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The chapel has an apse and side aisles which are fan-vaulted, and the central section is roofed with extraordinarily intricate and finely-detailed circular vaulting ,embellished with more Tudor badges and with carved pendants, which is literally breath-taking in the perfection of its beauty and artistry.
Beneath the windows, once filled with glass painted by Bernard Flower of which only fragments now remain, are ninety-four of the original 107 statues of saints, placed in richly embellished niches. Beneath these, in turn, hang the banners of the living Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, whose chapel this is. When the Order was founded in 1725, extra stalls and seats were added to those originally provided. To the stalls are attached plates recording the names and arms of past Knights of the Order, while under the seats can be seen finely carved misericords.
The altar, a copy of the sixteenth-century altar incorporates two of the original pillars and under its canopy hangs a fifteenth-century Madonna and Child by Vivarini.
In the centre of the apse, behind the altar, stand the tomb of Henry YII and Elizabeth of York, protected by a bronze screen. The tomb was the work of Torrigiani and the effigies of the king and queen are finely executed in gilt bronze.
In later years many more royal burials took place in the chapel. Mary I, her half-sister Elizabeth I and half-brother Edward YI all lie here The Latin inscription on thetomb - on which only Elizabeth Ist effigy rests - reads: «Consorts both in throne and grave, here rest we two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, in the hope of one Resurrection».
In the south asle lies Mary Queen of Scots, mother of James Yi and I, who brought her body from Peterborough and gave her a tomb even more magnificent than that which he had erected for his cousin Elizabeth.I.
In the same aisle lies Henry YII’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond. Her effigy, a bronze by Torrigiani, shows her in old age. She was known for her charitable works and for her intellect - she founded Christ’s and St John’s Colleges at Cambridge - and these activities are recorded in the inscription composed by Erasmus. Also in this aisle is the tomb of Margaret, Countess of Lennox.
THE CHAPEL OF ST EDWARD THE CONFESSOR, containing his shrine, lies east of the Sanctuary at the heart of the Abbey. It is closed off from the west by a stone screen, probably of fifteenth-century date, carved with scenes from the life of Edward the Confessor; it is approached from the east via a bridge from the Henry YII Chapel.
The shrine seen today within the chapel is only a ghost of its former self. It originally had three parts: a stone base decorated with Cosmati work, a gold feretory containing the saint’s coffin, a canopy above which could be raised to reveal the feretory or lowered to protect it. Votive offerings of gold and jewels were given to enrich the feretory over the centuries. To this shrine came many pilgrims, and the sick were frequently left beside it overnight in the hope of a cure. All this ceased at the Reformation The shrine was dismantled and stored by the monks; the gold feretory was taken away from them, but they were allowed to rebury the saint elsewhere in the Abbey.
It was during the reign of Mary I that a partial restoration of the shrine took place. The stone base was re-assembled, the coffin was placed, in the absence of a feretory, in the top part of the stone base and the canopy positioned on top. The Chapel has a Cosmati floor, similar to that before the High Altar, and a blank space in the design shows where the shrine once stood; it also indicates that the shrine was originally raised up on a platform, making the canopy visible beyond the western screen. The canopy of the shrine has recently been restored, and hopefully one day the rest of the shrine will also be restored.
And within the chapel can be seen the Coronation Chair and the tombs of five kings and four queens. At the eastern end is the tomb and Chantey Chapel of Henry Y, embellished with carvings including scenes of Henry Y’s coronation. The effigy of the king once had a silver head and silver regalia, and was covered in silver regalia, and was covered in silver gilt, but this precious metal was stolen in 1546.
Eleanor of Castle, first wife of Edward I, lies beside the Chapel. Her body was carried to Westminster from Lincoln, a memorial cross being erected at each place where the funeral procession rested.
Beside her lies Henry III, responsible for the rebuilding of the Abbey, in a tomb of Purbeck marble. Next to his tomb is that of Edward I. Richard II and Anne of Bohemia, Edward III and Philippa of Hainnault, and Catherine de Valois, Henry Y’s Queen, also lie in this chapel.
THE SOUTH TRANSEPT is lit by a large rose window, with glass dating from 1902. Beneath it, in the angles above the right and left arches, are two of the finest carvings in the Abbey, depicting sensing angels. In addition to the many monuments there are two fine late thirteen-century wall-paintings, uncovered in 1936, to be seen by the door leading into St Faith’s Chapel. They depict Christ showing his wounds to Doubting Thomas, and St Christopher. Beside the south wall rises the dormer staircase, once used by the monks going from their dormitory to the Choir for their night offices.
POET’S CORNER
One of the most well-known parts of Westminster Abbey, Poet’s Corner can be found in the south Transept. It was not originally designated as the burial place of writers, playwrights and poets; the first poet to be buried here, Geoffrey Chaucer, was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey because he had been Clerk of Works to the Palace of Westminster, not because he had written the Canterbury Tales. However, the inscription over his grave, placed there by William Caxton - the famous printer whose press was just beyond the transept wall - mentioned that he was a poet.
Over 150 years later, during the flowering of English literature in the sixteenth century, a more magnificent tomb was erected to Chaucer by Nicholas Brigham and in 1599 Edmund Spencer was laid to rest nearby. These two tombs began a tradition which developed over succeeding centuries.
Burial or commemoration in the abbey did not always occur at or soon after the time of death - many of those whose monuments now stand here had to wait a number of years for recognition; Byron, for example, whose lifestyle caused a scandal although his poetry was much admired, died in 1824 but was finally given a memorial only in 1969. Even Shakespeare, buried at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1616, had to wait until 1740 before a monument, designed by William Kent, appeared in Poet’s Corner. Other poets and writers, well-known in their own day, have now vanished into obscurity, with only their monuments to show that they were once famous.
Conversely, many whose writings are still appreciated today have never been memorialised in Poet’s Corner, although the reason may not always be clear. Therefore a resting place or memorial in Poet’s Corner should perhaps not be seen as a final statement of a writer or poet’s literary worth, but more as a reflection of their public standing at the time of death - or as an indication of the fickleness of Fate.
Some of the most famous to lie here, in addition to those detailed on the next two pages include BenJonson, John Dryden, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning and John Masefield, among the poets, and William Camden, Dr Samuel Johnson, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Hardy among the writers.
Charles Dickens’s grave attracts particular interest. As a writer who drew attention to the hardships born by the socially deprived and who advocated the abolition of the slave trade, he won enduring fame and gratitude and today, more than 110 years later, a wreath is still laid on his tomb on the anniversary of his death each year.
Those who have memorials here, although they are buried elsewhere, include among the poets John Milton, William Wordworth, Thomas Gray, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Burns, William Blake, T.S. Eliot and among the writers Samuel Butler, Jane Austen, Oliver Goldsmith, Sir Walter Scott, John Ruskin, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte and Henry James.
By no means all those buried in the South Transept are poets or writers, however. Several of Westminster’s former Deans, Archdeacons, Prebendaries and Canons lie here, as do John Keble, the historian Lord Macaulay, actors David Garrick, Sir Henry Irving and Mrs Hannah Pritchard, and, among many others, Thomas Parr, who was said to be 152 years of age when he died in 1635, having seen ten sovereigns on the throne during his long life.
CORONATIONS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY
Coronation have taken place at Westminster since at least 1066, when William the Conqueror arrived in London after his victory at the battle of Hastings. Whether or not Harold, his predecessor as monarch, had been crowned in Edward the Confessor’s Abbey is uncertain - coronations do not seem to have had a fixed location before 1066, though several monarchs were crowned at Kingston-upon-Thames, where the King’s Stone still exists - but William was determined to reinforce his victory, which gave him the right to rule by conquest, with the sacred hallowing of his sovereignty which the coronation ceremony would give him. He was crowned in the old Abbey - then recently completed and housing Edward the Confessor’s body- on Christmas Day 1066.
The service to-day has four parts: first comes the Introduction ,consisting of: the entry of the Sovereign into the Abbey; the formal recognition of the right of the Sovereign to rule - when the Archbishop presents the Sovereign to the congregation and asks them if they agree to the service proceeding, and they respond with an assent; the oath, when the Sovereign promises to respect and govern in accordance with the lows of his or her subjects and to uphold the Protestant reformed Church of England and Scotland; and the presentation of the Bible to the Sovereign, to be relied on as the source of all wisdom and low. Secondly, the Sovereign is anointed with holy oil, seated on the Coronation Chair. Thirdly, the Sovereign is invested with the royal robes and insignia, then crowned with St Edward’s crown. The final ceremony consists of the enthronement of the Sovereign on a throne placed on a raised platform, bringing him or her into full view of the assembled company for the first time, and there he or she receives the homage of the Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal and the congregation, representing the people of the realm.
The service has changed little - English replaced Latin as the main language used during the ceremony following Elizabeth Ist coronation, and from 1689 onwards the coronation ceremony has been set within a service of Holy Communion although indeed this was a return to ancient custom rather than the creation of a new precedent).
Coronations have not always followed an identical pattern. Edward YI, for example, was crowned