We turn from the King's monument to a stone in the
floor which marks the place where a very different sovereign, Pym, the
King of the Commons, lay for a brief while. The coffin was buried under
the brass of a famous warrior, Sir John Windsore, who fought for Henry
IV. at Shrewsbury, a battle familiar to us in Shakespeare's historic
play. The bodies of Pym {107} and of his friend Strode, the "Parliament
driver," were disinterred and ejected with those of the other
Commonwealth magnates after the Restoration. On our right is the Chapel
of St. John the Baptist, called the Abbots' Chapel, for here are buried
four of our mitred abbots, two of whose tombs form the screen. The
original doorway is closed by that of Ruthall, Bishop of Durham, sometime
private secretary to Henry VII.; a wealthy man ruined by his riches,
which drew down upon him the cupidity of Henry VIII. and Wolsey,--not,
however, before Ruthall had spent part of his vast wealth in the public
service by building many bridges, notably one at Newcastle-on-Tyne. The
present entrance was cut through a little chapel, where were once an
altar and an image of St. Erasmus, which were originally given by Queen
Elizabeth Woodville, and removed here when the old Lady Chapel was
destroyed. Next to this is the chapel where Abbot Islip used to lie in
solitary splendour, before the vaults were invaded by other coffins. A
black marble table tomb, with an alabaster figure of the Abbot on the
lower slab, stood formerly in the centre. Above, in the chamber where
prayers were offered for the dead man's soul, are now the wax effigies.
We {108} have referred before to most of these, except to the more modern
ones of Nelson, a particularly attractive representation of the hero, and
of Lord Chatham. In a locked cupboard are remains of the so-called
ragged regiment, the earlier effigies, which were carried at the funerals
of our kings and queens, or other exalted persons. Outside, the chapel
is decorated with Islip's quaint device, a play upon his name Islip: an
eye with a hand holding a slip or branch, and a man slipping from a tree.
In the ambulatory, not far from his successor Islip, lies another Abbot,
Esteney, to whom we have referred in connection with the completion of
the nave. His altar tomb has been lowered, and the fine brass is now
only slightly raised from the floor; it was originally in the adjacent
chapel of St. John the Baptist, but was moved, and thus mutilated, in the
eighteenth century to make way for the colossal monument of General
Wolfe. We avert our eyes with a shudder from the marble group which
represents Wolfe's death above, and divert our party's attention to the
bronze bas-relief below, where the British troops are depicted landing on
the river bank, then scaling the heights of Abraham, and finally drawn up
on the plain before Quebec. {109} In an unmarked grave near this lies
the Admiral, Sir Charles Saunders, without whose co-operation even the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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