Part 12

But the Abbey was a national institution, too firmly builded on the rocks to be more than shaken by the passing storms. It had weathered the earthquake of the Reformation, it had survived the tempests of the Revolution. With the Restoration came the calm, and quietly the old life was resumed. I have but little more to tell you of the inner story of the Abbey, nor from this time forward do kings and queens play any very important part in its story. It is the tombs and monuments which now begin, more closely even than before, to cement the tie between Westminster and the pages of English history. So I will only tell you in a few words how Dean Sprat busied himself with the restoration of the great buildings, the architect being Sir Christopher Wren, who, as you know, designed St. Paul's Cathedral, and rebuilt so many of the old London churches which the Great Fire had destroyed, and how Dean Atterbury carried on the work, including the rebuilding of the great dormitory, until his devotion to the Stuart cause and his opposition to George I. caused him to be sent first to the Tower, and afterwards as an exile to France. Atterbury loved well his Abbey, and his last request was that he might walk through it once more, especially to see the glass which was his own gift to it, and which still exists in the beautiful rose window over the north door. But the sad thing about these so-called restorations is that so much of the matchless old work was destroyed, and nobody seemed in the least concerned at this. That was an age when the glories of medieval architecture appear to have lost all their charm in men's eyes, when the love of beautiful things was at its lowest ebb. The Westminster boys played their games in the chapels, and were allowed to skip from tomb to tomb in the Confessor's shrine; hideous monuments were erected and crowded together, nothing old was reverenced, and we can only be thankful that more was not destroyed or hopelessly ruined. And yet, in spite of this apparent indifference, here and there were men who found themselves stirred when they came within those walls as they were stirred nowhere else, so that many a writer, including Addison, Steele, and Goldsmith, and earlier still, John Milton, has paid homage, even in those unimaginative days, to that fair place, "so far exceeding human excellence that a man would think it was knit together by the fingers of angels."

One more dean I must tell you of, and that is Dean Stanley, who, with his wife, lies in the south aisle of Henry VII.'s Chapel. For it was when he was appointed to Westminster in 1864 that once again the Abbey became something more than a great memory of former days. First of all he unfolded the storied past, clearing up many a mystery, setting right many an error, and then, impelled by a deep reverence for all its great associations, he consistently carried on its history. In every trace of his work we find this same wise spirit of sympathy and understanding. To him the Abbey was our greatest national treasure; his ideal was, not only so to keep it, but to make it a living influence among all English-speaking people. And thanks in no small degree to him, Westminster Abbey is to-day a very magnet in the heart of the empire, to which high and low rich and poor, learned and ignorant are drawn from far and near, to drink in, as they are able, its memories and its beauties, to do homage to those great souls whom it honours there to read as from a book stories of Englishmen who whether as kings or statesmen, abbots or deans, nobles or commoners, poets or patriots, added at least some stones to that other building, not fashioned by hands alone, which grew up side by side with Edward's church, and thus became the builders of our nation.

But we have gone forward, quickly, and I must take you back for a moment to Henry VII.'s Chapel, where still after the Restoration some royal funerals took place. With the outburst of loyal feeling, it was felt by many that Charles I., who had been buried at Windsor, ought to be brought here, and Christopher Wren was commanded to prepare a costly monument. But nothing further was done in the matter. Charles II. was buried at midnight most unceremoniously, close to the monument of General Monk, and one who was probably present adds, by way of comment, "he was soon forgotten." Ten children of James II. were laid in the spacious vault under Mary Queen of Scots monument, but he himself, having fled from his kingdom, died abroad and was buried in Paris. William and Mary, Queen Anne and her husband, Prince George of Denmark, all lie near Charles II., and the seventeen children of Anne are just behind in what is really the Children's Vault. One of these children, Prince William Henry, another Duke of Gloucester, though he only lived to be eleven, was such a quaint little boy that his tutor wrote a biography of him. He was always very delicate, but though his body was weak his mind was precocious and his spirits were unfailingly high. From the time he was two his craze was for soldiers, and he had a company of ninety boys from Kensington for his bodyguard, whom he drilled and ruled by martial law. These boys he called his horse-guards, and they wore red grenadiers' caps and carried wooden swords and muskets; but, however much they may have pleased the little prince, who lived at Camden House, they were somewhat of a terror to the people of Kensington, as, "presuming on being soldiers, they were very rude and challenged men in the streets, which caused complaints." This tutor of his, Jenkin Lewis, who entered thoroughly into the spirit of the little Duke, gives a delightful account of a visit paid to him by his uncle, the grave William III., who appears to have been very fond of him.

Altogether the Duke must have been a charming little boy, plucky, generous, and remarkably bright. If he fell down and hurt himself, he would say, "A bullet in the war had grazed me," and though, to please the queen, he learnt dancing from an old Frenchman, he confided to his tutor that the only thing he loved in that way was the English march to a drum.

Greatly to his joy the king decided to make him a Knight of the Garter when he was only six years old, and to add to the honour William tied on the Garter himself.

"Now," said the boy proudly, "if I fight any more battles I shall give harder blows than ever."

He was as quick and interested at his lessons as he was at soldiering, and we bear of his making amazing progress under the Bishop of Marlborough in the history of the Bible, geography, constitutional history, and many other subjects, while his tutor had taught him "the terms of fortification and navigation, the different parts of a ship of war, and stories about Caesar, Alexander, Pompey, Hannibal, and Scipio. It was his tutor who put into verse, and persuaded Mr. Church, one of the gentlemen of Westminster Abbey, to set to music, the Duke's words of command to his boys, which ran thus:--

"Hark, hark! the hostile drum alarms, Let ours too beat, and call to arms; Prepare, my boys, to meet the foe, Let every breast with valour glow. Soon conquest shall our arms decide, And Britain's sons in triumph ride. In order charge your daring band, Attentive to your chief's command. Discharge your volleys, fire away; They yield, my lads, we gain the day. March on, pursue to yonder town; No ambush fear, the day's our own. Yet from your hearts let mercy flow, And nobly spare the captive foe!"

When in 1696 a plot formed against William III. was discovered, the Duke determined not to be behind the Houses of Parliament, who offered their loyal addresses to the king, so he drew up a little address of his own in these words, which was signed by himself and all his boys: "We, your Majesty's faithful subjects, will stand by you as long as we have a drop of blood."

On the 24th July 1700 he was eleven and had a birthday party, which of course meant a sham fight among his boys; and when on the next morning he complained of feeling ill, every one naturally thought he was only over-tired or excited. But a bad throat and high fever soon showed that there was serious mischief, and within a week he died. "To the inexpressible grief," wrote the Bishop of Salisbury, "of all good men who were well-wishers to the Protestant religion and lovers of their country."

George II. was the last king to be buried in the Abbey, and he was laid in the same stone coffin as his wife, Queen Caroline. You will find the gravestones in the nave of Henry VII.'s Chapel, and near to it are buried his two daughters, his son Frederick, Prince of Wales, and several grandchildren. Horace Walpole, the son of Robert Walpole, who had for twenty-one years been the Prime Minister of the king, thus describes to us the last royal funeral at Westminster:--

"The procession through a line of foot-guards, every seventh man bearing a torch, the horse-guards lining the outside, their officers with drawn swords and crape sashes, the drums muffled, the fifes, the bells tolling, and the minute guns, all this was very solemn. But the charm was the entrance to the Abbey, where we were received by the Dean and Chapter in rich robes, the choir and almsmen bearing torches, the whole Abbey so illuminated that one saw it to greater advantage than by day. When we came to the Chapel of Henry VII., all solemnity and decorum ceased, no order was observed, people sat or stood where they would or could; the Yeomen of the Guard were crying out for help, oppressed by the immense weight of the coffin. The Bishop read sadly and blundered in the prayers, and the anthem, besides being immeasurably tedious, would have served as well for a wedding.... The Duke of Newcastle fell into a fit of crying the moment we came into the chapel and flung himself back in a stall, the Archbishop towering over him with a smelling-bottle; but in two minutes his curiosity got the better of his hypocrisy, and he ran about the chapel with his glass to spy who was or was not there. Then returned his fear of getting cold, and the Duke of Cumberland, who felt himself weighed down, on turning round found it was the Duke of Newcastle standing upon his train to avoid the chill of the marble."

But though Westminster was no longer to be the church of the royal tombs, there was one ceremony she was still to claim undisputed as her own peculiar right. A Coronation meant the Abbey; no other place was ever dreamt of. Charles II. here commenced his reign with great glory. James II. characteristically grudged spending any money excepting L100,000 for the queen's dress and trinkets. William and Mary were crowned together, for Mary refused to be queen unless her husband became king with her, and it is for this joint-coronation that the second chair of state was made, which stands with the old Coronation Chair in the Confessor's Chapel. The members of the House of Commons were present and "hummed applause at the eloquent ending to Bishop Burnet's sermon, in which he prayed God "to bless the royal pair with long life and love, with obedient subjects, wise counsellors, faithful allies, gallant fleets and armies, and finally with crowns more glorious and lasting than those which glittered on the altar of the Abbey."

Queen Anne, fat, gouty, and childless, found the day a weary one. Unlike her sister Mary, she was crowned queen in her own right, and her husband was the first of the nobles to do her homage.

When George I. was crowned many difficulties had to be overcome, for everything had to be explained to the king, who knew no English, by ministers who stumbled badly over their German. But George II. had learnt the language of his people, and liking great ceremonies as much as his father had disliked them, his coronation day was celebrated in great state. Queen Caroline must have been ablaze with jewels, for besides wearing all her own, she had borrowed what pearls she could from the ladies of quality, and had hired all manner of diamonds from the Jews and jewellers. George IV. spent more money when he was crowned king than any other of his race, but the day was not without a very painful scene, as he refused to prepare any place for his wife, Queen Caroline, and she indignantly tried in vain to insist on her rights and to force her way into the Abbey. She failed, and her failure so broke her spirits that she fell ill, and a few weeks later she died.

William IV. was crowned at a critical moment, for the country was in a state of excitement concerning the Reform Bill, which, if passed, would give a vote to a great number of people who did not possess one, but which was being firmly opposed by the Duke of Wellington and a strong party. To avoid any risks of riots or demonstrations the usual procession was left out, even the usual banquet in the old palace, while everything was as simple and private as possible. But seven years later those old grey walls looked down on a Coronation Day which brought untold blessings to England. On June 28, 1838, Princess Victoria, a slender girl in the first freshness of her youth, was publicly recognised undoubted queen of the realm, and took her solemn oath in the sight of the people to perform and keep the promises demanded of her by the Archbishop. Here in the Sanctuary she was anointed; here the spurs and the sword of state were presented to her, and then laid on the altar; here the orb was placed in her hands and the royal robe about her shoulders; here the ring, the sceptre, the rod were delivered to her; here was the crown of pure gold set on her head, and the Bible, the royal law, placed in her hands; here she ascended the throne, while her nobles did her homage; here, taking off her crown, she received the Holy Communion, and then passed on into the Confessor's Chapel in accordance with the time-honoured usage.

Vastly solemn indeed was the ceremony, calling to mind as it did the long procession of kings and queens who, without exception in that place, almost in those identical words, had accepted the great trust to which they had been called. Some had been faithful; some, through weakness or through wilful wrong-doing, had violated the vow. The strongest men had sometimes wavered, the bravest men had faltered before their task. But Queen Victoria never failed her people. Through weal and woe, through storm and sunshine, through good and evil days, she watched over them and guarded their interests. She ruled over their hearts at home and throughout those vaster dominions beyond the seas, she bound them to her with bonds of loyal devotion, so that when, in the dim light of a winter's day in February 1901, the Abbey was filled with a vast crowd of those who were there to pay their last tribute to her memory, their universal sorrow was no mere formality, but was in harmony with the sense of personal loss which was felt by all who had owned her as their Sovereign Lady.

*PART II*

*AMONG THE MONUMENTS*

*CHAPTER XIII*

*PURITANS AND CAVALIERS IN THE ABBEY*

By a strange irony of fate, the royal chapel of the Tudors was destined to be, at least for awhile, the burying-place of many Parliamentary leaders, and perhaps stranger still it is to realise how Roundhead and Cavalier, disgraced minister and triumphant reformer, came at last to the old Abbey, which opened its arms to receive them, condemning no man, but committing all unto the care of Him who judgeth with righteous judgment. The Duke of Buckingham and Pym, Cromwell and Prince Rupert, Admiral Blake, Clarendon the historian of the great rebellion, Essex and General Monk, all were buried within a few feet of each other, and their names are still engraved on Abbey stones, though some of them sleep there no more.

These men, in their different ways, stood in the forefront of that hard-fought Revolution, and as I want Westminster to be something more to you than a place of names and monuments, I will try to tell you enough of each one for you to be able to fit them into their proper places in the history of those stormy days.

We will begin with Buckingham, who, as young George Villiers, was brought up to be a courtier, and taught only such accomplishments as would fit him for that part. He was an apt pupil, graceful, witty, versatile, full of charm, and from the moment he entered the service of James I. as cupbearer, his upward career began. He leapt from step to step with dazzling rapidity, and the king became a mere puppet in his hands. "I love the Earl of Buckingham more than anything else," he declared. "Whatsoever he desireth must be done." For awhile Buckingham did not seriously interfere with politics; his ambition was satisfied with personal power and court influence, while his own position concerned him much more closely than the affairs of the country. But eventually he was drawn into the vortex, to his own undoing, for his brilliancy was only superficial, his wild schemes collapsed one after the other, while his reckless extravagance, coupled with his disastrous undertakings, staggered the Parliament, which had for a brief moment believed in him. However, Charles, who was now king, implicitly believed in him through all his failures, and supported his exorbitant demands for money to carry on his unpopular and unsuccessful foreign policy. At last the gathering indignation burst.

"The Duke of Buckingham is the cause of all our miseries," was the deliberate statement made in the House of Commons, followed by a long list of charges, and the determination, for the first time, to hold a minister responsible to Parliament for his actions. The king was furious. "None of my servants shall be questioned by you, or it shall be the worse for you," he said scornfully, and he dissolved Parliament. But the trial of Buckingham was taken out of their hands, for shortly afterwards he was stabbed to death by a certain Fenton, a melancholy, malcontented gentleman, who declared that he did so to rid the country of an intolerable tyrant. He was buried quietly in the Abbey, and the king set up to his memory the elaborate but hardly beautiful monument which you see. You must notice, though, the three figures of his children, for one of them, Francis, a very gallant boy, "of rare beauty and comeliness," fell fighting for the king at Kingston, wounded nine times, yet scorning to ask quarter, standing with his back against an oak tree till he dropped.

General Monk, afterwards Duke of Albemarle, fought on the Parliamentary side, and after the defeat of the Royalists in England he was with Cromwell through his victorious campaigns in Scotland and Ireland, remaining behind as commander-in-chief for Scotland. But it was as a sailor rather than as a soldier that he made his greatest reputation, for when the struggle began between England and the Dutch for the command of the seas, the Dutch challenging the English right to it, Monk, and another Parliamentary officer, Blake, were appointed generals at sea, it being thought that their ability to lead, their energy and their good sense, would more than compensate for their lack of technical experience. So it eventually proved, and after some close fighting Monk was able to report that the English held the coast of Holland as if it were besieged. Parliament rewarded Monk with a vote of thanks, a medal and a chain worth L300, and he assured them that he had "no other thought but to defend the nation against all enemies, whether by sea or by land, as might be entrusted to him."

Not altogether approving of the arbitrary way in which Cromwell treated Parliament, he determined to keep clear of politics and to remain a "plain fighting man." But while employed by the Protector he was entirely loyal to him, and at once sent to him a letter he received from Charles II. suggesting negotiations. "An honest, very simple-hearted man," was Cromwell's remark on him.

But with the death of the Protector the whole aspect of things changed. Monk had fully intended to serve Richard Cromwell as he had served his father, only it became palpably evident that the new Protector was not in any way capable of controlling the country or the army, and within a few weeks dissatisfaction and discontent were evident everywhere--the pendulum had swung back, and England cried for a king once more. With Richard Cromwell at the head of affairs, Monk saw that the days of the Commonwealth were numbered. "He forsook himself or I had never faltered in my allegiance," he explained; for Dick Cromwell was as anxious as any one to be rid of his office. Through his brother, Nicholas Monk, a sturdy Royalist, afterwards made Bishop of Hereford, Charles sent a straightforward letter to the general, judging rightly that plain words were more likely to take effect with him. "If you take my interests to heart," wrote the king, "I will leave the way and manner to you and act as you advise."

For awhile Monk hesitated, then he accepted the situation. He met the king at Dover, and served him faithfully in whatever capacity it was desired of him, assisting in the settlement of Scotland, or going to sea with Prince Rupert, or keeping order in London during those years of panic when first the plague, then the Great Fire produced the wildest terror and confusion. He died "like a Roman general and a soldier, his chamber door open as if it had been a tent, his officers around him," and England mourned an honest, duty-loving man, brave on every point excepting where his wife was concerned, and here he frankly admitted to a "terror of her tongue and passions." The king, who had made him Duke of Albemarle, was present at his funeral, and undertook to pay all the expenses, besides erecting a monument to him. But his memory and gratitude were both short-lived, so that it was left to the second Duke to see that his father's name and fame were duly chronicled in the Abbey, that future generations might know him as "an honest man, who served his country."

Admiral Blake, buried in the Cromwell vault, first went to sea to settle Prince Rupert, who with his tiny fleet was a terror to English ships, and so successful was he, that at last Rupert was thankful to reach France in safety with his one remaining vessel. For reward, Parliament gave him a place in the council of state, and he devoted himself to making the navy more efficient, as he felt sure a war at sea with the Dutch was imminent. He desired to make his sailors men of the same stamp as Cromwell's famous Ironsides, but though he was a great disciplinarian he was very popular, and his men fought for him with a will. The war began with a victory for Blake, which, far from disheartening the Dutch, put them on their mettle, and off Dungeness they compelled the English admiral to retreat on Dover, after a fierce struggle. So elated was Van Tromp at this advantage, that as he passed along the Channel he had a broom fastened to the masthead of his ship to show how he meant to sweep the English from the seas. Blake was sorely grieved at his failure, and for a moment gave way to a depression which led him to entreat Parliament that he might be discharged from "an employment much too great for him." Then his old spirit returned, and he asked "for more men to fight again."