King James the First, who died in 1625, is not buried with any of his own Stuart family, but in the great Tudor vault where Henry VII and Elizabeth of York lie. It is supposed that James wished this because the Stuarts claimed the English throne through the House of Tudor. When we think of these two Kings, one really a Welshman and the other a Scotchman, we remember that it was at James I’s succession that the Scottish crown was united to that of England and Wales. The United Kingdom may be said to have been begun then, although the actual formal union did not take place till long afterwards. We should also remember that our Colonial Empire really began in James I’s reign. Sir Walter Raleigh’s settlement in Virginia had indeed been given up, but in 1607 and 1610, settlements were again made in Virginia and also in Newfoundland. And more important still, it was in James I’s reign that the celebrated “Pilgrim Fathers” sailed from Plymouth in the _Mayflower_ and crossed to America. They landed in Massachusetts Bay, and called their first settlement New Plymouth. In 1629, the infant Prince Charles, eldest child of Charles I, was buried in the Stuart vault, and in 1640, another child of Charles I, the little Princess Anne, was laid there also. Soon after her funeral, the troublous days began, and it was not long before the Abbey passed into Cromwell’s hands. II We must now turn to think of a very different state of things and of very different people, namely, the Parliamentarian Government and the great men of the Commonwealth. Between the years 1653 and 1660 the Parliamentarian Party made great changes in the government and services of the Abbey, and the Presbyterian form of worship was established. Again, as at the time of Henry VIII, various ornaments and other possessions of the church were removed and sold. Archbishop Laud, one of the chief advisors of Charles I, and a great enemy of the Puritans, was at one time Prebendary of Westminster, and had great influence and authority in the Abbey while he was one of the Chapter. In his old age Archbishop Laud was imprisoned for three years, and, sad to say, he was finally executed by order of the Long Parliament. Many of the famous Parliamentary soldiers and statesmen were buried in the Abbey, as they most of them certainly deserved to be. Whether we like all they did or not, we grieve to think that the bones of these great Englishmen were nearly all taken out of their graves at the time of the Stuart Restoration, and buried in a large pit outside the Abbey walls. To us it seems a mean and unworthy revenge, but perhaps we can hardly understand how angry the Royalists were.