I am going to take you along very quickly through the reigns of the Norman kings—William Rufus, Henry I, Stephen, Henry II., Richard Coeur de Lion, and John, and not make a long pause till we come to the year 1216, when Henry III., the royal builder of the Abbey as we know it, came to the throne. The Church of Westminster, from the days of the Norman Conquest onwards, became, as if by right, the coronation church, "the head, crown, and diadem of the kingdom;" and Oxford, Winchester, and St. Paul’s, which had witnessed so many coronations in the time of the Saxon kings, were no more thought of for this purpose. But rather curiously none of the Norman kings were buried here. Of a foreign race they were, and some among them rested in foreign tombs—the Conqueror at Caen, Henry II. and Coeur de Lion at Fontrevault, while Rufus, killed in the New Forest, was carried to Winchester, Henry I. to Reading, Stephen to Faversham, and John to Worcester, this last-named king having left instructions that he should be dressed like a monk and laid next good Bishop Wulstan, hoping by this subterfuge to take in the devil! The fact, however, of the Abbey being the recognised place of coronation gave the Abbot a somewhat unique position, for he it was who had to prepare the king for the great ceremonial, though the actual crowning became the right of the Archbishop of Canterbury. All the regalia, too, such as the crown of Alfred, the sceptre, the ring of Edward the Confessor, were kept at Westminster till the seventeenth century, when all that remained of them after the destructive days of the Commonwealth found a safer resting-place in the Tower of London. Yet still are they carried to the Abbey the night before a coronation and placed for the night in the Jerusalem Chamber, while the Dean and Canons of Westminster still have the proud privilege of standing within the altar rails by the Archbishop. William Rufus had all the worst qualities of his father without his sense of justice, and he was a cruel, selfish king, but he left his mark on Westminster, though not on the Abbey. The Palace was not large enough for his requirements, and he intended to rebuild it on a great scale. However he accomplished little beyond the Great Hall, which to-day is known as Westminster Hall, and leads to the Houses of Parliament. [Illustration: PICTURE AND TAPESTRY IN THE SANCTUARY.]