London, Volume 4
Knight, Charles
1843
LXXXII.-Westminster Abbey: No. III. The Regal Mausoleums.
LXXXII.-Westminster Abbey: No. III. The Regal Mausoleums.
| It would be hardly possible to present a more impressive lesson on the mutability of earthly glory than is afforded by the contrast between the grand ceremonials which connect the history of our sovereigns for so many centuries with that of . The few steps upwards unto the throne, and the few downwards into the grave; the airy sweep of the beautiful pointed arches, tier above tier, and the low and narrow vault; the spirit-stirring splendours of pageant, and the sombre and dread magnificence of the other; the new-born hopes which, binding king and people for the hour in a common sympathy, make the past appear as nothing, the future all,--and, alas! the melancholy comment provoked when all is over as to the necessity for the repetition of the process; these are but the regular and almost unchanging phenomena of the momentous ebbing and flowing of regal life which meet us in the memories of the Abbey. It were a curious question to inquire whether those | |
98 | who have been the chief actors in such different ceremonials have ever, during the , thought of the other; whether, among all the monarchs who have passed along in their gorgeous robes, and beneath the silken canopies which the proudest nobles have been most proud to bear, there has been to whom the secret monitor has whispered, in the words of a writer [n.98.1] better known as the historian than as the poet of the Cathedral-
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Arousing ourselves, though reluctantly, from the train of reflection inspired by the place, and the significant juxta-position of the coronation-chair [n.98.2] and the tombs of the chief of those kings who have occupied it, let us look around. We are in the innermost sanctuary of the temple, in a spot made holy by a associations, but, above all, by the devout aspirations of the countless multitudes who have come from all parts, not only of our own but of distant lands, to bend before the shrine by our side, in which still repose the ashes of the canonized Confessor. Edward was at buried before the high altar, and then removed | |
| by Becket to a richer shrine in its neighbourhood, probably in consequence of his canonization by Pope Alexander III. about ; but after the rebuilding of the church by Henry III., that king had a shrine made to receive the treasured remains, of so sumptuous a character, that the details almost stagger belief. Among its ornaments were numerous golden statues, such as an image of St. Edmund, King, wearing a crown set with large sapphires, a ruby, and other precious stones; an image of a king with a ruby on his breast, and other small stones; an image of the king, holding in the right hand a flower, with sapphires and emeralds in the middle of the crown, and a great garnet in the breast, and otherwise set with pearls and small stones; other golden images of kings set with garnets, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires; | |
99 | golden angels; an image of the Virgin and Child, set with rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and garnets; a golden image of a king holding a shrine in his hand, set with precious stones; also, an image of a king holding in hand a cameo with heads, in the other a sceptre, set with rubies, onyx, and pearls; and an image of St. Peter, holding in hand a church, in the other the keys, and trampling upon Nero, with a large sapphire in his breast. The Patent Rolls mention also a weighing pennyweights; great cameo in a golden case, with a golden chain, valued alone at of the money of the century. There were, in all, large cameos. Such parts of the shrine as were not covered with these precious ornaments were inlaid with the richest mosaic, This was the shrine which |
100 | Henry III. prepared for the Confessor's ashes; and the ceremony of the removal was of accordant splendour. The coffin was borne by himself, his brother the King of the Romans, and other persons of the highest rank. Nor, for the credulous, were miracles wanting to maintain the Confessor's ancient reputation; an Irishman and an Englishman, according to Matthew Paris, being dispossessed of devils on the occasion. The shrine, we need hardly add, no longer exhibits the blaze of wealth which gladdened the eyes of our forefathers, as satisfying them their revered king was worthily lodged; time, and more mischievous agencies than time, have left it but a wreck of what it was, although a sumptuous-looking piece of antiquity still. The upper portion is a mere wainscot addition, it is supposed, of the century: why added, it is impossible to say. In connexion with this and preceding shrines of the Confessor are many interesting memories. When William the Conqueror was busy displacing the principal English ecclesiastics, in order to make room for his Norman followers, among the rest Wulstan Bishop of Worcester, an illiterate but pure and noble-minded man, was required by a synod sitting in the Abbey to deliver up his episcopal staff. Wulstan, in a few words addressed to the Archbishop Lanfranc, acknowledged his inability and unworthiness for the high duties of his vocation, and expressed his willingness to resign the pastoral staff; he continued, He then solemnly advanced to the shrine of the Confessor, and thus spake: At the breaking up of that synod Wulstan was still Bishop of Worcester, and the overjoyed people were informed, to their very great edification, that, when Wulstan had placed his crozier on the tomb, it became so fixed as to be irremoveable. Here, too, at a much later period; Henry IV. says Fabian, The attendants took him into the Jerusalem chamber, and when, inquiring the name of the place, and being told, he said, in the words of Shakspere- &c.- and here he died. Turning from the shrine in the centre of the Chapel to the screen which divides it from the Choir, we find this also has been dedicated to the memory of the Confessor. The very extraordinary and interesting frieze which decorates it contains no less than small but boldly sculptured groups or tableaux, representatives of the more remarkable events which |
101 | signalized his reign. We can only mention, a piece of sculpture near the centre, deeply hollowed out, representing a chamber with Edward in bed, and looking on a thief who is kneeling before a chest containing his treasure, and whom, according to the story, he admonishes;[n.101.1] and or others, descriptive of of the interesting tales in which the people of the middle ages so much delighted. |
Dart thus relates it, on the authority of an old manuscript:-- How implicitly this story was believed we may see from the pains taken to commemorate it in so many places in and about the Abbey; among the rest, over the old gate going into ,--in the stained glass of of the eastern windows of the Abbey,--and in the screen before us. If there were a tomb in the world which would have thought an antiquary would have looked on with awe-ashes which it were sacrilege almost to touch-we should have thought it was the tomb and ashes of the Confessor; around which hung all those associations, so solemnly and deeply interesting, however stripped of their superstitious alloy. Yet Keepe, of the historians of the Abbey, could write, without a blush upon his cheek, that, when a hole had been broken in the lid of the coffin during the removal of the scaffolding of James II.'s coronation, both of which were presented to the King, who ordered in return new planks for the coffin, that
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From the time of the burial of the Confessor, in the new Abbey he had built, to that of Henry III., in the structure which owns him for its founder, the Kings of England were mostly buried on the Continent; none of them in the Abbey of . Henry's tomb, which stands on the left of the paltry entrance into the Chapel from the Ambulatory, bears a striking resemblance to the lower part of that he caused to be erected for the Confessor; and, like that, was originally richly decorated. beautiful panels of porphyry still ornament the front and back, and the gilding is in parts also yet bright. The tomb was erected over the place which had been the grave previously of Edward, and where Henry | |
102 | was now buried; and it was standing upon the edge of that grave that the barons of England, with the Earl of Gloucester at their head, placing their hands upon the royal corpse, swore fealty to Edward I., then in the Holy Land. Some years after the grave was opened, and the heart taken away, by the Abbot Wenlock, and delivered to the Abbess of Font-Evraud, in Normandy, to whom Henry had promised it during his lifetime. What a contrast to Henry's memorial is that of his son on the side, or, to both monuments, that of his son's wife on the other. The tomb of Edward has an air of rude, almost savage dignity, which harmonises admirably with his character, and seems as though his executors had but fulfilled his own previously expressed wishes, or at least studied what would have been his tastes, when they left the historian to remark that his But this applies only to the tomb; the manner in which they decorated his body with false jewels was neither plain and simple, nor rich and befitting kingly dignity. The exhumation of the corpse of the English Justinian (when this circumstance was discovered) is so interesting that we should gladly give a more detailed account than our space will admit. It was in that certain antiquaries obtained permission of the Dean to examine the body, which was done in his presence. It was enclosed within a large square mantle of linen cloth well waxed, with a face-cloth of crimson sarcenet: these being removed, the great King was before them in all the ensigns of royalty, with sceptres in each hand, a crown on his head, and arrayed in a red silk damask tunic, white stole most elegantly ornamented, and a rich crimson mantle, the whole somewhat profusely decorated with false stones. The body beneath was covered with a fine linen cere-cloth, adhering closely to every part, including the fingers and face. The examination over, the coffin was most carefully closed again, but not before another of our antiquaries, according to Mr. D'Israeli, had exhibited the want of those sentiments which antiquarians above all others are so apt to pride themselves upon the possession of. Among the spectators We must add to this notice of Edward's tomb, that Froissart relates that Edward, on his death-bed at Burgh-upon-Sands, near Carlisle, on his way towards Scotland, then again in arms against him, called his son, and made him swear, in the presence of his nobles, that after his death he would cause his body to be boiled till the flesh should be stripped from the bones, and that then he would preserve the latter to carry with him whenever he should have occasion to lead an army against the rebellious Scots. If such an oath was exacted, the son took no further notice of it, but buried his father where we now find his remains. Eleanor lies on the other side of Henry III., beneath a tomb of grey marble, on which is a gilded effigy, of a character that hardly knows how to speak of with sufficient admiration. A more exquisitely beautiful work |
103 | of its kind perhaps does not exist; the indescribable loveliness of the face, the wonderful grace and elegance of the hands, and the general ease, dignity, and refinement of the figure, seem almost miraculous in connexion with the productions of what we are accustomed to call the dark ages. There it lies, not a feature of the face injured, not a finger broken off, perfect in its essentials as on the day it left the studio, whilst all around marks of injury and dilapidation meet you on every side: it is as though its own serene beauty had rendered violence impossible, had even touched the heart of the great destroyer Time himself. Only of late years has the name of the great-however unknown-artist of this work been made known; it was Master William Torel-English, it is supposed, for Torelli, an Italian artist, to whom we are also indebted for the effigy on Henry III.'s tomb. |
Going regularly round the Chapel, from the screen on the west side to the tombs just mentioned on the north, then to the east, which is occupied by the magnificent monument of Henry V., which we pass for the present, we have lastly, on the south side, Philippa, Queen of Edward III., endeared to all memories by the story of Calais; next, her husband,[n.103.1] and lastly Richard II. and his Queen. Both Philippa's and Edward's monuments have suffered grievously: of the statues and fret-work niches that formerly ornamented the , | |
104 | there remains but a fragment of the niches. Edward's has been more fortunate, for the outer side, or that seen from the Ambulatory, has yet small figures in good preservation. By this monument are objects that almost divide attention with the coronation chair--the sword and shield which were carried before the King in his destructive French wars. Edward died in -some years too late for his fame. It must have been a melancholy spectacle to see such a monarch spending his latter hours with a mistress too worthless even to wait patiently for their close, or to see him who had held powerful and undisputed sway over great kingdom, and shaken others to their very centre, too weak and friendless to prevent his own attendants from plundering him almost in his sight. |
The eye is attracted towards the tomb of Richard II. and his Queen by the rubbed surface of a portion of Richard's effigy, which shows the bright gilding that the dirt elsewhere conceals: this was erected by the King's own order in his lifetime. And here did the pious and generous care of Henry V., the son of his destroyer, soon after his accession, remove the murdered remains from Friars Langley, and place them by the side of the unhappy Richard's Queen. The whole subject of Richard's death has been as yet of impenetrable mystery, and the examination of his corpse here, if it be his, has not enlightened us. Neither of the skulls within the tomb, on the closest examination, presented any marks of fracture or evidences of murderous violence. Above the effigies are paintings in oil, on the roof of the canopy. To Bolingbroke's (Henry IV.'s) death we have already incidentally referred--he was buried at Canterbury. His son's brief but brilliant reign ended in France, where he died in . Seldom has monarch been more regretted than was Henry V. by his subjects. The body was carried in funereal state to Paris, thence through Rouen, Abbeville, and Boulogne to Calais, where a fleet waited to bear the remains across the Channel to Dover. As the long and melancholy procession approached the metropolis, a great number of bishops, mitred abbots, and the most eminent churchmen, attended by vast multitudes of people, went to meet and join it. Through the streets of London they moved with slow step, the clergy chanting the service for the dead, till they reached , where the solemn rites were performed in the presence of the Parliament of the nation. Then again the procession moved forward to the final resting-place, the Abbey. | |
The Chantry, beneath which he lies, and towards which we now turn, is, next to Henry VII.'s tomb, the most magnificent piece of mingled architecture and sculpture in the Abbey. In form it is not unlike a great H, the sides forming lofty octagonal towers, connected about the middle by a broad band, if we may so call it, which forms at once the roof of the arch between the turrets below and the floor of the Chantry above, where masses were formerly said times a day for the soul of the deceased sovereign. The entire front is mass of the richest and most florid architectural details, to which the large statues in their respective niches in the towers give breadth and grandeur. On high, at the back of the Chantry, is seen the helmet worn by Henry V., probably at Agincourt; deep dents in it show at least that he has worn it in no trifling or ignoble contest. His shield and saddle are also preserved here. The headless effigy of Henry (the head was of silver, and therefore carried off by his namesake of church-stripping memory, and not, as the guides tell us, by Cromwell) lies | |
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within the deep and solemn-looking arch beneath, where you look over the tomb, and through the arch over the Ambulatory, and on through the still darker porch of Henry VII.'s Chapel into that palace of art, whither we next direct our steps: not forgetting to observe by the way that Henry's Queen, Katherine of France, was buried in the old Chapel of the Virgin Mary, and, in consequence, had to be removed when that edifice was pulled down by her grandson, Henry VII. By some unaccountable and most disgraceful neglect, the body, which was in a peculiar but extraordinary state of preservation, was left so exposed for between and centuries, that any influential visitor who wished could see it. Of course the eternal sight-seer Pepys was attracted. he says, In the body was buried in St. Nicholas's Chapel. |
The entrance into Henry VII.'s Chapel is an event to be remembered for a lifetime: the sight of becomes, indeed, And with what consummate art has the architect enhanced even the effect of his own marvellous production, by the solemn gloom that pervades the porch through which we pass into the interior! moment we are in what may be almost called darkness; the next-having passed through the brazen open-worked gates--in a blaze of light and decoration. And, as we look around, | |
106 | what imagination but must own that even its own most brilliant and merely ideal creations are here surpassed in the expression stamped upon these solid stone walls, and windows, and roof. Did ever arches spring upward with such fairy-like grace?-or guide the entranced eye to a more surpassingly beautiful and almost miraculous roof? where, in the words of Washington Irving, Then, again, the statues; the innumerable statues of patriarchs, saints, martyrs, confessors, and angels! There must have been, after all, something truly magnificent in the king who could determine on the erection of such a place, select the genius that could erect it, and then give such unlimited scope to the development of its loftiest and most daring imaginings. And the artist, strange to say, is unknown, or at least not known with any certainty. The feverish desire of fame, which is so proverbially a characteristic of high minds, seems to be little felt by the highest. In the breasts of the great men who have bequeathed to this country its most precious architectural wealth we find no traces whatever of its existence. A few words deeply cut on a stone would have made their names immortal, but none of them seem to have thought it worth the trouble, if they thought of the matter at all. So with regard to Henry VII.'s Chapel: which has been attributed to Bishop Fox, Bishop Alcock, Sir Reginald Bray, and to the Prior of St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield; who, there is the greatest reason to believe, was the man. Henry, in his will, calls him the But, beautiful as the interior now appears, there was a time when it must have appeared infinitely more so. In its original state the were with the king's arms, badges, cognizances, &c.; the stained windows displayed similar ornaments, with the addition of greater works, such as all in the most brilliant and pristine colours; numerous altars were scattered about, of them with a large statue of the Virgin, and an immense golden cross, and the whole bearing tall wax tapers, burning constantly; whilst to and fro there was generally to be seen moving some procession of the inhabitants of the Abbey; the monks in their black garments, the incense-bearers in white, the officiating priests in their gemmed and embroidered vests, and the whole wearing the copes of cloth of gold tissue, embroidered with roses, given by Henry VII. to be used in the performance of the different ceremonials instituted by him for the due repose of his soul. And that soul seems to have been a difficult to deal with; for never, surely, did monarch impose more trouble upon certain portions of his subjects for its due preservation. In this, perhaps, Henry, like many other men whose piety and policy have not exactly gone hand in hand, tried to Whilst he was arranging with Abbot Islip for the performance of daily masses for the welfare of his soul, to continue for the additional ceremonies which were to take place on holidays and feasts; for the annual procession of the monks, prior, abbot, with the Lord Chancellor, Lord Treasurer, and other great officers of state, to the high altar by his tomb, where there was to be a hearse with a great tapers burning, and almsmen ranged round it with burning torches; whilst he was founding an almshouse within the Abbey, and providing gifts for a large |
107 | number of casual poor to be distributed at the altar;--was it to be supposed that in doing all this for the future welfare of his soul he could be expected to take much present care of it? Was he not to be allowed just to finish the policy he had steadily pursued through his reign, when he was showing how heartily he was determined to repent-after he was dead? But, fortunately for us, Henry's prospective piety took a more tangible shape than masses and requiems, and that it is heartily to be hoped may endure as long as they were to have endured, even --The chapel is but another evidence of Henry's care for his soul. This was begun (the Chapel of the Kings, or the Confessor's, being full) on in the year , as Holinshed carefully informs us; at which time the stone was laid by Abbot Islip, in the presence of numerous distinguished persons. It was still unfinished when Henry died in , who, in his last hours, was very careful to provide funds for its continuance, and to give ample directions in his will on all important points. The entire expense of .the work was about ; but as those figures give no idea to of the cost, we may offer, as an illustration merely, the fact that above has been expended in the present century in merely rebuilding the exterior! And this immense sum it seems has furnished but an insufficient restoration, as, from some defect in the stone or the workmanship, decay is said to be already evident. Having safely secured his soul, Henry made suitable provision for his body. He said little of his burial, further than to charge his executors to perform it with a but then he proceeded to set the said executors a bad example as to the pomp and the superfluities, if at least these words are to mean anything more than mere flourishes, for he directed a tomb to be made in a style that shows that he intended it in richness of decoration to surpass everything of the kind known in this country. And he was as fortunate in his executors' selection of an artist for this, as he had been himself for the greater work. Pietro Torrigiano, a Florentine, was the object of their choice, a man as distinguished for the turbulence of his temper as for his genius. In early life he had been a fellow-student with Michael Angelo, and in quarrel broke the bridge of his nose, and thus deformed for life the features of his great rival. He came to England with a high reputation--the tomb before us tells how deserved. Bacon calls it of the It consists of a pedestal or table of , a basaltic stone not unlike black marble, on which repose the effigies of Henry and his Queen, sculptured in a style of great simplicity and adherence to nature; the whole adorned with pilasters, relievos, rose-branches (referring to the junction of the rival Houses), and or graven as Henry calls them in the directions in his will, of the king's Avouries, or patron saints; viz. the Virgin and Saviour and St. Michael, St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, St. George and St. Anthony, all on the south side, and and St. Barbara, St. Christopher and St. Anne, Edward the Confessor and John, and, lastly, St. Vincent, on the north. These are all of copper, gilt. On the angles of the tomb are seated angels. Torrigiano was years engaged in the work, and received for it the immense sum of The brass screen, it is pleasant to have to remember, is the product of English art. It was |
108 | formerly adorned with no less than statues, of which only remain. We can only add to this general notice of the Chapel, as a parting illustration of its artistical wealth, that it is said to have possessed, within and without, about statues; and that the very seats (now only used, we believe, at the installation of the Knights of the Bath, whose banners hang overhead) display on their lower side, as we turn them back on their hinges, an infinite variety of the most exquisite carvings of flowers, fruit, foliage, grotesque animals, groups of Bacchanals, and still more important pictorial subjects, which are frequently of an amusing, sometimes of a licentious, character. of the seats has for its subject the Evil carrying off a friar in the central compartment, while a woman wrings her hands at his loss on side, and an attendant imp expresses feelings by beating a tattoo on the other; such were the monkish satires upon the lives of their wandering brethren. |
From the time of the burial of Henry VII. to that of George II. most of our sovereigns have been interred in this Chapel; with the latter reign the custom was discontinued-George III. erecting a vault for himself and successors at Windsor. The youthful and accomplished Edward VI., it appears, was buried near the high altar before mentioned; no tomb nor inscription marks the spot. As we walk up the northern aisle of the Chapel, we are directed to the last home of his sisters and successors, Mary and Elizabeth (who lie in the same tomb), by the immense monument erected to the latter by James I.; and which so much | |
109 | resembles the monument erected by the same king to his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, in the opposite aisle, that would suppose he wished to keep before the world, in as forcible a manner as possible, the remembrance of events in which conduct, during the period the scaffold was preparing for the unfortunate Mary, is perhaps the only point on which there cannot be a difference of opinion. Elizabeth's memorial is by Maximilian Coulte; Mary's by Cornelius Cure. |
At the end of the same aisle, near the sarcophagus of white marble containing the supposed remains of the murdered Edward V. and his brother (the finding of which in the Tower has already been mentioned),[n.109.1] is a vault in which lie in strange companionship the oppressor and the oppressed, James I. and Arabella Stuart, as well as James's Queen, Anne-and son, Prince Henry. The Lady Arabella, it will be remembered, died in a state of insanity in the Tower, brought on by the infamous persecutions to which she was subjected on account of her | |
| royal descent, and more particularly after the discovery of her marriage with William Seymour. Leaving this melancholy spot, we look in vain for any memorial of James's successor, whose headless corpse was buried at Windsor; or of the Protector, who interred here, and with more than the usual regal pomp. He died on the anniversary of his great victories of Dunbar and Worcester, the , and was buried on the ; when Henry VII.'s Chapel was hung both within and without--with hundreds of | |
110 | escutcheons, and the framework or enclosure of the hearse exhibited an immense number of embossed shields of different sizes, with crowns, badges, and scrolls, the latter bearing appropriate mottoes. Suspended from the hearse all around were waving pennons, and upon it lay a carved effigy of the Protector, the same party, we presume, to whom we are indebted for of the finest of English coins, Cromwell's crown-piece. The effigy was magnificently arrayed in a laced holland shirt, silk stockings, Spanish leather shoes tied with gold lace, doublet of uncut grey velvet with gold buttons, purple velvet surcoat laced with gold, and over all a royal robe of purple velvet, embossed with gold, and lined with ermine. Beneath the effigy was a bed, consisting of a quilt, then a cloth of estate, next a holland sheet, and lastly a velvet pall. The head rested on a cushion. On the sides of the figure were disposed the head-piece and plume, the breastplate, and greaves of the deceased warrior; whilst at his feet were his coat, mantle, helmet and crest, sword, target, spurs, and gauntlets. Among the other ornaments were the standards of England and Scotland. The procession was equally splendid, and included some of the most distinguished persons of the realm. Little more than years afterwards, on the anniversary of the day of Charles's execution, there came a band of men, armed with all due powers from the King, who broke open the grave that had been so solemnly closed, dragged forth the mouldering remains, and placed them, with those of Ireton, Cromwell's son-in-law, and Bradshaw, the President of the Court that had condemned the King, on hurdles, and dragged them to Tyburn. There the bodies were hung at the several angles of a triangular gallows till sunset, then cut down, beheaded, and thrown into a pit beneath, while the heads were taken back to , and placed on the top of the Hall. Whatever their political opinions, would have hardly supposed that the authorities of the Abbey could have exactly approved of this pitiful war with the dead; so far, however, was that from being the case, that the Dean and Chapter, in the exuberance of their loyalty, obtained a warrant for the further exhumation of the corpses of Cromwell's , women of the most blameless purity of lives; of Pym, Cromwell's early coadjutor, who had actually died whilst the struggle between the people and their sovereign was as yet a bloodless ; and of Blake, the great naval hero, whose only crime must have been the fighting too well for his country abroad, without troubling himself as to who was in power at home. It is strange that neither the King nor his advisers in these proceedings should have perceived that their indiscriminate character prevented even the semblance of justice from appertaining to them, and that they therefore could not fail to react to the injury of the doers. Of course no memorial marks the place from whence the bodies were taken. |
Crossing to the south aisle, we stand by the vault in which lies the restored King, Charles II., of whose burial and reign the royalist Evelyn gives this brief but significant comment:-- There were circumstances, however, attending the death that must have excited much speculation among the spectators of the funeral ceremonies. It was whispered abroad that Charles had | |
111 | been poisoned by his brother James, the new King; a charge which, though it ultimately found distinct expression from the Duke of Monmouth in his revolutionary attempt, seems to have been without foundation. There was another rumour, which, taken in connexion with the supposed religious views of James, must have deeply interested the nation at large. It was, that Charles, the Protestant Defender of the Faith as by law established, had actually died a Catholic, and that Catholic rites had been secretly performed whilst the chief ecclesiastics of the Church were in the palace. And the fact was afterwards decisively established. Barillon, the French ambassador, says, the Duchess of Portsmouth came to him a little before the King's death, and observed, She then entreated him to communicate with the Duke of York on the subject; Barillon did so, and the Duke promised to hazard all rather than not do his duty. James immediately went to his brother, and found he had refused to take the Sacrament from the Bishops, who, as if suspicious, hardly left his bed-side for a moment. The same subject was at the hearts of both the brothers, but neither of them, even at that dread hour, had sufficient manliness to avow honestly their sentiments, and take the consequences; at last the Duke, finding no better expedient, stooped down and whispered to the King-what could not be heard;--but Charles replied more than once, and in a loud voice, The Duke then hurried to Barillon, to desire him to find a priest instantly; and, after some search, there was discovered among the Queen's attendants Huddlestone, who, having saved the life of Charles at Worcester, had been exempted from all the penal laws relating to the Catholics. Huddlestone was taken to the door of a back room adjoining the royal chamber, when, all being prepared, the Duke entered and exclaimed, The disguised priest, with the host, was then brought in, James introducing him to his brother, with the remark, The ceremony proceeded, and the Duke subsequently told Barillon that Charles had formally engaged to declare himself a Catholic if he recovered. Whether he spake in full sincerity was not to be shown: he died the next morning, the . We need not look in Henry VII.'s Chapel for any memorial of his successor, whose career is summed up in a few words: he manfully declared his views, and the nation as manfully theirs; and they were the strongest. James died a Catholic, but no King. In the regal mausoleums he has no place. The vault where he should have been interred, the vacant space by his brother's remains he should have occupied, belong to his successful opponent-William III., who lies here with his lamented Queen. Anne and Prince George complete the list of inhabitants of the vault of the southern aisle. Lastly, in the centre of the Chapel repose, in a vault beneath the chequered pavement; George II. and his Queen, with the hero or butcher of Culloden-posterity does not seem to have quite determined whether the English or the Scotch appellation is the most suitable--the Duke of Cumberland. |
Among the other tombs scattered about the Chapel are some to the memory | |
112 | of persons of royal blood, which demand here a word of notice. Such is that to Lord Darnley's mother, a lady who, according to the inscription, and I. of England. And such is the tomb of Margaret Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII., whose effigy of brass is another piece of masterly workmanship from the hands of Torrigiano. This is the lady of whom Camden reports she would often say, the true spirit of a chivalrous lady of earlier ages, but little suited for the period of her son, when men did more by craft than the sword, and when the head alike of the church and the state was, as we have seen, too busy in taking care of his own soul to think of the souls of unknown multitudes of Mohammedans. And who that looks round upon this most beautiful of structures but sincerely rejoices in his determination? |
Footnotes: [n.98.1] Dart. [n.98.2] The second chair (the one to the right) is supposed to have been first used at the coronation of William and Mary. [n.101.1] Pennant calls it the story of his winking at the thief who was robbing his treasury. [n.103.1] The second Edward was buried at Gloucester. [n.109.1] No. XXXIX., vol. ii., p. 225. |
