When we come to the reign of Edward the Confessor we begin to get to actual definite things. Edward, as we know from our history books, was a very religious man, almost as much a monk as a King; and he took special delight in rebuilding ruined churches. While he was in exile in Normandy he made a vow to St. Peter that he would go on pilgrimage to Rome if ever he came into his kingdom. When, in the passage of time, he became King, and proposed to carry out his vows, his counsellors would not hear of such a journey; and, in the end, the Pope of Rome released him from his vow on condition that he agreed to build an Abbey to the glory of St. Peter. This Edward did. His own particular friend, Edwin, presided over the small monastery of Thorney, so Edward determined to make this the site of his new Abbey. Pulling down the old place, he devoted a tenth part of his income to the raising of the new “Collegiate Church of St. Peter of Westminster.” Commenced in the year 1049, it became the King’s life-work, and was consecrated only eight days before his death. In order that he might see the builders at work on his favourite project, he built himself a palace between the Abbey and the River, and for fifteen years he watched the rising into being of such an Abbey as England had never known. He endowed it lavishly with estates, and gave it the right of sanctuary, whereby all men should be safe within its walls. Of course, the fine structure we see as we stand in the open space known as Broad Sanctuary is not the Confessor’s building. Of that, all that now remains is the Chapel of the Pyx, the great schoolroom of Westminster School, which was the old monks’ dormitory, and portions of the walls of the south cloister. The rest has been added from time to time by the various Sovereigns. Henry III., in 1245, pulled down large portions of the old structure, and erected a beautiful chapel to contain the remains of the Abbey’s founder, and this chapel we can visit to-day. In it lies the sainted Confessor, borne thither on the shoulders of the Plantagenet nobles whose humbler tombs surround the shrine; also his Queen, Eleanor; Edward III., and that Queen who saved the lives of the burghers of Calais; also the luckless Richard II. [Illustration: Henry VII.’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey.] Other Sovereigns also took a share; but it was left to Henry VII. to give us the body of the Abbey mainly in the shape we know. At enormous expense he erected the famous Perpendicular chapel, called by his name—one of the most beautiful and magnificent chapels in the whole world. When we stand in the subdued light in this exquisite building, and examine the beautifully fretted stone-work of its amazing roof—a “dream in stone,” its “walls wrought into universal ornament,” the richly carved, dark-oak stalls of the Knights of the Bath with the banners of their Order drooping overhead—we find it hard to recall that this miserly man was one of the least popular of England’s Kings.