MEMORIALS OF WESTMINSTER.

13

CHAPTER I.

"The things to be seen and observed are the courts of princes; the courts of justice, where they sit and hear causes; the churches, with the monuments which are therein extant; the walls and fortifications of cities and towns; and so antiquities and ruins, libraries, colleges, houses and gardens of state and pleasure near great cities, treasuries of jewels and robes, cabinets and rarities; and, to conclude, whatsoever is memorable in the place. As for triumphs, feasts, weddings, funerals, capital executions, and such shows, they are not to be neglected."

LORD BACON'S ESSAYS-ON TRAVEL.

now

EN centuries ago, and Westminster ennobled with many a stirring memory of an eventful past, with royal parks and palaces, and the sessions of powerful parliaments,— and more by association with the names, that can never die, of worthies whom all England venerates,-might we but recal it in some magic glass, would again appear a dangerous waste, extending round a small convent newly built upon its highest elevation, a sandy gravelly soil overrun with briars and thorns, at the eastern extremity of a low marshy tract frequently inundated by the swollen Thames. Its fittest emblem is the oak of our native land, upon whose rind the successive rings of a thousand years denote its gradual growth from the tiny acorn into the kingliest forest-tree; for by the slowly outspreading landmarks we can trace each change of the isolated hamlet, as it dilated into the crowning city of the most powerful empire of the world. Strange changes have indeed been

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here,—the notes of the progress of a whole nation through good and ill, reverse and wealth. Here the rude Briton laved his painted limbs in waters, that were as an untravelled sea to his frail coracle; here the Roman knelt to the Apollo, whose idol temple has given place to the Church of the true GOD erected on its site; here the Saxon watched, fearful to behold each tide bear with it the galley of the Dane, until the pirate Northman came and drave him forth. The lone hut of the

barbarian, and the fire-wasted timbered house of the middle ages, are supplanted by the long vistas of the stout stone and brick of modern days; each eloquent spot is big with memories of the great and good. Here is planted the throne to which three kingdoms bow; and its obedient vassals are the colonies, on which the sun sets not, in the teeming islands of the West, and the spicy provinces of the golden East.

The Abbey Church of the Convent we have mentioned was called West Minster, in order to distinguish it from St. Paul's Cathedral, the Metropolitan Church of the East Saxons, and which lay to the eastward in London. The town, which soon grew up around it, took its origin and name from the monastery; for the opulence of the latter drew numbers of persons gradually together, and houses were built from time to time in its immediate neighbourhood, to accommodate those who were connected with the Abbey, or pursued those different trades and callings which the increase of buildings or the demands of the Benedictines supported and rendered

necessary.

A considerable portion of Westminster is only slightly raised above the level of high tide; much lies below it. In King-street and Great George-street the ground is 5 feet 6 inches above the high-water mark, and is the highest spot round the Abbey. Millbank-street is 4 feet 4 inches, the west of Tothill-street and the Broadway 9 inches, the New Way 6 inches, Old Pye-street 5 inches above high-water mark; New Tothill-street is 3 inches, the road by Mr. Elliot's brewery 11 inches, and Palmer's Village 12 inches below high-water mark.

The ancient town stood upon an island formed by the rude

channel worn by the river tides, which, owing to its growth of brambles, received the apt name of Thorney from Sulcardus, the earliest historian of the Abbey Church; and in a charter of King Offa, A. D. 785, yet more explicitly, is called "Torneia in loco terribili, quod dicitur æt Westmunster."

Thorney Island was about 470 yards long and 370 yards broad: on the east it was washed by the Thames, a branch of which entered at Canon-row, or as it was probably called from this cause Channel-row, almost close to the south wall of the Privy Gardens; and at the east end of Manchester-court, then running westward, it intersected King-street, and flowed down Gardener's-lane, from the west end of which its course ran to the south by a moat called Long Ditch, by the present line of Princes and Delahay Streets. The stream crossed Tothill-street to the west of the Gate-house, and, sweeping to the east, continued its way under the south wall of the Infirmary Garden in College-street, and so fell again into the main stream.

This island comprised the precinct of the Abbey and Palace, which were further defended by lofty stone walls; those on the east and south of the College gardens being the last remains of such defences of a later date. They were pierced with four gateways: the first in King-street; the second near New Palace-yard, the foundations of which were seen in December, A. D. 1838, in excavating for a sewer; the third opening into Tothill-street; and the fourth near the mill in College-street. The precinct was entered by two bridges: one crossed the water of Long Ditch at the east end of Gardener's-lane, having been built by Queen Matilda, the consort of King Henry I., for foot-passengers; the other still exists at the east end of College-street, underneath the pavement,—it connected Mill-bank with Dirty-lane.

In Domesday Book there is the following account of Westminster: "Land of St. Peter of Westminster, Hundred of Osulestane [bounded on the north by Edmonton and Herts, on the east by Essex, on the south by the Thames, on the west by Gore and Elthorn Hundreds], County of Middlesex. In the village where the Church of St. Peter