When the Commons separated from the Lords, they met within the walls of Westminster Abbey, while the Lords took the Painted Chamber of the Palace. For two hundred years the Commons assembled in the Cloister Court, or in the Refectory, or in the Chapter House. They changed the Chapter House for the no less beautiful church of St. Stephen in 1547, not long after the Dissolution of the Religious Houses. But the History of the Houses of Parliament belongs to the History of the Country. We have now gone through the Abbey without attempting any description of it. That has been done over and over again; now well, now ill. It is a treasury of architectural interest; it is crammed full of historical associations; one may linger among its ruins, among its monuments, under its noble roof, book in hand for days and weeks and years. I have shown you the monastic life and what it meant; I have told over again some of the stories that happened in the Abbey; I have shown you of what kind were the pageants and processions _outside_, witnessed by the people, belonging to the Coronations. Those who want the story of the Royal Tombs and Monuments, the Functions and Ceremonies, the Funerals and Weddings, that have been celebrated within these walls, may consult the courtly page of Stanley, the learned page of Loftie, and the laborious page of Dart. CHAPTER VI. SANCTUARY. On the northwest corner of the Abbey precinct--that is to say, on the right hand as one entered by the High Gate from King Street, where now stands the Westminster “Guildhall”--the earth formerly groaned beneath the weight of a ponderous structure resembling a square keep, not unlike that of Colchester, but very much smaller. It was a building of stone; each side was seventy-five feet in length, and it was sixty feet in height. On the east side was a door--the only door, a heavy oaken door covered with plates of iron--which gave entrance to a curiously gloomy and narrow chapel, shaped as a double cross, the equal arms of which were only ten feet in width. Three of the four corners of this lower square consisted of solid stone sixteen feet square; the third corner contained a circular staircase winding up to another chapel above. This, somewhat lighter and loftier than that below, was a plain single cross in form; three of the angles contained rooms; in the fourth the stairs continued to the roof. King Edward III. built--or rebuilt, perhaps--on this corner a belfry, containing three great bells, which were only rung at the coronation and the death of kings. The roof was paved with stone; there was a parapet, but not embattled. On the outside--its construction dated perhaps after King Edward built the belfry--there stood a small circular tower containing stairs to the upper story. The strong walls of this gloomy fortress contained only one door and one window on the lower floor; but in the upper story the walls were only three feet thick. This place was St.