where some of them were kept for two years. In 1349 Simon Langham was elected abbot. He contributed so largely to the wants and revenues of the convent, that the entire amount of his benefactions was estimated at £9,000 or £10,000. Part of this, we presume, was expended in carrying forward the building of the Abbey, which, in the time of his successor Litlington, received large additions; as the famous Jerusalem Chamber, the Hall of the Abbey (where now dine the boys of the Westminster School), and the abbot's house; whilst the south and the west sides of the great cloister were finished. The riches of the interior were also increased by this abbot, who added many ornaments of plate and furniture. Litlington's abbacy, however, is chiefly memorable for an incident that occurred in it of no ordinary interest connected with the privilege of sanctuary, which is supposed to have been granted by Edward the Confessor, in one of whose disputed charters the grant is found. The story is one of those romances of history which fortunately has not yet been disputed, partly, perhaps, from the careless way in which later writers (Pennant for instance) have mentioned it, omitting the most interesting features. At the battle of Najara, during the Campaign of the Black Prince in Spain, two of Sir John Chandos's squires, Frank de Haule and John Schakell, had the good fortune to take prisoner a Spanish nobleman of distinction, the Count of Denia, who, according to the custom of the time, was awarded to them as their rightful prize by Sir John Chandos and the Prince himself. They took the Count to England, who whilst there, being greatly desirous to return to Spain in order to collect the ransom-money demanded, was allowed to do so on his placing his eldest son in their hands. Either the Count forgot his son or was unable to raise the money, for years past without news of him, and then he was dead. About this period the Duke of Lancaster was promoting, by all the means in his power, his claim to the throne of Castile, and, knowing these two squires held prisoner the Count's son, now the Count, he induced the king, Richard II., and his council, to demand him from them; expecting, no doubt, to make important use of him in the advancement of his objects. The squires refused to give him up, unless the ransom to which they were justly entitled was paid; and, as the prisoner could not be found, Haule and Schakell were committed to the Tower. From thence they escaped, and took sanctuary at Westminster. Determined not to be baffled, John of Gaunt ordered the Constable of the Tower, Sir Alan Boxhull, and one Sir Ralph Ferrers, to pursue them with a band of armed men even into the sacred inclosure. At first they endeavoured to get them into their power by fair promises, and, with regard to Schakell, "used the matter so with him that they drew him forth" and sent him once more to his prison. Haule, however, refused to listen, and would not allow them to come within reach. They then prepared for force, when the brave but devoted squire drew a short sword from his side and kept his enemies at bay, with great address and spirit, even whilst they drove him twice round the choir. At last they got round him, and one of the assailants clove his head by a tremendous blow from behind, when the completion of the murder was easy. At the same time they slew one of the monks who interfered. All this took place in the midst of the performance of high mass. The prisoner, however, was still concealed in spite of all the efforts made to discover the place of his confinement; and partly, perhaps, from that circumstance, and partly from the odium attached to the affair by the violation of sanctuary, it was eventually agreed to pay Schakell, for his prisoner's ransom, 500 marks in ready money and 100 marks annually for his life. We give the conclusion, in the words of Holinshed :-"This is to be noted as very strange and wonderful, that when he should bring forth his prisoner, and deliver him to the king, it was known to be the very groom that had served him all the time of his trouble as an hired servant, in prison and out of prison, and in danger of life when his other master was murdered. Whereas, if he would have uttered himself, he might have been entertained in such honourable state as for a prisoner of his degree had been requisite; so that the faithful love and assured constancy in this noble gentleman was highly commended and praised, and no less marvelled at of all men." The church was closed for four months in consequence of this profanation, and the subject brought by Litlington before Parliament, which granted a new confirmation of its privilege. Boxhull and Ferrers had to pay each a fine. We have dwelt somewhat upon the early history of the Abbey, not only because it is the most interesting portion of that history, but more particularly on account of the harmonious connection, before alluded to, which exists between it and the structure. Look at the cathedrals of England, and at the simplicity and comparative inefficiency of the mechanical aids at the disposal of their builders, and then, on the other hand, at our best modern churches, erected under circumstances admitting of every conceivable mechanical advantage; what is the meaning of the melancholy contrast presented? The answer will be found in our previous pages. It is not that we are poorer, or that we want apprehension of architectural grandeur, least of all that our faith is less pure than that of our forefathers; it is that we have less faith in our faith: we are more worldly. The miracles, and relics, and processions, and offerings, and privileges, that form so considerable a portion of the early records of Westminster Abbey, are no doubt absurd enough to the eye of reason; but it were still more foolish to think of them as evidences of the credulity only of our ancestors. When the artisan came and offered his day's labour once or twice in every week without remuneration, and his wife parted gladly with her solitary trinket; when the farmer gave his corn, and the merchant his rich stuffs; when the noble felled his ancestral oaks, and the king decimated his possessions; when, in short, persons of all classes aided, each in the best way he could, the establishment of the new abbey or minster, and bishops might be seen in the position of the hewers of wood and drawers of water-circumstances all of more or less frequent occurrence in the history of such houses was it the mere vague sense of wonder and profitless admiration of miracles, relics, and processions, which moved the universal heart?-or was it not the fervour and entire devotion of men's spirits unto God, of which credulity was then but a natural, indeed inevitable, accompaniment ?-Religion in the middle ages was of "imagination all compact;" and, although such a state of things could not, ought not to be permanent, we are experiencing the truth of his remark who overthrew it. As Luther propped us on the one side, we have fallen on the other; when shall we obtain the true balance and elevation? Litlington was succeeded by Colchester, during whose abbacy, which extended through the reigns of Richard II., Henry IV., and Henry V., steady progress was kept up with the west end of the church, as also during the subsequent abbacies of Harweden, Estney, in whose time the roof of the nave and the great west window were completed, and Islip, in whose abbacy the works stopped, on the completion of Henry VII.'s chapel (the history of which will be noticed elsewhere), although the main and west towers were still unbuilt. The latter Wren supplied in a manner that, to say the least of it, does not add to his reputation; the former is wanting to this hour: its square base, just appearing above the body of the building at the intersection of the transepts, provoking an unsatisfactory inquiry. Two highly interesting incidents mark the history of the Abbey during the rule of Estney and his predecessor, Milling. On the defeat of Edward IV., in 1470, his Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, took shelter in the sanctuary, where, "in great penury, forsaken of all her friends," she gave birth to the unfortunate Edward V. Here, again, on her husband's final success, she received him in all the flush of victory, and presented the child for the first time to his father's arms; and here, lastly, when Edward was dead, took place those melancholy scenes in which the Protector Gloucester endeavoured, and successfully at last, to induce her to give up her children to his care. On one of these occasions More describes her as sitting "alow on the rushes" in her grief, to receive the embassy. The other incident to which we allude is the residence in some part of the At the Reformation Benson was abbot, a man who will be remembered for his remark to Sir T. More, if for nothing else. The great Chancellor was placed, for a short time, in his custody, when Benson endeavoured to turn him from his purpose of preserving a pure con science, by showing that he must be in error, since the council of the realm had so determined. This little revelation of the abbot's mind may explain the favour shown to the Abbey at the period so dangerous to all such institutions. The Abbey was changed into a Cathedral, with a Bishop, Dean, and twelve Prebendaries, and a revenue of at least £586 13s. 4d.,* the old revenues amounting to £3,977 6s. 4 d. according to one authority, or £3,471 0s. 24d. according to another. Benson, the late Abbot, was made Dean, the Prior and five other monks were made Prebendaries, four brethren became Minor Canons, four others were made king's students in the universities, and the remainder were dismissed with pensions. Thirlby received the bishopric, which, however, he resigned in 1550, when it was suppressed, and the Cathedral, the following year, was included within the diocese of London. We have not yet done with the settings-up and pullings-down of the old religion at Westminster. On Mary's accession, the abbey was restored, with Feckenham at its head, who set to work with great zeal in his new vocation. He repaired the shrine of the Confessor, provided a paschal candle weighing three hundred pounds, which was made with great solemnity in the presence of the master and warden of the Wax Chandlers' Company; he asserted the right of sanctuary; and made the processions as magnificent as ever. It was but for a brief period. Mary died, and Elizabeth restored in effect the cathedral foundation of her father, with the exception of the bishopric. William Bill was the new Dean. Among his successors have been Lancelot Andrews; Williams, who took so active, and to the court unpalatable, a part in the great Revolution, during which time the abbey was several times attacked by the mob, and considerable injury done; Atterbury, the literary friend of Pope, who was so deeply implicated in the conspiracies against George I., and in consequence deprived of his dignities and banished; Pearce, Horsley, &c. THE ABBEY EXTERIOR. As we approach from Parliament-street, the ex quisitely beautiful and most elaborately pannelled and pinnacled architecture of the rounded end of Henry VII.'s Chapel meets the eye over the long line of St. Margaret's Church; into the burial-ground of which we step, in order to pass along the northern side of the Abbey. About the centre we pause to gaze * Widmore's' History of the Church of St. Peter, Westminster;' Strype says £804. In the arrangements that now ensued, some portion of whence the popular remark-robbing Peter to pay Bagford says he the property of the Abbey (St. Peter's) passed to St. Paul's: Paul. architecture and its decorations, and so interesting yet are the remains. The pavement, with its coloured tiles in heraldic and other devices, and the wall almost covered apparently with paintings, deserve even closer investigation than they have yet received. It is also rich in its ouriosities: here is, perhaps, the most valuable ancient historical document possessed by any nation in the world, the Domesday Book, in such exquisite preservation, and its calligraphy so perfect, that it scarcely appears as many years old as it is centuries. The large gold seal appended to the treaty between Henry VIII. and Francis is not only interesting for its associations, but for its intrinsic merit. The sculptor was no other than Cellini. Passing through the Chapter-house, and turning round to look at the exterior of the building we have quitted, the most melancholy-looking part of the Abbey is before us; and it is that which is necessarily the most seen, standing as it does against the entrance to Poets' Corner. The magnificent windows bricked and plas tered up, two or three smaller ones being formed instead in the hideous walls which fill them, and the dilapidated, neglected aspect of the whole, are truly humiliating. And what a contrast to the visitor who has just passed Henry VII.'s Chapel! It is fortunate we can so soon forget it, and all other jarring associa tions: a few steps-and we are in the Abbey, andout of the world. POETS' CORNER. on the blackened exterior of the front of the north transept, in which, however, many of the most delicate beauties of the sculpture, as well as all the bolder outlines of the tracery and the mouldings, are distinctly and happily marked by the light colour of the projecting edges, (Cut, No. 2.) Time was when this front had its "statues of the twelve apostles at full length, with a vast number of other saints and martyrs, intermixed with intaglios, devices, and abundance of fretwork ;" and when it was called, for its extreme beauty, "Solomon's Porch ;" and now, even injured as it is, the whole forms a rich and beautiful façade. The rose window, thirty-two feet in diameter, was rebuilt in 1722. Beyond the transept, the new appearance of a part of the exterior of the nave shows how extensive have been the reparations of recent years; and we may add, the remainder shows how necessary it is to go on. As we pass round the corner towards the west front, one can hardly resist the fancy that Wren, seeing how badly the Abbey needed its deficient towers, had taken a couple from some of his city churches, and placed them here. And who could for a moment mistake the ornaments of the clock for a part of a genuine Gothic structure? At the right hand corner of the western front, half concealing the beautiful decorations of its lower part, is the plainlooking exterior of the Jerusalem Chamber, forming, with the Hall, Dean's house, &c., a square, partly resting against the nave on the southern side of the Abbey, partly projecting beyond it. Passing along the exterior of these buildings, a gateway leads into the Dean's yard, a large quadrangle, where the modern houses contrast strangely with the ancient ones, lower portions with upper, large windows with green blinds and small rude ones scarce big enough to put one's head through, painted wooden doorways and arches so old and decayed one scarcely even ventures to guess how old they may be. From the Dean's yard we can again approach the Abbey, the doorway in the corner, at the end of the pavement on our left, opening into a vaulted passage leading directly to the cloisters. From the grassy area of the latter you obtain a view, and we believe the only one, of the south transept, or rather of its upper portion. Passing along the south cloister, where the wall on your right is also the wall of the ancient refectory, to which the first doorway led, at the end you have on the right a low vaulted passage, which is considered a part of the Confessor's building, and where, in a small square called the Little Cloisters, stood the Chapel of St. Katherine, in which took place the scene between the Archbishops of York and Canterbury, so dramatically described by Holinshed, and on the left the East Cloister, with the low and well-barred door leading into the chamber of the Pix, and the exquisitely beautiful but much-harmonised so finely with our mingled sentiments of injured entrance to the Chapter-house. To this building, now used for the custody of records, and visited only by express permission from the Public Record Office, Chancery-lane, we might devote more pages than we have words to spare: so sumptuous were its "Poets' Corner!"-We could wish, most heartily, we knew the name of him who first gave this appellation to the south transept of the Abbey, and thus helped, most probably, to make it what it is, the richest little spot the earth possesses in its connection with the princes of song: such a man ought himself to have a monument among them. And, though he may have never written a line, we could almost venture to assert he must have been a kindred spirit, so exquisitely applicable is his phrase ;-so felicitously illustrative of the poet, who, with all his exhaustion of old worlds and creation of new, is generally most deeply attached to some one of the smallest corners of that on which he moves ;-so characteristic is it of the personal relation in which we, his readers, stand toward him: not in the pulpit, the senate, or the academy, does he teach us, but in the quiet corner by the winter fire-side, or in the green nook of the summer woods. In a word, we might have sought in vain for any other appellation that would have expressed, with equal force, the home-feeling with which we desire, however unconsciously, to invest this sumptuous abode of our dead poets, or that would have affection and reverence for their memory. But, though we do not know who gave the name, we are at no loss with regard to those whose burial here first suggested it. If, immediately we enter, we turn to the right, and gaze on the monuments on the wall by our side, we perceive one standing out from the rest in hoar antiquity, a fine old Gothic piece of sculpture, that, though in reality not three centuries old, seems at the first glance to be coeval with the building itself; that is the tomb of Chaucer, the first poet buried in the Abbey, and the first true poet England produced. It is, in other respects, one of the most interesting memorials of the place. Caxton, who, among his numerous claims to our gratitude, adds that of having sought out and made permanent by printing the manuscript of the Canterbury Tales (one of the editions of which he published under circumstances peculiarly honourable to himself,) placed the original inscription here, which he obtained from a learned Milanese. This remained till Brigham, a student in the university of Oxford, took upon him, as a labour of love, the erection of a monument to the illustrious poet's memory. The present tomb was accordingly placed here in 1555. As we pause to gaze on its decayed and blackened front, and to examine, with an interest that finds little to repay it, the remains of the poet's effigy, a kind of melancholy similarity between the fate of Chaucer's reputation and that of his memorial suggests itself: what Spenser calls "black oblivion's rust" has been almost as injurious to the first as to the last, and has caused one of the greatest, and, as far as qualifications are concerned, most popular of poets, to be the most neglected or unknown by the large majority of his countrymen. There is a rust upon his verses, it is true, that mars, upon the whole, their original music (such as we find it breaking out at intervals where time has not played his fantastic tricks with the spelling and pronunciation), and which, for the first few hours of perusal, somewhat dims also the brilliancy of the thoughts,--but that is all; he who devotes one day to studying Chaucer will be delighted the next, and on the third will look back with amazement on his ignorance of the writer who, all circumstance of time and position considered, can scarcely be said to have had yet a superior, unless it be Shakspere. Such was the first poet buried in the Corner. The next was a worthy successor, Spenser, the author of the Faerie Queen.' If poets, in the words of Shelley, are "cradled into wrong," or begin the world with suffering-so, alas! too often do they end it. Ben Jonson thus briefly records, in his conversation with Drummond of Haw thornden, the frightful circumstances that attended the last days of England's second great poet :-"The Irish having robbed Spenser's goods, and burnt his house and a little child new born, he and his wife escaped; and, after, he died for lake of bread in King-street, [Westminster,] and refused twenty pieces sent to him by my Lord of Essex, adding, 'he was sorry he had no time to spend them.'" This story sounds altogether terribly like truth; yet, as doubts have been thrown upon it, we are glad to think it possible that there may be some mistake, or at least exaggeration. This great poet had great patrons: Sir Philip Sidney, Raleigh, Essex, and Queen Elizabeth; so hunger, we may hope, was not by the poet's death-bed. Spenser was buried where he had desired to be, near his great predecessor, Chaucer (but on the other side of the entrance), in 1598-9, at the expense of the Earl of Essex. It has been recorded that several of his poetical brethren attended, who threw epitaphs, and elegies, and panegyrics on his works, into his grave, "with the pens that wrote them." "Gentle Willy" (Spenser's own designation of Shakspere) we may be tolerably sure was among these mourners. The short but beautiful inscription on the monument runs thus: 'Here lies, expecting the second coming of cur Saviour Christ Jesus, the body of Edmund Spenser, the prince of poets in his time, whose divine spirit needs no other witness than the works which he left behind him." This was the second inhabitant of Poets' Corner. The third was Beaumont: how was it that we cannot add, with whom rests Fletcher? So thoroughly have their lives become incorporated in the incorporation of their writings and fame, that one feels as though Beaumont himself were not all here, entombed thus alone. Most touching and beautiful of friendships! In all the works of these great writers there is no incident half so romantic as their own undivided lives; for, as Aubrey has shown us in his recorded gossip, their literary connection was but the natural manifestation not merely of kindred tastes and talents, but of an ardent affection for each other, that was as plainly seen in the house where they lived together, and had the same clothes, and most probably a common purse, as in the theatre, where their separate writings were undistinguishable, and where, if one were really greater than the other, they kept the secret to themselves so effectually, that to this hour the best critics have been baffled in their attempts to assign to each his due merit. How great that merit is, may be judged by those not familiar with their works from Schlegel's remark upon them. He says "They hardly wanted anything but a more profound seriousness of mind, and that sagacity in art which observes a due measure in everything, to deserve a place beside the greatest dramatic poets of all nations." Beaumont was buried before the entrance into the first of the chapels here (St. Benedict's), immediately beyond Chaucer's monument, where he lies without memorial or inscription. "O rare Ben Jonson!"-inscribed beneath a tablet with a head in relief of the poet. His remains do not, however, rest in this part of the Abbey, but in the north aisle of the nave, near Killigrew's monument, where the quaint epitaph was first "done," says Aubrey, "at the charge of Jack Young (afterwards knighted), who, walking here when the grave was covering, gave the fellow eighteen pence to cut it." The stone, very unnecessarily, was taken away at the late relaying of the pavement. Under the date of 1607, Evelyn writes, "Went to Mr. Cowley's funeral, whose corpse lay at Wallingford House, and was thence conveyed to Westminster Abbey in a hearse with six horses, and all funeral decency, near a hundred coaches of noblemen and persons of quality following; among these all the wits of the town, divers bishops and clergymen. He was interred next Geoffrey Chaucer, and near Spenser. A goodly monument since erected to his memory." The Latin inscription declares Cowley the Pindar, Horace, and Virgil of England. The monument was raised by George, Duke of Buckingham, the literary opponent of the great poet next buried here, and whose monument we find adjoining Cowley's, with a noble bust and the simplest of inscriptions, to "J. Dryden." This was not placed here till twenty years after the poet's death; when his friend and patron, Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, reminded, by Pope's intended epitaph on Rowe, of the "nameless stone" that covered the remains, caused a monument to be erected with an admirable bust by Scheemakers. If one could desire change in an inscription which is so refreshing for its simplicity and freedom from panegyric, it would be in order to introduce Pope's couplet : "This Sheffield raised: the sacred dust below Was Dryden once; the rest who does not know?" But, after all, the truest taste in such matters would be, we think, to banish everything but the plain name, where that name was such as Dryden's: the longer inscriptions might then be left for the use of those who feared that the virtues or genius of their deceased friends would not be sufficiently known without. Among the remaining poets buried in the Corner there are three whose memorials attract the attention of the ordinary visitor-those of Rowe, Prior, and Gay. The first and the last are side by side in the corner behind the screen which faces the doorway, whilst Prior's stares you in the face from the screen, as you enter, as if eager to thrust itself upon your notice before your attention is occupied by the greater memorials of the place. Rowe's monument is by Rysbrack, and is chiefly noticeable for a beautiful inscription by Pope, concluding with the following allusion to his widow : Drayton followed Beaumont in 1637, and was followed six years after by his great contemporary and panegyrist, Ben Jonson. Near Spenser's memorial these few words strike every visitor to Poets' Corner-To "To these so mourn'd sin death, o loved in life, The childless parent and the widow'd wife With tears inscribes this monumental stone, That holds their ashes, and expects her own.” the poet's excessive annoyance, it is said, the |
