTED CHAMBER AS IT APPEARED AFTER THE FIRE OF 1834.

you will light upon a most venerable old Tower hidden away in this corner. It is the last of the many Towers which formed part of the Westminster Palace. It was always ascribed to the Confessor as part of his Abbey buildings. When antiquaries first considered it, they found that Edward I. bought the piece of ground on which it stands of the Abbey; so it was concluded that he bought the Tower upon the ground. Later antiquaries, however, on fresh investigations, made up their minds that there was no Tower when Edward took the ground; therefore—the logic of the antiquary is never his strongest point—Edward built this Tower. Again, other antiquaries examined further, and they have now decided that the Tower was built by Richard II. One would have preferred the Confessor as architect, but the end of the fourteenth century gives us a respectable antiquity.

CURIOUS NEWEL STAIRCASE AT THE SOUTH-EAST ANGLE OF PAINTED CHAMBER.

Certain accounts of repairs,—carpenters’, masons’,

GUY FAWKES’ DOOR.

painters’ work,—still preserved, enable us to get a clearer understanding of the buildings that, in addition to the central group, which can be so exactly described and figured, made up the old Palace of Westminster. There must have been work for builders going on continually, but in the years 1307 to 1310 there were very extensive repairs, in consequence of a fire; the bills for these repairs have been preserved. They speak of the following buildings: of the Little Hall, of which mention has been already made; of the water-conduit—the pipes of which were repaired or restored; of the Queen’s Hall; the Nursery; the Mayden Hall, the private hall of the domicellæ, maids of honor—all these halls had their chambers, wardrobes, and galleries; of the chambers and cloisters round the

VAULT UNDER THE PAINTED CHAMBER.

Inner Hall,—was this the old House of Lords?—of the King’s Wardrobe; of Marculf’s Chamber; of the Chandlery; of the Lord Edmund’s Palace; of the Almonry; of the Gaol; of the houses and chambers of the chaplains, clerks, and officers of Court and Palace; of houses standing in the Inner Bailly—i. e., Old Palace Yard; of herbaries, vineries, gardens, galleries, aqueducts, and stew ponds.

It is impossible to assign these buildings and places to their original sites. Take the plan of Thorney, with its Palace, Abbey, and City. Remember that there was an open space for the Inner Bailly—Old Palace Yard; and another for the Outer Bailly—New Palace Yard. In this respect the Palace followed the practice of every castle and great house in the country; even in a college the first court is a survival of the Outer Bailly. Leave, also, an open space east of the wall from the Jewel House to the outer wall for the gardens and herbaries—perhaps, like the Abbey, the Palace had gardens in the reclaimed meadows outside. Then fill in the area between the King’s House and the river with other halls, houses, offices, galleries, wardrobes, and cloisters. Let barracks, stables, shops of all kinds run under the river wall; let there be narrow lanes winding about among these courts, connecting one with the other, and all with the Inner and the Outer Bailly and the Palace stairs. This done, you will begin to understand something of the extent and nature of the King’s Palace in the fourteenth century. Add to this that the buildings were infinitely more picturesque than anything we can show of our own design, our own construction, our own grouping. The gabled houses turned to the courts and lanes their carved timber and plaster fronts; the cloisters glowed in the sunshine with their lace-like tracery and the gold and crimson of their painted roofs and walls; gray old towers looked down upon the clustered and crowded little city; everywhere there were stately halls, lofty roofs, tourelles with rich carvings—gables, painted windows, windows of tracery most beautiful, archways, gates, battlements; granaries, storehouses, barns, chantry chapels, oratories, courts of justice, and interiors bright with splendid tapestry, the colors of which had not yet faded, with canopies of scarlet and cloth of gold, and the sunlight reflected from many a shining helm and breastplate, from many a jeweled hilt and golden scabbard, from many a trophy hanging on the walls, from many a coat of arms bright with color—azure, or gules and argent. It is the color in everything that makes the time so picturesque and bright. We see how small their chambers were, how narrow were the lanes, how close the houses stood; but we forget the bright colors of everything, the hangings and the arras, the painted shields, the robes and dresses, the windows and the walls, the chambers, halls, and refectories, the galleries and the cloisters. When Time brings in another age of color—it is surely due—we shall understand better the centuries of the Plantagenets.

When the fire destroyed these buildings how much we lost that connected us with the past! True it is that in Westminster Abbey and in Westminster Hall we seem to stand face to face with the history of the country. In the Hall were done such and such things; before us lies the effigy of a king to remind us that he was a living reality—to most of us the past is as unreal as the future; we need these reminders lest the voice of our ancestors should fall upon our ears with no

EAST FRONT OF ST. STEPHEN’S CHAPEL AS IT APPEARED AFTER THE FIRE OF 1834.

more meaning than the lapping of the tide or the babble of the brook or the whisper of the stream among the rushes. But we have nothing to remind us of the Palace where the Princes lived; the things that were done in them are not in the Book of Kings, but in that of the Things Left Out—the Book of Chronicles—mostly as yet unedited.

Princes were born here, and played here, and grew here to the age when they could ride the great horse and practice exercises in the New Palace Yard. Kings’ daughters were born here, and were kept here till they were sent away to marry—strange lot of the King’s daughter, that she never knew until she married what her country was to be! Queens prayed here for the safety of their husbands and their sons; here was all the home life, the private life of the Kings and Queens; in these chambers were held the King’s feasts; here he received ambassadors; here he held his council; here he looked on with the Queen at the mummeries and masques; here he held Christmas revelry; here he received and entertained—or else admonished—my Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London; here were his Parliaments; here were executed many nobles; here God Himself was invited to give judgment on the ordeal of battle. In the Painted Chamber, for instance, died King Edward the Confessor; this was the council-chamber of the Normans; here Edward III. received the embassy of Pope Benedict XII.; here Charles’s judges signed his death warrant; here Chatham lay in state. In the Court of Requests, close by, Richard I. heard cases as a judge; here Edward IV. kept his Christmas in 1472, and entertained the Mayor and Aldermen. In the old House of Lords Bacon was sentenced and disgraced, Somers was acquitted, Chatham was struck down. Under this hall the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot piled the barrels which were to destroy the Lords sitting in council. In Old Palace Yard died Raleigh; on the north side of Old Palace Yard lived Geoffrey Chaucer, clerk of the works. From the Confessor and Harold through five hundred years of kings and princes, for the whole history of England’s Parliament, for the whole history of English law and justice, the things that belonged to these chronicles passed in this succession of halls and chambers.

PASSAGE FROM ST. STEPHEN’S CHAPEL TO THE CLOISTER.

Thus, then, presented to you, was the Palace. You have restored the Palace of Westminster. It stands before you, plain and clear. But as yet it is a silent city—a city of the cold daybreak, a city of the sleeping. Fill it again with the living multitude—the thousands who thronged its courts—when it was the Palace of the Second Richard. Look: the men-at-arms and esquires and knights bear the cognizance—a fatal cognizance it proved to many—of the White Hart. It is the Palace of the Second Richard, whose court was the most splendid, and his expenditure the most prodigal, that the country had ever witnessed.

It is the third day of May, 1389. The sun rises before five and the day breaks at three at this season; long before sunrise, before daybreak, the silence of the night is broken by the rolling of the organ and the voices of the monks at Lauds; long before sunrise, even so early as this, there are signs of life about the Court. Stable-boys and grooms are up already, carrying buckets of water; dogs are leaping and barking; when the sun lifts his head above the low Surrey hills and falls upon the wall and towers of the Palace, the narrow lanes are full of men slowly addressing themselves to the work of the day. Clear and bright against the sky stand the buildings; huddled together they are, certainly—it is not yet a time for architectural grouping, except in the design of an abbey, which is generally placed where there is room enough and to spare. Where there is the King there is an army; there is also a place which may be attacked: therefore the smaller the circumference of the wall, the better for the defense. Besides, a Palace is like a walled city: it grows, but it cannot spread; it fills up. This hall needs another beside it; that chamber must have a gallery; this chapel must have cloisters; here let us put up a clock tower; if there are council chambers, there must also be guest chambers; the Court becomes more splendid, the Palace precinct becomes more crowded.

The place is more like a camp than a Palace. The grooms lead out the horses—there are thousands of horses in the place; in both Outer and Inner Bailly the pages,—wards of the King,—boys of eight or nine to sixteen, are exercising already, riding, leaping, fencing, running. In the long chambers, where the archers lie upon beds of rushes and of straw, the men are gathered about the doors passing round the blackjack with the morning draught. At the water gate are crowding already the boats laden with fish caught in the river and brought here daily. The servants are

CLOISTER COURT AS IT APPEARED AFTER THE FIRE.

running to and fro; the fires are lit in kitchen and in bakery: the clerks, pen in hand and ink-bottle hanging from their belts, go round to the offices. Listen to the baying of the hounds; see the falconers bringing out their birds; here are the chained bears rolling on the ground; there go the young nobles hasting to the King’s chamber—it is the time of gorgeous raiment: half a manor is in the blue silk jacket of that young lord, one of the King’s favorites. There is already, from this side or that, the tinkling of a mandolin, the scraping of a crowd; yonder fantastic group, the first to enter when the Palace gates are thrown open, are mummers, jugglers, and minstrels, who come to make sport for the archers and for the Court if the King’s Highness or the Queen’s most excellent Grace so wills. These people can play a mystery if needs be; or they can dress like fearful wild beasts, or dance like wild men of the woods; they have songs from France—love songs, songs for ladies; rougher songs in English for the soldiers; they can dance upon the tight-rope; they can eat fire; they can juggle and play strange tricks which they have brought hither all the way from Constantinople—at the sight of them you cross yourself and whisper that it is sorcery. As for the music of the King’s chamber, that is made by the King’s minstrels, who wear his colors and have bouche of court. See yonder gayly dressed young man: he is a minstrel; none other can touch the harp and sing with skill so sweet; he looks on with contempt at the fantastic crew as they sweep past to the soldiers’ quarters; they, too, carry their minstrel instruments with them, but their music is not his music. In the evening the minstrel will join in the crowd to see the dancing of the girls—the almond-eyed, dark-skinned girls of Syria—who follow the fortunes of the mummers and toss their round arms as they dance with strange gestures and wanton looks, at sight of which the senses swim and the brain reels and the soul yearns for things impossible.

The noise of the Palace grows; it is wide awake: the day has begun.

Outside the Palace, the road—there is now a road where there was once a marsh or shallow with a ford—is covered with an endless procession of those who make their way to the Palace and the Abbey with supplies. Here are drivers with herds of cattle and flocks of sheep; here are long lines of pack horses laden with things; here are men-at-arms, the following of some great lord: this is a procession which never ceases all the year round. And on the river barges are coming down the stream piled up, laden to the level of the water, with farm produce; and at flood tide barges come up the stream from the Port of London, sent by the merchants whom the King despoils,—yet they have their revenge,—boats laden with the things for which this magnificent Court is insatiable: cloth of gold, velvet, and silk; wines of France and Spain and Cyprus and Gaza; spices, perfumes, inlaid armor and arms, jewels and glass and plate, and wares ecclesiastic for the outer glory of St. Peter and St. Stephen—golden cross and chalice silver gilt, and vestments such as can only be matched in the Church of St. Peter at Rome.

Also along the Dover road, and up and down the road called Watling, and up the river and down the river, there ride day and night the King’s messengers. Was there a special service of messengers? I think

THE STAR CHAMBER. DEMOLISHED IN 1834.

not; men were dispatched with letters and enjoined to ride swiftly. There were neither telegraphs nor railways nor postal service, yet was the Court of every great king fully supplied with news. If it came a month after the event, so it came to all. We of to-day act on news of the moment; the statesmen of old acted on news of yesterday or yesterday fortnight. But communications with the outer world never ceased; news poured in daily from all quarters: from the Low Countries; from France and Spain; from Rome; from the Holy Land. Whatever happened was carried swiftly over Western Europe. If the king of Scotland crossed the border, in three days it was known in Westminster; if there was a rebellion in Ireland, four days brought the news to Westminster; if the Welsh harried the March, three days sufficed to bring the news to Westminster. Beside the messengers and bearers of dispatches, there were pilgrims who learned and carried about a vast quantity of information; there were the merchants whose ships arrived every day from Antwerp and from Sluys; and there were the foreign ships which came to London Port from the Levant and the Mediterranean.

The messengers as they arrived at the Palace of Westminster carried their letters not to the King, but to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to the Duke of Gloucester, the King’s uncle.

As for what follows, it is related by Francis de Winchelsea, scribe or clerk to the King’s Council, the same who went always limp or halt by reason of a knee stiffened by kneeling at his work; for before the Council the clerk who writes what he is commanded must neither sit nor stand. He kneels on his left knee and writes on the other knee. Many things were secretly written by Francis which are kept in the Abbey hard by, not to see the light for many years,—perhaps never,—because things said and done in secret council must not be spread abroad, as the cleric Froissart spread abroad all he knew and could learn, to the injury of many reputations. Thus sayeth Francis:

“On the morning of that day—the Induction of the Cross—it chanced that I was standing in the Cloisters of St. Stephen, whither I often repaired for meditation. The King came forth, and with him one—I name him not—who was his companion and friend. They walked in the cloisters, I retiring to a far corner; they were deep in conversation, and they marked me not. They talked in whispers for half an hour. Then the King said aloud, ‘Have no fear: this day will I reward my friends.’

“‘Beau Sire,’ replied the other, ‘your friends have mostly lost their heads thus far. Yet to die as your Highness’s friend should be reward enough.’

“‘Thou shalt not die. By St. Edward’s bones—when it comes to dying—— But wait.’

“Then I knew that something great was going to happen. And since whatever happens to Princes affects their subjects, I began to tremble. ‘This day,’ said the King. Now, there was not any Prince in the world more comely to look upon than King Richard. Since the time of David there had never been a Prince of more lovely aspect. He was then in early manhood: his chin and cheek were lightly fringed with down rather than with a beard; his face was long; his flowing hair was of a light brown; his eyes were large,—I have noticed that the eyes of those who sit apart and dream are often large,—yet could the King’s eyes become suddenly and swiftly terrible to meet: never yet was English King who was not terrible in his wrath. His nose was long and thin, his mouth was small and delicately shaped, his chin was not long, but round and firm; his shoulders were sloping, his fingers were long. He loved, as no other great Lord ever loved, rich apparel: he commonly wore a doublet or jerkin of green, embroidered with flowers, crowns, and the letters of his name. He was already twenty-three years of age, yet he took no part in the affairs of his own kingdom, which was managed by his uncles, the Dukes of Lancaster and Gloucester; so that, if it be permitted thus to speak of a King, he was fast falling into contempt as a Roy Fainéant, one who would do nothing; and there were whispers, even in the Palace, that a king who can do nothing must, soon or late, give place to one who can. Yet I marked that the King looked ever to his archers, of whom he had four thousand, and that he entertained them royally and kept them to their loyalty. Doubtless Richard remembered the fate of his great-grandfather, Edward the Second.

“At the hour of nine, mass said and breakfast dispatched, the King’s Council met in Marculf’s Chamber. There were present the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Hereford, the Duke of Gloucester, and the Earl of Arundel. And I also was there, on my knee, pen in hand, ready to write.

“My Lords of the Council discoursed pleasantly of this and of that: they had no suspicion of what would happen. Nor had I guessed the King’s purpose. Now learn what the Roy Fainéant did.

“While the Archbishop was speaking, without a word of warning, the council door was suddenly flung open wide and the usher called out, ‘My Lords—the King!’

“Then Richard stood in the doorway; upon his head he wore a crown; in his hand he carried his scepter; on his shoulders hung the mantle of ermine, borne below by two pages; and through the door I saw a throng of armed men and heard the clink of steel. Then I understood what was about to happen.

“The Council rose and stood up. White were their cheeks and astonied were their faces.

“‘Good my Lord——’ began the Duke of Gloucester.

“The King strode across the room and took his seat upon the throne. Let no one say that Richard’s eyes were soft. This morning they were like the eyes of a falcon; and the look which he cast upon his uncle betrayed the hatred in his heart and foretold the revenge that he would take. Afterward, when I heard of the King’s visit to Pleshy, I remembered that look.

“‘Fair uncle,’ he said, ‘tell me how old am I?’

“‘Your Highness,’ replied the Duke, ‘is now in your twenty-fourth year.’

“‘Say you so? Then, fair uncle, I am now old enough to manage mine own affairs.’

“So saying, he took the Great Seal from the Archbishop, and the keys of the Exchequer from the Bishop of Hereford; from the Duke of Gloucester he took his office; he appointed new Judges; he created a new Council.

“Look you,” said Francis of Winchelsea, “how secret are the counsels of the mighty! They keep their designs secret because they cannot trust their courtiers. The King made no sign when his uncles took the management of the realm into their own hands; he was not yet strong enough: he amused himself. They drove away his favorites and beheaded them; the King still made no sign; he amused himself. When the moment came he sprang up and delivered his blow. ’Twas a gallant Prince. Alas! that he was not always strong. That he compassed the death of the Duke of Gloucester no one doubts; but then the Duke had compassed the death of his friends. Twice in his life Richard was strong; on that day and another; twice was he strong.

“That night there was high revelry in the Palace; the mummers and the minstrels and the music made the Court merry; and the dancing girls moved the hearts of the young men. And the King’s Fool made the courtiers laugh when he jested about the Duke’s amazement and the Archbishop’s discomfiture. And as for me, plain Francis the scribe, I am inclined, seeing the miseries that have since fallen upon that most puissant Prince and upon this country, to humble myself and to acknowledge the mercy of Heaven in refusing me a higher place than this of scribe. The Kings succeed; the council changes; the ax and the block are always doing their work; but the scribe remains, and were it not for the stiffness of this right knee and a growing deafness, I should have but little cause for complaint.”

Here ends the manuscript of Francis de Winchelsea.

When the King’s House was removed from Westminster to Whitehall the importance of the old Palace suffered little diminution. St. Stephen’s was dissolved, but the chapel was not destroyed nor were the cloisters broken down. The Commons came across the road, leaving the Chapter House and exchanging one lovely building for another. They proceeded so to alter and to rebuild and add and subtract that by the time of the fire there was not much left of the old St. Stephen’s. The other buildings of the Palace were gradually modernized, so that in the end little was left of the old Palace except the nest of chambers that belonged in the first instance to Edward the Confessor, with the Hall of Rufus. As for this mediæval Palace, with its narrow lanes, its close courts, its corridors and cloisters, its lancet windows, its tourelles, its carved work—all that was gone, never to be replaced. But a good deal of history, a great many events, had to take place on this site before the building of the present House of Parliament, which is the greatest change of all. I set out in these chapters with the desire not to repeat, more than was necessary, stories that have been told over and over again. It is not always possible to avoid this repetition, since things must be related if only to avoid a probable charge of ignorance. Some things can be avoided as belonging rather to the History of the Nation than the History of Westminster. Among such things are the rise and development of the House of Commons. Some things again may be avoided as having been told so often that no one is ignorant of them; such as the death of Henry the Fourth in the Jerusalem Chamber. In what follows, chiefly concerning the Palace after its desertion by the King, there will be found some things well known to everybody, some things half known, some things not known at all.

In the Old Palace Yard, the open court belonging to the first Palace, many functions took place; tournaments, executions, trials by battle. At one of these tournaments, that of 1348, two Scottish knights, the Earl Douglas and Sir William Douglas, prisoners of war, acquitted themselves so valiantly that the King sent them home free. Of executions in Old Palace Yard there is recorded the hanging of a man for slaying another within the Palace; his body, for an example, remained hanging for two days. Of trial by battle, many are recorded in Tothill Fields and elsewhere, and those of Old Palace Yard. One of these was held in the presence of King Edward III., between Thomas de la Marche and John de Visconti, to prove that the former had not been guilty of treachery against the King of Sicily. De la Marche unhorsed his opponent and struck him in the face as he fell. It is not stated what became of the wounded man.

On the south side of the Old Palace Yard were certain fish ponds, or stew ponds, which were kept stocked with eels and pike. On the east side Geoffrey Chaucer, for a very short time,—less than a year,—occupied a house. It stood nigh to the White Rose tavern, abutting on the old Lady Chapel. King Henry the Seventh’s Chapel now occupies the site. And there was a gateway or passage from the Abbey churchyard to Old Palace Yard, over which was a house sacred to the memory of Ben Jonson, who lived there.

In the southeast corner of Old Palace Yard stood the house which was hired by Percy, one of the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot, through which the barrels of powder were conveyed to the vaults. In Palace Yard four of the conspirators, Guy Fawkes, Thomas Winter, Ambrose Rokewood, and Robert Keyes were executed fifteen years later, to the shame and dishonor of the English nation. Raleigh was brought to Old Palace Yard to die. The day chosen for his execution was Lord Mayor’s Day, so that the crowd should be drawn to the pageant rather than the execution. It is curious to read how Lady Raleigh attended at the execution and carried away the head in a bag. She kept it during the rest of her life, and after her death it was kept by her son Carew. The body lies buried in the Chancel of St. Margaret’s.

The memory of these great mobs closes the history of Old Palace Yard. One of these was in 1641, when six thousand citizens, armed with swords and clubs, seized on the entrance to the House of Lords and called for justice against Lord Strafford. The second, in 1773, when the Sheriff and Aldermen and Common Council of London, in a procession of two hundred carriages, attended by a huge mob, went to Westminster to petition against the Excise scheme of Sir Robert Walpole. The third is the mob that followed Lord George Gordon. On this occasion both Lords and Commons found it necessary to adjourn.

New Palace Yard has been the scene of many eventful episodes in history. Take, for instance, the history of the fight between the men of London and the men of Westminster. From this story may be learned the difficulty of controlling a mob, and that a London mob—and a mob fired with a sense of wrong: that kind of wrong that always fires an Englishman’s blood, when the game is played against the rules. Sport of all kinds must be played by rule. Here were the men of Westminster fairly and honestly beaten. That they should seek to revenge themselves in so mean and treacherous a fashion—oh! it was intolerable! How would the men of Yorkshire be fired with rage if, after a football match, the conquerors should be treacherously assailed and murdered? Yet this is exactly what happened. Let Stow tell the tale:

On Saint Iames day, the Citizens of London kept games of defence and wrestling, neere vnto the Hospital of Matild, where they got the maisterie of the menne of the Suburbes. The Baylie of Westminster deuising to be reuenged, proclaymed a game to be at Westminster vppon Lammas daye, wherevnto the Citizens of London repayred, and when they had played a while, the Baylie with the men of the suburbs harnised themselves and fell to fighting, that the Citizens being foully wounded, were forced to runne into the Citie, where they rang the common Bel, and assembled the Citizens in gret number, and when the matter was declared, euery man wished to reuenge the fact. The Maior of the Citie being a wise man and a quiet, willed them firste to moue the Abbot of Westminster of the matter, and if he wold promise to see amendes made, it were sufficient: but a certaine Citizen named Constantine Fitz Arnulfe, willed that all houses of the Abbot and Baylie should be pulled downe, whiche word being once spoken, the common people issued out of the Citie without anye order, and fought a ciuil battaile: for Constantine the firste pulled downe many houses, and ofttimes with a loude voyce cryed in prayse of the sayd Constantine, the ioye of the mountaine, the ioy of the mountaine, God helpe and the Lord Lodowike.

A fewe dayes after this tumult, the Abbot of Westminster came to London to Phillip Dawbney, one of the kings counsel, to complaine of the iniuries done to him, which the Londoners perceyuing, beset the house aboute, and tooke by violence twelue of the Abbots horsses away, cruelly beating of his men, &c. But whiles the foresayde Daubney, laboured to pacifie the vprore, the Abbot gotte out at a backe dore of the house, and so by a boate on the Thamis hardlye escaped, the Citizens throwing stones after him in great aboundāce. These things being thus done, Hubert de Burgo, Justiciar of England, with a great armye of men came to the Tower of London, and sent for the Maior and Aldermē, of whom he enquired for the principal aucthours of this faction. Then Constantine, who was constaunt in the sedition, was more constante in the aunsweare, affirming, that he had done it, and that he hadde done muche lesse than he ought to haue done. The Justiciar tooke him and two other with him, and in ý morning carely sent them to Falcatius by water, with a gret number of armed men, who brought Constantine to the gallowes, and when he sawe the rope about his necke, he offered for his life 15000. marks, but that would not saue him: so he was hanged with Constantine his nephew, & Galfride, that proclaymed his proclamation on the sixteenth of August.

Then the Justiciar entring the City with a great army, caused to be apprehended as many as he coulde learne to be culpable, whose feet and hands he caused to be cut off, which crueltie caused many to flee the Citie.

The king toke of the Citizens 60 pledges, which he sēt to diuers Castelles: he deposed the Maior, appointing a Gardien or keeper ouer the Citie, and caused a greate gybet to be made, and after heauie threatnings, the Citizens were reconciled, paying to the king manye thousande markes.

The bawling for the Lord Lodowicke was a very foolish thing to do. It showed, first, that the Londoners associated the men of Westminster with the Court; it showed also that the memory of Prince Louis of France, who had taken up his residence for a time in London, still survived. But it was ill advised, because it set the King against the citizens.

The pillory of New Palace Yard has held some notable persons in its embrace: Perkin Warbeck, for instance, who had to read his own confession. The same ceremony was performed in Cheapside “with many a curse and much wondering,” says Stow. In this pillory stood Alexander Leighton, for a fanatical libel. Here stood William Prynne for writing the “Histrio Mastix.” Here stood Titus Oates, and here stood the printer of Wilkes’s famous “No 45.”

New Palace Yard was formerly an inclosed area, surrounded by buildings picturesquely grouped. I do not think we have anything to show more picturesque than New Palace Yard in the fifteenth century. On the North side stood the Clock Tower, just where Parliament Street now begins. It was a very handsome Clock Tower, erected against his will by Chief Justice Ralph Hingham in the reign of Edward I. He was amerced in the sum of eight hundred marks for altering a court roll in favor of a poor man. His charity cost him dear. There was a warden of the Clochier, and the bell, called Tom, was the heaviest in London. In the year 1698 the Clock Tower was given to the Vestry of St. Margaret’s. They proceeded to pull it down—one knows not why. The materials were sold for £200; the bell for £385 17s. 6d.; it weighed 82 cwt. 2 qrs. 21 lbs. The bell was recast and taken to St. Paul’s.

On either side of the Clock Tower ran houses

belonging to the merchants of the Wool Staple, the market place of which was at the back of the houses; an archway opened into King Street at the northwest corner; the west side was occupied by houses, the gate into the Abbey, and St. Margaret’s; on the south side was Westminster Hall, with the Courts of the Exchequer; on the east was the Star Chamber, ending in what was called the Bridge, and a pier running out into the river. Under the Courts of the Exchequer were two prisons called “Hell,” and “Purgatory.” There was also “Heaven,” and all these places became taverns.

When one speaks of Westminster Hall it seems as if the whole of English history rolls through that ancient and venerable building. Historians have exhausted their eloquence in speaking of these gray old walls. What things have they not seen? The coronation banquets; the entertainments of kings; the proclamations; the solemn oaths; the State trials; we cannot, if we would, keep out of Westminster Hall. It was once the High Court of Justice: three Judges sat here in different parts of the Hall, hearing as many cases.

The State trials may be left to Macaulay and the historians. I think that we are here most concerned in that curious trial of the ‘prentices which followed “Evil May Day,” 1547.

Everybody knows that the Church of St. Andrew Undershaft is so called because a tall May-pole, the highest in London, was laid along, under a pentice, the side of the church and a row of houses called Shaft Alley. Every May Day the pole was taken off its iron hooks and set up on the south side of the church in the street, being higher than the steeple itself. Now, as to the connection of the steeple with Westminster Hall, it shall be told in the words of Maitland:

“About two Years after this, an Accident happened, which occasioned the Epithet of Evil to be added to this Day of Rejoicing, and that Day was afterward noted by the Name of Evil May Day. In the ninth Year of the Reign of King Henry VIII. A great Heart-burning, and malicious Grudge, grew amongst the Englishmen of the City of London, against Strangers; and namely, the Artificers found themselves much aggrieved, because such Number of Strangers were permitted to resort hither with their Wares, and to exercise Handicrafts, to the great Hindrance and Impoverishing of the King’s Liege People: Which Malice grew to such a Point, that one John Lincolne, a Broker, busied himself so far in the Matter, that about Palm-Sunday, or the fifth of April, he came to one Dr. Standish, with these Words; ‘Sir, I understand that you shall preach at the Spital on Monday in Easter Week; and so it is, that Englishmen, both Merchants and others, are undone by Strangers, who have more Liberty in this Land, than they, which is against Reason, and also against the Commonweal of this Realm. I beseech you, therefore, to declare this in your Sermon, and in so doing you shall deserve great Thanks of my Lord-Mayor, and of all his Brethren.’ And herewith he offered unto the said Doctor a Bill containing the Matter more at large: But Doctor Standish, wisely considering, that there might more Inconvenience arise from it, than he would wish, if he should deal in such Sort, both refused the Bill, and told Lincolne plainly, that he meant not to meddle with any such Matter in his Sermon.

“Whereupon the said Lincolne, went unto one Dr. Bell, or Bele, a Canon of the aforesaid Spital, that was appointed likewise to preach upon Tuesday in Easter Week, at the same Spital, whom he persuaded to read his said Bill in his Pulpit. Which Bill contained (in effect) the Grievances that many found from Strangers, for taking the Livings away from Artificers and the Intercourse from Merchants, the Redress whereof must come from the Commons united together; for, as the Hurt touched all Men, so must all set to their helping Hands: Which Letter he read, or the chief Part thereof, comprehending much seditious Matter, and then he began with this Sentence; Cœlum Cœli Domino, Terrain autem dedit Filiis Hominum, i. e., The Heavens to the Lord of Heaven, but the Earth he hath given to the children of Men: And upon this Text he shewed how this Land was given to Englishmen, and, as Birds defend their Nests, so ought Englishmen to cherish and maintain themselves, and to hurt and grieve Aliens for Respect of their Commonwealth: And on this Text, Pugna pro Patria, i. e., Fight for your Country, he brought in, how (by God’s Law) it was lawful to fight for their Country, and thus he subtilly moved the People to oppose Strangers. By this Sermon, many a light-headed Person took Courage, and spoke openly against them: And by chance there had been divers ill Things of late done by Strangers, in and about the City of London, which kindled the People’s Rancour the more furiously against them.

“The twenty-eighth Day of April, divers young Men of the City picked Quarrels with certain Strangers, as they passed along the Streets: Some they smote and buffeted, and some they threw into the Channel; for which the Lord Mayor sent some of the Englishmen to prison, as Stephen Studley, Skinner, Stevenson Betts, and others.

“Then suddenly rose a secret Rumour, and no Man could tell how it began, that on May-Day, next following, the City would slay all the Aliens, insomuch that divers Strangers fled out of the City.

“This Rumour came to the Knowledge of the King’s Council; whereupon the Lord Cardinal sent for the Mayor, and other of the Council of the City, giving them to understand what he had heard.

“The Lord-Mayor, as one ignorant of the Matter, told the Cardinal, that he doubted not so to govern the City, but that Peace should be obtained.

“The Cardinal willed him so to do, and to take heed, that, if any riotous Attempt were intended, he should by good Policy prevent it.

“The Mayor coming from the Cardinal’s House, about four o’Clock in the Afternoon, on May-Eve, sent for his Brethren to the Guildhall; yet was it almost seven o’Clock before the Assembly was set. Upon Conference had of the Matter, some thought it necessary, that a substantial Watch should be set of honest Citizens, which might withstand the Evil-Doers, if they went about any Misrule: Others were of contrary Opinion, as rather thinking it best, that every Man should be commanded to shut up his Doors, and to keep his Servants within. Before eight o’Clock, the Recorder was sent to the Cardinal with these Opinions, who, hearing the same, allowed the latter: And then the Recorder, and Sir Thomas More, late Under-Sheriff of London, and of the King’s Council, came back again to the Guildhall, half an Hour before nine o’Clock, and there shewed the Pleasure of the King’s Council; whereupon every Alderman sent to his Ward, that no Man, after nine o’Clock, should stir out of his House, but keep his Doors shut, and his Servants within, until nine o’Clock in the Morning.

“After this Command was given in the Evening, as Sir John Mundy, Alderman, came from his Ward, he found two young Men in Cheap, playing at the Bucklers, and a great many young Men looking on them; for the Command seemed to be scarcely published: He ordered them to leave off; and, because one of them asked, Why? he would have them sent to the Compter: But the ‘Prentices resisted the Alderman, taking the young Man from him, and cried, ‘Prentices, ‘Prentices! Clubs, Clubs! then out of every Door came Clubs, and other Weapons, so that the Alderman was put to Flight. Then more People arose out of every Quarter, and forth came Serving-men, Watermen, Courtiers, and others, so that by eleven o’Clock there were in Cheap six or seven hundred; and out of St. Paul’s Church-yard came about three hundred. From all Places they gathered together, and broke open the Compter, took out the Prisoners committed thither by the Lord-Mayor for hurting the Strangers; they went also to Newgate, and took out Studley and Betts, committed for the like Cause. The Mayor and Sheriffs were present, and made Proclamation in the King’s Name, but were not obeyed.

“Being thus gathered in crowds, they ran thro’ St. Nicholas’s Shambles; and at St. Martin’s Gate Sir Thomas More, and others, met them, desiring them to return to their Homes, which they had almost persuaded them to do; when some within St. Martin’s, throwing Sticks and Stones, hurt several who were with Sir Thomas More, particularly one Nicholas Dennis, a Serjeant at Arms, who, being much wounded, cried out, Down with them; and then all the unruly Persons ran to the Doors and Windows of the Houses within St. Martin’s, and spoiled all they found. After that they ran into Cornhill, and so on to a House East of Leadenhall, called the Green-Gate, where dwelt one Mewtas, a Picard, or Frenchman, with whom dwelt several other Frenchmen. These they plundered; and, if they had found Mewtas, they would have struck off his Head.

“They ran to other Places, and broke open and plundered the Houses of Strangers, and continued thus till three o’Clock in the Morning, at which Time they began to withdraw; but by the Way they were taken by the Mayor and others, and sent to the Tower, Newgate, and the Compters, to the Number of three hundred.

“The Cardinal, being advertised of this by Sir Thomas Parre, sent him immediately to inform the King of it at Richmond; and he forthwith sent to learn what Condition the City was in. Sir Roger Cholmeley, Lieutenant of the Tower, during the Time of this Business, shot off certain Pieces of Ordnance against the City, but did no great Hurt. About five o’Clock in the Morning the Earls of Shrewsbury and Surrey, Thomas Dockery, Lord Prior of St. John’s, George Nevil, Lord Abergavenny, and others, came to London, with what Forces they could get together; so did the Inns of Court: But, before they came, the Business was all over.

“Then were the Prisoners examined, and the Sermon of Doctor Bell called in Question, and he sent to the Tower. A Commission of Oyer and Terminer was directed to the Duke of Norfolk, and other Lords, for the Punishment of this Insurrection. The second of May, the Commissioners, with the Lord-Mayor, Aldermen, and Justices, went to Guildhall, where many of the Offenders were indicted; whereupon they were arraigned, and pleaded Not Guilty, having one Day given them, ‘till the fourth of May.

“On which Day, the Lord-Mayor, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Surrey, and others, came to sit in the Guildhall. The Duke of Norfolk entered the City with one thousand three hundred Men, and the Prisoners were brought thro’ the Streets tied with Ropes; some Men, some Lads but of thirteen or fourteen Years old, to the Number of two hundred and seventy-eight Persons. That Day John Lincolne, and divers others were indicted; and the next Day thirteen were adjudged to be drawn, hanged and quartered; for Execution whereof ten Pair of Gallows were set up in divers Places of the City, as at Aldgate, Blanchapleton, Grass-Street, Leadenhall, before each of the Compters, at Newgate, St. Martin’s, at Aldersgate, and Bishopsgate: And these Gallows were set upon Wheels to be removed from Street to Street, and from Door to Door, as the Prisoners were to be executed.

“On the seventh of May, Lincolne, Sherwin, and the two Brothers named Betts, with several of their Confederates, were found guilty, and received Sentence as the former; when, within a short Time after, they were drawn upon Hurdles to the Standard in Cheapside; where Lincolne was first executed; but, as the rest were about to be turned off, a Reprieve came from the King to stay the Execution: upon which the People shouted, crying, God save the King; and thereupon the Prisoners were carried back to Prison, there to attend the King’s farther Pleasure.

“After all this, all the Armed Men, which before had kept Watch in the City, were withdrawn; which gave the Citizens Hope that the King’s Displeasure towards them was not so great as themselves conceived: Whereupon, on the eleventh of May, the King residing at his Manor of Greenwich, the Mayor, Recorder, and divers Aldermen, went in Mourning Gowns to wait upon him; and having Admittance to the Privy-Chamber Door, after they had attended there for some Time, the King, attended with several of his Nobles, came forth; whereupon they falling upon their Knees, the Recorder in the Name of the rest spake as followeth:

“‘Most Natural, Benign, and our Sovereign Lord, We well know that your Grace is highly displeased with us of your City of London, for the great Riot done and committed there; wherefore we assure your Grace, that none of us, nor no honest Person, were condescending to that Enormity; yet we, our Wives and Children, every Hour lament that your Favour should be taken from us; and forasmuch as light and idle Persons were the Doers of the same, we most humbly beseech your Grace to have Mercy on us for our Negligence, and Compassion on the Offenders for their Offences and Trespasses.’

“To which the King replied; ‘Truly you have highly displeased and offended us, and therefore you ought to wail and be sorry for the same; and whereas you say that you the substantial Citizens were not consenting to what happened, it appeareth to the contrary; for you never moved to let them, nor stirred to fight with those whom you say were so small a Number of light Persons; wherefore we must think, and you cannot deny, but that you did wink at the Matter: Therefore at this Time we will neither grant you our Favour nor Goodwill, nor to the Offenders Mercy; but resort to our Lord Chancellor, and he shall make you an Answer, and declare to you our Pleasure.’

“At this Speech of the King’s, the Citizens departed very sorrowful; but, having Notice that the King intended to be at his Palace of Westminster on the twenty-second of May, they resolved to repair thither, which they did accordingly, though not without the Appointment of Cardinal Wolsey, who was then Lord Chancellor; when as a Cloth of Estate being placed at the upper End of Westminster-Hall, the King took his Place, and after him the Cardinal, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Earls of Wiltshire, Surry, Shrewsbury, and Essex, with several others; the Lord-Mayor, Recorder, and Aldermen, together with many of the Commons, attending in their Liveries; when, about nine o’Clock, Order was given for the bringing forth the Prisoners, which was accordingly done; so that in they came in their Shirts, bound together with Ropes, and Halters about their Necks, to the Number of four hundred Men, and eleven Women, one after another; which Sight so moved several of the Nobility, that they became earnest Intercessors to the King for their Pardon.

“When Silence was made, and they were all come into the King’s Presence, the Cardinal sharply rebuked the Mayor, Aldermen, and Commonalty, for their negligence; and then, addressing his Speech to the Prisoners, he told them, That for their Offences against the Laws of the Realm, and against his Majesty’s Crown and Dignity, they had deserved Death: Whereupon they all set up a piteous Cry, saying, Mercy, Gracious Lord, Mercy; which so moved the King, that, at the earnest Intreaty of the Lords, he pronounced them pardoned; upon which giving a great Shout, they threw up their Halters towards the Roof of the Hall, crying, God save the King. When this News was bruited abroad, several that had been in the Insurrection, and had escaped, came in upon their own accords with Ropes about their Necks, and received the Benefit of the King’s Pardon; after which the Cardinal gave them several good Exhortations tending to Loyalty and Obedience; and so dismissed them, to their no small Joy; and within a while after the Gallowses that were set in the several Parts of the City, were taken down, which so far pleased the Citizens, that they expressed infinite Thanks to the King for his Clemency.

“This Company was called the Black Waggon; and the Day whereon this Riot and Insurrection happened, bears the Name of Evil May-Day to these our present Times. And thus have you heard how the Citizens escaped the King’s Displeasure, and were again received into Favour; though, as it is thought, not without paying a considerable Sum of Money to the Cardinal to stand their Friend, for at that Time he was in such Power, that he did all with the King.

“These great Mayings and May-Games, with the triumphant Setting-up the great Shaft, a principal May-pole in Leadenhall-Street before the Parish Church of St. Andrew, thence called Undershaft, were not so commonly used after this Insurrection on May-Day, 1517, as before.”

The story must be finished, though this part of it does not belong to Westminster, by showing the end of the shaft.

After the Evil May-Day it was never raised again. This proves the growing dread, in the minds of the officials, of the mob when they came together. The after history of London is full of this dread, which experience fully justifies. The famous May-pole hung upon its hooks from the year 1517 to the year 1549, the third of Edward VI. There flourished at that time a certain person named Sir Stephen, a curate of St. Katharine Cree, a fanatic of the most abominable kind. He wanted to turn the Reformation into a Revolution; all the ancient ways were to be abandoned or turned upside down. He wanted the names of churches to be altered; the names of the days of the week to be altered—“Saturday” is sheer pagan, and so is Friday, for we all know who Freya was; he wanted fishdays to be any days except Friday and Saturday; and Lent to be observed at any time of the year except the time between Shrove Tuesday and Easter Sunday. “I have often,” says Stow, “seen this man forsaking the pulpit of his said parish church, preach out of a high elm tree in the midst of the churchyard, and then entering the church, forsaking the altar, to have sung his high mass in English upon a tomb of the dead towards the north.” Now on one occasion Sir Stephen preached at Paul’s Cross, and he told the people that by naming the church St. Andrew Undershaft they made an idol of a May-pole. “I heard his sermon,” says Stow, “and I saw the effect that followed, for in the afternoon of that present Sunday, the neighbours and tenants to the said bridge over whose doors the said shaft then leaned, after they had well dined, to make themselves strong, gathered more help and with great labour rending the shaft from the hooks, whereon it had rested two and thirty years, they sawed it in pieces, every man taking for his share so much as had lain over his door and stall, the length of his house: and they of the alley divided among them so much as had lain over their alley gate. Thus was this idol, as he, poor man, termed it, mangled and after burned.”

Many great and memorable events took place in the Hall, apart from the grand functions of State, or beside them. For instance, here began the massacre of the Jews at the coronation of Richard I. Here, in the same reign, the Archbishop and the Lords sat to pronounce sentence upon William Longbeard, who came with thousands of followers, so that they dared not pronounce sentence upon him. Here they brought the prisoners of Lincoln, a hundred and two Jews charged with crucifying a child, Hugh of Lincoln. That must have been a strange sight, this company of aliens who could never blend with the people among whom they lived: different in face, different in ideas, different in religion. They are dragged into the Hall, roped together: the prospect of death is before them; they are accused of a crime which they would not dare to commit, even at the very worst time of oppression; even when the wrongs and injustices and hatred of the people had driven them well-nigh mad. At the end of the Hall sit their judges; the men-at-arms are at their side to let none escape; the Hall is filled with people eager for their blood. The witnesses are called: they have heard this said and that said; it is all hearsay—there is nothing but hearsay; and at the close eighteen of them are sentenced to be hanged, and the rest are driven back to prison, lucky if, after many years, they live to receive the King’s release.

Stalls and shops for books, ribbons, and other things were set up along the sides of the Hall; and it was always a great place for lawyers. Lydgate says, speaking of the Hall:

Within this Hall, neither riche nor yet poore,
Wolde do for aught, althogh I sholde dye:
Which seeing I gat me out of the doore,
Where Flemynge on me began for to cry,
Master, what will you require or by?
Fyne felt hatts or spectacles to rede,
Lay down your sylver and here you may spede.

And so enough of Westminster Hall and the History of England.

CHAPTER III.
THE ABBEY—I.

ARMS OF THE ABBEY OF WESTMINSTER.

Weddings, Funerals, the monuments, and the architecture. Are they not written in the book of the Dean? Some of us, when we read of these great Functions, fall into the reflection that in that time, as in this, the place of the scholar, the poet, or the storyteller would have been outside among the crowd; the man of letters would have been distinguished beyond expectation had he been invited to stand somewhere far back in the nave—if he had secured a point of vantage near the North Porch, or anywhere in the Abbey Precinct where he could stand and see the Procession sweep past, the Procession of Heralds, Trumpets, Knights and Barons, and rich Lords, Bishops, and Mitered Abbots, Pursuivants and more Trumpets, splendid banners and canopies and shields borne by Nobles, Esquires, and the King’s Valets: lastly, their Highnesses the King and the Queen themselves. If he should happily stand near the Porch, he would hear the rolling of the organ and the voices of those who sing. When the soldiers rushed out of the church at William’s crowning to hack and cut down the people in suspicion of a tumult, the poet was among them and was glad to escape with a broken head; when King Richard’s men-at-arms slew the Jews, the poet who was then outside among them thought himself happy that he was not mistaken for one of those unfortunates; the poet was standing outside the Abbey Church—in a very good place too—when, with Pageant, songs, and flowers, the whole world turned out to welcome Good Queen Bess. At every Coronation before and since that festival he has formed part of the outside throng. When the Rejoicing and the Thanksgiving for the happy closing of Fifty Years were solemnly celebrated, seven years ago, the poets and the men of letters occupied their old, old place: it was the curb. All that was really noble and great and worthy of honor in the nation was invited within the walls. For literature was left, according to immemorial custom, the usual struggle for a place upon the curb. The proper place for the man of letters in this country has always been, and is still, the curb.

Here let us stand, then, happy at least in hearing the discourse of the people. When the Procession has been reformed and has swept past us again, we will betake ourselves to coffee-house or tavern, there to talk about it, while the great folk—the Quality—sit down to their banquet in Westminster Hall. If we take from Westminster Abbey its Kings and Princes, its Abbots, its Coronations, its Funerals, what remains? Exactly that which remains when you have taken out of history the Kings, Barons, and great Lords. There remain the people—in this case the monks, with the servants of the Abbey. If we consider the daily life of one monk, we shall understand pretty well the daily life of all; and we shall presently realize that our old friend Barnaby Googe is not an authority to be altogether trusted; that the monks of Thorney were not all gross sensualists, wallowing in their animalism; and that on the other hand most of them were not, and in the nature of things could not be, followers of the austere and saintly life, great scholars, or great divines. The unremembered life of Hugh de

PLAN OF THE BENEDICTINE ABBEY OF WESTMINSTER.

(By kind permission of Professor Henry Middleton.)

Steyninge, in Religion Brother Ambrosius, sometime monk in this Benedictine House, may be chosen to illustrate the Rule, as it was practiced in the fifteenth century, just before the Dissolution.

Hugh de Steyninge was the younger son of a knightly house; the family originally, as the name shows, held lands in Steyninge, east of Chichester; at the time of his father’s death—he was killed fighting for the Red Rose at Tewkesbury—there was still a small estate in Sussex, to which the eldest son succeeded; the second son was sent to London, where he was articled to Sir Ralph Jocelyne, Draper, Lord Mayor in the year 1476. (This son afterward rose to be Sheriff, and would have been Mayor, but that he died of the sweating sickness.) A third son went abroad and entered the service of the Duke of Tuscany. What became of him is not known. Hugh, the youngest, for whom there seemed nothing but the poor lot of becoming bailiff or steward to his brother, was so fortunate as to receive admission to the most wealthy Monastery in the kingdom. He was thus assured of an easy life, with the chance of rising, should he show ability, to a position of very considerable dignity and authority.

It was now extremely difficult to enter one of the richer Abbeys; a lad of humble origin had no chance of admission. Sometimes Founders’ or Benefactors’ kin possessed the right of nomination; sometimes admission was bought by money or the gift of land; sometimes it was obtained by the private interest of some great man.

At this time, however,—about the year 1472,—the monastic life, owing to many causes, had lost some of its attractions. First, there was going on a long and

HABIT OF A NOVICE OF THE ORDER OF ST. BENEDICT.

exhausting civil war, in which many noble houses were doomed to destruction, and the flower of English youth had to perish. Men had become too valuable to be shut up in a cloister. Again, the spread of Lollard opinions made all classes of people question the advantages of the monastic life. Thirdly, the wars had greatly damaged the value of the monastic property, so that an Abbey no longer supported so many monks as formerly. Thus the number of monks decreased steadily. At Westminster there had been eighty; before the Dissolution this number sank below thirty; at Canterbury a hundred and fifty became fifty-four; at Gloucester a hundred went down to thirty-six. Probably those who remained had no desire to return to the former and longer roll, which would involve a diminution in the splendor of their establishment. We must remember that the external splendor of the Abbey, which does not necessarily involve luxury and gluttony, was a thing always greatly regarded by the Brethren: it magnified the Order; it glorified the religious life. Even the most ascetic desired a splendid service, rich robes, vessels of gold and silver, gorgeous tapers, a fine organ, a well-trained choir of glorious voices, troops of servants, and stately buildings. So that this remarkable diminution of numbers may have been due, in some measure, to the increase of this kind of luxury.

However, there is no doubt that when little Hugh de Steyninge was admitted to the Abbey of St. Peter the House was at its highest point of splendor. It was the richest of all the English Houses; its manors had partly recovered from the losses caused by the civil wars; the Abbot was greater than any bishop; he lived in a palace; he entertained kings. The Brethren were surrounded by lay brothers and servants; the early austerities of the Rule had long been relaxed; the buildings of the Abbey, Church, Cloisters, Chapter House were more stately than those of any other House; the situation, close to the Palace and within easy reach of the Port and Markets of London, was most desirable. Nobody asked the boy if he would like to be a monk; nobody in those days ever consulted boys on such subjects; the child was told that he would be a monk, and he obeyed.

They offered little Hugh in the Church as a Novice. First they cut his long curls round, offering the hair to the Abbey, an act which symbolized something, but I know not what—only a Brother learned in the Rule could interpret all the symbols in the ritual; he was then, carrying in his hand the host and chalice, presented to the priest at the altar. The parents, or their representative, then wrapped the boy’s hands in the pall of the altar, and read a written promise that they would not induce him to leave the Monastery or the Order. After this the Abbot consecrated a hood for the boy and laid it upon him. He was then taken out, shaved after the fashion of the Order, robed and brought back, when he was received with prayers. This done, he was a Novice, and was supposed to belong to the House for life, provided he entered upon full vows in due course.

It took many years to make a perfect monk. The rules under which Hugh was now brought up were more voluminous than those of the Talmudic Law. Long hours of silence, sitting with eyes downcast, never being left alone, allowed to play only once a day; the performance of every action, even to the lifting of a cup to the lips, to be done according to the Rule; the separation of the boys from each other,—all these minute regulations, all these vexatious and petty precautions, learned after frequent floggings, and fully observed only after the habit of long years, gradually transformed the boy from possible manhood to certain monkhood. Gradually the old free look vanished; he

ENTRANCE TO CHAPTER HOUSE.

WALL OF THE REFECTORY, FROM ASHBURNHAM HOUSE.

became silent, timid, obedient. The House was all his world; the things of the House were the only things of importance in the whole world. He was not cruelly treated; on the contrary, he was most kindly treated—well fed, well clothed, well cared for. He quickly understood, as children do, that these things, so irksome at first, were necessary; that all the elders, even the Abbot and the Prior, had gone through the same discipline. All the time the boy’s education in other things besides the Rule was going on. He was taught a great deal—grammar, for instance, logic, Latin, philosophy, writing and illuminating, music, singing, the history of the Order. The Benedictines always rejoiced in a liberal education. The schoolhouse was the west cloister. Here, the arches being glazed, desks were placed one behind the other, and the boys sat in this single file, with their books before them. There were rules of silence, rules of talking French only, rules how to sit, how to carry the hands, rules here and rules there, regulations everywhere. If they had all been enforced, imbecility must have followed. As Hugh did not become imbecile, the regulations were certainly interpreted in a kindly spirit. The Brethren, for instance, except the teachers, were not allowed to converse with the boys; but we may be very certain that they did converse with them, and that they were kind to them, because St. Benedict could never wish to drive out of human nature that best part of it which prompts man to be tender toward the young. What happened to Hugh was that he acquired, little by little, the habit of living according to Rule, that by continual iteration he gradually learned the whole of the Litanies and Psalms, and that he obtained, before he became a full monk, some knowledge of the various branches of learning in which he had been grounded at his desk in the west cloister.

I pass over the ceremony of Profession. To give it in detail would take up too much space; to quote extracts might convey a false impression. Let it suffice that nothing was wanting to make the ceremony the most solemn occasion possible. It is true that children were brought to the Abbey quite young and without regard to vocation, but might not the practice be defended on the grounds (1) that nothing, from the mediæval point of view, could be better for a man than the Benedictine Rule, so that everyone, even though he might yearn for the outer world, ought to be grateful for this seclusion; and (2) that by the long years of preparation and education, the calling to Religion, which ought to be in every mind, was cultivated and developed? And really, when we consider how many of our own clergy are in the same way set apart from youth, without question as to their vocation, we need not throw stones at the mediæval Benedictines.

THE ABBOT’S DINING HALL AT WESTMINSTER; NOW USED AS THE DINING ROOM OF THE SCHOOL.