6 6 6 Cross. They dismounted at the north door, and 'went to 'the high altar, where, on the south side, was ordained a ' goodly traverse for my Lord Cardinal, and when his Grace was come into it,' then, as if after waiting for a personage more than royal, immediately began the mass of the Holy 'Ghost, sung by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Warham), 'The Bishop of Rochester (Fisher) acted as crozier to my 'Lord of Canterbury.' The Bishop of Lincoln read the Gospel, the Bishop of Exeter the Epistle. Besides the eight abbots were present the Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin, and the Bishops of Winchester, Durham, Norwich, Ely, and Llandaff. Colet, Dean of St. Paul's, made a brief collation 'or proposition,' explaining the causes of his high and 'joyous promotion,' the dignities of a prince and bishop, and also the high and great power of a Cardinal;' and 'how ⚫he betokeneth the free beams of wisdom and charity which 'the Apostles received from the Holy Ghost on Whit Sunday; and how a Cardinal representeth the order of Seraphim, ' which continually increaseth in the love of the glorious Trinity, and for this consideration a Cardinal is only ap'parelled with red, which colour only betokeneth nobleness.' His short discourse closed with an exhortation to my Lord Cardinal in this wise: My Lord Cardinal, be glad and enforce yourself always to do and execute righteously to rich and poor, and mercy with truth.' Then, after the reading of the Bull, at Agnus Dei, came forth of his traverse my Lord 'Cardinal, and kneeled before the middle of the High Altar, 'where for a certain time he lay grovelling, his hood over his 6 6 head during benediction and prayers concerning the high 'creation of a Cardinal,' said over him by Archbishop Warham, which also sett the Hatt upon his head.' Then Te Deum was sung. All services and ceremonies finished, my 'Lord came to the door before named, led by the Dukes of 'Norfolk and Suffolk, where his Grace with all the noble Caxton's printing press, 1477. 6 men ascended upon their horses, and in good order pro'ceeded to his place by Charing Cross, preceding it the 'mace, such as belongeth to a Cardinal to have; and my 'Lord of Canterbury' (the latest historian' of the Primates with true English pride adds, one almost revolts from 'writing the fact,') having no cross 2 before him.' We need not follow them to the splendid banquet. It is enough for the Abbey to have been selected as the scene of the Cardinal's triumphant day-to have thus seen the full magnificence at once of the Papal hierarchy and of the Revival of Letters, and to have heard in the still small accents of Colet the whisper of the coming storm, and have welcomed in the Cardinal Legate the first great dissolver of monasteries.3 But already the precincts of Westminster had sheltered the power which was to outshine the hats of cardinals, and the croziers of prelates, and to bring out into a new light all that was worthy of preservation in the Abbey itself. William 6 Caxton, who first introduced into Great Britain the art of printing, exercised that art A.D. 1477, or earlier, in the 'Abbey of Westminster.'4 So speaks the epitaph, designed originally for the walls of the Abbey, now erected by the Roxburgh Club near the grave in St. Margaret's Church, which received his remains in 1491. His press was near the house which, according to tradition, he occupied in the Almonry, by the Chapel of St. Anne. This ecclesiastical 1 Hook, v. 253. 2 Cavendish's Wolsey, ii. 301. MS. from the Herald's Office. 8 Wolsey visited the Abbey as Legate in 1518 and 1525. Ex improviso, severe, intemperanter, omnia agit, miscet, turbat, ut terreat cæteros, ut imperium ostendat, ut se terribilem præbeat;' Polydore Vergil. (Dugdale, i. 278.) The words 'in the Abbey of Westminster' are taken from the title pages of Caxton's books in 1480, 1481, Amongst the curiosities of natural Colonies origin of the first English Printing-press is perpetuated in the name of the Chapel,' given by printers to a congress or meeting of their body. Victor Hugo, in a famous passage of his Notre Dame de Paris,' describes how the Book killed 'the Church.' The connexion of Caxton with the Abbey gives to this thought another and a kindlier turn-'The 'Church (or the Chapel) has given life to the Book.' In this sense, if in no other, Westminster Abbey has been the source of enlightenment to England, beyond any other spot in the Empire; and the growth of this new world within its walls opens the way to the next stage in its history. paper, beginning with medieval copybooks, then of Caxton's first printed works, ranging down to the time of Queen Anne. Then, probably during the repairs of Wren, the hole was closed, and the depredations ceased, and the skeletons alone remained. |