Biographical Illustrations Of Westminster Abbey

Reprint of the original, first published in 1843.

Excerpt from Biographical Illustrations of Westminster Abbey Upon the origin of Westminster Abbey much has been written, and yet but little that can be said to be probable, is known. The monks traced its history far back into the ages of antiquity, and confused their accounts, as well with the fables of Paganism, as the miracles of Christianity: even the chronicles of more recent authors are replete with particulars which are now rejected by common consent as false and impossible. From the many legends that have involved the subject in obscurity, all that has been collected with any pretensions to sense and reality, is briefly this: - Sebert, a king of the Eastern Saxons, who, with his uncle Ethelbert, was converted to Christianity by St. Austin, and died in the year 616, cleared away the ruins of a temple in honour of Apollo, which had been thrown down by an earthquake, and stood west of the city of London, on Thorney Island, and there built a church in memory of St. Peter. To one part of this version, however, Sir Christopher Wren* has objected, inasmuch as, if the present structure had ever been raised upon the foundations of a Roman edifice, some fragments of the architecture, common to such works, must almost of necessity have remained about the walls; and he examined these diligently when he was commissioned to repair the Abbey, in the reign of William and Mary, but not a stone or relic of the description alluded to could he discover even in the oldest parts of the masonry. Nor are the stories which have been handed down to us respecting the consecration of the Abbey less conflicting or more natural. King Sebert is said to have ordered the solemnity to be performed by Mellitus, then bishop of London; but the ceremony, according to others, was eminently miraculous. For it has been reported, that, on the night preceding the day appointed for the consecration, St. Peter descended from heaven, in disguise, and, alighting at Lambeth, was rowed over to the island, then deeply flooded round from heavy rain, by the waterman of the ferry, who was also a fisherman. Upon his landing, he was joined by an embassy of winged angels, and amidst the refulgence of extraordinary lights from heaven, and a loud chorus of sweet music, in person baptized the new building holy! To the fisherman he then revealed his name, and the nature of his being, commissioning him at the same time to let Bishop Mellitus know all he had seen and heard. Farther to convince the astonished man of the divine interposition, St. Peter is recorded to have blessed his net, and given him a miraculous draught of salmon, a species of fish in catching which he also promised that no Thames fisherman should ever fail, so long as the fraternity approved the piety of their intentions, by presenting every tenth fish that should come to net for the use and benefit of the new church. Incredible as this tale appears, there are two royal charters still upon record which afford conclusive evidence of the implicit belief which it continued to receive for a long period of time. The first of these was one given by king Edgar, which recites that the Abbey church was consecrated by no less a personage than St. Peter, the prince of Apostles, who also named it to his own honour. The other is a charter from king Edward the Confessor, which declares, with minute care, that the Abbey church of Westminster was dedicated by St. Peter himself, with the attendance of angels, by the impression of the holy cross, and the anointment of the holy chrism. As to the custom of offering salmon, to the monks of Westminster Abbey, it was observed by watermen of the Thames to a date as recent as the fourteenth century. From various traditions, such as these, the foundation of the first Abbey in Thorney Isle, or the Island of Thorns, has been generally fixed in the sixth century, and in the reign of Sebert.

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