Part 8

In the third year of his reign Henry had made his will, in which he had set down careful instructions as to his own burying, which was to be at Westminster, among the kings; and as by now there was but little room left in the Confessor's Chapel, he directed that at its eastern end, where the relics were kept, a high place should be made, ascended on each side by steps, and that there should be raised an altar, while underneath it his body should be laid. To this altar he bequeathed plate, vestments, and a sum of money for the Abbey, in token of which three monks of the Abbey were daily to say three masses there for his soul.

He had been a great benefactor to the Abbey, for besides having completed the nave, he had paid to it a thousand marks yearly, restored to it a ring valued at a thousand marks, and given such valuable presents as a Psalter and other fine books; so the monks were anxious to do him all honour, while the people of London were determined to worthily show their sorrow and their love.

The great funeral procession set out from France, and by slow stages reached London. The coffin had been set on an open chariot, and behind it was carved an image of the king made of leather and painted to look lifelike, clothed in purple with ermine, holding a sceptre, crowned and sandalled. The queen and King James of Scotland followed as chief mourners; a thousand men in white bore torches; throughout the day chants, hymns, and sacred offices were sung by the priests, and wherever his body rested for awhile in a church, masses were said.

From Paris to Calais, Calais to Dover, Dover to Canterbury, and Canterbury to London, this solemn journey of many weeks was made, while once on English soil the procession was greatly lengthened. The streets of London were draped in black; each householder stood at his door with a lighted torch; before the royal coffin rode the king's favourite knight and standard-bearer, Sir Louis Robsart, and many lords bore the banners of saints. Men at arms, in deep black and on black horses, formed the guard of honour; behind came his three chargers, then followed the royal mourners, and once more came a touch of relief from the rich vestments of the bishops and abbots, and the white robes of the priests and singers.

"So with great solemnity and honour was that excellent prince brought unto the monastery of Westminster, and there at the feet of St. Edward reverently interred, on whose soul, sweet Jesus, be merciful."

The little king of England was not yet a year old, but directly after the funeral Parliament met, and Queen Katherine rode through the city of London in a chariot drawn by white horses, surrounded by the nobles of the land. She held her baby in her arms, and in the words of one who watched, "Those pretty hands which could not yet feed himself, were made capable of wielding a sceptre, and he who beholden to his nurses for food, did distribute law and justice to the nation." By his Chancellor the infant king saluted, and to his people spoke his mind, by means of another tongue. Alice Boteler and Joan Ashley were appointed by this year-old child to be his governess and nurse, "from time to time reasonably to chastise us as the case may require, to teach us courtesy and good manners, and many things convenient for our royal persons to learn."

The building of the chantry over the grave of Henry V. was not long delayed, and all his instructions were carefully carried out. You will see it is a little chapel of itself at the east end of the Confessor's Chapel, standing so high, that at first the people from the farther end of the Abbey could see the priests celebrating mass at its altar.

But before long the stone screen put up about this time, to the further honour of St. Edward, cut it off from view. How exquisite must that screen have been, with its lacework tracery, its niches full of saints, its brilliancy of gold, of crimson, and of blue! You must look carefully at the carvings, which tell the story of Edward's life, fact and legend blended together. Here I will tell you shortly what each scene is meant to represent, beginning from your left as you face the screen.

The first two describe the birth of Edward; the third, his coronation; the fourth, his dream of the devil dancing for joy over the piles of money collected by the much-hated tax called Danegeld, a dream which so alarmed the king that he did away with the tax. The fifth shows how Edward had mercy on a thief who tried to steal his gold, for the king said, "Let him keep it; he hath more need of it than us." The sixth tells how Christ appeared to the king at the Holy Sacrament; the seventh and eighth describe the crowning of the king of Denmark and a quarrel between Harold and Tostig. The ninth and tenth go back to legend, the vision of the Seven Sleepers and the appearance of St. John as a pilgrim; while the twelfth and thirteenth describe St. John giving back the ring to the pilgrim, and the pilgrim's bearing it to King Edward. The eleventh shows the king washing his hands on the right, and on the left are three blind men, waiting for their sight to be restored to them when they wash their eyes in the water Edward had used; and the two last tell of the king's death and the dedication of the Abbey.

The chantry of King Henry was less ornate than this screen, but it was nevertheless very beautiful. You must look at the pattern of the open work on the iron grating which is round the tomb gates, and pick out the fleur-de-lis, the emblem of France, claimed by Henry as his inheritance. The figure of the king was the special gift of his widow, and was carved of the best English oak, with a head of silver, and its value made it too great a temptation to some "covetous pilferers about the latter end of Henry VIII., who broke it off and conveyed it clean awaie."

Over the chantry you will see a helmet, shield, and saddle; and though the helmet is certainly not the one which Henry kept hidden from all people at the Agincourt festival, it is certainly as old as the funeral day, and was probably made for that occasion.

In the year 1878, Katherine of Valois, who had first been buried in Henry III.'s chapel, then left for more than two hundred years in a rudely made coffin, open to the public gaze, by her husband's tomb, and afterwards laid in a side chapel, was at last buried under the altar slab in the Chantry Chapel of Henry V., and here within the calm shelter of Edward's shrine were carried the remains of two other queens, Eadgytha, the wife of Harold, and good Queen Maude, the wife of Henry I. Here, too, rest two tiny royal children, Margaret of York, the baby daughter of Edward IV., and her niece, Elizabeth Tudor, the three-year-old child of Henry VII. and Elizabeth. Their little marble tombs are plain and bear now no name. One other royal prince is buried here, Thomas of Woodstock, the uncle and for some time the adviser of Richard II., who certainly suffered heavily for any advice he gave, good or otherwise, for he was smothered to death at Calais with Richard's consent. And one man not of royal birth lies here--John of Waltham, Bishop of Salisbury, for whom this same Richard II. had so great a liking, that, defying every one, he ordered him to be laid among kings, close to the tomb of the Confessor.

I wonder if by now you know thoroughly that chapel which holds our earliest and some of our greatest kings and queens? Does that stately tomb in the centre call to your mind Edward, the dreamer and the builder, the dramatic ending of his life, the splendid ceremony of his burial within these walls, when he was honoured not alone as king of England or founder of the Abbey, but as a saint of the Church? Does the tomb of Henry III., with its remains of soft coloured marble and gilt mosaics, tell you of Westminster's second great builder, a lover of beauty and religious observances, but withal weak and extravagant, and incapable of rising to his great responsibilities? Does the rugged, undecorated monument of Edward I. show you the man, strong, stern, and steadfast, or the tomb of his beloved Eleanor speak to you of his wonderful love for her and of her sweet goodness? And when you look at the resting-place of Edward III. and Philippa, does it not call up to your mind the days of chivalry and the feats of English soldiers, the victories of Poitiers and Crecy, the siege of Calais and the compassionate pleading of the kindly queen? You stand by the tomb of Richard and Anne, united at last, and do not you think, "Oh, the pity of it," when you remember how Richard might have been strong and brave, had only he kept true to his best self? And then, do you not turn with a thrill of pride to the lofty chantry which encircles the grave of Henry V., the best loved king England ever had, the king who set a glow of patriotism alight in his realm, who rose above his failings and his faults, and gave to his people the fine example of a man who was victor over himself as well as victor over his foreign foes? Worthily I think does Henry's chantry crown the Confessor's shrine.

If some of these thoughts have come to you, this chapel will have taught you more history than any number of books or any number of dates. Because history only grows real to all of us, when the men and women about whom we read and learn cease to be mere figures and become our familiar acquaintances, till we fit them in as it were to their proper places in the story of England--places which are not always bounded by the years of a reign, which often cannot be bounded even by centuries.

*CHAPTER IX*

*THE WARS OF THE ROSES AND THE THIRD ROYAL BUILDER*

Little Henry VI. was not crowned till he was nine years old, and one old writer says that "so small was he, he could not wear the crown, and a bracelet of his mother's was placed on his head." He was a dreamy, gentle boy, and, far from being excited or happy on his coronation day, we hear how "very sadly and gravely he beheld all the people round about him, at the sight of which he showed great humility." His mother, Katherine, had married a Welshman named Owen Tudor, much to the anger of those about the court and the nobles, who considered that by so doing she had demeaned herself, and after this she was allowed to see very little of her son, who was therefore left entirely to his uncles, the Duke of Bedford and the Duke of Gloucester. Like Edward the Confessor, Henry was fit for a cloister but not for a crown, and he was called to reign in troublous times, when strength of will and purpose were more needed in a king than saintliness or simplicity of life. His uncles, who realised his weakness, arranged that he should marry Margaret of Anjou, a woman who was brave, ambitious, and masterful; but the fact that she soon got Henry completely under her control only brought about in the end his destruction and hers. In France the English lose all that they had won, for a deliverer of France had arisen in the girl Joan of Arc, who gave fresh courage and hope to her fellow-countrymen and led them on to victory as though she had been a saint sent by God. Then back to England came those many thousands of soldiers who had been fighting abroad all these years, and they were not inclined to settle down to a peaceful life; they wanted adventure, excitement, and plunder, and they were ready to flock round any leader who could promise them the chance of a fight. You will remember how, when you looked at Edward III.'s tomb, with the figures of his sons kneeling round, I told you that the descendants of those sons brought civil war upon England; and it was in the reign of Henry VI. that this terrible war broke out. Henry, as you know, was descended from John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and his grandfather, Henry IV., had gained the throne by will of Parliament and by right of conquest, but not by right of inheritance. Now there was living Richard, Duke of York, who was descended from the Duke of Clarence, the elder brother of John of Gaunt, and when, owing to Henry's weakness and the jealousies of the great nobles, two parties gradually began to form themselves, these parties naturally became divided into those who supported the king, that is to say, the House of Lancaster, and those who supported the House of York. At first there was no thought of civil war; these two parties merely opposed each other and schemed one against the other; but before long feeling ran so high that open warfare became inevitable, and each side took as its badge a rose.

So began the Wars of the Roses, and there followed those terrible battles of Northampton, Wakefield, St. Albans, Towton, Barnet, and Tewkesbury, in which thousands of Englishmen were slain (20,000 at Towton alone), the victory resting first on one side and then on the other, though finally with the Yorkists. The Duke of York had been killed early in the campaign, but his place had been filled by his young son, Edward, and at last, after the battle of Tewkesbury, King Henry and Queen Margaret were taken prisoners, their son Edward having been killed in battle or murdered afterwards. Both were taken to the Tower, and one night, between eleven and twelve, King Henry was put to death, the Duke of Gloucester and divers of his men being in the Tower that night. So Edward of York ascended the throne, the fourth king of that name, and the first stage of the War of the Roses was ended.

Henry was not buried at Westminster; in the darkness of the night his body was carried from the Tower, put on to a lighted barge, and, "without singing or saying," conveyed up the dark waters of the Thames to his silent interment at Chertsey Abbey. And yet this gentle, humble king had loved the Abbey well, and had greatly longed to lie near to St. Edward, by his father and his ancestors, having chosen the spot where the relics had been kept, as a "good place."

Edward IV. reigned for twelve years, but he did not reign in peace; and once his wife Elizabeth was in such distress and danger that, with her three little girls, Elizabeth, Mary, and Cicely, and one faithful attendant, Lady Scrope, she fled to Westminster for sanctuary, and threw herself on the mercy of Abbot Mylling. In this gloomy place of refuge her son was born, she being tended by a certain Mother Cobb, who also lived in sanctuary, while the Abbot sent her some few things for her comfort, and a kind butcher named Gould provided "half a beef and two muttons every week."

It was a strange birthplace for an English prince; but his christening, which took place in the Abbey, was not without honour, though the ceremony was carried out as though he were a poor man's son. He was given the honoured name of Edward, the Abbot was his godfather, and the Duchess of Bedford with Lady Scrope stood as his godmothers. When peace was restored, Edward IV. at once came to Westminster to comfort his queen, and he did not forget to reward those who had helped Elizabeth in the hour of her distress. To Nurse Cobb he gave L12 a year; from the butcher he ordered a royal shipful of hides and tallow; while the Abbot, for "his great civility," was made a Privy Councillor, and afterwards Bishop of Hereford.

But though Elizabeth left the Sanctuary, she was once more to return to its kindly shelter. She had always a mistrust of her husband's favourite brother, the Duke of Gloucester, and when King Edward died in 1473, she at once went back to Westminster with her daughters and her second son, the Duke of York. Her eldest boy, Edward, was already in his uncle's power and in the Tower, although the Duke of Gloucester had made him enter London in state, he riding bare-headed before him, and saying to the people loudly, "Behold your prince and sovereign." But the queen was not to be deceived by this. "Woe worth him," she said bitterly; "he goeth about to destroy me and my blood."

This time Elizabeth and her children were given room in the Abbot's palace, probably in the dining-hall, and there the Archbishop of York came to her to deliver up, for the use of her son, the Great Seal, entrusted to him by Edward IV. He found her sitting on the floor, "alone on the rushes, desolate and dismayed, and about her was much rumble, haste, and business with conveyance of her household stuff into sanctuary. Every man was busy to carry, bear, and convey these stuffs, chests, and fardels, and no man was unoccupied." In the distance could be heard the noise of the workmen already beginning the preparations for the coronation of King Edward, which the Duke of Gloucester was apparently pushing forward with all haste. But as the Archbishop looked out of his window on to the Thames, he saw the river covered with boats full of the Duke of Gloucester's servants, keeping a watch over the queen's hiding-place.

Richard of Gloucester's next move was to get possession of the little Duke of York, and as he was now appointed Protector, having altogether deceived the Council as to his real intent, this was no very difficult matter. And the poor queen had only a mother's love and a mother's fears to set against these mighty men and the fair sounding argument "that the little king was melancholy and desired his brother for a playmate."

"I deliver him into your keeping, my lord," she said to the Archbishop of Canterbury, her face white, her voice trembling, "of whom I shall ask him again before God and the world. And I pray you, for the trust which his father reposed in you, that as you think I fear too much, so you be cautious that you fear not too little."

Then she threw her arms round the boy and covered him with kisses.

"Farewell, mine own sweet son," she sobbed; "God send you good keeping. And God knoweth when we shall kiss together again."

Her worst fears were realised. She never saw her boys again, never knew how they were murdered in the Tower, or even where they were buried. And from her dwelling-place within the Sanctuary precincts she could see and hear all the preparations that were being made for the coronation of Richard III., while she "sobbed and wept and pulled her fair hair, as she called by name her two sweet babes, and cried to God to comfort her."

For nearly a year she remained where she was, then Richard, having taken an oath before the Lord Mayor and the Council to protect her and her daughters, she moved out of Sanctuary into some humble lodgings near Westminster, where her one friend seems to have been a doctor named Lewis, who was also a priest, and apparently something of a politician too, for he began to plan with the queen for the marriage of her eldest daughter, Elizabeth, with Harry of Richmond, who, through his mother, Margaret Beaufort, was the hope of the Lancastrian party.

Richard III. was already hated in England, and as the story of the way in which he had caused his little nephews to be murdered became generally known, the hatred increased tenfold. So the Lancastrian party thought the moment had come for them to make another effort. Harry Richmond landed at Milford Haven from France with 3000 men, and soon an eager, willing army flocked to his standard. At Bosworth field he met Richard in battle.

"Let courage supply the want of our numbers," he cried. "And as for me, I propose to live with honour hereafter, or die with honour here."

Evening found him the victor of the day; Richard lay dead on the field, and his crown, which he had worn into battle, was found hanging on a bush. There on the scene of his triumph the crown was set on Henry's head, while the soldiers shouted joyfully, "God save King Henry VII.," and then burst into a solemn _Te Deum_.

In October Henry was formally crowned in the Abbey, and in the Abbey, too, a few months later, he married the Princess Elizabeth, once the helpless, homeless Sanctuary child. So were the Houses of York and Lancaster made one; so were the red roses and white roses grafted together, and the people of London celebrated the happy event with bonfires, dancing, songs, and banquet. Cardinal Bourchier, himself of Plantagenet stock, performed the marriage ceremony, and so, as an old writer prettily puts it, "his hand held the sweet posie wherein the white and red roses were first tied together."

Not till a year later was Elizabeth crowned, and by then a little son had been born to her, named Arthur at his father's wish, in memory of the stainless King Arthur, whom Henry VII. claimed as an ancestor through his Welsh grandfather, Owen Tudor.

It was about this time that a great change came over the people of England in regard to their opinion of Henry VI. They had begun by pitying him for his misfortunes; then they had called to mind his patience and humility, his kind deeds, his love of learning, and his pure life, till at last in their eyes he became nothing short of a saint. Richard III. had caused his body to be removed from Chertsey to Windsor, much to the anger of the priests at Chertsey, who had spread abroad stories of wonderful miracles performed at his tomb, which stories, being readily believed, had drawn many pilgrims to the place. And pilgrims never came empty-handed.

Henry VII. came under the influence of this feeling, and he resolved that honour should now be done to this king, whom men had liked and pitied, but had never honoured in life. He had already decided to build a new chapel to the Virgin Mary in the Abbey, or rather to entirely rebuild the Lady Chapel of Henry III., and here he intended Henry VI. should be reburied under a costly tomb. He went so far as to petition the Pope to add King Henry's name to the list of saints; but the Pope would only agree to do so for an extravagant sum of money, and Henry Tudor thought the money could be more profitably spent in other ways. So the matter was allowed to drop, and although the council which had been summoned to decide where Henry should finally be buried--in Windsor, Chertsey, or Westminster--gave their judgment in favour of Westminster, it is very doubtful if his body was ever moved to the Abbey at all. Certainly no monument was raised to his memory. However, the building of the Lady Chapel went on apace, only its purpose was changed. It was no longer to be the chantry of Henry VI., but the chapel of Henry VII., the burying-place of the Tudor kings and queens of his race.

Henry was a curious mixture of a desire to hoard up money, and a desire to build what he undertook on a very lavish scale. He saved more money than any other English king, and he certainly spent less, for he was simple in all his tastes, a silent, gloomy man. But he has left behind him in Westminster Abbey a piece of work as beautiful as wealth and art could make it, a building "stately and surprising, which brought this church to her highest pitch of glory," and though his original ideas as to its purpose were frustrated, his longings that here "three chantry monks should say prayers for his soul so long as the world endured," being ruthlessly disregarded by his own son, Henry VIII., his chapel still stands, so that with Edward the Confessor and Henry III. he ranks among the three great royal builders of the Abbey.

Before you go into this chapel stand for a minute in King Edward's shrine, with its stately simplicity; then pass under the chantry of Henry V., simple too, but telling of strength, of life, and vigour; walk up the steps of Henry's Chapel into the dark entrance, and then stay still in the doorway to drink in the matchless beauty before your eyes. Here, simplicity is a word unknown; everywhere, inside and out, is a wealth of carving; no spot or corner was deemed too hidden away to be ornamented; roof and walls alike are covered with delicate lacework and rich embroidery made out of stone.