Many great and memorable events took place in the Hall, apart from the grand functions of State, or beside them. For instance, here began the massacre of the Jews at the coronation of Richard I. Here, in the same reign, the Archbishop and the Lords sat to pronounce sentence upon William Longbeard, who came with thousands of followers, so that they dared not pronounce sentence upon him. Here they brought the prisoners of Lincoln, a hundred and two Jews charged with crucifying a child, Hugh of Lincoln. That must have been a strange sight, this company of aliens who could never blend with the people among whom they lived: different in face, different in ideas, different in religion. They are dragged into the Hall, roped together: the prospect of death is before them: they are accused of a crime which they would not dare to commit, even at the very worst time of oppression; even when the wrongs and injustices and hatred of the people had driven them well-nigh mad. At the end of the Hall sit their judges: the men-at-arms are at their side to let none escape the Hall is filled with people cager for their blood the witnesses are called: they have heard this said and that said it is all hearsay: there is nothing but hearsay: and at the close eighteen of them are sentenced to be hanged, and the rest are driven back to prison, lucky if, after many years, they live to receive the King's release.

Stalls and shops for books, ribbons, and other things, were set up along the sides of the Hall; and it was always a great place for lawyers. Lydgate says, speaking of the Hall :

Within this Hall, neither riche nor yet poore,

Wolde do for aught, althogh I sholde dye:

Which seeing I gat me out of the doore,
Where Flemynge on me began for to cry,

Master, what will you require or by?

Fyne felt hatts or spectacles to rede,

Lay down your sylver and here you may spede.

:

And so enough of Westminster Hall and the History of England.

AS AVRENTIES

CHAPTER III

THE ABBEY-I

LEAVE to courtly hands, to ecclesiastics of rank, to those who understand the pomp and dignity of history, the Abbey Church, with its royal memories and national associations. It is for Deans to dwell at length upon this stately shrine of England's story. Those whose place is duly assigned and reserved for them at Coronations, Functions and Funerals in this Church-those whose office brings them into personal relations with Kings and Queens, Princes and Princesses, those who belong to the Palace as much as to the Abbey -are the fittest persons to write on the events and episodes belonging to the Church, and to enumerate the chapels, altars, tombs and monuments within its walls. Again, there is the building itself: this has been described over and over again by architects and the students of architecture; stone by stone the structure has been examined; hardly one that has not been assigned to its builder and its date: we have been taught all that remains of Edward the Confessor; all that Henry III. began and his son continued; what Richard II. raised; what is due to Henry VII., and what to Wren. We may leave aside, for the most part, the ceremonies of state, Coronations, Weddings, Funerals, the monuments, and the architecture. Are they not written in the book of the Dean? Some of us, when we read of these great Functions, fall into the reflection that in that time, as in this, the place of the scholar, the poct or the story-teller

would have been outside among the crowd: the man of letters would have been distinguished beyond expectation had he been invited to stand somewhere far back in the nave, if he had secured a point of vantage near the North Porch, or anywhere in the Abbey Precinct where he could stand and see the Procession sweep past, the Procession of Heralds, Trumpets, Knights and Barons, and rich Lords, Bishops, and Mitred Abbots, Pursuivants and Trumpets, splendid banners and canopies and shields borne by Nobles, Esquires and the King's Vallets: lastly, their Highnesses the King and the Queen themselves. If he should happily stand near the Porch, he would hear the

more

rolling of the organ and the voices of those who sing. When the soldiers rushed out of the church at William's crowning to hack and cut down the people in suspicion of a tumult, the poet was among them and was glad to escape with a broken head; when King Richard's men-at-arms slew the Jews, the poet who was then outside among them thought himself happy that he was not mistaken for one of those unfortunates; the poet was

standing outside the Abbey Church-in a very good place too-when with Pageant, songs and flowers, the whole world turned out to welcome Good Queen Bess. At every Coronation before and since that festival he has formed part of the outside throng. When the Rejoicing and the Thanksgiving for the happy closing of Fifty Years were solemnly celebrated, seven years ago, the poets and the men of letters occupied their old, old place: it was the kerb. All that was really noble and great and worthy of honour in the nation was invited within the walls. For literature was left, according to immemorial custom, the usual struggle

PLAN OF THE BENEDICTINE ABBEY OF WESTMINSTER
(By kind permission of Professor Henry Middleton)

CREAT

COLLEGE

STREET

for a place upon the kerb. The proper place for the man of letters in this country has always been, and is still, the kerb.

Here let us stand, then, happy at least in hearing the discourse of the people. When the Procession has been reformed and has swept past us again, we will betake ourselves to coffee-house or tavern, there to talk about it, while the great folk-the Quality-sit down to their banquet in Westminster Hall. If we take from Westminster Abbey its Kings and Princes, its Abbots, its Coronations, its Funerals, what remains? Exactly that which remains when you have taken out of history the Kings, Barons and great Lords. There remain the people--in this case the monks, with the servants of the Abbey. If we consider the daily life of one monk, we shall understand pretty well the daily life of all; and we shall presently realise that our old friend Barnaby Googe is not an authority to be altogether trusted; that the monks of Thorney were not all gross sensualists, wallowing in their animalism; and that on the other hand most of them were not, and in the nature of things could not be, followers of the austere and saintly life, great scholars or great divines. The unremembered life of Hugh de Steyninge, in Religion Brother Ambrosius, sometime monk in this Benedictine House, may be chosen to illustrate the Rule, as it was practised in the fifteenth century, just before the Dissolution.

Hugh de Steyninge was the younger son of a knightly house; the family originally, as the name shows, held lands in Steyninge, east of Chichester; at the time of his father's death-he was killed fighting for the Red Rose at Tewkesbury-there was still a small estate in Sussex, to which the eldest son succeeded; the second son was sent to London, where he was articled to Sir Ralph Jocelyne, Draper, Lord Mayor in the year 1476. (This son afterwards rose to be Sheriff, and would have been Mayor but that he died of the sweating sickness.) A third son went abroad and entered the service of the Duke of Tuscany. What became of him is