PART I CHAPTER I IN THE MISTY PAST

"Without the walles of London, uppon the river Thames, there was in Times past, a little monasterie, builded to the honour of God and St. Peter, with a few Benedict monkes in it, under an Abbote serving Christe. Very poore they were, and little was given them for their reliefe. Here the king intended, for that it was near to the famous citie of London, and the river of Thames, that brought in all kinds of merchandizes, from all partes of the worlde, to make his sepulchre: he commanded that of the renters of all his rentes the work should be begunne, in such a sorte, as should become the Prince of the Apostles."

These are the words which gather up the early story of Westminster Abbey.

Try to forget for a few moments that pile of splendid and richly decorated buildings, majestic and dignified in its beauty, which to-day stands out so clearly against the grey of London skies as if conscious of its right to be regarded as the most wondrous treasure belonging to London City, and come back with me a journey of many hundred years, to make the acquaintance of the Abbey as it appeared to the boys and girls who lived under Saxon and Danish, English and Norman, Plantagenet and Tudor kings. For only so will you come to understand how the history of the Abbey has been interwoven with the history of England; how, in days gone by, kings and nobles, commons and people gathered beneath its shadow, making it not only the centre of the nation's life and activity, but also the starting-point from which set out every English sovereign called to the throne, the resting-place to which so many of them were borne back, when they had received their summons to the high court of the Great King.

Then you will feel something more than a sense of wonder as your eyes rest on its beauties. It will speak to you in a language of its own, as it tells you of that past which you must learn to know aright if you are to play your part nobly in present or in future days. It will open your ears so that you will catch echoes of the melodies which float down the ages. It will bring to your heart a thrill of reverence and a thrill of pride, as you realise that this treasure-house of memories is a national inheritance in which you have a share. It will make you familiar with that company of men and women who, by reason of their goodness or their greatness, or their many gifts, so won the respect of their fellows, that in death they were deemed worthy to lie within walls "paved with princes and a royal race." And it will teach you, as no book can teach you, the story of the land we love, the land which all the great men of history—kings, soldiers, statesmen, poets, workers, and thinkers have helped to build up, that it might be ours to inherit and then to pass on to coming generations in unsullied greatness.

Now if we wish to trace back to its first commencement that "little monasterie without the walles of London," we must frankly admit that concerning its earliest history any information we possess is of a very shadowy character. Certain it is that for some centuries a religious building had existed on Thorn-ea, one of those many little islands standing above the reach of the floods which rose at high tide in that part of the Thames where it broadened out into a great marsh. Possibly the Romans had a station at Thorn-ea, as Roman bricks and pieces of mosaic and such remains as a fine Roman coffin have been discovered from time to time, and Bede, our first English historian, states that Lucius, king of Britain, himself a Christian, built a church on Thorney Island about the year A.D. 178. For nearly four hundred years England had remained the conquered province of the Roman Empire. Then the greatness of that power began to wane; Rome was threatened at her own doors by the Goths, and to defend herself she had to call back her legions from Britain and leave the island to its fate. Picts, Scots, and Saxons bore down on it, and the Saxons, "fierce beyond other foes, cunning as they are fierce, the sea-wolves that live on the pillage of the world, to whom the sea is their school of war and the storm their friend," swept all before them. Wherever they went on their victorious way they slaughtered and shattered, and whatever Christian church existed on Thornea they razed to the ground. For awhile the curtain falls, then it rises to show us Sebert, a Christian king of the East Saxons, who lived at the beginning of the seventh century. He was converted and baptized by Mellitus, the Bishop of London, and founded the Minster of St. Paul on the east side of London. But in years to come, when Thornea was no longer a desolate "Isle of Thorns overrun and wild," but the spot above which there towered the Abbey, the Palace and the Monastery all grouped together under the name of the West Minster Foundation, the monks declared that King Sebert had raised a second church in this very place, dedicated to St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles. Furthermore they told how one dark and stormy Sunday night, the eve of the day set apart by Bishop Mellitus for the consecration of the new church, Edric, a fisherman busy at his craft, heard a voice calling him from the opposite side of the river. He went across in his boat, and found there a stranger, who begged to be rowed over to the island. This Edric did with some difficulty, as the waters were rough, and raised with "prodigious rains," and the stranger, landed safely on the island, at once went towards the newly builded church. "Watch well this night, Edric," he said as he left the astonished fisherman. So Edric waited and watched, and in the space of a few moments he saw the empty church ablaze with light, standing out without darkness or shadow in the wild night. Voices, such as he had never heard before, sang chants and hymns:—

    "Yonder swelled that strain,
    And still the Bride of God, that Church late dark,
    Glad of her saintly sponsors laughed and shone,
    The radiance ever freshening....
    The fisher knew that hour
    That with vast concourse of the sons of God
    That Church was thronged."—AUBREY DE VERE.
    

Then the lights faded, the music died away, and once more the stranger stood at Edric's side.

"Give me to eat," he asked of him.

But Edric had as yet caught nothing.

"Cast forth thy nets, for the Fisherman of Galilee hath blessed thee," said the stranger, and then he added, "Tell Mellitus on the morrow what you have seen, and show him the token that I, Peter, have consecrated mine own church at Westminster. For yourself, go out into the river; of fish you shall catch plenty, and many salmon. But the tenth of all you take, you shall pay to my church, and never again shall you seek to catch fish on any Sunday."

With these words the stranger vanished, leaving Edric to ponder on the wonderful things he had seen and heard.

On the morrow, when Bishop Mellitus, accompanied by his priests and singing-boys, arrived to dedicate with all such honour as he could the Minster of Thorney, he was met by Edric, who held in his hand a salmon, and gave the message which had been delivered to him. Furthermore, he pointed out to him the marks of the twelve crosses of consecration, in memory of the twelve Apostles, on the church within and without. And the Bishop believed his words, for he saw everywhere the signs; so he went from the church saying: "The dedication had been performed sufficiently, better and in a more saintly fashion than he could have done." So he held a service of thanksgiving for this token of heavenly favour, and then made his way back to London, to enjoy with a good conscience the fish which Edric had presented to him.

Quaint and picturesque as is the legend, it is clearly nothing but a legend, told by the monks of St. Peter's for various reasons, the most probable being that they were anxious to prove their superiority over the monks of St. Paul's. It is not even a certainty that King Sebert played any part at all in the history of Thorney Island, for in several of the oldest chronicles we are told about "a dweller or citizen of London by name Sebert who was excyted to make a church in the worship of St. Peter in the West End of London, which that time was foregrowen with bushes and bryeres exceedynglye." But, on the whole, I think we may allow the monks to keep King Sebert as their founder, and accept the story that he and his queen were buried in leaden coffins in this early church, that their bodies were removed to the restored church more than four hundred years later, and once again, in the reign of Henry III., were taken from their resting-place to be laid with great ceremony in the tomb which now you can see just inside the south ambulatory of the Abbey.

A century later we find something tangible concerning the Church and Monastery of St. Peter; for Offa, the wise and strong king of Mercia, made certain gifts to it, and in the charter of 785 A.D. confirming these, he spoke of Thorney Island as a "locus terribilis," by which he probably meant "a sacred spot." But after this again there is silence. Once more Britain lay at the mercy of the invaders, this time the fierce Danes, who, as the Saxons had done, swept ruthlessly over the land, devastating and destroying as they went. The church at Thorney was in far too conspicuous a position to escape their notice; they fell upon it in all their fury, and only a few of the monks managed to reach London alive. So were the buildings "reduced to a very mean and low condition."

In time, however, the hand of the Dane was stayed. For a hundred years indeed had they held their sway of terror, till at last they were decisively beaten by Alfred of Wessex, that ideal warrior-king, who first freed his people from their oppressors, and afterwards, laying aside all personal ambition, devoted himself to the task of ruling them wisely and well.

The Peace of Wedmore was signed in 875, and probably the church and monastery of St. Peter were rebuilt soon after, but we know nothing till we come to the days when Dunstan was made Bishop of London, and "prevailed easily with King Edgar (as indeed he did, and ordered all in Church matters during the reign of that Prince), to have the monastery, then in ruins, restored, and that too at the king's expense; that is, the walls and what else remained of the ruins repaired and the place made habitable. And he brought hither from Glastonbury twelve monks to make it a small monastery of the Benedictine Order." Dunstan had grown up from childhood under the shadow of that famous monastery at Glastonbury, where he had been the pupil of the well-learned and deeply religious men who had come over there from Ireland, and when at last, after many years of varied fortunes, he found himself all-powerful, he made it his first object to introduce the strict Benedictine rule wherever it was possible in religious houses. For during the time when the Danes held the upper hand the people had fallen back into many heathen ways, and the priests no longer held the torch of Christ's religion on high, or sought to lead men from darkness to light. Dunstan was full of zeal, and under his strong influence King Edgar made many grants of lands and provisions to the Abbey of St. Peter, in which place Wulsinus, also a monk from Glastonbury, reigned as Abbot.

But once again the monks of Thorney Island were driven forth from their cells and their cloisters, this time also at the hands of the Danes, who, led by Sweyn, "marched through the land, lighting war beacons" as they went on their way, avenging the treacherous massacre of their fellow-countrymen in Wessex.

King Ethelred, the Unready, offered no resistance to the Danes, but let every city save London fall into their hands, and then fled from his kingdom, leaving Sweyn on the throne. However, in Canute, the son of Sweyn, there arose a friend to what remained of the religious house on Thorney, for he, "of a usurper being none of the worst," as an old writer cautiously admits, conceived a great affection for a good monk, Wulnoth, who had been brought up in the monastery there. When he became king, Canute raised Wulnoth to the position of Abbot, granted many favours to him and his house, and there is little doubt that he built for himself a dwelling-place at Thorney so as to be near Wulnoth, whose conversation pleased him, the Abbot being a man of singular sincerity. It was a rest to him to turn from the cares and responsibilities of his kingdom to the peaceful simple life of the Benedictine house. God had called him to the camp and the court, and he had vowed never to spare himself in what was good or needful for his people. But in his latter days it was the calm of the cloister that he loved. Nothing remains of the palace he built there, save the record that it was burned down in a later reign, but it is probable that the well-known incident of the courtiers and the tide took place on Thorney Isle.

Canute was but forty when he died, and with him died the peace which had been such a blessing to his people while he reigned. For he left three sons, and between two of these, Harold and Hardicanute, there was sharp strife as to who should become king of England. First they divided the land, then Harold became sole king. But three years later he died, and was buried in the Church of St. Peter, under the shadow of the walls his father had loved so well. From thence, however, his fierce brother Hardicanute dragged forth his body and had it thrown into the Thames hard by.

Such a deed as this stamps the man, and shows him as he was, cruel, revengeful, and fierce. His people suffered many things at his hands, and when he died of hard drinking at the end of two years, there was a great longing throughout the land to shake off the last trace of a Danish yoke and to have for king one of their own race. Their hearts turned towards Edward, the younger son of Ethelred the Unready, whose life hitherto had been chiefly spent in Normandy, whither he with his mother, Emma of Normandy, afterwards the wife of Canute, had taken refuge when Sweyn had conquered England. Little did they know of him, save that he was of their blood, and had been exiled from his land and his birthright by a foreign foe. But his face was gentle, like that of a woman, with white skin, pink cheeks, blue eyes and golden hair; his voice was low, his manner serious and kind, his ways were simple and he had a reputation for great holiness.

Earl Godwine, the all-powerful noble who had served under Canute and had vainly endeavoured to restrain his sons, was at one with the people of England in this matter, and so it came to pass that "before King Hardicanute buried were, all folk chose Edward to king at London." For awhile Edward hesitated. A throne had no attractions for him, and he was almost a stranger to English manners and English life. But Godwine, who had gone out to Normandy as the bearer of the message from the people, over-persuaded him and brought him back. The Witan met at Gillingham in Dorset to confirm the choice of the citizens of London, and Edward was crowned in Winchester Cathedral on Easter Day with great ceremony, many foreign princes and ambassadors being present to do him honour.

Almost the first work of the new king was to build himself a palace, and the site he chose was one close to the little Benedictine monastery at Thorney Isle, which now was always called Westminster, a place no longer covered with brambles, but well cultivated by the monks, who were skilled tillers of the soil, and rendered green and fertile by the river which flowed hard by. Of the palace as he built it no traces are left to us, it having been all destroyed by fire, but we know it was made very strong, guarded by outer and inner walls fashioned after the manner of a Norman castle, probably nearly resembling the Council Chamber and Banqueting Hall which still remain in the Tower of London, little altered since the day when the early Norman builders completed their work. The Abbot of Westminster at this time was Eadwine, a very prudent man, and he soon attracted the notice of the king, who was by nature far more fit to rule a monastery than a kingdom. Edward was troubled somewhat in his mind, for when an exile in Normandy, he had taken a vow that should it ever please God to restore him to his rightful inheritance, he would go on a pilgrimage to Rome to do honour to St. Peter there; but now that he was safely established on the throne, his council made strong objections to his leaving the country, lest some evil should befall him or the Danes should take advantage of his absence to invade the land, while "the common people, publicly and with tears, showed their concern, entreating him to desist from so dangerous a voyage." Thus the king knew not how to act, desiring ardently to carry out his vow, and yet being unwilling to disregard the wishes of his people. Possibly it was Eadwine, living as he did so near to the king's new palace as to be often consulted by him, who proposed as a way out of the difficulty that a Bishop, with a fitting retinue, should be sent as an ambassador to Pope Leo, to explain to him how Edward was restrained from journeying thither himself, and to ask for a dispensation. This proposal was quickly carried into action.

Pope Leo readily absolved the king from his vow, desiring that instead he should build or restore some monastery to the honour of St. Peter, and make over to the relief of the poor such a sum of money as his journey would have cost him.

Edward was wonderfully pleased at the Pope's message, and resolved to begin at once a building worthy of the great Apostle. What more natural than that he should choose the little monastery at Westminster, which was very poor? It lay near to the city of London, and to that great river up and down which there was so much coming and going of ships. It lay near also to his own palace, and if the present humble buildings gave place to such an edifice as he intended to raise, where could a more suitable burying-place for himself be found when the time came for God to call him hence? Then, too, Abbot Eadwine found great favour in his eyes; and the monks there, under the strict rule of St. Benedict, had won for themselves a good report concerning the simplicity and holiness of their lives. So it seemed fitting that Westminster should be raised from its lowly state and be refashioned in a manner worthy of the saint whose name it bore.

Just at this time, too, Wulsinus, an aged and saintly monk at Worcester, had a wondrous story to tell of a sacred vision vouchsafed to him, in which St. Peter had appeared bidding him to deliver this message to the king. "There is," declared the Apostle, "a place of mine in the west of London, which I chose and love, the name of it being Thorney: which having for the sins of the people been given to the power of the barbarians, from rich is become poor, from stately low, and from honourable is made despicable. This let the king by my command restore and make a dwelling of monks, stately built and well endowed, for it shall be no less than the House of God and the Gate of Heaven."

The vision was made known to Edward, and shortly afterwards he commanded that a tenth of his entire substance, gold, silver, cattle, and all other possessions, should be set aside for the purpose of pulling down the old church and raising a new one from the very foundation.

So from this time the story of the Abbey passes from misty legend into proven history, and it is with Edward, named afterwards "the Confessor," that the glory must rest of having called into being that great religious house, destined in the future to be most closely linked with all that concerned alike the crown and the country.