The Children's Story of Westminster Abbey

It is very difficult properly to divide the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, because, of course, history does not cut itself up into lengths of a hundred years. But in telli...

From the Tudors and the great people of their reigns we pass on to the House of Stuart, to the troubles of the great Civil War, and to the Restoration of the Stuarts in 1661.

“_We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town; We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down. Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power...

“_Fair is our lot—O goodly is our heritage! (Humble ye, my people, and be fearful in your mirth!) For the Lord our God Most High He hath made the deep as dry, He hath smote for...

“_Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anointed Solomon king; and all the people rejoiced and said: God save the king, Long live the king, May the king live for ever._”—1 Kin...

“_It is finished! The Kingliest Abbey in all Christian lands, The lordliest, loftiest minster ever built To Holy Peter in our English Isle! Let me be buried there, and all our K...

With the help of the Abbey we have taken a long, and perhaps rather hurried, journey through many centuries of our country’s history, and have tried to think of the many links b...

“_This England never did, nor never shall, Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, But when it first did help to wound itself. Now these her princes are come home again, Come the...

As has already been told, the Confessor died on January 5th, 1066, and was buried the next day, January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany. He was laid in front of the high altar of...

“_Let him that is a true-born gentleman, And stands upon the honour of his birth, If he suppose that I have pleaded truth, From off this briar pluck a white rose with me._”

“_Enflamed with the study of learning, and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all age...

The name of Abbot Edwyn, who was the first Abbot to rule over the Confessor’s newly founded monastery, leads us on to think of some few others among the Abbots who played a part...

Before speaking of the other parts of the Abbey buildings we must not forget the little Islip Chantry, or upper part of Abbot Islip’s beautiful chapel in the North Ambulatory. I...