This is the mother church of the City of Westminster and the parish church of the Lower House of Parliament. On special occasions the Commons, led by the Speaker whose pew is directly in front of the lectern, attends services here. It is also a tradition for the bells to be tolled or pealed when the sovereign passes or is nearby. While the original church was probably founded by King Edward the Confessor in the eleventh century, the oldest parts now date to its rebuilding in 1490–1523, placing it within the early part of Henry VIII’s reign.
The most obvious feature of this church—its location next to Westminster Abbey—also accounts for the most interesting aspects of its history. The first building on the site is thought to have been erected at about the same time as the Abbey, 1065, by Edward the Confessor. Its purpose seems to have been a dual one: to provide a church for the increasing population in the vicinity and to allow the monks to hold divine services undisturbed by the laity. A second building replaced the original during the reign of Edward III (1327¬77), which in turn was replaced by the present building in the time of Henry VII.
The large and impressive stained-glass window at the east end is a particular treasure of St Margaret’s. It was made by order of the magistrates in Dort, Holland, as a present to Henry VII on the occasion of the marriage of his son Arthur to Catherine of Aragon. The subject is the Crucifixion of Christ, and Arthur and Catherine are depicted kneeling at the foot of the cross. The window was to have been placed in Henry’s new chapel in Westminster Abbey. However, it was not completed when Arthur died, and not long thereafter, in 1509, Henry. VII also died. The new king, Henry VIII, himself now married to Catherine, had the window set up in the chapel of the abbot of Waltham near Epping. At the Dissolution it was moved to New Hall, also in Essex, and during the Commonwealth period this place came into the possession of General Monk, who preserved it from destruction. In 1758 the parishioners of St Margaret’s bought it for 400 guineas and installed it in its present position.
The association with the Commons was a development of the Puritan movement during the reign of James I. As the Puritans dominated the Lower House, they decided to worship at St Margaret’s so as to separate themselves from the high-church ceremonials at Westminster Abbey attended by the House of Lords. The entire House assembled here on Palm Sunday, 17 April 1614. During the turbulent years of the seventeenth century a number of famous Puritan divines preached here, including Dr John Reynolds (whose proposal at the Hampton Court Conference led to the King James Version of the Bible); John Owen, the chaplain of Oliver Cromwell; and Richard Baxter, author of Saint’s Everlasting Rest.
St Margaret’s has had associations with numerous famous persons, from William Caxton, a member of this church who set up his printing press in 1477 in Almonry and who is buried in the churchyard, to Winston Churchill, who was married here in 1908. Sir Walter Raleigh’s decapitated body was buried in front of the altar after his execution in Palace Yard. He is commemorated by a brass memorial near the east door and in a memorial window which also depicts Elizabeth I. Another window commemorates John Milton, with the lines from John Greenleaf Whittier:
The New World honours him whose lofty plan for England’s freedom made her own more sure...
Wenceslaus Hollar, the notable Dutch engraver, is also thought to have been buried in St Margaret’s. Samuel Pepys, who was married here in 1655, records several visits to services at St Margaret’s, at one time hearing common prayer for the first time (5 August 1660). Alexander Pope contributed a ten-line epitaph to the monument of Mrs Elizabeth Corbett which is quoted by Dr Samuel Johnson in his Lives of the Poets. George Whitefield preached at St Margaret’s one Sunday evening in February 1739, apparently taking the pulpit without official sanction. The sexton thereupon locked him in, ‘to the great confusion of the bewildered congregation’.
At the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 the remains of twenty-one prominent persons who had been buried in Westminster Abbey were disinterred by the rabble and thrown into St Margaret’s churchyard. John Pym, Admiral Robert Blake and Oliver Cromwell’s mother were among this group. An individual who figured in American history, James Rumsey, who demonstrated his invention of the steamboat to George Washington in 1784, is also buried in St Margaret’s churchyard. In his memory a curious epitaph by Robert Herrick (In memory of the late deceased Virgin mistris Elizabeth Hereicke’) was restored to the church and may be seen on the south aisle. Unfortunately, the memorial of John Skelton (1460–1529) on the porch does not remain. Skelton was made ‘poet laureate’ by both Oxford and Cambridge, but his witty and barbed satires eventually got him into trouble with Cardinal Wolsey. He was forced to flee to Westminster for sanctuary, where he died in poverty. His self-written epitaph was as follows:
Come, Alecto, lend me thy torch To find a churchyard in a church porch; Poverty and poetry this tomb doth enclose: Therefore, gentlemen, be merry in prose.