Park; and whilst a thin stream found its way through what is now called the King's Scholars' Pond Sewer into the Thames, its waters also spread through the morass (which was afterwards called from it the manor of Eyebury, or Ebury) into the vast Bulinga Fen.1

4 6

The island (or peninsula) thus enclosed, in common with more than one similar spot, derived its name from its thickets of thorn-Thorn Ey,2 the Isle of Thorns-which formed in their jungle a refuge for the wild ox3 or huge red deer with towering antlers, that strayed into it from the neighbouring hills. This spot, thus entrenched, marsh within marsh, and forest within forest, was indeed locus terribilis, the terrible place,' as it was called in the first notices of its existence; yet even thus early it presented several points of attraction to the founder of whatever was the original building which was to redeem it from the wilderness. It had the advantages of a Thebaid, as contrasted with the stir and tumult of the neighbouring fortress of London. And, on the other hand, the river, then swarming with fish," was close by to feed the colony; the gravel soil and the close fine sand, still dug up under the floor of the Abbey and in St. Margaret's Churchyard, was necessarily healthy; and in the centre of the thickets there bubbled up at least one spring, perhaps two, which gave them water clear and pure, supplied by the percolation of the rain-water from the gravel beds of Hyde Park and the Palace Gardens through the isthmus, when the river was too turbid to drink. It has been said, with a happy paradox, that no local traditions are so durable as those which are writ in water.'7 So it is here. In the green of Dean's Yard there stands a well-worn pump. The

the aspirate. The original 'Aye Hill' appears in a charter of Henry VI., in the archives of Eton College.

Tothill Fields (Vincent Square). (Arch. xxvi. 224.)

2 Or Dorney. (Burton's London and Westminster, p. 285.) There was a Thorney Abbey in Cambridgeshire and in Somersetshire. The description of one of these in Ordericus Vitalis (book xi.) exactly describes what Westminster Abbey must have been. It is called in English the Isle of • Thorns, because its woods, thick with all manner of trees, are surrounded by vast pools of water.'

The bones of such an ox (Bos primicerius) were discovered under the

The spring.

spring,' which, till quite recently, supplied it, was the vivifying centre of all that has grown up around.

II. These were the original elements of the greatness of Westminster, and such was the Isle of Thorns. On like islands

Legendary origin.

Temple of

arose the cathedral and town of Ely, the Abbey of Croyland, the Abbey of Glastonbury, and the CastleCathedral of Limerick. On such another grew up a still more exact parallel-Notre Dame at Paris, with the palace of the kings close by. What was the first settlement in those thorny shades, amidst those watery wastes, beside that bubbling spring, it is impossible to decipher. The monastic traditions maintained that the earliest building had been a Temple Apollo. of Apollo, shaken down by an earthquake in the year A.D. 154, not, however, before it had received the remains of Bladud the magician, who lighted here in his preternatural flight from Bath, and was thus the first interment in the venerable soil. But this is probably no more than the attempt to outshine the rival cathedral of St. Paul's, by endeavouring to counterbalance the dubious claims of the Temple of Diana by a still more dubious assertion of the claims of the temple of her brother the Sun God.3 Next comes King Lucius, the legendary founder of the originals of St. Peter's, Lucius. Cornhill, Gloucester, Canteburry, Dover, Bangor, Glastonbury, Cambridge, Winchester. He it was who was said to have converted the two London temples into churches; or, according to one version, to have restored two yet more ancient churches which the temples had superseded. He it was who, in the Swiss legends, deserted his British throne to become the bishop of Coire in the Grisons, where in the cathedral are shown his relics, with those of his sister Emerita; and high in the woods above the town emerges a rocky pulpit, still bearing the marks of his fingers, from which he preached to the inhabitants

Church of

There is also another in St. Margaret's Churchyard.

2 For the story of the Temple of Diana, as well as for all other illustrations rendered to the Abbey, partly by parallel, partly by contrast, from its great rival, the Cathedral of London, I have a melancholy pleasure in referring to the Annals of St. Paul's,' the last work of its illustrious and venerable chief, Dean Milman.

Letter of Sir Christopher Wren (Life, App. xxix. p 105). The two

main British divinities were so called by the Romans, and Apollo is said to have been Belin,-according to one version the origin of Billingsgate. (See Fuller's Church Hist. i. § 2.)

4 Westminster alone is ascribed to him in Brompton. (Twysden, c. 724.) For his supposed establishment of the Sanctuary, see Abbot Feckenham's speech, A.D. 1555, quoted in Chap. V.

5 Ellis's Dugdale, p. 3; Milman's Church of S. Paul's, p. 3.

of the valleys, in a voice so clear and loud, that it could be heard on the Luciensteig (the Pass of Lucius), twelve miles off. The only authentic record of the Roman period is the sarcophagus of Valerius Amandinus, discovered in the north green of the Abbey in 1869.

1

A.D. 616.

Sebert.

The clouds which hang so thick over the Temple of Apollo and the Church of Lucius are only so far removed when we reach the time of Sebert,' as that in him we arrive at an unquestionably historical personage, if indeed the Church of Sebert to whom the foundation of the Abbey is ascribed be the king of that name in Essex, and not, as another writer represents, a private citizen of London. But Bede's entire omission of Westminster in his account of Sebert's connection with St. Paul's throws a doubt over the whole story, and the introduction of the name in relation to Westminster may be only another attempt of the Westminster monks to redress their balance against St. Paul's.

4

Grave of

Sebert.

Still the tradition afterwards appeared in so substantial a form, that Sebert's grave has never ceased to be shown in the Abbey from the time of the erection of the present building. Originally it would seem to have been inside the church. Then, during the repairs of Henry III., the remains were deposited on the south side of the entrance to the Chapter-house, and subsequently, in the reign of Edward II., removed to the Choir," where they occupy a position on the south of the altar analogous to that of Dagobert the founder of St. Denys. A figure, supposed to be that of Sebert, is painted over it. The same tradition that records his burial in the Chapter-house adds to his remains those of his wife Ethelgoda and his sister Ricula.8

1 For a complete account of it, see the dissertations on it collected by Mr. Albert Way, and reprinted from the Archæological Journal. It is now in the entrance to the Chapter-house.

2 Our father Saba,' as his wild sons used to call him, when they envied the fragments of white bread' which they saw the bishop give him in the Eucharist. (Bede, ii. 5.) The fine description of the Abbey by Montalembert (Moines de l'Occident, iv. 432) is in connection with Sebert.

* Sulcard, in Cotton MSS. Faustina, B. iii., f. 12, in marg.; Higden, p. 228; Thorn. Twysden, c. 1768.

• Bede, ii. 3.

• Flete MS.

6 Weever's Funeral Monuments, p. 456. See the Epitaph in Ackermann, i. 83. The right arm was supposed to be still undecayed, with the skin clinging to the bone, A.D. 1307. (Walsingham, i. 114; Rishanger, p. 425.)

A sarcophagus of Purbeck marble was found under the canopy, in 1866, when the modern structure of brickwork was removed, which had been erected by Dean Ireland, and which is elaborately described in Gent. Mag. xcv. p. 306.

8 His mother, according to Bede (ii. 3), sister to Ethelbert. See Chapters III. and V.

Foundation of Edgar.

6

The gradual formation of a monastic body, indicated in the charters of Offa and Edgar, marks the spread of the Benedictine Order throughout England, under the influence of Dunstan.1 The 'terror' of the spot, which had still been its chief characteristic in the charter of the wild Offa, had in the days of the more peaceful Edgar given way to a dubious renown.' Twelve monks is the number traditionally said to have been established by Dunstan. A few acres near Staines formed their chief property, and their monastic character was sufficiently recognised to have given to the old locality of the 'terrible place' the name of the Western Monastery,' or 'Minster of the West.' But this seems to have been overrun by the Danes, and it would have had no further history but for the combination of circumstances which directed hither the notice of Edward the Confessor.

Historical origin.

4

III. It has been truly remarked that there is a striking difference between the origin of Pagan temples and of Christian churches. 'The Pagan temples were always the 'public works of nations and of communities. They ' were national buildings, dedicated to national purposes. The 'mediæval churches, on the other hand, were the erections of ' individuals, monuments of personal piety, tokens of the hope ' of a personal reward.' This cannot be said, without reserve, of Southern Europe, where, as at Venice and Florence, the chief churches were due to the munificence of the State. But in England it is true even of the one ecclesiastical building which is most especially national-the gift not of private individuals, but of kings. Westminster Abbey is, in its origin, the monument not merely of the personal piety, but of the personal character and circumstances of its Founder.

Edward the

We know the Confessor well from the descriptions preserved by his contemporaries. His appearance was such as no one could forget. It was almost that of an Albino. His Conford full-flushed rose-red cheeks strangely contrasted with appearance. the milky whiteness of his waving hair and beard. His eyes were always fixed on the ground. There was a kind

His outward

6

of magical charm in his thin white hands and his long transparent fingers,' which not unnaturally led to the belief that there resided in them a healing power of stroking away the diseases of his subjects. His manners presented a singular mixture of gravity and levity. Usually affable and gentle, so as to make even a refusal look like an acceptance, he burst forth at times into a fury which showed that the old Berserkir rage was not dead within him.2 By God and His mother, I 'will give you just such another turn if ever it come in my 'way!' was the utterance of what was thought by his biographers a mild expression of his noble indignation against a peasant who interfered with the pleasure of his chase.3 Austere as were his habits-old even as a child -he startled his courtiers sometimes by a sudden smile or a peal of laughter, for which they or he could only account by some mysterious vision. He cared for little but his devotional exercises and hunting. He would spend hours in church, and then, as soon as he was set free, would be off to the woods for days together, flying his hawks and cheering on his hounds.

With his gentle piety was blended a strange hardness towards those to whom he was most bound. He was harsh to his mother. His alienation from his wife, even in His chathat fantastic age, was thought extremely questionable.6 racter. His good faith was not unimpeachable. There was nothing,' it was said, that he would not promise from the exigency of 'the time. He pledged his faith on both sides, and confirmed 'by oath anything that was demanded of him.' On the other hand a childish kindliness towards the poor and suffering made them look upon him as their natural protector. The unreasoning benevolence which, in a modern French romance, appears as an extravagance of an unworldly bishop, was literally ascribed to the Confessor in a popular legend, of which the representation was depicted on the tapestries that once hung round the Choir, and may still be seen in one of the com(See Freeman's Norman Conquest, ii. 27.)

1 Longis interlucentibus digitis. (Harleian Life, p. 240.) The presence of the pious king' is intimated in Shakspeare (Macbeth, act iv. scene 3) only by the crowd waiting to be touched for the Evil.

2 Harleian Life, 225. See this well drawn out in the North British Review, xlii. 361.

• William of Malmesbury, ii. 13.

Ailred of Rievaulx, c. 373.

5 As when he saw in a trance the shipwreck of the King of Denmark (Oxford Life, 244; Cambridge Life, 1342), or the movements of the Seven Sleepers. See p. 24.

6 Harleian Life, 480-495.

7 William of Malmesbury, ii. 13. Harleian Life, 875-890.