Westminster
This anonymous account of Benjamin Disraeli's disastrous
maiden speech in 1837 captures the theatre and the open democratic
debate that are the essence of Westminster. Even
today, visitors to the House of Commons witness ferocious
public cross questioning. The Westminster City, unlike the secretive City
of London which operates behind the
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closed doors of its grand facades,
lives its life in public, using some of London's
grandest buildings as a backdrop. Its three powerhouses Westminster
, the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham
Palace are all central to that public life and reinforce
Westminster's position as the temporal and spiritual
headquarters of the sovereign, who is head of church and state, and
of the Commonwealth, and of her government.
Westminster was founded on religion. On the boggy
banks of the Tyburn river, more than 2 miles (3 km) upstream from
the busy, walled City of London, the church of St Peter was
established in 604, possibly by Sebert, king of the East
Saxons. Subsequent kings and worthies endowed St Peter's. Edgar
gave land, Canute relics, then, around 960, St Dunstan, Bishop
of London, provided a dozen Benedictine monks to start a
monastery.
But the real creator of Westminster was Edward
the Confessor. Dreaming of a new palace, a monastery and
an abbey church fit for royal burial, his religious fervour was redoubled
when Pope Leo allowed him to restore Westminster's
monastery instead of making a pilgrimage to Rome. Edward began
his new Romanesque church, and in about 1060 left Wardrobe Palace
in the City for the Palace in Westminster.
From then on, rulers at Westminster and
merchants in the City would enjoy a distant but tense relationship.
The former constantly needed money for wars, crusades or extravagant
lifestyles; the latter could supply that money but would do so only
in return for power. Edward's abbey was consecrated on 28 December
1065. Eight days later he died, but his dream continued without him,
propelled by the need to fuse religion and state. When William
the Conqueror was crowned with great ritual in the abbey
on Christmas Day 1066, he began a tradition which was as much political
as spiritual. It was in that tradition that Elizabeth
II was crowned in 1953. Nine processions Of 250 people
escorted her to the abbey and during the four hour ceremony she sat
on three chairs and wore four sets of clothes. She was crowned with
St Edward's Crown, but left the abbey wearing the Imperial State Crown.
Successive kings lavished money on the abbey. Henry III
began by adding the Lady Chapel then, in 1245, employed Henry
de Reyns to start rebuilding it all in the new, soaring Gothic
style, with the intention of making it into a combination of shrine
to Edward the Confessor, grand coronation church
and royal necropolis. Richard II, Henry V,
Henry VII and donations from pilgrims to the shrine
further funded the abbey to near completion. Then, in 1532,
Henry VIII broke with Rome. The following year the King took
the wealthy Benedictine monastery as Crown property. Deprived of its
monks, the abbey became the shrine, coronation church and royal burial
site Henry III had dreamed of. The royal tombs and
the Confessor's Chapel lie at its heart,
amidst monuments to politicians, scientists, poets and philanthropists.
Until the late nineteenth century, burial rights at the abbey could
be bought, so not all those interred here are especially virtuous.
The crowd of grandly entombed sovereigns begins with Edward
the Confessor although one tomb may even be that of
the founder Sebert and ends with George II,
after whose death Windsor Castle became the royal family's preferred
place of burial.
For visitors today, the westminster cloisters are an evocative reminder
of its past. Outside the westminster great west door, more old monastic
buildings are occupied by Westminster School, whose
former pupils include Ben Jonson and Sir
Christopher Wren.
Extract from London, Louise Nicholson. London: A Hodder & Stoughton Book, 1998.
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