Compensa ferred on the literature and the intelligence of England since the Reformation may fairly be weighed in the balance tion of gifts. against the architectural prodigies which adorned the ages before. Whilst the dignitaries of the ancient Abbey, as we have seen, hardly left any moral or intellectual mark on their age, there have been those in the catalogue of former Deans, Prebendaries, and Masters-not to speak of innumerable names among the scholars of Westminster-who will probably never cease to awaken a recollection as long as the British commonwealth lasts. The English and Scottish Confessions of 1561 and 1643, the English Prayer Book of 1662, and the American Prayer Book of 1789-which derived their origin, in part at least, from our Precincts-have, whatever be their defects, a more enduring and lively existence than any result of the mediæval Councils of Westminster. And if these same Precincts have been disturbed by the personal contests of Williams and Atterbury, and by the unseemly contentions of Convocation, more than an equivalent is found in the violent scenes in St. Catherine's Chapel, the intrigues attendant on the election of the Abbots, and the deplorable scandals of the Sanctuary. Abbot Feckenham believed that,' 'so long as the 'fear and dread of the Christian name remained in England, the privilege of sanctuary in Westminster would remain un'disturbed.' We may much more confidently say, that 'as long as the fear and dread of Christian justice and charity remain,' those unhappy privileges will never be restored, either here or anywhere else.2 These differences, it is true, belong to the general advance of knowledge and power which has pervaded the whole of England since the sixteenth century. But not the less are they witnesses to the value of the Reformation—not the less a compensation for the inevitable loss of those marvellous gifts, which passed away from Europe, Catholic and Protestant alike, with the close of the Middle Ages. What is yet in store for the Abbey none can say. Much, 1 See Appendix to Chapter VI. 2 For the moral state of the district surrounding the Abbey before and since the Reformation, a brief sketch has been given by one whose lifelong residence, and persevering promotion of all good works in the neighbourhood, well entitle him to the name of 'the Lay 'Bishop of Westminster.' See a state ment published in 1850, by Sir William Page Wood (afterwards Lord Hatherley), with a Preface on the Westminster Spiritual Aid Fund, which was then set on foot and since kept up by the unwearied energy of Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, then Canon of Westminster, now Bishop of Lincoln. assuredly, remains to be done to place it on a level with the increasing demands of the human mind, with the changing wants of the English people, with the never-ending enlarge'ment of the Church,' for which every member of the Chapter is on his installation pledged to labour.1 It is the natural centre of religious life and truth, if not to the whole metropolis, at least to the city of Westminster. It is the peculiar home of the entire Anglo-Saxon race, on the other side of the Atlantic no less than on this. It is endeared both to the conforming and to the nonconforming members of the National Church. It combines the full glories of Mediæval and of Protestant England. It is of all our purely ecclesiastical institutions the one which most easily lends itself to union and reconciliation, and is with most difficulty turned to party or polemical uses. By its history, its position, and its independence, it thus becomes in the highest and most comprehensive sense-what it has been well called 'the Fortress of the 'Church of England,' if only its garrison be worthy of it. Whilst Westminster Abbey stands, the Church of England stands. So long as its stones are not sold to the first chance purchaser; so long as it remains the sanctuary, not of any private sect, but of the English people; so long as the great Council of the nation which assisted at its first dedication recognises its religious purpose-so long the separation between the English State and the English Church will not have been accomplished. II. This leads us to remember that the one common element which binds together, by natural piety,' the past changes and the future prospects of the Abbey, has been the continuity intention, carried on from its Founder to the present of worship. day, that it should be a place dedicated for ever to the worship of God. Whilst the interest in the other events and localities of the building has slackened with the course of time, the interest connected with its sacred services has found expression The altar of the 11th century, of the 13th, in all the varying forms of the successive vicissitudes which have passed over the religious mind of England. The history of the Altar' of Westminster Abbey is almost the history of the English Church. The Monuments and Chapels have remained comparatively unchanged except by the natural decay of time. The Holy Table and its accompaniments alone have kept pace with the requirements of each succeeding period. The simpler feeling of the early Middle Ages was represented in its original position, when it stood, as in most churches of that time, at the eastern extremity. In the changes of the thirteenth century, which so deeply affected the whole framework of Christian doctrine, the new veneration for the local saint and for the Virgin Mother, whilst it produced the Lady Chapel and the Confessor's Shrine, thrust forward the High Altar to its present place in front of St. Edward's Chapel. The foreign art of the period left its trace in the richly-painted frontal, the only remnant of the gorgeous Mediæval Altar.3 When, in the fifteenth century, reflecting the increasing divisions and narrowing tendencies of Christendom, walls of partition sprang up everywhere across the Churches of the West, the Screen was erected which parted asunder the Altar from the whole o the Refor- eastern portion of the Abbey. At the Reformation mation, and during the Commonwealth, the wooden movable Table which was brought down into the body of the Church, reproduced, though by a probably undesigned conformity, the of the 15th, of the Restoration, primitive custom both of East and West. Its return to its more easterly position marks the triumph of the Laudian usages under the Stuarts. Its adornment by the sculptures and marbles of Queen Anne follows the of Queen Anne, The popular name of Altar' is nowhere applied to the Holy Table in the Liturgy or Articles. But it is used of the Table of Westminster Abbey in the Coronation Service issued by order of the Privy Council at the beginning of each reign. It is there preserved with other antique customs which have disappeared everywhere else. In no other place, and on no other occasion, could the word be applied so consistently with the tenor of the Reformed Liturgy. If an Altar be a place of Sacrifice, and if (as is well known) the only Sacrifices acknowledged in the English Prayer Book are those of praise and thanksgiving, and still more emphatically of human hearts and lives-then there is a certain fitness in this one application of the name of Altar. For here it signifies the place and time in which are offered up the Sacrifice of the Prayers and thanksgivings of the whole English nation, and the Sacrifice of the highest life in this church and realm, to the good of man and the honour of God. 2 The fate of the Altar and the Table in Henry VII.'s Chapel has been already described in p. 472. 3 Gleanings, 105-111. This Table is probably the one now in the Confessor's Chapel. development of classical art in that our Augustan age. The plaster restoration of the original Screen by Bernasconi, in 1824, indicates the first faint rise of the revival of Gothic art. At its elevation was present a young architect, whose name has since been identified with the full develop- of the 19th ment of the like taste in our own time, and who in the century, design of the new Screen and new altar, erected in 1867, has united the ancient forms of the fifteenth century with the simpler and loftier faith of the nineteenth. And now the contrast of its newness and youth with the venerable mouldering forms around it, is but the contrast of the perpetual growth of the soul of religion with the stationary or decaying memories of its external accompaniments. We sometimes think that it is the Transitory alone which changes, the Eternal which stands still. Rather the Transitory stands still, fades, and falls to pieces: the Eternal continues, by changing its form in accordance with the movement of advancing ages. of the The successive Pulpits of the Abbey, if not equally expressive of the changes which it has witnessed, carry on the sound of many voices, heard with delight and wonder in The Pulpit their time. No vestige remains of the old mediæval Abbots, platform whence the Abbots urged the reluctant court of Henry III. to the Crusades. But we have still the fragile of the Tudor structure from which Cranmer must have preached at of the the coronation and funeral of his royal godson; and Divines, the more elaborate carving of that which resounded with the passionate appeals, at one time of Baxter, Howe, and Owen, at This Altarpiece, once at Whitehall, and then at Hampton Court, was then, through the influence of Lord Godolphin, given by Queen Anne to the Abbey, where it remained till the reign of George IV. (See Neale, ii. 38; Plate xlii.) The order for its removal appears in the Chapter Book, May 29, March 23, 1823; July 9, then given by Dr. King, Bishop of Rochester, who had been Prebendary of Westminster, to the parish church of Burnham, near Bridgewater, of which he had been vicar, and in which it still remains. 1824. It was 2 This was Sir Gilbert Scott's earliest recollection of Westminster Abbey. The frieze in the new Screen has been filled by Mr. Armstead with groups representing the Life of our Lord; the 3 Divines, Caroline larger niches with St. Peter and St. Now in Henry VII.'s Chapel. The of the 18th century in That other times of Heylin, Williams, South, and Barrow. from which was poured forth the oratory of the Deans of the eighteenth century, from Atterbury to Horsley, is now century, in Trotterscliffe' church, near Maidstone. The marble pulpit in the Nave, given in 1859 to commemorate the beginof the 19th ning of the Special Services, through which Westthe Nave. minster led the way in re-animating the silent naves of so many of our Cathedrals, has thus been the chief vehicle of the varied teaching of those who have been well called the People's Preachers:' 'Vox quidem dissona, sed una religio.'2 It may be said that these sacred purposes are shared by the Abbey with the humblest church or chapel in the kingdom. But there is a peculiar charm added to the thought here, by the reflection that on it, as on a thin (at times almost invisible) thread, has hung every other interest which has accumulated around the building. Break that thread; and the whole structure becomes an unmeaning labyrinth. Extinguish that sacred fire; and the arched vaults and soaring pillars would assume the sickly hue of a cold artificial Valhalla, and the rows of warriors and the walks of kings' would be transformed into the conventional galleries of a lifeless museum. By the secret nurture of individual souls, which have found rest in its services 3 or meditated in its silent nooks, or been inspired, whether in the thick of battle, or in the humblest 5 In its stead, in 1827, was erected in the Choir another, which in 1851 was removed to Shoreham, to give place to the present. 2 St. Jerome, Opp. i. p. 82. I went,' wrote De Foe, on Sept. 24, 1725, into the Abbey, and there I found the Royal tombs and the 'Monuments of the Dead remaining and increased; but the gazers, the readers of the epitaphs, and the 'country ladies to see the tombs were 'strangely decreased in number. Nay, 'the appearance of the Choir was 'diminished; for setting aside the 'families of the clergy resident and a very few more, the place was for'saken. "Well," said I," then a man "may be devout with the less dis"turbance;" so I went in, said my Sprayers, and then took a walk in the park.' (Works, iii. 427.) So, amongst others, the poetpainter Blake. Sir Henry Taylor describes the first visit of Webster, the American orator, to Westminster Abbey. 'He walked in, looked about him, and burst into tears.' (English Poets, ii. p. 231.) See the touching story of the famous Baptist Missionary Marshman, who began his career as a bookseller's shop-boy : The labour of trudging through the streets, day by day, with a heavy parcel of books, became at length disheartening; and having been one day sent to the Duke of Grafton with three folio vols. of Clarendon's History, he began to give way to melancholy, and as he passed Westminster Abbey laid down the load and sobbed at the thought that there was no higher prospect before him in life than that of being a bookseller's porter; but looking up at the building, and recalling to mind the noble associations connected with it, he brushed away his tears, replaced the load on his shoulders, and walked on with a light heart, determined to bide his time.'The story of Carey, Marshman, and Ward, by John Clark Marshman, p. 47. |