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Title: Tales from Westminster Abbey - Told to Children by Mrs. Frewen Lord
Author: Lord, Millicent Frewen
Language: English
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ABBEY ***
[Illustration: WEST FRONT OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
_After a Photograph by the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Co.,
Ltd._]
TALES
FROM
WESTMINSTER ABBEY
TOLD TO CHILDREN BY
MRS. FREWEN LORD.
WITH
VIGNETTE PORTRAIT OF DEAN STANLEY, PLAN OF THE ABBEY
AND GENERAL VIEW OF WEST FRONT OF ABBEY.
_SECOND EDITION._
LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & COMPANY
_LIMITED_,
St. Dunstan’s House,
Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, E.C.
1894.
[_All rights reserved._]
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
[Illustration: DEAN STANLEY.
_From a Photograph by the London Stereoscopic Company._]
DEDICATED
to the memory of
DEAN STANLEY,
whose walks and talks with children
in Westminster Abbey
can never be effaced from the
grateful recollection of one who as a child
had the happiness of enjoying them.
TALES
FROM
WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
CHAPTER I.
A great many years ago, when I was quite a small child, I was taken
with some other children over Westminster Abbey by Dean Stanley, who
was then the Dean of Westminster.
Some of you may have read a book called “Tom Brown’s School Days,”
and if so you will remember Tom’s great friend, Arthur, who began his
school life a lonely and home-sick little boy, but who as the years
went on came to be looked up to and liked almost more than any other
boy at Rugby. “George Arthur” this boy is called in the book, but
his real name was Arthur Stanley, and when he grew up he became a
clergyman, and was for many years Dean of Westminster. He wrote a great
many books, and one all about Westminster Abbey; for he knew every
corner and part of this great church, and was full of stories about the
great people who are buried here, and the kings and queens who were
crowned here. There was nothing he liked better than taking people over
the Abbey, and any one who had the happiness of going with him, as I
did, and of hearing him, would always remember some, at any rate, of
the stories he told.
He died in 1881, and as none of you can ever see or hear him, standing
in the Abbey surrounded by children, and telling them all that he
thought would interest them, I am going to take out of my memory, and
out of this book of his,[1] just as much of what he used to say as I
hope will help you to enjoy what you will see there.
When one goes to visit any place for the first time, there is always
a great deal that one wants to have explained; and what I myself most
enjoy is to read or be told beforehand something about what I am going
to see, and then I understand it much better--I do not waste so much
time in asking questions, and have all the more time to look about.
If we go and stand at the great West Door, as it is called, of
Westminster Abbey, and look down Victoria Street, it is difficult to
believe that this very same place was, hundreds of years ago, quite
wild country. Where there are now houses and streets and churches,
there used to be only marshy land and forests. Where there are now
endless streams of carriages, carts, and omnibuses, and people
hurrying along, there were in the far-off time, when the Abbey Church
of Westminster was first begun, only wild oxen or huge red deer with
towering antlers which strayed from the neighbouring hills and roamed
about in this jungle. It used to be called “the terrible place,” so
wild and so lonely was it.
Dotted about in the marsh were many little islands, one of which was
called Thorney Isle, because there were so many wild thorn trees
growing there, and on this spot Westminster Abbey now stands.
For as the forests in this part of London were gradually cut down,
this island looked so pretty and quiet with the water flowing all
round it, and nothing to be seen from it but sunny green meadows,
that King Edward the Confessor chose it as the place to build a great
church, which he called the Church of St. Peter. At that time there
were not many large churches in England, and the Church of St. Peter
was thought to be one of the most splendid that was ever seen. It took
fifteen years to build, but at last it was finished, and on Christmas
Day, 1065, King Edward the Confessor, wearing his crown, as was the
custom in those days on great occasions, came with all his bishops and
nobles to the first great service in the Abbey Church which he himself
had built. He was then a very old man, and a few days after the great
service he was taken ill and died, and was buried in his own church. He
is called the Founder of the Abbey, and you will see, when you go round
it, the shrine of King Edward and of his queen, who was afterwards
buried at his side.
Now, there is only one more thing to be remembered before we begin to
look round inside and decide what are the most interesting things to
see, and that is that this Abbey we are in to-day is _not_ the actual
Church of St. Peter which King Edward the Confessor built. Of that
church there is now left only a little bit of one pillar, which perhaps
a guide will show you, within the altar-rail, in what is called the
“Sacrarium.” I do not mean that the church was pulled down all at once,
and this Abbey built instead, but bit by bit, as years went on, it was
added to and altered. New parts were built on by different kings--for
Westminster Abbey is a church that has been all built by kings and
princes--and as the new parts were added, the old were gradually pulled
down.
Of all the kings who helped to build and beautify the Abbey, Henry III.
was the one who did most, and he spent on it such enormous sums of
money that he is often spoken of as one of the most extravagant kings
England ever had. He made up his mind that the Abbey of Westminster was
to be the most beautiful church in the world, and he used to invite the
best foreign artists and sculptors to come and help to make plans and
paintings and carvings for it. He it was who built the shrine where
Edward the Confessor is now buried, in the part of the choir behind
where the communion table (formerly the high altar) now stands. It was
when he was growing to be an old man that he thought the founder of
the Abbey ought to be treated with special honour and respect, and so
almost the last thing he did in his life was to build this shrine,
which stands in what is called Edward the Confessor’s Chapel.
The king sent all the way to Rome--and in those days the journey was a
very much longer and more difficult one than it is now--for the mosaics
and enamels which are still to be seen on the shrine; the workmen who
made it came from Rome, where the best workmen were then to be found;
and the twisted columns round the shrine were made in imitation of the
columns on some of the tombs in the great churches in Rome.[2]
When it was finished, in 1269, the old king himself, his brother
Richard, and his two sons, Edward and Edmund, carried the coffin of
Edward the Confessor on their shoulders from the place where it had
been buried in 1065 to the new chapel, and there it has rested to this
very day.
Years afterwards a great and magnificent chapel was added by Henry
VII. at the east end of the Abbey, which was called after him. He was
buried there when he died, and so were his grandson, Edward VI., and
Queen Elizabeth, and Mary Queen of Scots, and many others whose tombs
you must look at by-and-by.
It was in the year 1509 that Henry VII. was buried in Westminster
Abbey, just four hundred and forty-four years after the burial of King
Edward the Confessor. But in these four hundred and forty-four years
the Abbey had been so much altered, the old parts so pulled down and
rebuilt, that King Edward, could he have seen it again, would hardly
have believed that this great Abbey, as we see it to-day, had grown up
from his first Church of St. Peter on Thorney Isle.
And now, as I have said enough about the building of the Abbey, we can
go inside and begin to see some of the monuments and tombs of which it
is full.
CHAPTER II.
This chapter on the _geography_ of the Abbey, as I call it, has nothing
to do with the stories which begin in the next chapter, and the only
reason that I have written it at all is this. In the days when I first
heard many of the stories which I am going to tell you now, they were
told to us by Dean Stanley in the Abbey. As we walked about with him
he explained to us what part of the church we were in, and pointed out
the tomb or monument of the man, or woman, or child about whom he was
telling us. But some of you may read this little book before you have
ever been to Westminster Abbey, and others may have been there, but may
not know the names of the different parts of the church, or where any
particular monument or tomb is.
So, instead of trying to explain at the beginning of every story
whereabouts we are supposed to be standing, I am putting all such
explanations in this chapter; and this will, I hope, help you to find
your way about in the Abbey for yourselves. If you only want to hear
the stories, you must miss this chapter and go on to the next one.
Just as we have maps to understand the geography of countries, so we
have maps, which are called _plans_, to understand the geography of
churches and houses, and the drawing you see on the opposite page is
a map or plan of the inside of Westminster Abbey. The picture at the
beginning of this book is a view of the outside.
We will now suppose we have just come into the Abbey at the great
west door, the door between the two towers (see frontispiece). The
name is marked on the plan.[3] We should then be standing in what is
called the nave, and right in front of us and through those iron gates
underneath the organ is the choir. That is where service is held every
morning and every afternoon, and where all the Westminster School boys
sit on Sundays when they come to church, for as Westminster school has
no chapel of its own, the boys have all their services in the Abbey.
Through the choir gates you can see the communion table in front of
you, and behind that, again, are all the chapels where the kings and
queens are buried. The nave and transepts are full of the monuments and
graves of great men. The numbers 1, 2, 3, etc., on the plan mark those
about which you will find stories later on.
[Illustration: PLAN OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]
A. Chapel of Edward Confessor.
B. „ St. Benedict.
C. „ St. Edmund.
D. „ St. Nicholas.
E. Henry VII. Chapel.
F. Chapel of St. Paul.
G. „ St. John Baptist.
H. „ St. Erasmus.
I. „ Abbot Islip.
J. „ St. John Evangelist.
K. „ St. Michael.
L. „ St. Andrew.
1. Lord Shaftesbury.
2. General Gordon.
3. Edward Mansell.
4. Edward de Carteret.
5. Sir Isaac Newton.
6. Lord Lawrence.
7. Sir James Outram.
8. David Livingstone.
9. Henry Fawcett.
10. Sir John Franklin.
11. Geoffrey Chaucer.
12. Alfred Tennyson.
13. Shakespeare.
14. Handel.
15. Lord Beaconsfield.
16. George Canning.
17. Earl Canning.
18. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe.
19. Lord Chatham and William Pitt.
20. Wilberforce.
21. Henry III.
22. Queen Eleanor.
23. Edward I.
24. Edward III.
25. Richard II.
26. Henry V.
27. Henry VII. and Queen.
28. Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary Tudor.
29. Mary Queen of Scots.
30. Oliver Cromwell.
31. Edward VI.
32. Dean Stanley.
And now, if you look at the plan, you will see exactly where
everything is. The whole Abbey is built on a piece of land which has
the shape of a cross laid upon the ground. The nave and choir represent
the stem of the cross, and the two transepts form the two arms.
In the part of the choir beyond the communion table are the chapels.
Altogether there are eleven, and they are arranged like a wreath round
the shrine of Edward the Confessor. They are marked on the plan by
the letters A, B, C, etc., and their names you will find on the plan,
beginning with A, which is the Chapel of Edward the Confessor.
One last thing I must explain before we begin the stories, and that
is--how this great church came to be called an Abbey, and not a
Cathedral. It is not at all difficult to remember when you have once
been told.
The Church of St. Peter did not stand, as you may have supposed, all by
itself on Thorney Isle, but was only one part of a mass of buildings
called the Monastery of St. Peter.
A monastery, as you very likely already know, was a kind of college
for monks. Here they lived under the rule of an abbot; and the church
belonging to the monastery--for every monastery had a church, as well
as a school and hospital or infirmary, belonging to it--was called an
Abbey.
In early days the life of the monks was a very busy one. They did
all the rough work, such as cooking, and cleaning pots and pans; for
although many of them had been great soldiers or great nobles, they
did not think any work done for the monastery was beneath them. They
ploughed the land and planted seeds; they cut down trees for firewood;
they nursed the sick; they fed and looked after the poor who lived
round about them; and they taught in the school, and watched over the
boys who were sent there to be educated.
Many boys--not only those who intended to become monks when they grew
up, but those also who were to go out into the world, or become
soldiers--went to the monastery schools to be taught. Here the sons of
great nobles sat to learn their lessons side by side with the children
of the poorest people, who were allowed to come and have as good an
education as the rich without paying any school fees. The schools were
open to all who wished to learn.
Of course, Scripture was the chief thing that they were taught, but
the monks did not think that alone was enough, and the boys often
learnt, besides reading and writing, grammar, poetry, astronomy, and
arithmetic. Latin many of the monks talked almost as easily as their
own language, and very often music and painting were added to all this.
In the cloisters, or covered walks belonging to the monastery, the
boys learned their lessons, always with a master near by, and sitting
one behind another, so that no signals or jokes were possible. And
very hard it must have been to keep their attention on their work in
summer time when, if they looked up, they could see through the open
archways the sun shining on the grass in the centre of the cloisters,
and inviting them to come and play there. Something was always going
on in the cloisters. Sometimes the schoolboys were tempted to waste
their time watching the monks shaving. Once a fortnight in summer,
and once in three weeks in winter, the monks came out here with hot
water and soap, and the important business of shaving went on, while
on “Saturdays the heads and feet of the brethren were duly washed.”
If while all these things were going on the abbot appeared, every one
stood up and bowed, and the lessons and the shaving and the washing
stopped until he had passed by.
Perhaps the most important part of every monastery was the library, and
an abbot who cared much for the monastery over which he ruled tried
to collect and preserve and buy as many books as he could. In those
days printing was not invented, and so every book of which many copies
were wanted had to be written out by the monks. And this they did in
a most wonderful way, copying them, so we are told,[4] “on parchment
of extreme fineness prepared by their own hands,” and ornamenting them
with “the most delicate miniatures and paintings.” The monks at that
time loved their books more than anything else, and there was a saying
among them that a cloister without books was like a fortress without
an arsenal. Often they took long and difficult journeys to see or to
copy the books in other monasteries. “Our books,” said a monk, “are
our delight and our wealth in time of peace, ... our food when we are
hungry, and our medicine when we are sick.”
And now, having told you a little about the life of the monks in those
far-off days, we must come back to these buildings on Thorney Isle,
which as I have said were called the Monastery of St. Peter. It is
not known when this particular monastery was first founded; but it is
said that St. Dunstan, who lived in the reign of King Edwy, found
there some half-ruined buildings. He repaired them, and then brought
twelve monks to live in company with him. But probably the Danes,
who were often invading England at that time, destroyed this little
monastery, for when Edward the Confessor came to the throne, many years
afterwards, it had almost, if not quite, disappeared; and when he
rebuilt it he added this great church of St. Peter, about which I told
you in the first chapter.
There is a pretty story told of how this came about. An old monk was
one day lying asleep, and in his sleep he was commanded by St. Peter,
who appeared visibly to him, to acquaint the king that it was his
pleasure he should restore the monastery. “There is,” said the apostle,
“a place of mine in the west part of London which I choose and love.
The name of the place is Thorney.... There let the king by my command
make a dwelling of monks, stately build and amply endow; it shall be
no less than the House of God, and the Gates of Heaven.” When he woke
up, the old monk went to the king and told him his vision. Upon hearing
it Edward journeyed to “the west part of London;” there he found
Thorney Isle, and there he built the monastery and church, which he
called after the apostle.
And now at last we have finished all the explanations. In the first
chapter I told you how the Abbey came to be built, and in this one I
have shown you how to find your way about it. In the next I shall begin
telling you the stories, the first being about Lord Shaftesbury, whose
monument is in the nave, where you see No. 1 on the plan.
CHAPTER III.
Very likely you have never even heard the name of Lord Shaftesbury;
but as you will be sure to read and hear of him by-and-by, I will tell
you a little about what he did, and why a monument was put up in his
memory. He was born in 1801, and died in 1885, and so was an old man
of eighty-four when he died. He spent all his long life in trying to
make other people--especially the poorest and most miserable he could
find--more happy and more comfortable. He was a great nobleman, and
very rich, and he gave most of his time to finding out the cause of the
suffering of the poorest people in England, and, when he had found it
out, he helped to make laws to improve things for them, and, if money
was wanted, he gave that too. But he gave away his money wisely and
well; he never was taken in by idle people and beggars who would not
work for themselves; his motto seems to have been to “help those who
help themselves,” and one name by which he was known was “The Working
Man’s Friend.” But especially may he be remembered by all children
for what he did for children. More than fifty years ago, when first
machines (spinning machines and weaving machines) were invented in
the great cotton factories in England, it was found that children
could work them just as well as men and women; and as children would
not have to be paid so much as men, the masters of the mills began to
employ them. Quite tiny children, sometimes not more than five years
old, and so small that they often had to be lifted up on stools to
reach their work, were made to toil in the mills and factories all day,
and sometimes all night too. They were treated like little slaves. If
they did not work fast enough, they were beaten and kicked by their
masters; and they spent all their days in hot rooms, hearing nothing
but the whirring of the machines, and stopping their work only for
about half an hour in the middle of the day for their dinner, which
was generally only black bread and porridge, and sometimes a little
bacon. They had no time for play, and they had no time to rest, except
on Sundays, and then they were too tired to move from the berths (or
shelves) where they slept, for they did not even have proper beds.
Then, again, there were the children who worked in coal-mines, who
spent all their days in damp, dark mines, who never saw the sun, and
who had to draw the trucks filled with coal, or carry great baskets
full of it on their backs. And all this they began to do before they
were six years old.
When Lord Shaftesbury saw these things--for he went into the mills and
the factories, and he went down into the mines--he made up his mind
that something must be done for such children. So he made speeches in
Parliament, in which he told of the cruelty with which thousands of
English children were treated; and at last laws were made by which it
was forbidden to let such little children work in mines and factories
at all, and by which older children were given shorter hours to work
and more time for rest and fresh air. All this and much more Lord
Shaftesbury did during his long life, and when at last he died, this
monument was put up in Westminster Abbey with these words on it, so
that people who had never known him might be always reminded of the way
he spent his life:--
LORD SHAFTESBURY,
BORN 1801; DIED 1885.
ENDEARED TO HIS COUNTRYMEN BY A LONG
LIFE SPENT IN THE CAUSE OF THE
HELPLESS AND SUFFERING.
“LOVE--SERVE.”
Close to Lord Shaftesbury, there is a monument to a great soldier,
General Gordon,[5] who was killed in Egypt in 1885--the same year that
Lord Shaftesbury died. He fought in the Crimean War and in China, and
was often called “Chinese Gordon.” All the soldiers who served under
him were so fond and proud of him that they would have done anything
for him. He was very brave, and it was well known that he would always
be in the front rank to lead his men when there was a battle, and this,
more than anything else, made him popular. He himself never was armed
except with a little cane, which his soldiers called “the wand of
victory.” Once when he was wounded his men wanted to carry him out of
the battle, but he would not allow it, and went on leading them till he
fainted from pain and weakness.
Lord Shaftesbury, the great statesman, died in England, with all his
many friends near him, and General Gordon, the great soldier, was
killed by savages while he was shut up in Khartoum, a town in Africa,
where he was besieged; but their two monuments are close together in
Westminster Abbey, and they were alike in one thing--they both did all
they could to help other people. Of course, Gordon had not time to do
so much as Lord Shaftesbury,[6] but when he was not fighting he lived
in England, and then “his house,” said a gentleman who knew him,[7]
“was school and hospital and almshouse in turn. The poor, the sick, and
the unfortunate were all welcome. He always took a great delight in
children, but especially in boys employed on the river or the sea. Many
he rescued from the gutter, cleansed them and clothed them, and kept
them for weeks in his house. For their benefit he established reading
classes. He called them his kings, and for many of them he got berths
on board ship. One day a friend asked him why there were so many pins
stuck into the map of the world over his mantelpiece. He was told they
marked and followed the course of the boys on their voyages; that they
were moved from point to point as his youngsters advanced, and that he
prayed for them as they went night and day. The light in which he was
held by those lads was shown by inscriptions in chalk on the fences.
A favourite one was ‘God bless the Kernel,’” which was their way of
spelling “colonel,” for he was at that time Colonel Gordon.
But I must not stay to tell you more of him now, for there are many
other people I want you to hear about. “This Abbey,” Dean Stanley used
to say, “is full of the remembrances of great men and famous women.
But it is also full of the remembrances of little boys and girls whose
death shot a pang through the hearts of those who loved them, and who
wished that they should never be forgotten.”
So now, not far from the monuments to these two great men, we come upon
the tombs of two boys who are buried here: one Edward Mansell,[8] a
boy of fourteen, who died as long ago as 1681; and another Edward,
Edward de Carteret,[9] a little boy “seven yeares and nine months
old,” who “dyed the 30th day of October, 1677.” His father and mother
put nothing on his tomb to tell us about him except that he was a
“gentleman;” but that one word tells us much, for it means, said Dean
Stanley, that “they believed--and no belief can be so welcome to any
father or mother--they believed that their little son was growing up
truthful, manly, courageous, courteous, unselfish, and religious.” And
if this little boy had tried to be a “gentleman” in this true and best
sense of the word, it does not seem out of place that he should be
buried in the Abbey among great men and famous women.
Close by little Edward de Carteret is buried Sir Isaac Newton.[10]
There is on the floor a plain grey stone with these few words in Latin
on it, “Hic depositum quod mortale fuit Isaaci Newtoni,” which means,
“Here lies what was mortal of Isaac Newton.” Sir Isaac Newton was one
of the most celebrated Englishmen who ever lived, and made wonderful
discoveries in science, especially in astronomy, by which his name
is known all over the world. He was born on Christmas Day, 1642, and
lived to be seventy-five years old. In spite of being so learned and so
famous, he was always modest about what he knew, and believed that what
he had learned and discovered was only a very, very little bit of all
there was to learn and discover in the world and about the world. When
he was quite an old man, some one was saying to him one day how much
he had done and how wonderful his discoveries were, and he answered,
“To myself I seem to have been as a child picking up shells on the
seashore, while the great ocean of truth lay unexplored before me.”
Just above the grey stone in the floor there is a large statue of Sir
Isaac Newton, sitting with his head resting on his hands as though he
were thinking, and a great pile of books by his side.
I have already told you about General Gordon. I now come to the
story of another great soldier, Sir James Outram, who is buried in
the Abbey. The graves of Sir James Outram and of David Livingstone,
a great traveller and missionary, and of Lord Lawrence, who was the
Governor-General of India, and who did a great deal for the natives
while he lived among them, are all close together, and there is
something interesting to tell you about all these three men, especially
Sir James Outram and David Livingstone.
If you have read or heard anything of the story of the Indian Mutiny,
when the native soldiers of India rebelled against the English who
governed them, and killed hundreds of men, women, and children, you
must, I think, have heard the names of Lord Lawrence and Sir James
Outram.
During the years he had lived among them, the natives of India
had grown so fond of Lord Lawrence,[11] that when the mutiny (or
rebellion) broke out, the men of the Punjaub (which was the part of
India he then governed) said they would be true to the man who had
been good to them, and so they fought for England with the few English
soldiers who were then in India, and helped us to conquer the rebels.
Lord Lawrence has been called the “Saviour of India,” because he came
to the help of his fellow-countrymen with these Indian soldiers just
when he was most terribly needed.
Later on, in the same war, came the siege of Lucknow. Lucknow was one
of the chief cities of India, but the streets were long and narrow and
dirty, and most of the houses were poor and mean. Among them, however,
were some magnificent palaces and temples. The Residency, the house
where the English governor of Lucknow lived, was built on a hill above
the river, and all round it were the offices and the bungalows of the
English who were living there. When the mutiny broke out, it was soon
seen that the native soldiers would attack the English in Lucknow,
and the people at once set to work to make as many preparations
against them as they could. To begin with, Sir Henry Lawrence, who
was in command of the soldiers both English and Indian, and who was
the brother of Lord Lawrence, of whom we spoke just now, ordered all
the women and children to come and live in the Residency, which was
supposed to be the safest place in Lucknow. Then guns, powder and shot,
and food were brought in and stored in the cellars. At last, at nine
o’clock on the evening of the 30th of May, 1857, when the officers were
quietly at dinner, nearly all the native soldiers in Lucknow suddenly
rose against the English. They loaded their guns, and fired at every
one they could see; they broke into the houses, and, after stealing
everything they could, set fire to them; and all night there was
nothing to be heard save the savage yells of the rebels and the firing
of the guns, and nothing to be seen but fighting men and burning
houses. About five hundred of the native soldiers were true to the
English, and they stayed with them and fought against their rebellious
countrymen through all the long siege of Lucknow. For though the rebels
were beaten at their first rising by the English, yet in a month or two
they rose again, and then every one, including the soldiers, was driven
by the enemy into the Residency, which was the last place of refuge.
Some day, perhaps, you will read a poem by Lord Tennyson called
“Lucknow,” which describes all the terrible things that happened during
the “eighty-seven” days the English and the faithful natives were shut
up in the Residency, on the topmost roof of which, as he says, the
“banner of England blew” during the whole siege, though it was shot
through by bullets, and torn and tattered, and faded in the hot Indian
summer sun.
One of the first things that happened was that Sir Henry Lawrence was
killed. He was lying on his bed one morning talking to an officer, when
a shell was fired from a cannon into his room. It burst as it fell,
and some of its fragments wounded Sir Henry so terribly that he died
the next day. Almost the last thing he said to the other officers was
to beg them never to give in to the natives, but to fight as long as
there was an English man left alive. Lord Lawrence, his brother, who
died some years afterwards, was buried, as you remember, in Westminster
Abbey; but Sir Henry Lawrence was carried out of the Residency while
the fighting was going on, and the bullets were falling like rain, and
buried side by side with some private soldiers who had also been killed
by the rebels. On his gravestone they put these words, which he himself
had asked should be written there, “Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried
to do his duty.”
This was on the 4th of July, and Sir Henry Lawrence had said he thought
it would be possible to defend the Residency for a fortnight. But as
time went on the English grew fewer and fewer; every day more soldiers
were killed, and every day many died of their wounds, while those who
were left alive had to fight day and night. The English ladies nursed
the sick men, and cooked the food, which they used to bring out to
those who were fighting; and they looked after the children, very many
of whom died too. For it was the hottest time of the year in India--a
time when English children are sent away to the hills to get fresh
air--and, besides suffering from the heat, they missed all the comforts
they were accustomed to; they had no milk and very little to eat, and
they were terrified by the noise of the firing and all the confusion.
But still the fighting went on day after day, long after the fortnight
was over, and day after day the enemy saw the English flag still flying
on the roof of the Residency, and began to think they never would
conquer this brave little band of Englishmen.
All this time, however, though they did not know it in the Residency,
Sir James Outram[12] and Sir Henry Havelock, with more English
soldiers, were fighting their way to Lucknow.[13]
They had both been for many years in India, and were two of the bravest
and best men who could possibly have been sent to the relief of the
little band who had been besieged for so many weeks. On the 23rd of
September, nearly _twelve weeks_ after the day Sir Henry Lawrence died,
it was heard in Lucknow that Sir James Outram and Sir Henry Havelock
were close by, and on the 25th the Highlanders were in the city and
fighting their way through the narrow streets to the Residency. Then
from every window and every balcony and every roof the rebels fired
down on them. Many were killed and more were wounded. A story is told,
by Mr. Archibald Forbes,[14] of two Irishmen who were in the Highland
regiment. “They were great friends, named Glandell and M‘Donough,
and in going through one of these narrow streets M‘Donough’s leg was
broken by a bullet. He fell, but he was not left to die, for his friend
who was by him took him on his back and trudged on with his heavy
burden. Although he was carrying M‘Donough, Glandell determined to
fight at the same time, so when there was a chance to fire a shot, he
propped his wounded comrade up against a wall and took up his rifle
instead; then he would pick up M‘Donough again and stagger cheerily on
till a place of safety was reached.”
At last the gate of the Residency was in sight of the relieving force,
and then the besieged people looking out saw through the smoke officers
on horseback--Outram with a great cut across his face, and one arm in
a sling, on a big white horse, and Havelock walking by his side (for
his horse had been shot), and the Highlanders in their kilts and for
the most part in their shirt-sleeves, with no coats on. “Then,” wrote
some one who had been all these weeks in the Residency--“then all our
doubts and fears were over, and from every pit, trench, and battery,
from behind the sand-bags piled on shattered houses, from every post
still held by a few gallant spirits, even from the hospital, rose cheer
on cheer.” Sir James Outram’s horse shied at the gate, but with a shout
the Highlanders hoisted him through; Sir Henry Havelock followed, “and
then in rushed the eager soldiers, powder-grimed, dusty, and bloody,
... and all round them as they swarmed in crowded ... the fighting
men of the garrison, and the civilians whom the siege had made into
soldiers, and women weeping tears of joy, and the sick and the wounded
who had crawled out of the hospital to welcome their deliverers. The
ladies came down among the soldiers to shake their hands, and the
children hugged them.” “We were all rushing about,” said a lady,
“to give the poor fellows drinks of water, for they were perfectly
exhausted; and tea was made, of which a large party of tired, thirsty
officers partook without milk and sugar, and we had nothing to give
them to eat. Every one’s tongue seemed going at once with so much to
ask and to tell, and the faces of utter strangers beamed on each other
like those of dearest friends and brothers.” So ended the siege of
Lucknow. Sir Henry Havelock had not been wounded, but he had suffered
much from hard work and from having so little to eat. “I find it not so
easy to starve at sixty as at forty-seven,” he said one day. At last,
in November, he became very ill, and when Sir James Outram went to see
him in the common soldier’s tent which he had always used since he had
been in Lucknow, he told him that he was going to die; “but I have
for forty years so ruled my life that when death came I might face it
without fear,” he added. He died on the 24th of November, 1857, and
was buried just outside Lucknow, under a mango tree, and even now the
letter H, which was carved in the bark--for no other monument could be
put up to his memory in those days of war and disturbance--can just be
seen, more than thirty years afterwards.
Sir James Outram was nursed in Dr. Fayrer’s house in Lucknow until
he was well, and three years afterwards, in 1860, he left India and
came back to England. Then he had many honours shown him; but, like
Sir Henry Havelock, he felt the effects of all he had gone through in
India, and gradually he became more ill, and was at last sent to the
south of France, where he died on the 11th of March, 1863. His body was
brought to England and buried in the Abbey under the grey stone which
you will see in the nave, and on it were written these words--
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR JAMES OUTRAM,
BORN JAN. 29TH, 1805; DIED MAR. 11TH, 1863.
“THE BAYARD OF INDIA.”
I remember, in one of the sermons which he used to preach to children,
Dean Stanley spoke of this grave of Sir James Outram, and said,
“There was a famous French soldier of bygone days whose name you will
see written in this Abbey on the gravestone of Sir James Outram,
because in many ways he was like Bayard. Bayard was a small boy--only
thirteen--when he went into his first service, and his mother told
him to remember three things: first, to fear and love God; secondly,
to have gentle and courteous manners to those above him; and thirdly,
to be generous and charitable, without pride or haughtiness, to those
beneath him; and these three things he never forgot, which helped to
make him the soldier without fear and without reproach.” And it was in
these three things that Sir James Outram was supposed to be so like the
French soldier, Bayard.
One more thing I must tell you before we pass on to David Livingstone.
On the morning of the day when Outram was to be buried, some Highland
soldiers came to his house and asked to be allowed to carry the coffin
on their shoulders down to the Abbey. They were some men from the 78th
Regiment--the very same men who had fought under him at the relief of
Lucknow, and who had been with him when Sir Henry Havelock was buried
under the mango tree; and they came now hoping to carry the body of Sir
James Outram to his burial. Unfortunately, they were too late, and were
told, much to their disappointment, that this was impossible because
other arrangements had been made.
We come now to David Livingstone,[15] the great traveller and
missionary. He was born in Scotland in 1813. His father and mother
were very poor, and when he was ten years old he was sent to work in a
cotton factory. He grew up to be a very extraordinary man, as you will
see, and he certainly was a very unusual boy. He saved up his wages,
and the first thing he bought was a Latin grammar, from which he used
to learn in the evenings after he left his work; and so interested was
he that he often went on till twelve o’clock at night, when his mother
took away the book and sent him to bed, for he had to be at the factory
at six every morning. When he grew up he became a missionary, and went
to Africa, where he made many discoveries, travelling into parts of the
country where no one had ever been before, and teaching the natives,
who were quite ignorant and wild, but who grew very fond of this “white
man who treated black men as his brothers”--for so one native chief
described him--and who cared for them, and doctored them when they were
ill, and gave up all his life to them. He had all sorts of adventures.
Once he lived for some time in a place which was full of lions, who
used to come and kill the cattle even in the day time. The people made
up their minds to try to kill one lion; for if one of a party of lions
is killed, the rest generally go away. Livingstone went out with them,
and they found the lions on a little hill covered with trees. Some of
the men fired, but did not hit any of them. Presently Livingstone “saw
one of the beasts sitting on a rock, behind a little bush”--these are
his own words--“about thirty yards off. I took a good aim at his body
through the bush, and fired at him. The men then called out, ‘He is
shot--he is shot!’ others cried out, ‘He has been shot by another man,
too; let us go to him.’ I did not see any one else shoot at him, but
I saw the lion’s tail erected in anger behind the bush, and, turning
to the people, said, ‘Stop a little till I fire again.’ When in the
act of ramming down the bullets I heard a shout. Starting and looking
half round, I saw the lion in the act of springing on me. I was upon
a little height. He caught my shoulder as he sprang, and we both came
to the ground together. Growling horribly close to my ear, he shook me
as a terrier dog does a rat.” It was wonderful that Livingstone did
not seem to feel any pain or fear; he said he seemed to be in a kind
of dream, but knew quite well all that was happening. Of course, in
another minute he would have been killed, had not some of the people
fired again at the lion and this time killed it. But Livingstone never
afterwards could use quite easily the arm which the lion had crushed.
During his travels he discovered Lake Nyassa, which you can find marked
now on every map of Africa. Before he went there all that part of the
country used to be marked “unexplored.”
For more than thirty years Livingstone lived in Africa, always
travelling about, and finding new tribes of natives, all of whom he
got to know, and all of whom became fond of him; and at last, when he
died in a little hut which his black servants had built for him in the
middle of one of these great African forests, Susi and Chumah, two of
his followers, who had been with him for many years, came all the way
to England with the body of their dead master. On the day when he was
buried, the Abbey was crowded with people who came from all parts of
England and Scotland; and among all the white faces were seen two black
ones, for the faithful servants stood close by the grave; and Dean
Stanley, who read the service, said afterwards that he had never seen
two men seem more broken-hearted. On his tombstone you will read of one
more thing which he did for the natives whilst he lived among them; and
that was, to help to abolish the slave-trade in Central Africa. He was
sixty years old when he died, and he had worked all his life to raise
the lives of thousands of African savages into something better and
happier.
Many other great men I have no time to tell you about, but there are
two more, of whom I particularly want you to hear a few words--Henry
Fawcett and Sir John Franklin. Henry Fawcett[16] was not a soldier, nor
a great traveller, but he was known for many years all over England
as the “Blind Postmaster-General.” He was not born blind, and why I
want to tell you about him is to show you what a brave man can do when
such a terrible misfortune as becoming blind happens to him. He was
born in 1833, and died in 1884, and for twenty-six years of his life
he was quite blind. He lost his sight in this way. He was out shooting
one day with his father, who fired at a bird without noticing that
his son was close by. Suddenly he saw that some of the shots, instead
of hitting the bird, had hit his son in the eyes. Henry Fawcett was
wearing spectacles, and a shot went through each of the glasses, making
a little round hole in them, and then going on into his eyes. From
that moment he never saw again. His first thought, he afterwards told
his sister, was that he should never again see the lovely view, and
the colours of the autumn leaves on the trees, as he had seen them a
moment before; his second thought was to try and do everything he could
to comfort his father, who must need comfort almost as much as he did
himself. So, at twenty-five years of age, Henry Fawcett, who had made
up his mind to work hard as a barrister--for he was very poor--and make
enough money to go into Parliament, which had been his great wish ever
since he was at school, suddenly found all his plans and all his hopes
upset. But his courage never gave way; he determined that his blindness
should not make him a helpless, disappointed man. “In ten minutes after
the accident,” he said some years later, “he had made up his mind that
he would stick to what he had meant to do.” And so he did. He had been
a great rider, a great skater, and a great fisherman, and all these
things he kept up. He skated with his friends, holding on to a stick by
which they guided him; he rode, he fished, he walked, behaving in all
things as though he were not blind. He was obliged to give up being a
barrister, but he became a professor at Cambridge. He wrote in papers
and magazines (of course some one had to do the actual writing for him,
but he dictated it), and at last, when he was thirty-two years old,
that is to say, seven years after the accident, he achieved his object,
and became member of Parliament (the Blind Member, he was sometimes
called) for Brighton.
It would take too long to tell you of all the work he did for his
country after he was in Parliament, but he was always trying to
improve things; he was never idle, and at last, when he was made
Postmaster-General, he hardly ever had time for a holiday. He was a
favourite with every one, and, when he was ill, telegrams and letters
used to come from all parts of England to ask after him. He always
took a great interest in other blind people, and was fond of saying
to them, “Do what you can to act as though you were not blind; be of
good courage, and help yourselves.” And to his friends, and all who
had blind friends or relations, he was never tired of saying, “Do not
treat us as though you pitied us for our misfortune; the kindest thing
that can be done or said to a blind person is to help him as far as
possible to be of good cheer, to give him confidence that help will be
afforded him whenever necessary, that there is still good work for him
to do, and, the more active his career, the more useful his life to
others, the more happy his days to himself.” These are his own words.
They are brave words; but Henry Fawcett was, as you have seen, a brave
man, and fought and conquered all the great difficulties with which
his blindness surrounded him, with as much courage as Sir James Outram
showed when he fought his way into Lucknow, or David Livingstone when
he journeyed through the deserts and forests of Africa. And that is why
a memorial of him was put up in Westminster Abbey by the people of
England, who subscribed for it, so that the heroic life of the Blind
Postmaster-General should never be forgotten.
Sir John Franklin[17] was a sailor and a great Arctic explorer, who
made many expeditions, and went nearer to the North Pole than any man
had ever been before. He and his companions endured every kind of
hardship in the ice and the snow of the Arctic regions. He died on his
third expedition, just two years after last leaving England, and was
buried in the far-away cold North amidst the snow under slabs of ice.
On the monument in Westminster Abbey, which was put up in his memory by
his wife, Lady Franklin, are written the words “O ye frost and cold,
O ye ice and snow, bless ye the Lord: praise Him, and magnify Him for
ever.” The story of the expedition is a very sad one, for, during the
winter after Sir John’s death, it became clear to the sailors that the
ships were so fast in the ice, which had closed in and frozen all
round them, that they would never be able to move again. So at last,
nearly all the provisions being exhausted, the men abandoned their
ships, and with boats and sledges, which they carried or dragged over
the ice, set out to walk southwards in the hope that they might at last
reach the unfrozen sea and meet a ship. But this they never did, for
they were starved and ill, and although another expedition had been
sent from England to look for them, it was too late to save them. The
only traces ever found of them were their skeletons, and the boats and
sledges, containing many books and papers which Sir John had written,
saying how far he had been, and what he had done on this voyage from
which he never returned.
His epitaph, written by Lord Tennyson, is one of the most beautiful in
the Abbey--
“Not here! the white North has thy bones; and thou,
Heroic sailor-soul,
Art passing on thine happier voyage now
Toward no earthly pole.”
CHAPTER IV.
In Westminster Abbey are the graves of many poets--so many that one
part of the church (the south transept) is always known as Poets’
Corner.
Geoffrey Chaucer,[18] who wrote among other things a book called the
“Canterbury Tales,” and who died as long ago as 1400, was one of the
first English poets buried in Poets’ Corner; and the last was Alfred
Tennyson,[19] who died in 1892, and was buried close beside Chaucer,
just four hundred and ninety-two years afterwards.
When I was telling you the story of the Indian Mutiny, I spoke of
a poem called “Lucknow,” which described in a wonderful way the
sufferings of the people who were shut up in the Residency during the
long siege. This poem and very many others were written by Alfred
Tennyson, the great poet, who was made by the Queen Poet Laureate of
England, and then, many years afterwards, Lord Tennyson, by which name
you will always hear him spoken of.
There is a story told of how the first verses Alfred Tennyson ever made
were written. His father was a clergyman, and Alfred and his brothers
and sisters lived all their lives in the country, running wild in the
woods and the fields, and learning all about birds and flowers, until
they were old enough to go to school. One Sunday morning, when every
one but Alfred, who was then very small, was going to church, his elder
brother Charles said he would give him something to do, and told him
he must write some verses about the flowers in the garden. When they
came in, Alfred appeared with his slate covered all over with his
first poem. He was very fond of story-telling, and he and his brothers
and sisters would combine to make up long and exciting tales which
sometimes lasted for months. When he went to school he began to read a
great deal, especially poetry. If he found any he particularly liked,
he would try to imitate it in poems of his own, and in this way he and
his brother Charles, who was with him at school, used to spend a great
deal of their spare time.
It would take too long, and it would not be interesting, to tell you
the names of even the chief poems which Lord Tennyson wrote. By-and-by
you will read many of them for yourselves, and two I am sure you
will specially enjoy. One is the “Siege of Lucknow,” which we have
so often spoken of; and the other is the “Revenge,” which is also a
story of fighting--but a sea-fight in the time of Queen Elizabeth.
Lord Tennyson, like most poets, was more fond of the country than of
towns, and most of his life he lived either in the Isle of Wight or in
Surrey. He used, until quite the end of his life, to enjoy taking long
country walks, and he never lost his love for flowers or birds, or
failed to notice them; and this in spite of having all his life been
very short-sighted. It was said of him that “when he was looking at any
object he seemed to be smelling it,” so closely used he to hold it to
his eyes.
And yet, with this difficulty, he noticed “more than most men with
perfect sight would see. I remember his telling me,” so wrote a friend
of his, “_if you tread on daisies they turn up underfoot and get rosy_.
His hearing, on the other hand, was exceptionally keen, and he held it
as a sort of compensation for his blurred sight; he could hear _the
shriek of a bat_, which he always said was the test of a quick ear.”
Lord Tennyson was eighty-three when he died, and when he was buried
in Westminster Abbey the great church was crowded, not only during
the funeral service, but for many days and even weeks afterwards, by
hundreds of people, who came to see, and lay flowers on, his grave.
Although so many poets were buried in the Abbey, yet there were many
others who when they died were buried in the country, or in other
churches in London, and, when this was the case, monuments were often
put up in the Abbey in memory of them. For instance, Shakespeare,[20]
the greatest of all our great poets, was buried at Stratford-on-Avon,
where he had lived for the last part of his life, and where he died.
There is not a very great deal known about his life. He was the son
of a country shopkeeper, who was very poor, but who managed to send
his son to the grammar school at Stratford-on-Avon, where they lived.
When he was fourteen he was taken away from school, and had to earn
his own living. It is sometimes said that he was first a butcher’s
boy, and had to carry out the meat, but no one knows exactly what he
did after he left school until he was about nineteen. Then he went
to London, and began to write poetry and plays. He had at this time
hardly any money, and was thankful to earn a penny whenever he could
by holding horses, or making himself useful in any way he could think
of, and was nicknamed by his friends “Jack-of-all-trades.” At last
he got employment as a writer of plays for the Globe Theatre. This
Globe Theatre was very different from the theatres of nowadays. It
was a round wooden building with no roof, except just over the stage,
and there it was covered in to protect the dresses of the actors and
actresses in case of bad weather. Gradually it became clear that
this William Shakespeare, who had come to London quite a poor and
unknown man, was a great poet, his plays began to be talked of, and
many great and rich men became his friends. In a few years he was no
longer poor, and had begun to save money to buy himself a house at
Stratford-on-Avon, where he had been born. To do this had always been
a dream of his: for a long time his wife and children had been living
there while he worked hard for them in London, and when at last he had
bought his house, which was called New Place, he left London and went
home to them.
Many years passed away, and Shakespeare, who had written great plays
such as _Hamlet_ and _The Merchant of Venice_, which you will all know
and perhaps see acted some day, lived quietly in the little town of
Stratford-on-Avon, making friends of all the people round him, both
rich and poor, and seeing his own plays acted in a great empty barn
near his house, for in those days there was no theatre in Stratford.
“Master Shakespeare,” as he was called, was buried in the churchyard
of the little town he had been so fond of all his life; and many years
afterwards, when his name had become known all over England, and his
plays and his poems had become famous as they had never been during
his lifetime, a monument was put up to his memory in Westminster Abbey
close by the graves of two other poets, Spenser and Drayton, who had
been his friends: on it are written these words out of his own play of
_The Tempest_--
“The Cloud-capt Towers,
The Gorgeous Palaces,
The Solemn Temples,
The Great Globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit,
Shall dissolve;
And, like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Leave not a wreck behind.”[21]
Among all the poets who are buried in the south transept, there is one
great musician, George Frederick Handel.[22] Dean Stanley says that
“Handel, who composed the music of the ‘Messiah’ and the ‘Israel in
Egypt,’ must have been a poet no less than a musician, and therefore he
was not unfitly buried in Poets’ Corner.”
Handel was the son of a German doctor, and was born in a little German
town. As a boy he was very fond of music, but as his father meant him
to be a lawyer, he would not let him hear any for fear that he would
want to be a musician. Once,[23] when George was seven years old, his
father went to visit another son who lived at the court of the Duke of
Saxe-Weissenfels. The little boy, who had most likely heard his brother
speak of the court concerts, begged to go too, but of course he was
told that it was impossible. His father drove off, but still George
determined to go. He managed to slip out, and ran as long as he could
after the carriage. At last he was seen and taken in, and as there
was no time to bring him home, he went with his father to the court.
He soon made friends among the duke’s musicians, who let him try the
organ. One day after the service he was lifted on to the organ-stool,
and played so wonderfully that the duke, who was in church, asked who
it was. When he heard that it was the little seven-year-old Handel, he
sent for his father, and told him that his son would one day be such
a great musician that it would be quite wrong to make him a lawyer. So
from that day George was regularly taught music. When he was older he
came to England, and here he lived most of his life, and here he wrote
most of the music which is known almost all over the world. He used
to give concerts at the English court, to which the Prince of Wales,
the son of George II., and the princess, and many great people came.
Sometimes at these concerts ladies would talk instead of listening
to the music, and then Handel quite lost his temper. “His rage was
uncontrollable,” so we are told, “and sometimes carried him to the
length of swearing and calling names; whereupon the gentle princess
would say to the offenders, ‘Hush, hush! Handel is angry;’ and when
all was quiet the concert would go on again.” Handel, when he was old,
became quite blind, but he still played the organ up to the very end
of his life. He died on Good Friday, April 13, 1759, and was buried
in the Abbey, and on his monument are written the words, “I know that
my Redeemer liveth,” from the Book of Job, which he had set to most
beautiful music, and had asked to have written upon his tomb.
I have only spoken to you of Geoffrey Chaucer and of Alfred Tennyson,
the first and the last poets who were buried in the Abbey; of
Shakespeare, the greatest of all English poets, and of George Frederick
Handel, the musician; but very many others are remembered in Poets’
Corner. And when you some day walk round the Abbey you will see there
the graves or monuments of most of the great English writers.
The north transept is full of the graves and monuments of statesmen.
A great many of them you must have heard of, and some of you perhaps
belong to the Primrose League, which was founded in 1881 in memory of
Benjamin Disraeli,[24] Lord Beaconsfield, whose monument is in the
Abbey. He was twice Prime Minister of England, and when he died the
Primrose League (the badge of which is a primrose, and which was chosen
because it was said to be his favourite flower) was started to band
people together to carry on the work and help on the political party
to which he had belonged. Then there are monuments to three members
of one family--the family of Canning--who were all great statesmen.
George Canning,[25] who was born as long ago as 1770, became known as
a wonderful orator. When he was quite a small boy at school he used to
say that he meant some day to be a member of Parliament, and at Eton he
helped to start a debating society which was modelled on the House of
Commons. Here his speeches soon became famous among the boys. He lived
to be not only a member of Parliament, but Prime Minister of England.
His youngest son Charles,[26] who was also a great man, became Earl
Canning and first Viceroy of India.
“The third great Canning” was Stratford Canning[27] (a cousin of
Charles), who has been called “the greatest ambassador of our time,”
and who before he died was made Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, by which
name he is best known. Each of these three great men gave all his time
and all his strength to work for the good of his country. Two of them,
George Canning and his son, the Viceroy of India, are buried in one
grave here in the Abbey. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, although his
statue stands side by side with the monuments to his uncle and cousin,
is buried in the little country churchyard of Frant, in Kent.
Lord Stratford de Redcliffe was an old man of ninety-three when he
died. He had done so much, and known so many great and interesting
people, that the story of his life is a book you will all like to
read some day. One of the first things he remembered was how, when he
was a little boy at school, he had seen Lord Nelson. It was at Eton,
and Nelson, “with all his wounds and all his honours”--for so Lord
Stratford describes him--came down to see the boys, and asked that they
might have a whole holiday. More than eighty years afterwards, when
Lord Stratford de Redcliffe died, there was found in his room a little
picture of Lord Nelson, which he had kept ever since those far-off
school days.
I remember Dean Stanley telling us that when Lord Stratford de
Redcliffe was a very old man he remembered quite clearly what he had
learnt and done when he was a little child at home. “Not long ago,”
the Dean said, “I was visiting this aged and famous statesman, and he
repeated to me, word for word, the Evening Hymn beginning ‘Glory to
Thee, my God, this night,’ as he had learnt it, he told me, from his
nurse ninety years before.”
I must not end this chapter without telling you the names of three
more great statesmen. You will often hear the two Pitts and William
Wilberforce spoken of, and I should like to say a few words about all
three before beginning the stories of the kings and queens.
William Pitt[28] was Prime Minister of England, and was made Lord
Chatham by King George III. He and his son, the younger William
Pitt,[29] are as well known to all Englishmen as George Canning and his
son Earl Canning, about whom I have told you. Lord Chatham was, like
George Canning, a great orator, and even when he was very old and very
ill, he would come down to the Houses of Parliament and make wonderful
speeches, which sometimes lasted as long as three hours and a half,
but which were so interesting that they were listened to in perfect
silence; “the stillness,” it is said, “was so deep that the dropping
of a handkerchief would have been heard.” When he died he was buried
in the Abbey; and in the same grave, twenty-eight years afterwards,
was buried his son William, the second Pitt, who was an even greater
statesman than his father. This William was, when quite a little boy,
astonishingly clever. “The fineness of William’s mind,” wrote his
mother, in the old-fashioned words of those times, “makes him enjoy
with the greatest pleasure what would be above the reach of any other
creature of his small age.” He was too delicate to be sent to school,
but he was made to work hard at home till he was old enough to be sent
to Cambridge. Although a very young man when he became a member of
Parliament, his first speech in the House was a great success. “It is
not a chip of the old block,” said some one who heard him--“it is the
old block himself;” meaning that this speech of young William Pitt
was as good as any his father had made. When he first became Prime
Minister he was only just twenty-four years old, and from that time
until he died (twenty-four years afterwards) he was one of the most
illustrious men in Europe. He and Wilberforce,[30] the last of the
statesmen about whom I must tell you, were both very much interested in
one thing--and this was the abolition of (or doing away with) slavery.
The name of Wilberforce will never be forgotten, for he it was who
first thought and said that slavery ought to be put an end to, all
over the world, wherever Englishmen were the rulers. Wilberforce and
William Pitt were once staying together in a country house not far
from London, and sitting together one day under an old tree in the
park, they began to talk about slavery, and to say how terrible a thing
it was that the lives of hundreds and thousands of men and women and
children were made full of misery by cruel masters who worked their
slaves far harder than they worked their horses or their oxen. “I well
remember,” wrote Mr. Wilberforce in his Diary, “after this conversation
with Mr. Pitt I resolved to give notice in the House of Commons of my
intention to bring forward the abolition of the slave-trade.” And
not long afterwards Wilberforce made a great speech in the House of
Commons about slavery, and in the end a law was passed to do away with
the slave-trade. Wherever the English flag was flying there should be
no slavery, and a slave who could once set foot on any land held by
Englishmen became a free man.
When Pitt died Wilberforce was one of those who carried a banner in the
great funeral procession, when he was buried, as I have told you, in
the same grave with his father, the first Pitt. Many years afterwards
Wilberforce too “was buried there amongst his friends,” and in another
part of the Abbey there is a large statue of him, as an old and bent
man, sitting in an armchair. When you go round the Abbey you must look
for this monument, for it is said to be very like him during the last
part of his life.
But we can spend no more time now in telling stories of statesmen, and
must in the next chapter go on to the kings and queens.
CHAPTER V.
We now come to the kings and queens who are buried in Westminster
Abbey, and this will be the last chapter of my book.
You remember my telling you how Henry III. built a new shrine for
Edward the Confessor. Three years after this Chapel of Edward the
Confessor (as it is called) was finished, King Henry III.,[31] who had
reigned for fifty-six years, died, and was buried in the Abbey which
he had loved so long. His son Edward, who now became Edward I., was
just starting home from the Holy Land with his wife, Queen Eleanor, who
always went with him on all his journeys, when his father died, and he
brought with him from the East the marble for the tomb.
I expect you will all remember having heard of this Queen Eleanor, the
wife of Edward I. She was so brave and so fond of him that she would go
with him when he went on his crusade to the Holy Land; and when people
told her that it was dangerous, and that she might be killed, and tried
to persuade her to stay at home, her only answer was, “The way to
heaven is as near from Palestine as from England.”
She was not killed, or even hurt; but there is a story told of how,
while they were in the Holy Land, Edward was wounded by one of his
enemies, who stabbed him in the arm with a poisoned dagger. This would
certainly have killed him, if Eleanor had not at once sucked the poison
out of the wound, and so saved his life.
Edward I.--Edward Longshanks, as he was called, for he was more than
six feet high--and Queen Eleanor were crowned King and Queen of England
in Westminster Abbey when they came back from the Holy Land. After the
coronation a great banquet was given, to which Edward and his brother
Edmund and all their nobles and attendants came--five hundred of
them, riding on five hundred magnificent horses. When they dismounted,
the horses were let loose in the crowd, and anybody who succeeded in
catching one was allowed to keep it.
When, after having been Queen of England eighteen years, Eleanor[32]
died at Hardby, in Nottinghamshire, her body was brought to
Westminster, to be buried in the Abbey. From Nottinghamshire to London
was a long journey in those days, and it had to be done by stages.
Wherever the funeral procession stopped, Edward ordered a cross to be
put up in memory of the queen. They were called the “Eleanor Crosses,”
and there were altogether twelve of them. The last was in London, at
Charing Cross, which was the final halting-place before the procession
reached the Abbey.
Edward I. was a great soldier, and gradually he “filled the Confessor’s
Chapel with trophies of war.” One of these trophies you must specially
notice when you go over the Abbey. At the west end of the Confessor’s
Chapel stand two chairs. One is a plain, very old-looking wooden chair,
much scratched and battered, and underneath it is a rough-looking bit
of stone. This old stone is called the “Stone of Scone,” and on it all
the Kings of Scotland had been crowned at Scone, which was the capital
of Scotland up to the time when Edward I. became King of England.
Edward I. and Alexander III., King of Scotland, were always at war; and
when the English at last conquered the Scotch, Edward took away this
ancient treasure, the “Stone of Scone,” and brought it to Westminster
Abbey, that our kings might be crowned upon it, as Kings of England and
Scotland. The wooden chair was made by his orders, and the stone put
underneath it, and there it has been ever since, for nearly six hundred
years.
The other chair was made long afterwards for the coronation of William
III. and Mary. Between the two are the sword and shield of Edward
III., which he is said to have used in all his many wars against
France. The sword is seven feet long, and weighs eighteen pounds.
Edward I.,[33] “the greatest of the Plantagenets,” was buried close by
Queen Eleanor, but his tomb is quite plain. There is no figure on it,
and no carving, as there is on the tombs of the other kings and queens.
Dean Stanley explained, when he showed us the Abbey as children,
that, for many years after Edward I. died, there was a kind of belief
that, although the king was dead, yet, if another war broke out with
Scotland, he would once again lead his army against the enemy, as he
had so often done before. And so from time to time they would come and
lift off the great marble slab which covered his tomb, and which was
easily moved, and look in to see if the king was still there.
The first of our kings who was crowned on the “Stone of Scone” was
Edward I.’s son, Edward II. He was crowned in the Abbey, but was not
buried there. The next king who was buried there was Edward III.,[34]
whose sword and shield we saw just now.
Richard II.,[35] the grandson of Edward III., is sometimes called the
“Westminster King,” because he was crowned and married and buried in
the Abbey.
He was only eleven years old when he became King of England. For a
week before his coronation he had lived in the Tower of London, which
was the custom in those days for all kings and queens before they were
crowned. The procession from the Tower to the Abbey was one of the
most splendid that had ever been seen. But the service was very long,
and the sermon was longer, and before it was over the king was carried
out fainting. After this there was a great banquet, at which he had to
appear again, and then at last the long day was over.
Five years later he was married in the Abbey to Queen Anne. After
reigning for twenty-five years, he was deposed by Henry of Lancaster,
and murdered at Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire by his enemies--for he
had made many during his life. He was buried in Hertfordshire. When
Henry V. came to the throne, he ordered that Richard’s body should be
brought to Westminster, and then at last it was laid in the same tomb
in which, many years before, his wife, Queen Anne, had been buried.
Henry V.[36] when he was a boy was so wild that he was called “Madcap
Harry.” But he was particularly fond of the Abbey, and although most
of his reign was spent in fighting with France, he did a great deal to
improve and decorate his great church, and when the English won the
battle of Agincourt (of which you may have heard or read), his first
thought was to order a Thanksgiving Service to be held at Westminster.
He had always said he wished to be buried in the Abbey; so, when he
died in France his body was brought to England. “The long procession
from Paris to Calais, and from Dover to London, was headed by the King
of Scots, James I.... As it approached London it was met by all the
clergy. The services were held first at St. Paul’s, and then at the
Abbey. No English king’s funeral had ever been so grand. His three
chargers were led up to the altar, behind the effigy (a wax model of
the king carried outside his coffin), which lay on a splendid car,
accompanied by torches and white-robed priests innumerable, ... and at
the extreme eastern end of the Confessor’s Chapel was deposited the
body of the most splendid king that England had to that time produced.”
Above his tomb, on a bar which stretches across the steps leading out
of the chapel, are hung his helmet and saddle. The helmet is probably
the very one which he wore at the battle of Agincourt, and which twice
saved his life on that day; it is much dinted, and shows the marks of
many sword-cuts.
Henry VI. was crowned king when he was only nine years old, and on the
day of his coronation it is said that he “sat on the platform in the
Abbey beholding all the people about sadly and wisely.” But as he was
so young the service was shortened and he had much less to endure than
the last boy-king, Richard II.
There is a story told of how, toward the end of his reign, King Henry
VI. used to come and wander about in the Abbey between seven and eight
o’clock in the evening, when it was growing dusk. He generally came
quite alone, and only the abbot who carried a torch went with him round
the dark and silent church. One night he went into the Confessor’s
Chapel, where he spent more than an hour, wondering if room could be,
by-and-by, made for his own tomb. “It was suggested to him that the
tomb of Henry V. should be pushed a little on one side, and his own
placed beside it; but he replied, ‘Nay, let him alone; he lieth like
a noble prince; I would not trouble him.’ But close beside the shrine
of the Confessor there seemed to be room for another tomb. ‘Lend me
your staff,’ he said to Lord Cromwell, who was with him that evening;
‘is it not fitting I should have a place here, where my father and my
ancestors lie, near St. Edward?’ And then, pointing with a white staff
to the place indicated, he said, ‘Here, methinks, is a convenient
place;’ adding, ‘Forsooth, forsooth, here will we lie; here is a good
place for us.’” Three days afterwards the tomb was ordered to be made;
but it was never even begun, for Henry was deposed by Edward IV. and
died in the Tower, and from there his body was taken and buried in the
Abbey of Chertsey.
Close by all these great kings and queens are several tombs of
children. Among them is a monument to a little deaf and dumb girl of
five years old, the Princess Catherine, daughter of Henry III. “Close
to her, as if to keep her company, are buried her two little brothers,
and four little nephews.”
So far I have told you principally of kings who are buried in
Westminster Abbey, but now we come to the tombs of some of the Queens
of England.
You remember that Henry VII. had built a great and magnificent chapel
which was called after him. The first queen buried there was his wife,
Queen Elizabeth, who was the mother of Henry VIII.
She had had a life full of adventures. She was the daughter of Edward
IV., and sister of the two poor little princes who were murdered in the
Tower by their uncle Richard.
Princess Elizabeth was born in Westminster, and christened in the
Abbey, but she lived afterwards in the country at the palace of Sheen.
When she was four years old, her father, Edward IV., was defeated in
battle, and King Henry VI. was made King of England in his stead.
The queen, the Princess Elizabeth, and her two baby sisters had to
leave Sheen and come back to Westminster, where they were hidden in a
place of safety while all these wars (the Wars of the Roses, as they
were called) were going on. After two years, however, her father was
victorious. Henry was deposed, and Edward IV. was once more King of
England. To celebrate the victory, a great ball was given at Windsor
Castle, and the little six-year-old princess, who was a special pet
of her father’s, came down and danced first with him, and then with
some of the great nobles. When she was nine years old, her father and
Louis XI., the King of France, decided that, as soon as she was grown
up, she should marry the Dauphin, his eldest son, who, if he lived,
would in time become the King of France. Then began a busy time for
the little princess who might one day be Queen of France. Besides all
her English lessons, she had to learn to speak and write French and
Spanish, and she was always called “Madame la Dauphine,” even while
she was a little girl in the schoolroom. At last she was old enough to
be married, but when the time for the wedding came, the King of France
said he had found another wife for his son. Edward IV., who had set
his heart on seeing his favourite daughter the Queen of France, was
so disappointed and angry that he became very ill, and died. Then it
was that Elizabeth’s little brother Edward became Edward V., and the
day was fixed for his coronation in the Abbey. A great banquet was
arranged, and all the guests were invited; but before the day came, the
little king and his younger brother, the Duke of York, were both killed
by the order of their uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who then made
himself King Richard III. of England. Now began a sad time for Princess
Elizabeth, who was first taken away from her mother and sisters, and
afterwards kept a prisoner in a lonely old castle in Yorkshire.
Meanwhile, during the time she was shut up here, many things had been
going on about which she probably knew nothing.
Richard III. was hated by every one, and two years after he had become
king, Henry, Earl of Richmond, one of the greatest nobles in England,
decided to try and depose him, and set free Princess Elizabeth. So
he got together an army and marched to Leicester, where the king was
then living. On the evening of a summer day the two armies camped at
a place called Bosworth Field, and there the next day a great battle,
the Battle of Bosworth, was fought, and Richard III. was killed. It is
said that the crown of England had, at the beginning of the battle,
been hidden in a hawthorn bush, and when afterwards it was found by a
soldier, the Earl of Richmond was at once crowned King Henry VII., and
all the soldiers who had been lying down, resting after the long fight,
stood up round him and sang the _Te Deum_.
When Princess Elizabeth, in her far-away lonely castle, heard cries of
joy from the people who came crowding to the doors of her prison she
guessed that something had happened and that a better time might be
coming for her. And soon came a messenger from the king, who had been
sent straight from the field of battle, with orders to set the princess
free and bring her to London.
The end of this story is really almost like the end of a fairy tale,
for her many troubles were now over, and the next year she married
Henry VII., and so became Queen of England. And when after many years
she died, she was buried--as I told you at the beginning of this
story--in the Chapel of Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey. Some years
later the king was buried beside her; and inside the bronze railings
surrounding the tomb (which stands behind the altar) you will see the
figures of Henry VII.[37] and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, lying side by
side.
Three other queens who are buried here are known to all of you. Two
of them were sisters, Queen Mary[38] and Queen Elizabeth,[39] the
daughters of Henry VIII.; and the third was their cousin, another
Mary--Mary Queen of Scots,[40] who was beheaded by the order of Queen
Elizabeth, because she was afraid that Mary wanted to make herself
Queen of England in her stead. Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, though
they were sisters, had all their lives been enemies. They differed
about everything, but especially about their religion, for Mary had
been brought up a Roman Catholic, and Elizabeth and their little
brother Edward (who afterwards became Edward VI.) were Protestants.
Elizabeth and Edward were very fond of one another, and it is said that
Elizabeth used to spend a great deal of her time when she was quite a
little girl in doing needlework for her brother. On his second birthday
she gave him for a birthday present a little shirt which she had made
for him all herself, though she was then only six years old.
Both these queens, when little girls, were made to do a great many
lessons, and were taught Latin and Greek with their brother, as well
as French and Italian and Spanish. Queen Mary was always very fond of
music, and there is a story told of how, when she was only three years
old, some friends of her father’s (King Henry VIII.) came down to see
her at Richmond, where she was then living. The little princess--for
this was a long time before she became queen--was not in the least shy:
she welcomed her visitors, and after talking to them “and entertaining
them with most goodly countenance”--for so one of the gentlemen who was
there wrote about her afterwards--she played to them on the virginal
(a kind of piano), after which strawberries and biscuits and wine were
brought in, and the baby princess had nothing more to do but enjoy
herself. These three children, Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward, became in
turn Queens and King of England.
When Henry VIII. died, Edward, the youngest of the three, became King
Edward VI. But he had all his life been very delicate, and when he had
been king just six years, and was sixteen years old, he died, and then
Mary, his eldest sister, became queen. The reign of Queen Mary--Bloody
Mary she is sometimes called--was a terrible time in England, for,
as I told you, she was a Roman Catholic, and so determined was she
that all English men and women should be Roman Catholics too, that she
ordered those who were Protestants to change their religion and become
Catholics; and if they refused, they were burnt alive. Hundreds of
people were killed in this cruel way; and Queen Mary became at last
so much hated, that when she died, and the Princess Elizabeth became
queen, there was rejoicing almost all over England. For in spite of all
the queen had done to make England a Roman Catholic country, by far the
greater part of the people had remained Protestants, and now once again
had a Protestant queen to reign over them.
Almost the last time a Catholic Mass (or service) was held in
Westminster Abbey was at the funeral of Queen Mary.[41] The procession,
led by the monks, who knew that this was most likely the last service
in which they would ever take part, came from St. James’s Palace, where
she died, down to Westminster, and at the great West Door of the Abbey
were waiting four bishops and the Abbot of Westminster in all the
magnificent robes which Catholic priests wear.
The body of the queen was carried into Henry VII.’s chapel, and all
night the Abbey was dimly lighted by the hundred wax torches which were
held and kept alight by the soldiers of the Queen’s Guard. The next day
she was buried, and the Catholic Bishop of Winchester preached before
Elizabeth, who, although she hated the religion, did not refuse to
come to the funeral of her sister, as Queen Mary had done years before
on the death of their brother Edward, when, rather than come to a
Protestant service in the Abbey, she ordered a separate funeral mass to
be said before her in the Tower.
A little more than a month after this, Queen Elizabeth was crowned in
the Abbey, and for the next forty-five years “good Queen Bess,” as
she is often called, reigned over England, and did much that was wise
and good. One thing she did, however, that was neither wise nor good,
and that one thing I spoke about when I told you that two Queen Marys
were buried here, one of whom was Mary Queen of Scots, the cousin of
Elizabeth. The story of Mary Queen of Scots is a long and very sad one.
You will some day read about her, if you have not already done so, and
when you hear how she was imprisoned in Fotheringay Castle, and at last
beheaded, you will perhaps feel that in some ways Elizabeth could be as
cruel as her sister Mary.
These three queens are all buried in Henry VII.’s Chapel--Elizabeth
and Mary together in a white marble tomb, on the outside of which lies
the statue of Queen Elizabeth, and on which these words in Latin were
written by James I.: “Consorts both in throne and grave, here rest we
two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, in hope of our resurrection.” And not
far from them lies Mary Queen of Scots. After she had been beheaded
at Fotheringay Castle her body was buried in Peterborough Cathedral,
and from there it was brought to Westminster by her son, James VI. of
Scotland, who was also James I. of England, “that the like honour,” so
he wrote, “might be done to his dearest mother” as had been done to
Queen Elizabeth and the other Queen Mary.
We are now coming to the end of these stories, and I must only mention
in a very few words some of the other graves in this chapel of Henry
VII.
Oliver Cromwell[42] who, after Charles I. had been beheaded, made
himself Protector of England, was buried here among the kings and
queens. It is said that his funeral was more magnificent than any
king’s had ever been, and that an immense sum of money was spent upon
it. Close by him was buried Elizabeth Claypole, his favourite daughter,
and many of his soldiers and followers.
Three years afterwards his body was dug up and taken to Tyburn. There
his head was cut off, on the 30th of January, the anniversary of the
day Charles I. had been beheaded, after which his body was buried
under the gallows, instead of in Westminster Abbey.
“Here are also buried,” says Dean Stanley, “some of our young princes
and princesses. There was that wonderfully gifted boy, Edward VI.”[43]
(of whom we have already spoken), “who was only sixteen when he died,
and who before that time had by his diligence and his honesty made
himself beloved and trusted by all about him. There is the good Prince
Henry, eldest son of James I., who when his foolish attendants provoked
him to swear because a butcher’s dog had killed a stag that he was
hunting, said, ‘Away with you! All the pleasure in the world is not
worth a profane oath.’ Then there was, again, that other Henry, Duke
of Gloucester, who sat on the knees of his father, Charles I., on the
day before his execution, and who when his father said to him, ‘They
will try to make you king instead of your elder brother,’ fired up like
a little man, and said, ‘I will be torn in pieces first!’ Then there
are two small tombs of the two infant daughters of James I. (one of
which is made in the shape of a cradle). And to these tombs of these
two little girls were brought, in after-days, by King Charles II., the
bones of the two young murdered princes (Edward V. and Richard, Duke of
York), which in his time were discovered at the foot of the staircase
in the Tower. Well might all these princes be mourned and have a place
in this Abbey, because many of them, though they died early, showed
of what stuff they were made, and that they would have been fit to be
kings and to be with kings.”
As I copied down these words of Dean Stanley’s, I was once more
reminded of him, and once more I seemed to hear him telling the
children gathered round him in the Abbey some of these stories which I
have just been telling you. And as the last words in this book about
the Abbey are his words, so the last grave which I want to tell you of
is his, and when you some day go to the Abbey you must not forget to
see (also in Henry VII.’s Chapel) the place where, together in one
tomb, are buried Arthur Stanley,[44] Dean of Westminster, and his wife,
Lady Augusta.
Dean Stanley knew more about Westminster Abbey than almost any other
man; and not only did he _know_ more, but by writing books and by
telling stories to his friends as he showed them over the great church,
he helped many other people, who but for him perhaps would not have
thought much about the Abbey at all to know something of the Church of
St. Peter on Thorney Isle.
And it is because I hoped that what interested us as children many
years ago might interest others now, that I have tried to remember, and
collect, and write down these tales from Westminster Abbey in something
the same way as they were told to us by the Dean.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “Memorials of Westminster Abbey.”
[2] The Basilicas of St. John Lateran, St. Paul, St. Lorenzo, and St.
Clement.
[3] The west door is hardly ever used now as an entrance for visitors,
and if we were really coming to the Abbey we should enter by another
door, called Solomon’s Porch, close by St. Margaret’s Church. But as
soon as we had got inside we should walk straight down to the great
west door, and imagine we had just come in that way.
[4] Montalembert, “Monks of the West.”
[5] No. 2 on plan.
[6] Gordon was fifty-two when he was killed.
[7] See Mr. Hake’s “Life of Gordon.”
[8] No. 3 on plan.
[9] No. 4 on plan.
[10] No. 5 on plan.
[11] No. 6 on plan.
[12] No. 7 on plan.
[13] Sir James Outram was born on the 29th of January, 1805, and Sir
Henry Havelock was born on the 5th of April, 1795; so at the time of
the siege of Lucknow Sir James was fifty-one, and Sir Henry sixty-two
years old.
[14] See “Havelock,” by Archibald Forbes (“English Men of Action
Series”).
[15] No. 8 on plan.
[16] No. 9 on plan.
[17] No. 10 on plan.
[18] No. 11 on plan.
[19] No. 12 on plan.
[20] No. 13 on plan.
[21] This is the actual inscription on the monument. The last line as
written by Shakespeare reads, “Leave not a rack behind.”
[22] No. 14 on plan.
[23] See Sir George Grove’s “Dictionary of Music.”
[24] No. 15 on plan.
[25] No. 16 on plan.
[26] No. 17 on plan.
[27] No. 18 on plan.
[28] No. 19 on plan.
[29] Also No. 19 on plan.
[30] No. 20 on plan.
[31] No. 21 on plan.
[32] No. 22 on plan.
[33] No. 23 on plan.
[34] No. 24 on plan.
[35] No. 25 on plan.
[36] No. 26 on plan.
[37] No. 27 on plan.
[38] No. 28 on plan.
[39] Also No. 28 on plan.
[40] No. 29 on plan.
[41] The last Catholic funeral service was held in the Abbey a few days
later, when by the order of Elizabeth a requiem mass was said for the
Emperor Charles V.
[42] No. 30 on plan.
[43] No. 31 on plan.
[44] No. 32 on plan.
Transcriber’s note:
On the Plan diagram (facing Pg 14), Geoffery Chaucer changed to
Geoffrey Chaucer.
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