Westminster Abbey Embalms Our History

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 352, 12 May 1928, Page 24

Westminster Abbey Embalms Our History

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FTER ’ two years’ plauning and scheming, Westminster Abbey is —the first extension J&3 to this historic building for 200 years. The sacristy, which has been madg possible by the gift of a donor who wishes to remain anonymous, will prove of great value. Abbey is probably the only large church in the land which has not got one. Apart from the need of a room largo enough for the clergy to meet and robe in, the centuries have brought an ever-growing number of relics, vestments, church furniture and silver plate for which there has been no adequate place of storage.

flection in the Abbey. Many creeds and many parties meet in this building o£ infinite history. Some who are there died in distant lands, some carried to their grave the poison which had killed them, some the wounds inflicted on them by murderers who struck their fatal blows actually within the sacred building. Sinner 3 and saints, misers and philanthropists, warriors, heroes of peace, kings at whose name Europe trembled, children at whose death fond parents’ hearts were broken, scheming abbots, pious monks, and poor scholars all lie equal in the dust of this hallowed hall of memories.

Its oldest inhabitant is Edward the Confessor, who had his building consecrated late in 1065, just in time to receive him in death in the new year; but many a charter was forged in the early days to prove an even greater antiquity of privileges, privileges which meant a larger share of salmon caught in the Thames, enlarged liberties, wealth, power and influence. Edward the Confessor had not skill or strength enough to prevent England falling from Harold’s hands into the Conqueror’s, yet he was represented in the Abbey as a worker of miracles; his body as it lay in the tomb was an asset to draw the halt, the maimed, the sick, the blind, to worship, with money for the monks in their hands.

Priceless vestments, some of them dating back to Charles ll.’s reign, have been folded up in oak boxes in various parts of the Abbey, where they are gradually decaying. “A temporary structure is to be erected first,” said an official, “so that we can be quite certain that the appearance of the Abbey will not he damaged in any way. “We hope to make the building, picturesque as it will be, as inconspicuous as possible. “It will, therefore, be only 20ft high, 30ft long, and about 25ft wide, and almost hidden from view on all sides.

We have ceased now to bury royalties in the Abbey, keeping it for our really*great and heroic dead; no king or queen has been laid there since George the Second. The royal company assembled there is, however, enough to recall our history for nearly a thousand years. It is a formidable list, covering a period which saw the domains of the British race rise from

“St. Margaret’s Church will screen it entirely from the north, a group of trees will almost hide it from the Houses of Parliament side, the Abbey will cover it entirely from the south side, and the North Transept, which will protrude farther than the sacristy, will almost hide it from the Victoria Street side.”

Mr. Walter Tapper. A.R.A., President of the Royal Institute of British Architects, is the architect of the new sacristy.

The Abbey is not our oldest, but it is our most treasured sacred building. It is our noblest Imperial heritage. It belongs to the whole Empire. No matter what our political opinions, no matter to what religious denomination we belong, no matter what our profession or calling, no matter whether we be rich or poor, we are all, throughout the Empire, equal heirs of this stately and ancient palace af God.

The Abbey has the rarest population that ever a building held. Never in the world’s history have the centuries gathered beneath one roof such a company of men and women whose names live after them. It is the sanctuary of the nation’s great dead. Good and bad lie buried in the Abbey. We have there not only this epitome of history, but representatives of all strata of life, high and low, the inspired, the malevolent, the tyrannous, the vicious. The same acre which enshrines Queen Eleanor and the proud Elizabeth embraces women of the worst age of the stage, and of society creatures no better; the building which is enriched by the presence of Chaucer and Sir Isaac Newton holds the remains of a ruffian who grew rich out of the blood and tears of wretched Hindus; and within the precincts there even lies a man who was the champion prize-fighter of his age. Saint and cynic may find food for re-

a Saxon kingdom to a mighty empire. Civilisation may bare its head at the grave of Henry the Third, for it is tyranny’s tomb and liberty’s cradle. We may not gather grapes from thistles, but a very bad man may be turned to unsuspected foundations for good. His very wickedness, treachery, autocracy, made Henry the Third of value to humanity. From him, goaded to despair by his wrongdoing, was wrung the first Parliament. Government of the people for the people by the people began for the first time in the world in England’s first Parliament, which Plenry the Third was driven to concede.

The barons mastered Henry; Edward the First, his son, widened the foundations of popular power and, to curb the will of the barons, extended human rights to the common people. Necessity was a driving power to some extent in this direction, but the warlike king, unlike his father, had a genuine passion for law and good government. His was a hard and cruel age, and he was hard and cruel at times in war; but he had a softening influence at his side in his gentle queen, Eleanor of Castile.

Romance and splendour attended the progress of his grandson, Edward the Third, and that king’s son, the Black Prince. Their feats included Crecy and Poitiers, but as we stand in the Abbey, where the third Edward is, but the Black Prince is not, the thought that comes to mind is that we owe to the old monarch more than the empty glory of historic battles; we owe him thanks for the arts of peace. Although the Black Death ravaged England at the time, and even crept into the very Abbey and slew its priests, a.nd although he had war upon war, and finally fell into dotage and allowed a worthless woman to warp his life and his efforts at good government, in spite of all this Edward the Third was the father of our commerce, the founder of our national prosperity. Richard the Second, the Black Prince’s son, with some of his grandsire’s qualities but with ail the fierce passions and cruelties of his breed, lives for us in Shakespeare, and we (Continued on Page 25.)