Westminster Abbey Part 5

[Ill.u.s.tration: The South Transept and Chapter House from Dean's Yard]

THE SOUTH TRANSEPT AND CHAPTER HOUSE

From Dean's Yard we get the best view of the south transept and the group of buildings which surround it. Thus we see the Chapter House behind the roof of the ancient dormitory, now the Chapter library and the great school, while at the back of the old houses to the left are the leads which cover the cloisters. To the right is the small arch which leads into Little Dean's Yard, and the immediate foreground is filled by the green, where the Westminster boys are allowed to play football between school in winter. The elm trees, themselves of some antiquity, are interesting, for their forerunners were planted by f.e.c.kenham, the last Abbot of Westminster, and gave the name of the Elms to the whole square which is now called Dean's Yard.

From the west door we pa.s.s down the north walk, pausing to observe a modern tablet which recalls the Boer War: it commemorates seven of the Queen's Westminster Volunteers who fell in South Africa, fighting side by side with their civic comrades the C.I.V.'s. Some round holes in the stone bench below are said to be the marks of an old English game, called "nine men's morris," which was popular in mediaeval times; and if this be so, we can only suppose that even the more studious brethren in the library had their lighter {124} moments, or that the novices were allowed to play here. The lover of quaint epitaphs in our party is sure to stop a little further on in order to decipher an almost obliterated rhyming inscription, which tells how faithfully William Lawrence served a Prebendary, and "gained this remembrance at his master's cost." Our feet are treading now upon the graves of Garrick's contemporaries, Spranger Barry, his wife Ann Crawford, and Mrs. Cibber. As we turn into the east walk we see the names of two other lights of the eighteenth-century stage, Betterton and Mrs. Bracegirdle, cut in the pavement; the mural tablet close by to "Jane Lister, deare child," by its very simplicity is sure to attract the child-lover. Before moving on, let us look up at the east cloister door with its delicate thirteenth-century moulding, which is far more beautiful than the later Perpendicular work of Abbot Litlington's time above the west door. Lower down a grand portal with a double doorway, of the same earlier date, leads through a dark vestibule into that incomparable specimen of Early English architecture, the Chapter House. In one of the outer arches are fragments of figures and foliage representing a tree of Jesse, and in the tympanum above we see two decaying but still beautiful {125} stone angels. The centre was once filled by a group of the Virgin with the infant Saviour in her arms, no trace of which now remains. The Chapter House, which was built at the same time as Henry the Third's church, ranks as one of the finest in England, but it has suffered much damage at various periods from the hands of careless guardians and from the well-meaning efforts of successive restorers. It was originally designed for the use of the convent, but ever since the dissolution of the monastery it has been in the possession of the Government, and has never been under the jurisdiction of the Dean and Chapter. Here it was that the monks used to a.s.semble in conclave, under the presidency of the Abbot, about once a week, to discuss their affairs, and summary justice was administered to such of the elder brethren who had broken the rules of the Order. These were flogged near the central pillar, under the eyes of the other monks, who sat round on the stone benches against the wall; the younger offenders were chastised in the cloisters. Quite early in the reign of the first Edward, however, the kings began to use this council chamber of the monastery for their own purposes, and would often hold synods of the clergy within its walls, usually with the purpose of {126} extorting subsidies. About the middle of the fourteenth century the Abbot lent the Chapter House to the Crown for the use of the Commons, who met henceforth in the monastic precincts till they were removed by an edict of Edward VI.'s to the old chapel of St. Stephen's. The wise head of the monastery, Abbot Henley, made a stipulation at the same time that the Government should bear the expense of all future repairs. Whether this compact was faithfully carried out at first we do not know, but after the Dissolution, when the building lapsed finally to the Crown, it fell into a shocking state of ruin, and was used as a kind of lumber-room for State doc.u.ments. In the eighteenth century it was fitted up as a record office, and the architecture ruthlessly maltreated. The original roof, which was in a ruinous condition, was removed altogether; wooden shelves, galleries, and staircases concealed the painted walls; a boarded floor was added half-way up, and rolls of dusty and inflammable parchments increased the constant risk of fire. In 1834 when the houses of Parliament hard by were burnt, watchers were stationed on the roof of the Chapter House, ready to remove the Doomsday Book and other valuable records should the conflagration spread and the safety of {127} this historic building be seriously threatened. So urgent did the danger from fire appear long afterwards to Sir Gilbert Scott, when he was Surveyor of the Abbey fabric, that he prevailed on the Government of 1865 to remove the records, and obtained a grant of money from Parliament for the purpose of restoring the place as far as possible to its original aspect.

Altered as it must have been by this restoration, yet Scott did his work well, and as we look around us we see traces of its ancient splendour, although irreparable damage from neglect and misguided attempts to repair the ravages of former generations has been wrought at various times. The very interesting mural paintings, for instance, which date from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, have been slowly yet surely fading ever since the wooden panelling was removed forty years ago, and well-meant modern experiments, which were intended to preserve the colour, seem only to have added to their destruction. Above the inner door are two graceful stone figures, one of which is said to represent St. John the Baptist; the central medallion of Christ is by Sir Gilbert Scott, but does not compare favourably with the thirteenth-century sculptures. The tracery of the windows was restored after the pattern of {128} the only one which Scott found intact, but the ancient painted gla.s.s had long disappeared, and the present gla.s.s, the work of Messrs.

Clayton and Bell, was inserted at the end of the last century as a memorial to Dean Stanley. Part of one window is still unfinished, waiting until sufficient funds are forthcoming, but the remainder have now been filled up. The east window was given by the generosity of Queen Victoria as a token of her admiration for her old friend, while the cost of the one next to it was defrayed entirely by American subscribers.

Historical scenes closely connected with the Abbey are here represented; above them are figures of those sovereigns and abbots who rank as benefactors to the foundation. We pa.s.sed just now in the vestibule a small medallion portrait with a modern window above it, both of which were put there as a memorial to James Russell Lowell, who was for many years the United States Minister in London, and whose brilliant speech in this very place, when he supported Dean Bradley's appeal for funds to worthily commemorate Dean Stanley, will never be forgotten by those present on that occasion. Railed off in the centre of the floor are remnants of the ancient encaustic tiles, with which the whole was once paved, and {129} round about them are gla.s.s cases containing many interesting doc.u.ments, seals, and other relics, which should be studied at leisure by the antiquarian members of our party. These are already admiring the famous Litlington Missal and the Liber Regalis, an illuminated book containing the order of the Coronation Service, which was prepared for the use of Richard II., and is probably the actual volume which the boy King held in his hands during the long and, to a child, tedious ceremony. There is also a fine ma.n.u.script containing an agreement between Henry VII. and the Bermondsey convent. Others are attracted to the skeletons of rats, mice, and sparrows which were found when cleaning out the old organ pipes. In the vestibule as we go out we see a curious old doorway, which was originally the entrance to the royal treasury, now called the Pyx Chapel. Upon the other side hang strips of the human skin with which it was once entirely covered, like the door which used to divide the chapels of St. Faith and St. Blaise, in the south transept. The latter was taken down long ago, but in Scott's time the frame, which still had some skin adhering to it, was extant, but it was then carried off by the Abbey master-mason and has been since entirely lost sight {130} of. The gruesome relics on the south transept door were traditionally supposed to be the skins of the Danes, but the one here was said to be that of a man flayed alive for robbing the royal treasury in the time of Edward I., which was fixed upon the treasury entrance as a warning to the monks, who were implicated in the crime.

Sir Gilbert Scott, however, believed the skins to have been those of men who were executed for sacrilege. Beneath the Chapter House itself is a crypt, which was also used as a depository for treasure, and formed part of the King's wardrobe in Edward the First's reign. It is still a moot-point as to which strong room was broken into by the robbers, but this need not detain us now. The door leads nowhere at present; but in the Confessor's day, when the chamber was built, and for long afterwards, it admitted at once into the treasury chamber. Behind it now there is only an empty s.p.a.ce beneath the library stairs, within which, late in the eighteenth and early in the nineteenth century, one of the Chapter officials seems to have kept his wine, for the names of different wines and the dates are written upon the stones. Beyond the fourteenth-century staircase, which led up to the monks' dormitory, a wall, probably of the same period, divides this part of {131} the treasury from the rest, and one of the Norman columns has been built into the middle of it. In Scott's day a modern door led to the Chapter library from the vestibule, but he restored the original staircase with the entrance into the east cloister, which is on our left when we emerge. The s.p.a.cious chamber above was originally the dormitory, whence the monks pa.s.sed to and fro into the church over this vestibule by a covered pa.s.sage-way, which crossed the end of St. Faith's Chapel and descended by stone steps, some of which remain, into the chapel of St. Blaise in the south transept.

After having been occasionally used as a library under different Deans, part of this dormitory (the rest is incorporated in the schoolroom) was restored and fitted up by Dean Vincent in the seventeenth century, and is now the Chapter library. In the cloister beyond the library entrance a heavy oak door, clamped with iron bars, leads into the chamber or chapel of the Pyx. Behind this is another equally formidable-looking door, and upon each are three complicated locks, only two of which are used at the present time. There is little doubt that these locks date from the seventeenth century and are not the original ones belonging to the Treasury, of which the Keeper of the Royal {132} Wardrobe and the Abbot had duplicate keys; for we know that when Parliament sent Sir Robert Harley to seize the regalia in 1643, no keys were produced by the Dean, the locks were therefore broken, and new ones were put on by order of the House. The whole question of the Pyx Chapel is one of vast interest, and much of its history is still an insoluble riddle. It is enough to tell our party that the regalia and Crown jewels were kept here for many centuries, and that in later times the pyx, a box containing the standard pieces of gold and silver money, took the place of the ancient treasure.

The pyx is now in the Mint, and quite recently the treasury chamber, which is at present under the control of the Board of Works, has been cleared out after centuries of neglect, and most of the old chests have been temporarily removed. Now that the chapel is empty, it is possible to appreciate the fine proportions of its architecture. This vaulted chamber and a few other substructures beyond it, including the dark cloister, belong to the Norman monastery, and were built during and after the Confessor's time. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries most of the old monastic buildings were gradually pulled down to make way for more airy and convenient {133} new structures, but these remained untouched when the rest were destroyed. The Pyx Chamber appears to have been a chapel at one time, there are traces of an altar and a thirteenth-century holy-water basin at the east end, as there are also in the Chapter-House crypt, but both were used as royal treasuries, and the regalia was kept in the former until the Commonwealth. After the Restoration the new regalia was deposited in the Tower, and ever since it has been brought to the Abbey the night before the coronation. The Romanesque round arches and plain short pillars with fluted mouldings date from the eleventh century, while on the floor are ancient tiles of various periods, some of which have been identified as Roman. Two large and solid chests on which are written the names of different countries, such, for instance, as Scotland, Burgundy, and Navarre, seem to have held treaties and possibly tribute money. We cannot visit either the Library or the Pyx Chapel to-day, nor the small vaulted chamber which leads into the school gymnasium, but we must spare a few moments to see the only portion of the original Norman cloister which is still standing, a dark round arch, beneath which we pa.s.s into a modernised court called the Little Cloister. The {134} monks' infirmary, an Early English building, was formerly here, and a few arches of the infirmary chapel, which was dedicated to St. Catherine, are still to be seen behind one of the Canon's houses; a small locked door in the other corner leads into the "College Garden," where the sick brethren used to take the air. We stop to notice a tablet against the wall, near the choir boys' practice-room, which is a favourite with all our parties, on account of the quaint conceit about the man who, "through the spotted veil of the smallpox, rendered a pure and unspotted soul to G.o.d." Returning by the dark arch we look into Little Dean's Yard, around which are the school buildings, but Westminster School is too vast a subject to be tackled at the end of a long morning, so we merely point out the gateway leading to the great schoolroom, where are carved the names of many a distinguished old Westminster, and advise our friends to visit Ashburnham House and see Inigo Jones's famous staircase on another occasion. The south walk is the direct way to Dean's Yard. The wall all along the side most probably formed part of the Norman cloister, and was utilised by Litlington for the new one; behind it was the great refectory, to which we have referred before. So closely connected in {135} style is the late Decorated and early Perpendicular that it is impossible to define the exact date of this part of the monastery, but, roughly speaking, we may attribute the rest of the buildings which we are now about to visit to the energy of Abbot Litlington, although some were finished after his death. The tombs of the early Abbots against this wall were probably originally inside the Norman church; in any case they have certainly been brought here from elsewhere. The names we see now were cut in the eighteenth century, and are so strangely transposed that scarcely one tomb is correctly inscribed. A large blue stone called Long Meg was long believed to cover the remains of twenty-eight monks stricken by the plague, but like many another Abbey legend this is scarcely credible when we recall the busy monastic life which went on in these cloisters, and the fact that the cemetery was outside the Lady Chapel. Our goal at present is the famous Jerusalem Chamber, where the Abbots used to entertain their guests. To reach this we pa.s.s beneath another archway after leaving the cloisters, and enter a picturesque courtyard; on one side is the College Hall, which was formerly the Abbot's dining-room, and was used for the same purpose by the earlier Deans; on {136} the other three sides of the court are the Abbot's lodgings, now the Deanery. The Hall was built by Litlington at the same time as the Chamber, and although it was remodelled in the Elizabethan period, when the roof was restored and the minstrels' gallery added, much of the fourteenth-century work remains. The Abbot's initials, N. L., with his arms are seen on pieces of painted gla.s.s and on the bosses of the roof, while the primitive fireplace in the centre of the floor, with a hole above for the smoke to escape, was in use until the middle of last century. On the dais, raised two steps above the rest of the Hall, the Abbot, and afterwards his successor the Dean, had his place of honour; the ancient oak tables are supposed to have been made out of the wrecks of the Spanish Armada, and undoubtedly date from Elizabeth's reign, when the newly founded Queen's scholars used to dine with the Dean and Prebendaries. A small door in the corner admits us, by a pa.s.sage-way, into the Jerusalem Chamber, but here we look round in vain for traces of our friend Litlington, for the room has been so modernised and restored that practically only the cedar wood and the architectural details belong to his time. More fragments of ancient gla.s.s, dating from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, {137} remind us that once not only these but the church windows were filled with painted gla.s.s, most of which was destroyed by the early Protestants, and all that was left was broken by the Puritans. The tapestry was brought here from the choir and from the great school in 1821, when the Chamber was restored. The tiles and fireplace were added in Queen Victoria's reign, while the overmantel was put up by Dean Williams, to commemorate the marriage of Charles I. to Henrietta Maria--on either side are grotesque heads of the bride and bridegroom; Williams entertained the French Amba.s.sador at a banquet in this room while the negotiations were proceeding. Dean Stanley placed the busts of Henry IV. and Henry V. against the wall, and thus all who visit this historic chamber are reminded that a king died on the spot before the hearth where we now stand. Shakespeare has made the scene of Henry the Fourth's death very familiar, and we remember the King's words when he recovered consciousness after his swoon. Henry was taken ill when praying at St. Edward's shrine, before starting for the Holy Land; the dying man asked the name of the room into which he was carried from the church, and receiving the reply "Hierusalem," he broke out into thanksgiving:--

{138}

Laud be to G.o.d! even there my life must end.

It hath been prophesied to me many years I should not die but in Jerusalem; Which vainly I suppos'd the Holy Land.

But bear me to that chamber; there I'll lie; In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Abbot's Courtyard and the Entrance to the Jerusalem Chamber]

THE ABBOT'S COURTYARD AND THE ENTRANCE TO THE JERUSALEM CHAMBER

This little paved yard has borne its present name ever since the days of the Westminster abbots, for the buildings all round belonged to the Abbot's lodgings. Here, for instance, is the fine hall where the Abbot used to dine, and where the Westminster scholars still have their meals.

We cannot see this in the picture, but immediately facing us is the entrance to the Jerusalem Chamber and Jericho parlour, the Abbot's guest-rooms. The old bedrooms above also formed part of the Abbot's house, and are now used by the Dean. The whole of this, including the Jericho parlour, the windows of which we can see below, was probably built, in the reign of King Henry VII., by Abbot Islip. The Jerusalem Chamber dates from an earlier period, the fourteenth century.

Many and diverse are the purposes for which the Abbot's withdrawing-room has been utilised since the dissolution of the monastery. More than one coffin has rested here before the interment; the most notable was that of Sir Isaac Newton, when the Chamber was thronged with distinguished men from all parts of Europe. The least reputable was the famous occasion when the painted, bedizened body of a notorious actress, whose charms were extolled by Horace Walpole and sneered at by Alexander Pope, was brought into these monastic precincts, and afterwards buried inside the church itself. Wedding as well as funeral parties a.s.semble in this room from time to time, and the Chamber is occasionally lent by the Dean for special meetings. Thus the revisers of the Old Testament carried out their onerous task, the work of several years, seated round this table.

Long before, in the seventeenth century, a very different body of men had met here, when the Westminster a.s.sembly, driven from Henry VII.'s Chapel by {139} the freezing cold, moved into the warmer atmosphere of the Dean's house, and held many a stormy debate in this peaceful old-world place.

From Jerusalem we pa.s.s into the Jericho parlour; this room, and the bedrooms above it, were built in the sixteenth century, probably by Abbot Islip, who was like Litlington a great builder; the fine linen scroll panelling round the walls dates from an earlier period, and in the window hang more remains of ancient gla.s.s. A door leads from the Deanery into the lobby outside, and at the end of a dark pa.s.sage is the Dean's private entrance to the Abbey, which opens into the nave beneath the "Abbot's Pew." We have referred once or twice to the Commonwealth era, when Presbyterian ministers preached in the church, and the Deanery was leased for a while to the Lord President of the Council, John Bradshaw. We seem even now, after the lapse of over two hundred years, to see the striking figure of the regicide, his stern features concealed by his favourite broad-brimmed hat, stride across the darkness to the little door in the wall, whence he ascended to the secluded study in the triforium, where he loved to meditate amongst his books. But enough of these fascinating memories. Our own pilgrimage is drawing to {140} a close; we retrace our steps through the Abbot's courtyard and emerge from the twilight of the cloisters into the suns.h.i.+ne of Dean's Yard, turning for a moment before we part to look up at the window of the "long room," which, with his private chapel behind it, was built by our friend Litlington. On each side of the gateway below it are the heads of the Abbot himself and of his sovereign, Richard II. Part of the ancient refectory wall is concealed behind bookcases in the Abbot's long room, and there are other remains of monastic times in the Deanery, which is a rambling old house, added to by successive Deans, with many a picturesque corner and secret chamber. Let us take leave of one another standing under the old elm-trees, some of which were planted in Elizabeth's reign by f.e.c.kenham, the last Abbot, and here complete our morning's walk round the church and precincts of St. Peter's, Westminster.