Permanance of CHAP. X. city, and yet removed from its immediate throng and turmoil, was chosen as the site of a foundation in which royalty and monasticism were to dwell side by side, where living Kings were to dwell and hold their court under the shadow of the pile which covered the bones of the Kings who had gone before them. Like Fécamp, which may well have been his model,2 Eadward designed to place palace and monastery in each other's close neighbourhood, to make Westminster the centre of the strongest national feelings of religion and loyalty. And he has had his reward. His scheme prospered in his own time, and it has survived to ours. His minster still stands, rebuilt, Eadwards partly by a more illustrious bearer of his own name, in minster such a guise as to make it the noblest of the noble and palace. churches of England. Within its walls a long succession of Kings have received the Crown whose special glory was to be the Crown of Eadward. And the walls which beheld their crowning also beheld their burial; Westminster has supplanted Sherborne and Glastonbury and Winchester as the resting-place of the Kings and worthies of our land. And as the centre of them all, displacing God's altar from its worthiest site, still stands the shrine of Eadward himself, his name and his dust still abiding in somewhat of their ancient honour, while the nobler dust of Ælfred and Eadgar and Harold is scattered to the winds. And by the minster still stands the palace; no longer indeed the dwelling-place of Kings, but more than ever the true home of the nation; where the Witan of all England still meet for judgement and for legislation, as they did in the days when Eadward wore his Crown at that last Midwinter Feast-as they did when the first national act 1 Vita Eadw. 417. "Intendit Deo devotus Rex locum illum, tam vicinum famosæ et opulentæ urbi, tum satis apricum ex circumjacentibus fecundis terris et viridantibus prædiis.” 2 See vol. i. p. 253, and Appendix C. PERMANENCE OF EADWARD'S FOUNDATION. done beneath the roof of the newly hallowed minster was to place that Crown, as the gift of the English people, on the brow of the foremost man of English blood and speech. 503 СНАР. Х. church de and rebuilt in his own The church of Westminster, as built by Eadward, has Eadward's wholly given way to the conceptions of later architects, stroyed who, in the true spirit of medieval times, sought to do fresh honour to the saint by making his own work give honour. way to theirs. With our feelings on such matters, we should look on the pile itself as the best monument of its founder, and, if the original West Minster had lasted to our time, our first object would be to preserve its genuine features precisely as they came from the hands of its first builders. In the ideas of the thirteenth century the memories of the past, the associations of a spot or of a building, were feebly felt compared with the devotion which was felt towards the precious possession of all, the saint himself still present in his wonder-working relics. For them no receptacle could be too gorgeous or too costly; reverence for the saint would of itself call for the destruction of his own building, if it could be replaced by one which the taste of the age deemed more worthy of sheltering the shrine which contained his bones. The church of Eadward was therefore destroyed by his own worshippers in his own honour. His special devotee, one might almost think his special imitator, Henry the Third, began that magnificent temple which, after so many ages, still remains unfinished. Of the domestic buildings of the Existing abbey as raised by Eadward large portions have been Eadward's spared. The solid passages and substructures, built in the buildings. massive style of the time, remain almost perfect, and even of the more important buildings, as the refectory and dormitory, considerable traces still exist. But the church. 1 On the remains of Eadward's work in Westminster Abbey, see the work by Mr. G. G. Scott and others, Gleanings from Westminster Abbey. remains of CHAP. X. itself, the central building of all, gradually gave way to the superb structure with which we are all familiar; nothing is left of Eadward's minster save a few bases of pillars and other fragments brought to light in various excavations and alterations of the present fabric. But we are not left without minute accounts of a building which made a deep impression on men's minds, and whose erection formed an æra in our national architecture. His church Among other importations from Normandy which we could well have spared, Eadward brought one with him which even our insular pride might be glad to welcome. The building art was now receiving daily improvements at the hands of the founders of those great Norman churches which were rising in such abundance on the other side of the sea. All those improvements Eadward carefully introduced into his new minster. the first great example of Norman architecture in England. He built his church in the newest style of the day, and it remained the great object of English imitation deep into the twelfth century. Of the church thus built we have a description and a pictorial representation made while the charm of novelty was still fresh upon it. It was a Norman minster of vast size, the increase of size in churches being one main distinction between the new Norman style and the older English manner of building. Its dimensions no doubt far surpassed those of any church then standing in England, as they certainly far surpassed those of the contemporary church of Waltham. A short eastern limb, ending in an apse, contained the high altar. Over the choir rose, in Norman fashion, the central ... 1 This is asserted in the famous passage of William of Malmesbury (ii. 228), "Ecclesia . . quam ipse illo compositionis genere primus in Anglia ædificaverat quod nunc pene cuncti sumptuosis æmulantur expensis." On the architectural question I trust to say something in the last volume of this work. 2 See the description in the Biographer, and the representation in the Bayeux Tapestry, which shows beyond doubt that the building consecrated in 1065 was a perfect church, and not a mere fragment. EADWARD'S CHURCH. 505 tower, seemingly surrounded at its angles by smaller turrets, CHAP. X. and crowned by a cupola of wood and lead. The transepts projected north and south; to the west stretched the long nave, with its two ranges of arches, resting seemingly on tall columnar piers, like those of Jumièges, Gloucester, and Tewkesbury. Two smaller towers, for the reception of the bells, were designed as the finish of the building to the west.1 On the erection of this vast and stately fabric, and on the other objects of his foundation, Eadward had for many years spent the tenth part of his royal revenues.2 The monastic buildings had been finished for some years; the monks with their Abbot Eadwine 3 were already in possession of their house and its endowments. The minster The church was meanwhile rising, and it was Eadward's wish to in- 1065. terfere as little as possible with the worship which had still to be celebrated in the old building. The new church was therefore begun at some distance to the east of its doomed predecessor, which was doubtless not wholly demolished till the new one was completed. In the foundation and endowment of the monastery the King found helpers 4 1 1 So says the French Life (2295), which, on such a subject, may be trusted; "En miliu dresce une tur, E deus en frunt del Occident But, as the Tapestry does not show these towers, they were probably carried up at a later time, as often happened. 2 Vita Eadw. 417. "Præcepit deinde ex decimis omnium redituum suorum initiari opus nobilis ædificii." So Cod. Dipl. iv. 176. "Decimari præcepi omnem substantiam meam, tam in auro et argento, quam in pecudibus et omni genere possessionum." * Cod. Dipl. iv. 179. So the writs in iv. 190, 228. I presume that he succeeded Wulfnoth in 1049. 4 The Charter in Cod. Dipl. 176 says, "Destruens veterem, novam a fundamentis basilicam construxi." The Biographer explains the gradual process (418); "Hæc autem multiplicitas tam vasti operis tanto spatio ab oriente ordita est veteris templi, ne scilicet interim inibi commorantes fratres vacarent a servitio Christi, ut etiam aliqua pars spatiose subiret interjaciendi vestibuli." The Biographer, always hard to understand, is specially so in his architectural description. finished. CHAP. X. among his subjects, Tostig in the days of his power having been among their number.1 But the building of the church seems to have been wholly Eadward's own personal work. At last the work of so many years was brought to perfection. The time employed on the building was indeed shorter than that bestowed on many other of our great churches, which their own Prelates had to rear out of their own resources. But here a King was pressing on the work with all his might, a King who, when he had once completed the great object of his life, was ready to depart in peace. After fourteen years from the receipt of the Papal dispensation the building was finished from the apse to the western front. By the time of the Midwinter festival of the year one thousand and sixty-five the new minster of Saint Peter stood ready for its hallowing. Legends. So great a work, raised under such circumstances, could hardly fail to become surrounded by an atmosphere of legend. It was not every church that was founded either by a King or by a canonized saint. Fewer still among churches were founded by a King who was at once a canonized saint, the last of an ancient dynasty, and one whose memory was embalmed in the national recollection as the representative of the times before the evil days of foreign domination. In his life-time, or at most within a few years after his death, Eadward was already deemed to be a worker of miracles. For his dreams, visions, and prophecies he was renowned to his last moment. One 2 1 The Charter in Cod. Dipl. iv. 177 mentions Leofcild, Æthelric, Wulfwig, Guthmund, Elfric, Atsere (or Azor) the Black (Swerte), Ingulf, Atsere, Tostig, Elfwine, Wulfstan, Siward, and Leofsige of London. The gifts of several of them are mentioned in various writs; Leofcild in iv. 214; Ælfwine, iv. 217; Atsere Swerte, iv. 220; the other Atsere, iv. 191 (which of these was the Azor of Gloucestershire and Somersetshire?); and Leofsige, "Dudde sunu," iv. 218. There is also Ulf the Portreeve in iv. 221. The writs about the King's own gifts are very numerous. 2 See the Life, pp. 428 et seqq., and Appendix B. |
