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    William de Colchester Abbot of Westminster
    William de Colchester Abbot of Westminster
    William de Colchester Abbot of Westminster
    Ebook116 pages1 hour

    William de Colchester Abbot of Westminster

    By Ernest Harold Pearce

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
    William de Colchester Abbot of Westminster

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      Book preview

      William de Colchester Abbot of Westminster - Ernest Harold Pearce

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of William de Colchester, by Ernest Harold Pearce

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: William de Colchester

      Abbot of Westminster

      Author: Ernest Harold Pearce

      Release Date: August 3, 2011 [EBook #36968]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM DE COLCHESTER ***

      Produced by Louise Pryor, David Garcia and the Online

      Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This

      book was produced from scanned images of public domain

      material from the Google Print project.)

      ABBOT COLCHESTER.

      WILLIAM DE COLCHESTER

      ABBOT OF WESTMINSTER

      BY

      E. H. PEARCE

      CANON OF WESTMINSTER

      SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE

      LONDON: Northumberland Avenue, W.C.

      New York: E. S. GORHAM

      1915

      TO

      J. D. AND H. R. D.

      WITH AFFECTION

      CONTENTS

      NOTE

      Having had the honour of an invitation to deliver in May last a Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal Institution on the Archives of Westminster Abbey, I thought it best to confine what I could say within an hour to the career of a single man, preferably one whose record had not hitherto been written. I have here expanded the lecture to some extent, and have added references. I am indebted to Mr. David Weller, the Dean's Virger, for some excellent pictures.

      E. H. P.

      3, Little Cloisters,

      September, 1915.

      LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

      WILLIAM DE COLCHESTER

      I

      A WINDOW IN THE NAVE

      When the body of the late Lord Kelvin was laid to rest, by a right which there was none to dispute, in the Abbey Church of Westminster, it was placed, by the same kind of right, close to the grave of Sir Isaac Newton. In the same corner there are the graves, or the memorials, of Darwin and Herschel, of Joule and Gabriel Stokes and John Couch Adams, to be joined shortly by tablets in memory of Alfred Russel Wallace, of Sir Joseph Hooker, and of another Joseph, who died Lord Lister. It was not likely that Kelvin would long lack some memorial more impressive than the slab which covers his remains, and it was a happy and appropriate impulse which caused the representatives of engineering science on both sides of the Atlantic to undertake the task of providing one. But what form could it best take? The walls of the church have been overcrowded, to the grievous destruction of some precious features. The floor-space, as the centuries following the Reformation were apt to forget, is intended to serve the purposes of public worship. But the large windows of the Nave offer to those who would honour and foster the memory of the great dead a means of fulfilling their desire, and of adorning the fabric at the same time. In this case the chance was welcomed, and Kelvin has his Abbey memorial in stained glass. The window is one of a series projected in 1907 by Dr. Armitage Robinson, now Dean of Wells, and loyally accepted by his successor in the Deanery of Westminster—a series in which there are placed side by side a King of England who contributed either to the greatness of the foundation or to the majesty of the building, and the Abbot through whom the King worked his pious will. The King in this case is Harry of Monmouth, and we are thinking with somewhat mingled feelings that October 25, 1915, brings us to the 500th anniversary of the battle of Agincourt. But it is Henry V.'s Abbot who concerns us now; for in such a scheme of windows the Abbots are more difficult to justify to the ordinary visitor than the monarchs, not because of unworthiness, but because there has been but little effort made to appraise their worth as heads of our ancient house, or as conspicuous figures in their generation. 1

      In this case the Abbot is William of Colchester. As we shall see, his character is depicted by Shakespeare, but he has no article to his credit in the Dictionary of National Biography. If he is to be brought back from obscurity, it can only be accomplished by repeated visits to the Abbey Muniment Room. I shall therefore ask the reader to climb with me the turret staircase which is approached from a door in the East Cloister, and to enter a noble apartment of which that cloister is the origin. For when Henry III.'s builders came to the planning of the South Transept, known as Poets' Corner, the lines of the Great Cloister had already been long established, and must not be minished or altered by the new work. Therefore, whereas the North Transept has aisles on its east side and on its west, the South Transept is aisled only on the east side. The East Cloister occupies the space of what would otherwise be the western aisle, and thus upholds the floor of the apartment which we enter. We look into the distant recesses of the Abbey eastward, through three of Henry III.'s bays, across a low wall split up by the bases of dwarf pillars. There are signs of royalty in the room, such as the crowned heads at the capitals of the pillars of the colonnade by which we enter, and on the wooden wall which shuts off the southern section is the outline of a white hart crowned, the emblem of Richard II. Professor Lethaby has suggested to me that such a point of vantage from which to see what stones and what buildings are here, and from which to observe some procession of State as it arrives from

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