ground that the two sees should not be held together. Tosti was furious on behalf of his friend Aldred, but could not gain his point. On their return they were attacked by a band of robbers at Sutri, a spot still dangerous for the same reason. Some of the party were stripped to the skin-amongst them the Archbishop of York. Tosti was saved only by the magnificent appearance of Gospatrick, who rode before, and misled. the robbers into the belief that he was the powerful Earl.2 Meanwhile Tosti returned to Rome, in a state of fierce indignation, and, with his well-known 'adamantine obstinacy,' declared that he would take measures for stopping Peter's pence from England, by making it known that the Pope, whose claims were so formidable abroad, was in the hands of robbers at home.3 With this threat (so often repeated in every form and tone since) he carried the suit of his friend; and the deputation returned, not only with the privileges of Westminster, but with the questionable confirmation of Aldred's questionable demands. The Abbey had been fifteen years in building. The King had spent upon it one-tenth of the property of the kingdom. It was to be a marvel of its kind. As in its origin it Building of the Abbey. bore the traces of the fantastic childish character of the King and of the age, in its architecture it bore the stamp of the peculiar position which Edward occupied in English history between Saxon and Norman. By birth he was a Saxon, but in all else he was a foreigner. Accordingly, the Church at Westminster was a wide sweeping innovation on all that had been seen before. 'Destroying the old building,' he says in his Charter, 'I have built up a new one from the very foundation.' Its fame as a new style of composition' lingered in the minds of men for generations. It was the first cruciform church in England, from which all the rest of like shape were copied-an 6 Stubbs, C. 1702. William of Malmesbury in Life of Wulfstan, pt. ii. c. 10. (Anglia Sacra, vol. ii. 250.) 2 Harleian Life, 770. 3 Brompton, c. 952: Knyghton, c. 2336. The collegiate church of Waltham, which was founded by Harold in A.D. 1060, must have been the nearest approach to this. But whatever view is taken of the present structure of the church at Waltham, it was considerably smaller than the Abbey. The proof of the size of the Confessor's church rests on the facts-1. That the Lady Chapel of Henry III. must have Kemble, No. 824, iv. 176. expression of the increasing hold which the idea of the Crucifixion in the tenth century had laid on the imagination of Europe. Its massive roof and pillars formed a contrast with the rude wooden rafters and beams of the common Saxon churches. Its very size--occupying, as it did, almost the whole area of the present building-was in itself portentous. The deep foundations, of large square blocks of gray stone, were duly laid. The east end was rounded into an apse. A tower rose in the centre crowned by a cupola of wood. At the western end were erected two smaller towers, with five large bells. The hard strong stones were richly sculptured. The windows were filled with stained glass. The roof was covered with lead. The cloisters, chapter-house, refectory, dormitory, the infirmary, with its spacious chapel, if not completed by Edward, were all begun, and finished in the next generation on the same plan. This structure, venerable as it would be if it had lasted to our time, has almost entirely vanished. Possibly one vast dark arch in the southern transept-certainly the substructures of the dormitory, with their huge pillars, 'grand and regal at the bases and capitals '-the massive low-browed passage, leading from the great cloister to Little Dean's Yard -and some portions of the refectory and of the infirmary chapel, remain as specimens of the work which astonished the last age of the Anglo-Saxon and the first age of the Norman monarchy.1 2 The institution was made as new as the building. Abbot Edwin remained; but a large body of monks was imported from Exeter, coincidently with the removal of the see of Crediton to Exeter in the person of the King's friend Leofwin. The services still continued in the old building whilst the new one was rising. A small chapel, dedicated to St. Margaret, which stood on the north side of the present Abbey," is said to have been pulled down; and a new church, bearing the same name, was built on the site of the present Church of St. Margaret.7 The affection entertained for the martyr-saint of Antioch by the House of Cerdic appears in the continuation of her name in Edward's grandniece, Margaret of Scotland. the Seven Sleepers. 2 The end of the Confessor was now at hand. Two legends mark its approach. The first is as follows. It was at Easter.1 Legend of He was sitting in his gold-embroidered robe, and solemnly crowned, in the midst of his courtiers, who were voraciously devouring their food after the long abstinence of Lent. On a sudden he sank into a deep abstraction. Then came one of his curious laughs, and again his rapt meditation. He retired into his chamber, and was followed. by Duke Harold, the Archbishop, and the Abbot of Westminster.3 To them he confided his vision. He had seen the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus suddenly turn from their right sides to their left, and recognised in this omen the sign of war, famine, and pestilence for the coming seventy years, during which the sleepers were to lie in their new position. Immediately on hearing this, the Duke despatched a knight, the Archbishop a bishop, the Abbot a monk, to the Emperor of Constantinople. To Mount Celion under his guidance they went, and there found the Seven Sleepers as the King had seen them. The proof of this portent at once confirmed the King's prevision, and received its own confirmation in the violent convulsions which disturbed the close of the eleventh century. Legend of the Pilgrim. The other legend has a more personal character. The King was on his way to the dedication of the Chapel of St. John the Evangelist." As Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, was the saint before whom the Confessor trembled with a mysterious awe, John, the Apostle of Love, was the saint whom he venerated with a familiar tenderness." A beggar implored him, for the love of St. John, to bestow alms upon him. Hugolin was not to be found. In the chest there was no gold or silver. The King remained in silent thought, and then drew off from his hand a ring, ‘large, royal, and beautiful,' which he gave to the beggar, who vanished. Two English pilgrims, from the town of Ludlow, shortly afterwards found themselves benighted in Syria; when suddenly the path was lighted up, and an old man, white and hoary, preceded by two tapers, accosted them. They told him of their country and their saintly King, on which the old man, 'joy'ously like to a clerk,' guided them to a hostelry, and announced that he was John the Evangelist, the special friend of Edward; and gave them the ring to carry back, with the warning that in six months the King should be with him in Paradise. The pilgrims returned. They found the King at his palace in Essex, said to be called from this incident Havering atte Bower, and with a church dedicated to St. John the Evangelist. He acknowledged the ring, and prepared for his end accordingly.' of the 25. 1065. The long-expected day of the dedication of the Abbey at last arrived. 'At Midwinter,' says the Saxon Chronicle, 'King Edward came to Westminster, and had the Dedication 'minster there consecrated, which he had himself Abbey. 'built, to the honour of God and St. Peter, and all God's 'saints.' It was at Christmas-time (when, as usual at that age, the Court assembled) that the dedication so eagerly desired was to be accomplished. On Christmas Day he appeared, according to custom, wearing his royal crown; 2 but on Christmas night, his strength, prematurely ex- December hausted, suddenly gave way. The mortal illness, long anticipated, set in. He struggled, however, through the three next days, even appearing, with his occasional bursts of hilarity, in the stately banquets with the bishops and nobles. On St. John's Day he grew so rapidly worse, that he gave orders for the solemnity to be fixed for the December morrow. On the morning of that morrow (Wednes- 27. day, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, Childermas 1) he roused himself sufficiently to sign the charter of the Founda- December tion. The peculiar nature of the Festival may have 28. had an attraction for the innocent character of the King; but in the later Middle Ages, and even down to the last century, Cambridge Life, 3455-3590; Oxford Life, 410-40. The story is one of those which attached to St. John, from the old belief (John xxi. 23) that he was not dead, but sleeping. Compare his apparition to James IV. at Linlithgow. It occupies three compartments on the screen, and is also to be seen on the tiles of the Chapterhouse floor. (See Archæol. xxix. 39.) 1065. From the time of Henry III. a figure So in the Charter itself (Kemble, iv. 180). Robert of Gloucester and Ailred of Rievaulx fix it on St. John's 2 a strong prejudice prevailed against beginning anything of moment on that day.' If this belief existed already in the time of the Confessor, the selection of the day is a proof of the haste with which the dedication was pushed forward. It is, at any rate, an instance of a most auspicious work begun (if so be) on the most inauspicious day of the year. The signatures which follow the King's acquire a tragic interest in the light of the events of the next few months. Edith the Queen, her brothers Harold and Gurth, Stigand and Aldred, the two rival primates, are the most conspicuous. They, as the King's illness grew upon him, took his place at the consecration. He himself had arranged the ornaments, gifts, and relics; but the Queen presided at the ceremony3 (she is queen, as he is king, both in church and in palace); and the walls of Westminster Abbey, then white and fresh from the workman's tools, received from Stigand their first consecration -the first which, according to the legend of St. Peter's visit, had ever been given to the spot by mortal hands. By that effort the enfeebled frame and overstrained spirit of the King were worn out. On the evening of Innocents' Day he sank into a deep stupor and was laid in the chamber in Westminster Palace which long afterwards bore his name. On the third day, a startling rally took place. His voice again. sounded loud and clear; his face resumed its brightBut it was the rally of delirium. A few incoherent sentences broke from his lips. He described how in his trance he had seen two holy monks whom he remembered in Normandy, and how they foretold to him the coming disasters, which should only be ended when the green tree, after severance from its trunk and removal to the distance of three acres, 'should return to its parent stem, and again bear leaf and fruit and flower.' The Queen was sitting on the ground, fondling his cold feet in her lap. Beside her stood her brother Harold, Rodbert the keeper of the palace, and others who had been called in by Edward's revival. They were all terrorstruck. Archbishop Stigand alone had the courage to whisper December 31. ness. Home's Everyday Book, i. 1648. See Chapter II. 2 For the relics, see Dart, i. 37 They consisted of the usual extraordinary fragments of the dresses, etc., of the most sacred personages. The most remarkable were the girdle dropt by the Virgin to convince St. Thomas 5 of her assumption (which is also shown in the Batopædi Convent of Mount Athos), and the cross which came over sea, against winds and waves, with the Confessor from Normandy. 3 Ailred, c. 399. Cambridge Life, 3655. |