The Royal Chapels in Westminster Abbey.

London, October 2, 1902.

We had reserved our last day in London for a visit to the eastern part of the great Abbey, where nearly all the kings and queens of England are buried. There is a charge of sixpence for admission to this part of the building. When we had paid our fees a black robed, bullet-headed, hard-voiced verger led us rapidly, along with a big crowd of other sightseers, from one chapel to another, pointing out one or two objects of special interest in each, and speaking a few words of explanation. Thus we were "railroaded" through the Royal Chapels in the most tantalizing manner. When we were all turned out of the iron gate at the end of this rapid round, with our heads full of a jumble of kings and queens, and other notables, our little party lingered to parley with our burly conductor, in the hope of getting more time in this fascinating part of the Abbey; but, though a shilling is a wonder-worker in England, and though we offered to pay another fee each for the privilege of remaining a while longer, our guide was for some reason obdurate. It should be added, in justice to him, that this was only the second day that the Abbey had been opened to visitors, after being closed throughout the greater part of the summer on account of the coronation, and consequently there was a much larger number of visitors for the vergers to handle than usual.

We were not yet beaten, however. After a brief "council of war," two of us walked out through the cloisters, rang at the door of the sub-Dean's residence, and, learning that he was not in, left a note for him, explaining our disappointment at having waited so long for the Abbey to open, only to find that we could get but a hasty glance at some of its most interesting parts, and asking him to give us permission to visit those parts at our leisure. On his return home, the sub-Dean, Canon Duckworth, very courteously wrote the desired authorization that we should visit the chapels "without a guide," and this permission was of use to some members of the party that afternoon.

Meantime it occurred to us that all vergers might not be equally ungracious, so, pending the Canon's answer to our note, we approached that one of the vergers who seemed to have the most benevolent face, informed him that we had just been through the chapels, but that our guide had given us very little time, and had not shown us the wax effigies at all, which we were very anxious to see, and asked him if he could not afford us a better opportunity. Unlike him of the stony heart into whose hands we had fallen at first, this one promptly and kindly granted our request, though doubtless expecting a fee, which, by the way, he deserved and received, and not only came with us himself to show us the wax effigies, but then gave us liberty to roam among the chapels at our pleasure. It was now dinner-time, but we gladly did without dinner in order to improve the opportunity thus secured, and set about a leisurely and thorough examination of the contents of the chapels and adjoining rooms in the eastern half of the building.

The wax work figures in a chamber over one of the chapels are very interesting, and should not be missed by visitors to Westminster, and yet I went through the Abbey some years ago without even knowing that they were there. We had a good look at them this time. They are effigies of notable personages, dressed exactly as they were in life. These effigies were carried at the public funerals of those whom they represent. The earlier custom was to carry the embalmed bodies of the kings and queens, with faces uncovered, at their funerals, but from the time of Henry V. these life-like representations were carried instead. Here is Queen Elizabeth, ugly and overdressed, as usual, with the diadem on her head, the huge ruff round her neck, the long stomacher covered with jewels, the velvet robe embroidered with gold and supported on panniers, and the pointed high-heeled shoes with rosettes—"gotten up," perhaps, pretty much as she was when, just a year before her death, she had allowed the Scottish ambassador, as if by accident, to see her "dancing high and disposedly," that he might disappoint the hopes of his master, King James, by his report of her health and spirits; she was then an old woman. There are few subjects more perilous for a man to write about than a woman's dress, and I may as well tell my readers that in the foregoing description of Elizabeth's finery I have closely followed good authorities.

Another of the effigies shows us the swarthy and sensual face of Charles II. He is dressed in red velvet, with lace collar and ruffles. Here, too, is the strong face and slight figure of William III., represented as very much shorter than Mary, his wife, who stands nearly six feet in height beside him. The fat figure of Queen Anne, and the very small one of Lord Nelson, with the empty sleeve of course, are among the most interesting. There are eleven in all still existing. A good many have disappeared.

The shrine of Edward the Confessor is raised upon a kind of platform mound, said to have been made of several shiploads of earth brought from the Holy Land, and is surrounded by the tombs of Edward I., the good Queen Eleanor, Richard II., Henry V., and others. Above the grand tomb of Henry V. are hung his shield, saddle and helmet. Upon it lies the headless effigy of the great king, which was cut from English oak and plated with silver-gilt. The head, which was of solid silver, with teeth of gold, was stolen from the Abbey centuries ago. Other tombs have suffered in the same way. The coffin of Edward the Confessor has been robbed of its funeral ornaments. The sceptre has been stolen from the hand of Queen Elizabeth. One of the beautifully modelled fingers of the recumbent marble statue of Mary, Queen of Scots, has been broken off, carried away as a souvenir, perhaps, by some conscienceless vandal.

In the two aisles on the opposite side of Henry VII.'s Chapel lie the remains of these two rival queens, Elizabeth and Mary, the one beheaded by the other,—a striking instance of the equality of the grave, and reminding us of Macaulay's description of the Abbey as "the great temple of silence and reconciliation, where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried."

I have only touched in the briefest manner a few of the many interesting monuments which throng the royal chapels. But there is one thing that I must write to you about before leaving the subject of Westminster Abbey finally, and that is the vacant space in the Central Eastern Chapel, where the body of the greatest man that ever ruled England once lay, and the story of why his body is not there now.

We have seen that Lord Macaulay speaks of Westminster Abbey as "the great temple of silence and reconciliation, where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried." In the same strain, Sir Walter Scott writes:

These are fine sentiments, and certainly the policy of the authorities of the Abbey has been broad enough in some respects, far too broad indeed, as many think, in the matter of admitting the bodies of men of skeptical views and evil lives to lie here alongside of the great and good in God's house.

But in some other respects the policy has been a narrow one. The erection of a monument here to Louis Napoleon, the late Prince Imperial of France, who fell in Zululand while fighting in the cause of England, was prevented by what has been called "the illiberal clamor of an ignorant faction." By the way, within the precincts of the Roman Catholic Oratory of Brompton, in West London, stands a statue of Cardinal Newman, the most distinguished of modern apostates, who forsook the English Church for the Romish; it was intended for Oxford, but was refused by the University, and not allowed a place in the streets of London. These two are not very good examples of the kind of narrowness to which I refer,—one can hardly blame the English churchmen for the treatment accorded to Newman's statue,—they are simply instances which naturally come to mind in connection with the general subject. I will give an example presently of the complete triumph of prejudice in the exclusion from the Abbey of the greatest man of action that England ever produced.

Meantime, as leading up to that, let us note the remark of Dr. Gregory to Dr. Johnson when, in 1737, the monument of Milton was placed in the Abbey: "I have seen erected in the church a bust of that man whose name I once knew considered a pollution of its walls." He was referring to the action of Dean Sprat in cutting away a part of the fulsome epitaph on the tomb of John Philips which compared him to Milton, of whom he was a feeble imitator. "The line, 'Uni Miltono secundus, primoque paene par,' was effaced under Dean Sprat, not because of its almost profane arrogance, but because the royalist dean would not allow even the name of the regicide Milton to appear within the Abbey—it was 'too detestable to be read on the wall of a building dedicated to devotion.' The line was restored under Dean Atterbury," and, as already noted, a bust of the great Puritan genius was installed in the Abbey a few decades later, so that the triumph of prejudice in this case was short-lived.

The story reminds one of the action of General Meigs in removing the name of President Davis from the record-stone of the Cabin John Bridge near Washington. This magnificent aqueduct bridge, one of the largest and most beautiful single stone arches in the world, was erected by Jefferson Davis while Secretary of War for the United States, and of course his name, with those of the then President and other high officials of the government, was placed on the completed structure. When the Civil War came on, and Mr. Davis was elected President of the Confederate States, General Meigs had the misfortune to lose a son in battle in Virginia. One can feel profound sympathy with him in such a bereavement, but does it not seem a small and childish thing that he should then have had Mr. Davis' name chiselled off the bridge in revenge? And has not his action, like Dean Sprat's, defeated itself? The blank made in the inscription excited curiosity and gave rise to questions, which brought out the whole story, and thus reminded many people who might otherwise have forgotten it, what eminent services Jefferson Davis had rendered to the united country before the unhappy division which made him the President of that portion of it with which his greater fame is now associated.

To but few men in her long history is England so deeply indebted as to Oliver Cromwell. Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, written by a bitterly hostile and prejudiced contemporary, effectually blackened Cromwell's character for some two hundred years, the misrepresentation being continued by other royalist writers, such as Sir Walter Scott in Woodstock. Carlyle's publication of Cromwell's own letters proved that he had been grossly slandered, and put it beyond question that the Protector was a sincere and godly man and a true patriot, as well as the greatest man of action that had ever lived in England. This is the view taken of Cromwell by the more recent biographies of him, which have been coming from the press in significantly rapid succession, such as Hood's, Gardiner's, John Morley's and President Roosevelt's. So that in several senses Cromwell is coming to his own again, though his work seemed at one time to have failed utterly, and to have been swept clean away by the restoration of Charles II. to the throne.

It is of the indignities visited upon Cromwell's remains at the time of this Restoration that I wish to tell you. The great men of the Commonwealth and several members of Cromwell's family were buried in the extreme eastern end of the Abbey. After the Restoration they were disinterred from this honorable place of sepulture, and the only member of the Protector's family who was allowed to remain in the Abbey was his second daughter, Elizabeth Claypole, "as being both a royalist and a member of the Church of England."

The bodies of Cromwell, his son-in-law, General Ireton, and Bradshaw, the judge who had condemned Charles I., were dragged through London on sledges and hanged at Tyburn, and their heads were set up on the high roof-gable of Westminster Hall, the very building in which Cromwell had been made Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. It is safer to kick a dead lion than a living one. Fancy these valiant royalists treating Cromwell that way in his lifetime!

Cromwell's head having been embalmed before his burial, "remained exposed to the atmosphere for twenty-five years, and then one stormy night it was blown down, and picked up by the sentry, who, hiding it under his cloak, took it home and secreted it in the chimney corner; and, as inquiries were constantly being made about it by the government, it was only on his death-bed that he revealed where he had hidden it. His family sold the head to one of the Cambridgeshire Russells, and in the same box in which it still is, it descended to a certain Samuel Russell," who, being in need, sold it to James Cox, the keeper of a famous museum. Cox in turn sold it, about the time of the French Revolution, for $1,150, to three men, who made a business of exhibiting it at half a crown per head in Bond Street, London. At the death of the last of these three men, it came into the possession of his three nieces. These young ladies, being nervous at keeping it in the house, asked Mr. Horace Wilkinson, their physician, to take charge of it for them, and finally sold it to him; and in his house at Sevenoaks, Kent, the head of Oliver Cromwell remains to this day.

It is a ghastly story, though I have been careful to leave out the most gruesome details.

To-day, immediately in front of Westminster Hall, where his head was first exposed in dishonor, stands a bronze statue of the Great Protector, with a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other,—erected within the last five years,—and doubtless the day will come when a monument of "the greatest prince that ever ruled England" will be given its rightful place in Westminster Abbey.