Henry III's Building

Norman Building

Conjectural View of the Abbey in the Time of Edward I tion's rulers coming up in state to be crowned, and after their share in the making of history, returning for burial. No other building in the world can show such a record.

Edward's church stood intact for nearly two hundred years, while the conquering Normans and the early Plantagenets slowly learned the temper of the people they were ruling. But with Henry III the Abbey feels the stir of a new era. He, the first of the Plantagenets to be born in England, made Westminster his chief residence. His sons Edward and Edmund bore the names of famous Saxon saints, but his French connection had been early established by his marriage, in the Abbey, with Eleanor of Provence, and influenced by the crusade in favor of Virgin worship which swept over Europe under St. Bernard, he erected in 1245 a chapel to "Our Lady" adjoining on the east the Confessor's tomb. But his architectural enthusiasm went further, and it is to him that we owe the beautiful Abbey as we see it today. Strongly religious and not perceiving the new signs of the time he sapped the resources of his kingdom so unsparingly that the growing strength of Parliament had to be reckoned with under succeeding sovereigns.

The thirteenth century was a period of great artistic activity. The newly awakened spirit of freedom found its natural expression in the aspiring lines of Gothic architec

ture, and kindled the imagination of European builders. Henry shared their enthusiasm and the new Abbey, "Early English" almost throughout, possesses also some very striking French characteristics. The King lived to complete only the eastern end of his new church with two bays of the nave and the Chapter House, and it was nearly two hundred years before the old Norman nave entirely disappeared. Strange indeed the building must have looked with its towering Early English Gothic at one end and heavy Norman masonry at the other. Fortunately when the nave was completed the earlier style was copied so that the harmony of the interior is unbroken.

Approaching the east end of the Abbey from the Old Palace Yard the one striking contrast in its exterior is very apparent. Henry III's Lady Chapel has gone. It was pulled down in later times to make way for that of Henry VII, one of the most beautiful buildings of the late Tudor style in England. You instinctively turn to compare it with the Parliament buildings opposite, erected three hundred years later but in the spirit of the older time which crystalized this form under the name of Tudor Gothic. The paneled stone work extending all around the lower half of the chapel is very characteristic, and the emphasis upon perpendicular lines even in the stone tracery of the windows justifies the name of Perpendicular which is also given to this late Gothic. A sumptuous effect is produced by the upper carvings upon the canopied pinnacles and even in the flying buttresses. The contrast between the adjoining part of the Abbey and this highly elaborated chapel is that between Gothic in the simplicity of its first lofty beginnings and Gothic in the over exuberance of its declining years, yet each has its own distinct charm. Passing around the east end you reach the great entrance at the end of the north transept. The tooth of time and the hand of the restorer have destroyed many of its ancient details, but the triple doorway, a noteworthy feature of Henry's church, is pre

sumably an imitation of the splendid portals so common in France. The scarcely perceptible beginnings of a central tower render it uncertain whether a taller structure was ever intended, and the upper part of the two western towers, designed by Christopher Wren but not finished till after his death, make you wish that Sir Christopher had had greater sympathy with the Gothic spirit.

You enter the Abbey by the west door and the splendor of the noble church church surrounds surrounds you. The towering arches of the nave carry the vaulted ceiling up more than a hundred feet, the highest in England, a touch of the French influence. The warm brown tone of the interior is very different from Ely or Canterbury. Magnificent clustered columns of brown purbeck marble rise to a great height, and the stonework which they support, lighter in color but shaded perhaps by London smoke, is wonderfully harmonious. The triforium is one of the most exquisite features of the church. Your eye travels down the long perspective of Early English arches with their lovely trefoiled heads and you notice as you examine them closely that in the older part of the church toward the east the capitals of their slender columns are carved while below the triforium the spaces above the great arches of the transepts have been enriched by a delicately wrought diaper pattern. You notice also that lancet windows predominate in the choir and transepts while in the later work of the nave the trefoiled form takes their place but without disturbing the harmony of the whole. The walls on every side are crowded with monuments but between and around them you will see that here also a charming feature of the original design was the beautiful wall arcading decorated at intervals with shields of early noblemen, among them that of the great founder of Parliaments, Simon de Montfort.

Before studying the church in detail we step through a door in the south aisle and stroll around the old