Westminster Abbey is one of the world’s most famous churches, certainly the best known in the English-speaking world. Whole books have been written about it, and indeed the wisest thing for a first-time visitor to do is go into the Abbey Bookshop and buy an illustrated guide. However, these few paragraphs will serve as a general introduction.
Back in very early Saxon times, when monastic communities were springing up all over Europe, a group of Benedictine monks settled on a tract of land surrounded by the waters of the Thames at high tide and known as the Isle of Thorns. Though the monastery was known at the time of Dunstan (960), no traces of it have ever been found. The most important fact is that this was the site chosen by the pious Saxon King Edward (1042–66) for his new palace. Edward had been brought up partly in the royal court of Normandy and was a good friend of Duke William, later known as ‘the Conqueror’. When Edward decided to rebuild the monastery abbey which would serve as his final resting place, it was logical that he would employ the new Norman style of construction.
Edward the Confessor’s church, then, became the first Norman building in England (and the largest in either England or Normandy). Nothing now remains of this church above ground, though its foundations have been discovered and scholars have determined that it occupied roughly the same area as the present Abbey. Edward the Confessor was buried before the high altar of his newly finished church in 1066, and thus he began a tradition that was to last until George II was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey in 1760, nearly 700 years later. In all, thirty-two sovereigns or their consorts are interred here, though only seventeen have monuments. The last monument to be erected was that of Queen Elizabeth I. Considerably before 1760 some monarchs and their consorts (Henry VIII, Jane Seymour and Charles I) were buried in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, and most have since been buried there as well.
On Christmas Day, 1066, the same year that Edward the Confessor was buried in the Abbey, William the Conqueror was crowned here as William I of England. That has been an unbroken tradition (excepting only Edward V and Edward VIII) to the present day. In 1296 the great king Edward I captured the ancient Scottish coronation stone at Scone and brought it to England. A year later he had a special coronation chair made, with a place for the Stone of Scone underneath the seat. This was used for the coronation of Edward II in 1327, and at every coronation since, and has rested in the Abbey continuously except for short periods during the Commonwealth and World War II. The Stone of Scone disappeared for a short time after a break-in on Christmas Eve, 1950, but was found in Scotland a few weeks later.
As we know from Chaucer, the Middle Ages were a time when English men and women of every class ‘longen to goon on pilgrimages’. The pilgrims sought the shrines of martyrs such as that of King Edmund in Gloucester Cathedral. Soon after Edward’s death, they began to throng to Westminster. In the thirteenth century King Henry III, when still a boy, was present at Canterbury Cathedral when the body of Thomas a Becket was placed in a new tomb, soon to become one of the most famous shrines in all Christendom. Henry was proud of his Anglo- Saxon ancestry and was devoted to the veneration of Edward the Confessor. Some years later he decided to build a new tomb for the remains of Edward behind the high altar and to rebuild the church itself. The work was started at the east end in 1245, under the direction of the architect Master Henry of Reyns, and by 1269 had been rebuilt in the new Gothic style as far west as the choir. On 13 October of that year the body of the Confessor was placed in a magnificent gold shrine resting on a Purbeck marble and mosaic base. Though sadly defaced, it remains today one of the great treasures of English history. Work on the nave was commenced in 1475, during the reign of Richard II, but for various reasons it took over 150 years before it was entirely completed. Fortunately, Henry Yevele, Richard II’s mason and a great architect, determined that the nave should be a unity with the rest of the building by carrying on the original plan of Henry III. Henry IV, Richard’s successor, neglected Westminster Abbey and gave liberally to Canterbury, planning to be himself interred near Becket’s shrine. However, by a strange irony he was praying at the shrine of the Confessor when death by a stroke overtook him. The next king, the famous warrior Henry V (immortalized by Shakespeare as Prince Hal), continued the work on the nave, and during his time the great west window and the vaulting were completed.
It was in January 1503 that work commenced on a chapel that was to become one of the most perfect examples in all England of the perpendicular style of Gothic architecture. The first of the Tudor monarchs, Henry VII, had decided to erect a shrine for the remains of Henry VI, but this was destined to be his own monument. From the beautiful carved stalls to the glorious stained glass to the exquisite fan vaulting high above all, this was a magnificent piece of work. And it remains so today, despite the loss of most of the original glass. The Reformation caught up with Westminster Abbey on 14 January 1540, when the monastery was dissolved under Henry VIII. Before long many of its moveable treasures were sold off and scattered, and much which was not moveable was defaced. Because of its important place in England’s history the building itself, including Henry VII’s chapel, was fortunately spared. A further disaster, however, occurred during the Civil War, when in 1643 a committee was appointed to demolish ‘monuments of superstition and idolatry’. It was at the time that the glass in Henry VII’s Chapel was destroyed, together with other priceless works of art.
Two other interesting developments during Reformation times were the founding of the famous Westminster School and the end of the right of sanctuary for debtors. The former got its start when Henry VIII founded the College of St Peter, Westminster. A grammar school which had operated on the precincts for some 200 years was incorporated into the new College, and under Queen Mary the sons of many prominent people in the court were sent there. Over the years Westminster has taken its place beside Eton and Winchester as one of England’s great educational institutions. The right of sanctuary for debtors at Westminster had been granted by Edward the Confessor. While within the precincts, the fugitive was safe from his adversaries so long as he took an oath to behave himself properly, wear no weapons and not go out of bounds. This right was finally abolished by Parliament in 1623. A third great tradition involving Westminster Abbey (following coronations and royal burials) got its start at the Dissolution. From being the church of a monastery and the burial place of kings, Westminster Abbey became a national possession where commoners, too, could be laid to rest. At first these included courtiers and wealthy individuals of no particular distinction. But gradually it became an established policy for the nation’s heroes either to lie in Westminster Abbey after death or to be commemorated there. Further, there has been a tendency for great persons of a particular calling to be grouped around a key figure—statesmen around Chatham, poets around Chaucer, musicians around Purcell, scholars around Casaubon, scientists around Newton, and so on. Of special interest from the perspective of Christian history are the grave of David Livingstone in the centre of the nave, the monument of the seventh earl of Shaftesbury near the west door, a tablet to William Tyndale and medallions to John Wesley, Charles Wesley and Isaac Watts in the south choir aisle.
The two imposing west towers of Westminster Abbey were built in 1738–39 by John James, successor to Nicholas Hawksmoor, who in turn was a successor to Christopher Wren. Wren was appointed Architect to the Abbey in 1698. It was his idea to have a central tower with a spire, but for one reason or another neither he nor Hawksmoor was able to complete this plan. But Wren and Hawksmoor did recase the exterior of the Abbey and fill the north and west windows with glass executed by Joshua Price. The medieval choir stalls were replaced in 1775, a sad loss, and other unfortunate changes made during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, in 1849 Sir Gilbert Scott was appointed architect, and he was the first to use scientific means to preserve the Abbey. Since his day the value of this great London monument has been amply recognized. It stands now not only as London’s number one tourist attraction but as a living reminder that England’s history is inseparable from the Christian faith.