churchyard path and pass the little grave From The Times. THE FABRIC OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY. cut back the face of the walls or not, his restoration of them has not proved very successful. Wren also cut out and replaced the fire-stone window-jambs and other features, and apparently in several cases altered the lines in the old mould. ings in such a manner as to make it difficult to discover the ancient detail. Oxfordshire stone which he used, though beautiful in color and texture, has been clearly shown to be incapable of resisting the London atmosphere. The As regards the wall surfaces round the FOR Some time past it has been known clerestory windows, wherever the firethat the fabric of Westminster Abbey is stone has been allowed to remain they in a condition requiring the most exten- have become very seriously decayed, the sive repairs. The interior, indeed, is in decay having in some places penetrated good order, and it may be hoped that a to a depth of seven or eight inches, so long time will elapse before any further that the architect is surprised that the restorations are necessary to it. But with heavy cornices and parapets should have the outside the case is different. Beneath found a sufficient support in so ruinous a the coating of grime and dirt with which wall. Just before his report, in some of long ages have covered the structure, and the very worst places on the south side of which conceals the decay from the eye of the nave, the superstructure had been the casual passer-by, there has been long removed and the face of the wall rebuilt; going on a process of decomposition but this only went a very little way, and which, if not arrested, must speedily cause Mr. Pearson's opinion two years ago was the ruin of the building. The dean and that "immediate and very extensive rechapter, well aware of this state of things, pairs and restorations were urgently have taken measures to be fully and ex- needed for the whole of the masonry of actly informed of the extent of the dan- these clerestories." Very much the same ger, and have long been casting about for was his conclusion in regard to the flying a means of meeting it. In March, 1882, buttresses supporting the clerestory walls. they received a report from Mr. John L. In some places they are dangerous, and Pearson, R.A., the well-known architect, in others so decayed that pieces of stone on the state of the Abbey, which was by are constantly falling from them upon the no means calculated to set their fears at lead roofs below. The clerestory of the rest. As this report has now been for choir is also urgently in need of repair, some two years before the authorities, though its condition is not quite so bad there is no indiscretion in our mentioning as that of the nave and transepts. Going the principal points of it. Mr. Pearson round to the south side of the nave, over begins by discussing the history and con- the cloister roof, the report is of the most dition of the clerestories of the nave and gloomy character, declaring that it is transepts, and describes the work as left scarcely safe to pass along this cloister by Sir Christopher Wren in the beginning roof, or, indeed, along any of the lower of the last century. He charges Sir Chris- roofs. "Large pieces of stone are contopher, who had undertaken the external tinually falling, being detached by the restoration of the Abbey, with having cut rusting of the iron clamps with which the back the wall surface two or more inches masonry was thoughtlessly put together. -a treatment which could hardly have Very considerable damage has from this answered with the best weather-stone, and cause been done to the western towers, which was certain to fail with the softer the whole surface of which is disfigured fire-stone that had been used throughout by the bursting off of triangular and other the Abbey. For the credit of Wren, how-shaped pieces of stone; these heavy ever, it may be remarked that Mr. Pearson's judgment is contradicted by an express statement of Wren's, who in a letter dated June, 1713, when he was a very old man, declares that he faced the walls with Burford stone. It is difficult to decide between two statements that contradict one another so flatly; but, whether Wren pieces fall not infrequently, and do much damage." As to the transepts, that on the south side has been recently restored under the direction of the late Sir Gilbert Scott; and the porch of the north transept is also new. But above that porch the masonry is in places very loose and unsafe, and demands complete and exten sive repairs. The stonework of the clere- of building and rebuilding, the most mustory of Henry VII.'s Chapel, of the fly-nificent of all being Archbishop Langham, ing buttresses, and of the pinnacles, is abbot from 1349 to 1361, who, both in his also badly decayed, though in this part of lifetime and by his will, gave so much the building the ruin may be arrested by money to the Abbey that by that means, timely measures. The cloisters also re- and with aid from Richard II., the buildquire some restoration, but they might be ing of the nave was pushed forward, the allowed to wait till the body of the Abbey abbot's house and the Jerusalem Chamhas been dealt with. ber were added, and the cloisters completed. But by the time of Edward IV. we find that the Abbey had fallen into an unsatisfactory condition, and that espe cial efforts were necessary in order to extricate it. A curious letter from the king to the pope, written in the year 1478, and dated "Ex oppidulo nostro Grenewici" is printed in the history of the Abbey which was written in the last century by Richard Widmore, appealing in a piteous manner to his Holiness to excuse the newly elected abbots from the costly jour ney to Rome for confirmation, on the ground of the poverty of the monastery. The king writes: It is thus evident that if Westminster Abbey is not to be allowed to fall into ruin very considerable works must be at once undertaken in order to save it. The question then arises, How are the necessary funds, which are estimated at from £60,000 to £80,000, to be raised, and by What means may future generations be spared the periodical scandal of discovering that this great historical church has fallen into decay? A slight retrospect of the history of the fabric of the Abbey, with a special view to this question of a fabric fund, may here be not out of place, and it will at least show that we of this generation are not alone in making the discovery that a great medieval building is a costly heritage. While the monastery of Westminster existedi.e., from Edward the Confessor's reign to the dissolution in 1540-there seems to have been no definite provision for the main tenance and repair of buildings belonging to the monks. Two reasons may be given for this. The Abbey was in close connection with the crown, and the abbots were individually of great power and wealth. It was seldom difficult for the monks to obtain what sums were necessary from the king for the support of a building where kings were crowned and buried, and many parts of which had been built by the benefactions of kings. Un der Henry II. Abbot Laurence obtained a grant from the king and the empress Maud for the purpose of repairing the Abbey buildings and reroofing them with lead, and the same abbot, and many of his successors, obtained from time to time leave to impropriate livings for the same purpose the very converse, it may be remarked, of the proceedings of the present day, when so many of the cathedrals have been mulcted for the benefit of the smaller livings. The contributions made by Henry III. to the rebuilding of the Abbey and the building of the Chap. ter House are matter of history, and Henry III.'s benefactions were continued by many of his successors. The abbots, again, were generous. The fourteenth century has left numerous records of individual abbots contributing to the work - condescend to succor the Monastery, which is We pray you that the Apostolic See should now not only tottering but almost fallen, and which is on the point of utter ruin. A part of that Monastery, indeed, our ancestors built, and that portion is even now almost wasted by age; but the greater part they left unfinished, and of this up to the present time the poverty of the Monastery has prevented the completion, partly through the expense of the confirmation of the newly elected Abbots, and partly through the badness of the seasons and the floods, which have ruined the greater part of the estates of the Monastery. A pathetic appeal, truly, and one which ought to find an echo in the hearts of every cathedral chapter and of every country clergyman of our own day, when agricultural distress has once more become a bitter reality. Neither in Henry VII.'s time, when the royal munificence was expended upon the famous chapel, nor up to the dissolution, nor during the short ten years from 1540 to 1550, when Westminster was a bishopric, nor on the reconstitution of the Abbey as a collegiate church, in 1560, were any separate estates or funds set apart for the support of the fabric. Dean Williams (1620–1640) who was also Bishop of Lincoln, and afterwards Archbishop of York, spent no less than £4.500 on the church alone, repairing at his own cost the north-west exterior and the chapels on the south-east. Scandal, indeed, said that much of his generosity was at the expense of the prebendaries, but this was expressly contradicted in a chapter act of 1628, which indignantly denied that "our dean had done such repairs out of the diet and bellies of the prebendaries and revenue of the said church, and not out of his own." It was clear, then, that under Charles I. there was no fabric fund in existence, and that the general tradition still survived which made the abbot or his successor mainly responsible for the maintenance of the building. It was only in 1662, after the Restoration, that Dean Dolben, after wards Archbishop of York, prevailed on the chapter to "assign henceforth one prebend's share" ie., one fifteenth of the total annual divisible income-to the maintenance of the fabric, a measure which was thought worthy of honorable mention in the archbishop's epitaph. Until the handing over of the estates to the commissioners the measure introduced by Dean Dolben was adhered to, but it is only too plain that the sum so assigned was totally inadequate. In 1697 a petition from the dean and chapter to the House of Commons stated that since the Restoration they had spent nearly £20,000 on the church, but that their surveyor reported that £40,000 more was needed, and, in consequence of this, an act of Parliament granted to a commission, on behalf of the Abbey, one-sixth of the proceeds of a duty levied on coals imported into Lon-dean and chapter. This is not a matter don, the same to be assigned "for the repair of the Collegiate Church and for no other purpose whatever." The act was to be enforced from 1700 to 1716, and by a new act in the ninth year of Queen Anne the grant was commuted for a sum of £4,000 annually up to 1724 for the same purpose. But neither these large sums nor the ingenuity of Sir Christopher Wren sufficed to put the Abbey into complete repair. Between the years 1731 and 1741 sums of £4,000 were granted in at least four or five sessions of Parliament; and in those years, under the superintendence of Dean Wilcocks, the greater part of Wren's plans were carried out, including the erection of the western towers. We hear no more of appeals to Parliament until the present century, but in 1807 we❘ THE EPITAPH ON THE COUNTESS OF share of the divisible income of the chapter agreed to in Dean Dolben's time was always devoted to the fabric, with the addition of any revenue from the sales of timber and money paid for monuments, and any odd surplus funds of which the chapter might find itself possessed. The average expenditure in the years immedi ately preceding the transfer of estates was something over £2,300-a sum which was largely increased after the commutation. From Mr. Pearson's report, however, it is plain that this expenditure has been quite insufficient to keep the building in proper repair, and the question which is now under anxious discussion is by what means the very large sum immediately required can be raised. We understand that negotiations are in progress between the dean and chapter, the ecclesiastical commissioners, and the government, cut of which it is hoped that some prompt and satisfactory solution will be arrived at. What will be the exact nature of that solution is not as yet decided, and it would be premature to suggest any one course in preference to the others which are open. One method, however, we may deprecate, and with all the more confidence since we believe that it finds no favor with the for a public voluntary subscription. Westminster Abbey is not the church of any group of individuals, or of any party, or of any sect, or even of the establishment itself. It is bound up with the history of the nation. If the maintenance of the fabric is beyond the resources which the Chapter either commands at present or by some judicious arrangement can be made to command, then the responsibility for it ought to fall, not upon a few benev olent individuals, but upon the nation as a whole. From The Academy. PEMBROKE. find the dean and chapter petitioning the House of Commons, and stating that durLondon: Feb. 19, 1884. ing the last twenty years they had ex- WITH reference to the interesting dis pended nearly £29,000 on the church. A cussion lately published in the Academy committee of inquiry sat, and a grant of concerning the authorship of this famous £2,000 was immediately made, to be fol- epitaph, perhaps I may be allowed to say lowed up during the years between 1809 that, in looking through a small volume of and 1822 by grants amounting altogether poems with the title, "Poems written by to £42,000. Since that time, and until the Right Honorable William, Earl of the transfer of the estates to the Eccle- Pembroke, Lord Steward of his Majesties siastical Commission, the one-fifteenth | Household, whereof many of which are answered by way of Repartee, by Sr. Ben- | course, however, the question would be jamin Ruddier, Knight; with several Distinct Poems written by them occasionally and apart (Lond., 1660)," I find this celebrated epitaph in the following form: Vnderneath this sable Herse, Shall turn Marble, and become Both her Mourner, and her Tomb.* It would thus at first sight seem that the editor of the volume, John Donne, as signed the epitaph to Pembroke or to Ruddier. But it is certainly not probable that either the one or the other was the true author; and, indeed, the editor says in his preface that, besides genuine poems, it is quite possible that there are others which "be surreptitiously got into their company." But, if so, the fact that the epitaph was inserted in a volume so closely connected with the Pembroke family is important, especially as tending to show that the authorship was already in 1660 obscure or unknown. Mr. H. S. Milman, in the Academy of January 12, states definitely that the epifaph was written by William Browne, mentioning as evidence a volume in the British Museum Library (Lansd. MS. 777), in which, according to Mr. Milman, Browne wrote the epitaph "and signed his name thereto." I have examined the MS., which certainly contains the epitaph, but Browne's signature is not appended to it, as it is to some other of the poems. Moreover, the volume contains poems to which other names than Browne's are appended. The insertion of the epitaph in this volume is therefore no proof that Browne was the author. I have failed to obtain evidence as to whether the MS. is in the handwriting of Browne. If this could be shown, it might prove that Browne was alive in 1650 — a fact which does not seem to be otherwise known. But it seems to me that the writing on the title is not from the same hand as that which wrote the epitaph; and I should doubt, indeed, whether the poems are not in the writing of more than one hand. Of "Giles" in the seventh line is an evident misprint for "Piles." settled if Mr. Milman has evidence in support of his assertion that "in October 1621 William Browne laid upon the herse of the Countess Dowager of Pembroke” a scroll bearing the epitaph in question. But, if such evidence is not forthcoming, the attribution to Jonson, though by no means certain, seems likely to continue on grounds of internal probability. As to the substitution of "marble" for "sable," and the dropping away of the last six lines, this would easily occur after an inscription had been placed over the countess's grave. There is both in the printed volume above mentioned, and in the Browne MS. with "E. of Pembroke "appended, a littleknown poem which should be interesting to students of Shakespeare's sonnets, seeing that it was in all probability written by the Mr. W. H. to whom sonnets I to 126 were addressed, and on account also of the similarity of thought to that found in those poems. It is given in the printed volume in this form : Soul's joy when I am gone, Since I must leave myself with thee, of mutual love, Yet when unto our eyes absence denves but by their feet; why should our Day t Over our spirit so much sway To tye us to that way. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the Living AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. |