The Pictorial History of Westminster Abbey [antikvár]

THE PICTORIAL HISTORY OFWESTMINSTER ABBEYBY CANON ADAM FOX, D.D.formerly sub-dean of westminsterTHE recorded history of Westminster Abbey begins in Edward the Confessor's time, but there are glimpses of its existence before that. The name occurs in a ioth-century documentwhere it is described as a terrible place, that is, an awesome place. This evidence points to the previous foundation of a monastery or at least of a church, and legend attributes this foundation to Sebert, King of the East Saxons (died 616), under the influence of Mellitus, first Bishop of London. Earlier still, Romance, as shaped by Mallory in his Morte d'Arthur, tells of King Arthur holding a tourna-ment near by; of Queen Guinevere going a-maying into the fields aside, and of the corpse of Elaine the fair maiden being rowed in a barge up and down the Thames at Westminster and then being richly interred. No one has ventured to point to Elaine's grave in the Abbey, but they do show the tomb of Sebert erected by the monks in 1308.Ail this is dim and misty. But the création of Edward the Confessor is with us still. By a supreme but prob-ably quite unconscious act of statesmanship, he made Westminster the cradle of a future empire. On an island in the River Thames, already called Westminster Eyot (earlier known as Thorney or Thorneye Island), he set about to build a great monastery to promote the glory of God and the prosperity of his king-dom in England. Close by he took up his residence in order that he might watch the progress of the building. Thus he separated the seat of government from the City of London which lay across the fields a couple of miles away. This he may have done intentionally. Further, byfacing page: The nave, looking east.placing the Abbey and the palace side by side he strengthened for some centuries the bond between Church and State. This may also have been intentional in part, but he could not have foreseen the ultimate effect.For the first five centuries of its existence, that is from the nth cen-tury to the i6th, the palace at Westminster was the reigning king's place of residence. For the last two of these five centuries, actually from about 1376 to 1547, the House of Commons normally met in the Chapter House or the refectory of the Abbey. During this period, too, eight of the kings and queens of England were buried in the Abbey, where previously the only royal burial was that of the Confessor himself. Thus, Church and State forged bonds between themselves. But after the middle of the i6th cen-tury the king ceased to live at Westminster, and this led on to great and new events. His palace became the Houses of Parliament, and side by side with the législative power the executive, or, as we should call it now, the Civil Service, grew up and established itself in Whitehall where it still remains. By a parallel devel-opment, the business of the Church of England has come to be transacted in another area that adjoins the Abbey precincts. Here are the Church House, the Convocations, the Church Commissioners, and most of the Church societies, instead of being, as might have been expect-ed, in the vicinity of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Palace at Lambeth.Edward the Confessor is, there-fore, no mere figure of fabled sanc-tity. His work still strongly influences the national life. Of his buildingsalmost nothing is left. He completed the church which was later on en-tirely demolished, but the rest of the monastery was hiardly begun in his lifetime. Some kind of temporary accommodation there must have been for the Abbot and monks to eat and sleep and work in, but it took the best part of a hundred years to erect the permanent buildings. Of these there are very considérable remains. You may stiU see the undercroft of the monks* dormitory almost exactly as it was. You can see one wall of the refectory with its Norman arcading, and the Dark Cloister by which the monks moved from one part of the monastery to another. Three arches of St. Catherine's Chapel are stul standing, a part of the original in-firmary and a relie of later Norman work.But of course it was round the church that the whole life of the community revolved, and Edward the Confessor was perhaps content to have completed that. It stood on the north side of the monastic buildings a very large church in the style then prevalent in France, and for that reason termed the Norman style, but abroad the Romanesque. The ground plan was very little different from that of the present church, except that the transepts were narrower. It was in the form of a cross and probably had a central tower, and is so represented in the Bayeux tapestry. East of the cross-ing made by the transepts was the Sanctuary which occupied a considérable area with the High Altar in the centre. To the east of the Altar there was presently to be the tomb of the Confessor himself.The consécration of the church had been fixed for Christmas Day Continued on page 8