omen for the Abbey of Westminster-let us accept it also for the Throne and State of England. I. We have now to trace the slow gradual formation of this side of the story of Westminster-a counterpart of the irregular uncertain course of the history of England itself. Reserving for future consideration the graves of those connected with the Convent,' it was natural that, in the first instance, the Cloisters, which contained the little monastic cemetery, should also admit the immediate families and retainers of the Court. It was the burial place of the adjacent Palace of Westminster, just as now the precincts of St. George's Chapel contain the burial place of the immediate dependents of the Castle of Windsor. The earliest of these humbler intruders-who heads, as it were, the long series of private monuments-was Hugolin, the chamberlain Hugolin. of the Confessor, buried (with a fitness, perhaps, hardly appreciated at the time) within or hard by the Royal Treasury, which he had kept so well.2 Not far off (we know not where) was Geoffrey of Mandeville, with his wife Adelaide, Geoffrey of who followed the Conqueror to Hastings, and who, in return ville. for his burial here, gave to the Abbey the manor of Eye, then a waste morass, which gave its name to the Eye Brook, and under the names of Hyde, Eye-bury (or Ebury), and Neate, contained Hyde Park, Belgravia, and Chelsea.3 Mande 1072. Fulk de Castro Novo, 1247. We dimly trace a few interments within the Church. Egelric, Amongst these were Egelric, Bishop of Durham, imprisoned at Westminster, where, by prayer and fasting, he acquired the fame of an anchorite-buried in the Porch of St. Nicholas;4 Sir Fulk de Castro Novo, cousin of Henry III., and attended to his grave by the King;5 Richard of Wendover, Bishop of Rochester, who had the reputation of a saint; Ford, Abbot Ford, 1 See Chapter V. 2 See Chapters I. and V. 3 Widmore, p. 21; Arch. xxvi. 234. • See Chapter V. 5 Matthew Paris, 724. 6 Anglia Sacra, I. 348-350. Weever, p. 338. Richard of Wendover, 1251. Abbot 1261. Trussel, 1364. COURTIERS OF RICHARD II. John of Waltham, 1395. Golofre, 1396. of Glastonbury; Trussel, Speaker of the House of Commons in the reigns of Edward II. and Edward III., buried in St. Michael's Chapel; Walter Leycester (1391), buried in the North Transept, at the foot of the Great Crucifix.3 But the first distinct impulse given to the tombs of famous citizens was from Richard II. It was the result of his passionate attachment to Westminster, combined with his unbounded favouritism. His courtiers and officers were the first magnates not of royal blood who reached the heart of the Abbey. John of Waltham, Bishop of Salisbury, Treasurer, Keeper of the Privy Seal, and Master of the Rolls, was, by the King's order, buried not only in the church, but in the Chapel of the Confessor, amongst the Kings. It was not without a general murmur of indignation that this intrusion was effected; but the disturbance of the mosaic pavement by the brass effigy marks the unusual honour, the pledge of the ever-increasing magnitude of the succession of English statesmen, whose statues from the adjoining transept may claim John of Waltham as their venerable precursor. Other favourites of the same sovereign lie in graves only less distinguished. Sir John Golofre, who was his ambassador in France, was, by the King's ex 1 Domerham, 525. 2 In connexion both with the House of Commons in the Chapter House, and the interment of eminent commoners in the Abbey, must be mentioned that of William Trussel, Speaker of the House of Commons, in St. Michael's Chapel. (Crull, 290.) Mr. F. S. Haydon has assisted me in the probable identification of this 'Mons. William Trussel,' who was Speaker in 1366 (Rolls. of Parl. 1369) with a procurator for Parliament and an escheator south of Trent in 1327. If so, his death was on July 20, 1364. (Frag. p. m. 37 E. III. No. 69.) Foss's Judges, iii. 307–309. 1400. press command, transferred from the Grey Friars' Church at Wallingford, where he himself had desired to be buried, and was laid close beneath his master's tomb. The father-inlaw of Golofre, Sir Bernard Brocas, who was chamberlain to Brocas, Richard's Queen, and was beheaded on Tower Hill, in consequence of having joined in a conspiracy to reinstate him, lies in the almost regal Chapel of St. Edmund.3 He was famous for his ancient descent, his Spanish connexion (as was supposed) with Brozas near Alcantara, above all his wars with the Moors, where he won the crest, on which his helmet rests, of the crowned head of a Moor, and which was either the result or the cause of the account,' to which Sir Roger de Coverley was so very attentive,' of the lord who 'cut off the King of Morocco's head.'4 Close to him rests Robert Waldeby, the accomplished companion of the Black Waldeby, Prince, then the tutor of Richard himself, and through his influence raised to the sees successively of Aire in Gascony, Dublin, Chichester, and York, who, renowned as at once physician and divine, is in the Abbey the first representative of literature, as Waltham is of statesmanship. 1397. COURTIERS OF HENRY v. died Sept. Next come the chiefs of the court and camp of Henry V. One, like John of Waltham, lies in the Confessor's Chapel -Richard Courtney, Bishop of Norwich, who during his ill- Courtney, ness at Harfleur was tenderly nursed by the King himself, and 15, 1415. died immediately before the Battle of Agincourt. Lewis Robsart, Robsart, who from his exploits on that great day was made the King's standard-bearer, was a few years afterwards interred in St. Paul's Chapel; and on the same side in the northern aisle, at the entrance of the Chapels of 1 Dart, ii. 21. 2 Crull, App. p. 20. See Chapter III. Spectator, No. 329. An inscription was composed by the family in 1838. See Neale, ii. 156, and Gough's Sepulchral Monuments, 1399. On the north side of the Shrinein ipsius ostii ingressu. (Godwin, p. 438.) Tyler's Henry V., ii. 148. 1431. the two St. Johns, were laid under brass effigies, which Windsor, can still be faintly traced, Sir John Windsor and Sir John 1414. Harpedon, Harpedon. 1,457. OF ED 1471. Lord Carew, The fashion slowly grew. Though Edward IV. himself, COURTIERS with his best-beloved companion in arms, lies at Windsor, WARD IV. four of his nobles were brought to Westminster. Humphrey Bourchier, Bourchier, who died at the field of Barnet, was buried in St. Edmund's Chapel. In St. Nicholas's Chapel lie Lord Carew, who died in the same year; and Dudley—who, being the first Dean of Edward's new Chapel of Windsor, was elevated to the see of Durham-uncle of Henry VII.'s notorious financier, and founder of the great house which bore his name. The first layman in the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, is Sir Vaughan. Thomas Vaughan, treasurer to Edward IV. and chamberlain to Edward V. 1471. Dudley, 1483. COURTIERS VII. Stanley, 1505. The renewed affection for the Abbey in the person of Henry VII. reflects itself in the tombs of three of his courtiers. In the Chapel of St. Nicholas is interred Sir Humphrey Stanley, who with his relatives had in the Battle of Bosworth fought on the victorious side. In the Chapel of St. Paul is the King's chamberlain and cousin, Sir Giles Daubeny, Daubeny, Lord-Lieutenant of Calais; and in that of St. John the Baptist his favourite secretary Ruthell,3 Bishop of Durham, victim of his own fatal mistake in sending to his second master, Henry VIII., the inventory of his private wealth, instead of a state-paper on the affairs of the nation. 1507. Ruthell, 1523. The statesmen and divines who died under Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Mary have left hardly any trace in the Abbey. We only detect Sir Thomas Clifford, Governor of A curious record of Henry VII.'s adventures in crossing by the Channel Islands is preserved on Sir Thomas Hardy's monument in the Nave, erected in 1732. 2 Hence the burial of other mem bers of the Derby family in this chapel. (Register, 1603, 1620, 1631.) * Godwin, p. 755.-He died at Durham Place, in the Strand; hence, perhaps, his burial at Westminster. Berwick, and his wife, under the pavement of the Choir,' with two or three other persons of obscure name.2 Tower Hill, Smithfield, and the ditch beneath the walls of Oxford, in that fierce struggle, contain ashes more illustrious than any interred in consecrated precincts. OF THE buried It is characteristic of the middle of the sixteenth cen- LADIES tury, when the destinies of Europe were woven by the TUDOR hands of the extraordinary Queens who ruled the fortunes of COURT. France, England, and Scotland, and when the royal tombs in the Abbey are occupied by Elizabeth, the two Marys, and the two Margarets,3 that the more private history of the time should also be traced, more than at any other period, by the sepulchres of illustrious ladies. Frances Grey, Duchess of Frances Grey, Suffolk, granddaughter of Henry VII., by Charles Brandon Duchess of and Mary Queen of France, and mother of Lady Jane Suffolk, Grey, reposes in the Chapel of St. Edmund, under a Dec. 5, stately monument erected by her second husband, Adrian Stokes, Esquire. 'What,' exclaimed Elizabeth, "hath she 'married her horsekeeper?' 'Yes, Madam,' was the reply, ' and she saith that Your Majesty would fain do the same;' alluding to Leicester, the Master of the Horse. She lived just long enough to see the betrothal of her daughter, Catherine Grey, to the Earl of Hertford, and to enjoy the turn of fortune which restored our Elizabeth to the throne, and thus allowed her own sepulture beside her royal ancestors." The service was probably the first celebrated in 5 1 Dart, ii. 23. Machyn's Diary, Nov. 26, 1557. 2 'Master Wentworth,' cofferer to Queen Mary. (Machyn, Oct. 23, 1558.) 'Master Gennings' (ibid.), servant of Philip and Mary, who left considerable sums to the abbot and monks, and desired to be buried under a brass. Nov. 26, 1557. (These particulars I learn from his will, communicated by Colonel Chester.) Sir Thomas Parry, treasurer of Elizabeth's household, See Chapter III. Machyn's Diary, Dec. 5, 1559. • Cooper's Life of Arabella Stuart, 'Compare Edward VI.'s funeral, Chapter III. 1559. |