consideration of the interests of the Precentor, Minor Capons, and Lay Clerks of Westminster. When, four years afterwards, he died at Brighton, and was buried at St. Mary's Newington, which he held with the see of St. Asaph, 'the Choir of Westminster Abbey attended his funeral, to testify ' their gratitude."1

2

Vincent,

Horsley was succeeded by Vincent, who had profited by William his superior's classical criticisms whilst Horsley was Dean, 1802-16, and he Headmaster. His long connexion with the Abbey, and his tomb in the South Transept, have been already noticed. Of his own good qualities, both as a teacher and scholar, the sepulchral stone' (as the inscription written by himself records) is silent.' His appointment was marked by a change in the office, which restored the Deanery of Westminster to its independent position. The see of Rochester, for almost the first time for 140 years, was parted from it. It is said that, shortly after his nomination, he met George III. on the terrace of Windsor Castle. The King expressed his regret at the separation of the two offices. The Dean replied that he was perfectly content. • If you

are satisfied,' said the King, 'I am not. They ought not 'to have been separated-they ought not to have been 'separated.' However, they were, happily, never reunited, and Vincent continued his Westminster career in the Deanery till his death. If he had had the choice of all the prefer'ments in His Majesty's gift, there is none,' he said, 'that he 'should rather have had than the Deanery of Westminster.' His name is perpetuated in Westminster by the conversion into Vincent Square of that part of Tothill Fields, which had been appropriated to the playground of the School.

From

See Lusus Westmonast. i. p. 296.
For his death see ibid. p. 239.

John

Ireland, 1815-42.

his exertions was obtained the Parliamentary grant for the reparation of the exterior of Henry VII.'s Chapel. His scholars long remembered his swinging pace, his sonorous quotations, and the loud Latin call of Eloquere, Puer, Eloquere, with which he ordered the boys to speak out. They testified that at his lectures preparatory to the Holy Communion there was never known an instance of any boy treating the disquisition with levity, or not showing an eagerness to be present at, or to profit by, the lesson. To Vincent succeeded Ireland, whose benefactions at Oxford will long preserve his name in the recollection of grateful scholars. He is the last Dean buried in the Abbey. He lies in the South Transept, with his schoolfellow Gifford, translator of Juvenal, and first editor of the Quarterly.'

6

'With what feelings,' says that faithful friend, 'do I trace the 'words "the Dean of Westminster." Five-and-forty springs have now passed over my head since I first found Dr. Ireland, some years my junior, in our little school, at his spelling-book. During 'this long period, our friendship has been without a cloud; my delight in youth, my pride and consolation in age. I have followed ' with an interest that few can feel, and none can know, the progress of my friend from the humble state of a curate to the elevated 'situation which he has now reached, and in every successive change 'have seen, with inexpressible delight, his reputation and the wishes ' of the public precede his advancement. His piety, his learning, his 'conscientious discharge of his sacred duties, his unwearied zeal to promote the interests of all around him, will be the theme of other 'times and other pens: it is sufficient for my happiness to have wit'nessed at the close of a career, prolonged by Infinite Goodness far beyond my expectations, the friend and companion of my heart in that dignified place, which, while it renders his talents and his 'virtues more conspicuous, derives every advantage from their wider 'influence and exertion.'2

The remaining years of this century are too recent for detailed remarks. The names of Cary, Page, Goodenough,

1 Gent. Mag. xlv. 633.

2 Preface to the Memoirs of Ben Jonson, by William Gifford, p. 72.

Turton,

died 1864.

Wilber

force, 1845.

Williamson, and Liddell will still be remembered, apart from the other spheres in which they each shone, in their benefactions or improvements of Westminster School-even of the Westminster Play. To Ireland succeeded Turton, Thomas for a brief stay, before his removal to the see of Ely. 1842-45, Then came one whose government of Westminster, though Samuel overclouded at its close, has left deep traces on the place. If the memory of the eagles, serpents, and monkeys, which William crowded the Deanery in Dean Buckland's geological reign, 1845-56. awake a grotesque reminiscence, his active concern in the Richard welfare of the School, his keen interest in the tombs Trench, we must add, the very stones and soil-of the Abbey, have been rarely equalled amongst his predecessors. The two remaining Deans are still living Prelates, whose names belong to the history and to the literature of England.

There are a few occasional solemnities to be noticed before we part from the general history. Baptisms and marriages have been comparatively rare. Marriages, which were occasionally celebrated in Henry VII.'s Chapel, were discontinued after the passing of Lord Hardwicke's Act in 1754, and were only revived within the last ten years. Confirmations have been confined to the celebration of that rite for the Westminster School, by some Bishop connected with Westminster, appointed for the purpose by the Dean. Ordinations have very rarely taken place in the Abbey. Of episcopal consecrations the most notable instances have been mentioned as we have proceeded. After their sudden and striking accumulation at the Restoration, they gradually died away.2 It was reserved for this century to witness

1

Besides that of Ferrar (see p. 496) by Laud, there was one by the Bishop of Bangor (Roberts), Sept. 4, 1660, in Henry VII.'s Chapel (Evelyn's Memoirs, ii. 153), and by Sprat in 1689 (Statutes of King's College, Cambridge, p. xxv.).

2 The only one in the last century was Bishop Dawes of Chester on February 8, 1708; and the discontinuance of the ceremony is rendered more significant from the fact, that the consecration of another Bishop of Chester (Peploe), April 12, 1726, took

Buckland,

Chenevix

1856-63.

Consecration of

Colonial Bishops.

the reintroduction of the rite in a more imposing form, not
as before in the Chapel of the Infirmary, or of Henry VII,
but in the Choir of the Abbey itself. This change coin-
cides with the extension of the Colonial Episcopate' which
marked the administration of Archbishop Howley, a move-
ment which doubtless contained from the beginning a
germ of future mischief, but which was projected with the
best intentions, and often with the best results. The first
of these in 1843 included the Bishops of Barbadoes, Antigua,
Guiana, Gibraltar, and Tasmania. This was followed in 1847
by the consecration of three Australian Bishops, and the
first Bishop of South Africa, Robert Gray, Bishop of Cape-
town, and in 1850 by that of Francis Fulford, Bishop of Mon-
treal, who both became subsequently known from the contro-
versies, political and theological, in which they were involved.
On Ascension Day, 1858, was consecrated George Lynch Cotton,
Bishop of Calcutta. Years afterwards, from the shores from
which he never returned, he wrote with a touching fervour of
the scenes he had known so well to the friend who had mean-
while become the head of 'that noblest and grandest of English
Churches, the one to which in historical and religious interest
even Canterbury must yield, the one in which,' he adds, 'I
worshipped as a boy, in which I was confirmed, and in which
'I was consecrated to the great work of my life.' In 1859,
the first Bishops of Columbia, Brisbane, and St. Helena, and,
in 1863, two missionary Bishops of Central Africa and of the
Orange River Free State, were consecrated. It was not till
1859 that the practice of consecrating in the Abbey the
Bishops of English sees was revived, in the case of Bangor.
In 1864 and 1868, followed those of Ely and Hereford; and
place at Westminster, not in the
Abbey, but in the parish church of
St. Margaret.

Its main promoter, Ernest Hawkins, for many years Secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the

Gospel, after finding a few years' respite from his labours in the Precincts of Westminster, now lies in the East Cloister.

2 See the last letter of Dr. Arnold, May 22, 1842, Life, p. 604.

in 1869 a distinguished Canon and benefactor of Westminster was consecrated to the see of Lincoln in the same Precincts where his illustrious predecessor, St. Hugh, had been raised to the same office.

6

mediæval

taste.

We must cast a glance backwards over the history of the Decline of whole fabric during this period. The aversion from mediæval architecture and tradition had indeed been allowed here, as elsewhere in Europe, its full scope. Not only in the monuments, as we have already seen, but in the general neglect of the beauty of the fabric, had this sentiment made itself manifest. The Westminster boys were allowed to skip from "tomb to tomb in the Confessor's Chapel." On Sundays the town boys sate in the Sacrarium, doubtless not without injury to the precious mosaic pavement. There was also 'playing at football, in some of the most curious parts of the Abbey, by the men appointed to show them." The scenes of the Westminster Play were kept in the Triforium of the North Transept.3 There was a thoroughfare from Poets' Corner to the western door, and to the Cloisters.1 The South Transept was a 'newswalk' for the singing men and their friends. The poor of St. Margaret's begged in the Abbey even during Prayers, as they had, ever since the time of Elizabeth, had their food laid out in the South Transept during the sermon, till within the memory of man." The memory of old inhabitants of the Cloisters still retains the figure of one old Minor Canon, who on Sundays preached two-thirds of the sermons in the course of the year, and on week-days sate by the tomb of Henry III.'s children,

Malcolm, p. 167.

6

2 Gent. Mag. lxxi. pt. ii. pp. 101, 623.

Till April 27, 1829, when they caught fire. From this dates the institution of the nightly watchmen. (Gent. Mag. pt. i. pp. 363, 460.)

Malcolm, pp. 163, 167. The iron

5

gate which now stands by Andre's
monument originally stood by that of
Bell, and was opened after the service
to allow the thoroughfare.

5 Dart, i. 41.

London Spy, p. 179.

Rye's England as Seen by Foreigners, p. 132.