St Margaret's Church, Westminster

“ Westminster Abbey is generally entered by the [Pg 217] north transept door, and almost every one of its visitors overlooks the modest little parish church of St. Margaret, standing only a few paces off, so completely dwarfed and rendered almost insignificant is it by the imposing proportions of its impressive neighbour. Nevertheless, small as is this interior, it possesses a window which the Abbey would be proud to have, one of such pre-eminent excellence as to draw from Winston the statement that “the harmonious arrangement of the colouring is worthy of attention. ”

“ Margaret to be newly built without the abbey church of Westminster, for the ease and commodity of the monks, because before that time the parish church stood within the old abbey church in the south aisle, somewhat to their annoyance.
King Henry III., in the year of Christ 1220, and in the 5th of his reign, began the new work of our Lady’s chapel, whereof he laid the first stone in the foundation; and in the year 1245, the walls and steeple of the old church (built by King Edward) were taken down, and enlarging the same church, caused them to be made more comely ”

“ WESTMINSTER ABBEY.—NORTH ENTRANCE.
At first sight Westminster Abbey is a little dwarfed by the enormous pile of the Houses of Parliament and their great towers. And St. Margaret's Church, nestling close to it on the north, mars the full view of its length. But when we draw near to it, all other buildings are forgotten. Crossing St. Margaret's churchyard where Raleigh sleeps, we seem to come into the shadow of a [Pg 13] great gray cliff. Arch and buttress and pinnacle and exquisite pointed windows tier upon tier, are piled up to the parapet more than a hundred feet over our heads. ”

“ Margaret’s, Westminster, were fined in 1647 for decorating their church at Christmas. The practice, as before referred to, existed from the earliest times; and in the churchwardens’ accounts of various parishes in the fifteenth and following centuries, entries may be found of payments for holme, holly, and ivy; and even during the Commonwealth the practice was not extinct, although the puritans tried to abolish it ”

“ Edmund Waller, the poet, was married in St. Margaret's to Anne Banks on July 5, 1631, and John Milton to Katherine Woodcock in November, 1656. A son of Sir Walter Raleigh's is buried in the church, and also Colonel Blood. Children of Judge Jeffreys: Bishop Burnet, Titus Oates and Jeremy Bentham were christened here. Besides Latimer and Sacheverell the list of great preachers in St. Margaret's is long, including many Archbishops and Bishops, and the roll of Rectors con [Pg 59] tains many distinguished names. A man who occupies the pulpit must feel he has high tradition to uphold. ”

“ Margaret's is far superior to the exterior, a reversal of what is usual in church architecture. The splendid arcades of aisle arches, early Perpendicular, or transition from Decorated to the Perpendicular style, are uninterrupted by any chancel arch, and with the clerestory windows sweep from end to end of the building. The east window is filled with stained glass of the richest tints, the blues and greens being particularly striking. This glass has a history. It was made at Gouda in Holland, and was a present from the magistrates of Dort to Henry VIII. for the chapel of Whitehall Palace. ”

“ Power was given to hold property, to carry on legal proceedings, to make bye-laws, and to collect subscriptions. To stamp the whole with a Church of England character, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Bishops of London and Ely, the Lord Almoner, the Deans of Westminster and St. Paul’s, the Archdeacon of London, and the Regius and Margaret Professors of Divinity at Oxford and Cambridge for the time being, were constituted trustees, the selection of some of these dignitaries at first being doubtless determined on personal grounds. ”

“ Mary's and a church of St. John of Jerusalem, also a chapel, a cloister, and a charnel-house in St. Paul's Churchyard, and he carted away the remains of the dead by whole loads, and threw them into a pit in Bloomsbury. When he attempted to pull down St. Margaret's Church in Westminster, for the stones, the parishioners rose in tumult, and drove his men away. ”

“ One of his last acts was to rebuild in 1682 the north gallery in the church of St. Margaret, Westminster, his own parish, for the benefit of the poor. He also gave an annual sum of 37l. to the parish for their relief. ”

“ Margaret Street was named after Margaret, heiress of the Newcastle and Oxford families. In it is All Saints' Church, a decorative building which has been described as the most beautiful church in the Metropolis. It was built by W. Butterfield, and the first stone was laid by Dr. Pusey on All Saints' Day, November 1, 1850. The whole of the interior is covered by mural decorations. The frescoes in the chancel were executed by W. Dyce, R.A. The style is Early English, and the spire reaches a height of 227 feet. ”

“ Men hurried to and fro eagerly and with cloudy looks. The workmen gradually gathered in a close phalanx about the little church, whispered anxiously together, and brandished their tools with a faint show of defiance, yet seemed afraid or reluctant to level them against the sacred pile which stood among that mass of eager human beings in the cool morning light, quiet and tranquil as the spirit of holiness that brooded over its altar.
Though the persons gathered about St. Margaret’s were considerable in numbers, they were not yet condensed into a form that could justly be termed a mob. ”

“ The Public Walks forms a pleasant promenade parallel to the wall, and in the centre of it stands a picturesque octagonal Chapel of the Red Mount, exhibiting ornate Perpendicular work, and once frequented by pilgrims. The church of St Margaret, formerly the priory church, is a fine building with two towers at the west end, one of which was formerly surmounted by a spire, blown down in 1741. ”

“ Thus it was that with all true sorrow of repentance she had knelt in the abbey church. When the Lady Margaret and the abbess came upon her in the dusk bending before the high altar, she was indeed, as the abbess had intimated, praying not for strength to face the troublesome world again, but for grace to take the vows of the Benedictine rule. ”

“ Margaret’s chapel, a small building in the middle of the burying-ground, and leaning against the iron railing which formed at once its door and gable-end, she folded her hands reverently, and prayed. The custom in Roman Catholic countries of leaving the church-doors constantly open, most certainly conduces to promote piety. Many a giddy girl whose thoughts have wandered as unrestrained as her glances down the crowded aisle, has sought the same spot afterwards in solitude, to offer up supplications and thanksgivings as fervent, perhaps, as ever were breathed. ”

“ All Saints’ Church.—This handsome edifice was consecrated by the late Bishop Blomfield on Saturday, July 21st, 1849. It was erected to supply a very great want, for previously p. 99this isolated portion of St. Margaret’s parish was destitute of a place of worship for the members of the Church of England. Within the last twenty years the population has vastly increased; and houses of first-class character have covered the nursery-grounds and fields formerly abounding. ”

“ The old Celtic monastic system, with Iona as its centre, was superseded by the monastic system of the Roman Church in the eleventh century, and the old Culdee monks were either driven from their ancient settlements or compelled to become Augustinian canons or Benedictine monks. The life of Queen Margaret marks the period of transition in Scotland from the old system to that of the Church of Rome both in building and in every other department, and what Queen Margaret began, her sons, Edgar, Alexander and David completed. ”

“ Margaret’s and their churchyards was at one time used for interments. At present the Abbey Churchyard and that of St. Margaret’s (where at times a fair used to be held) are in one. They are neatly turfed and open to the public, and they form a simple but suitable base for the glorious old buildings which rise from them. On the south side of the Abbey are the large and small cloisters, with their grass plots and their ancient stones, while, according to Brayley, a part of Covent Garden Market is on the site of what used to be the burial-ground of the Westminster Convent. ”

“ In 1891, to bestow more honor on Scotland’s hero, the pulpit was moved back and a monumental brass inserted in the floor to indicate the royal vault. The tomb of St. Margaret and Malcolm, which was within the ruined walls of the Lady chapel, was restored and enclosed at the command of Queen Victoria. The nave of the abbey church was of noble proportions, but of the abbey itself,71 only portions of the refectory, tower, and arched gateway remain. The devastating reformers of March, 1560, spared the nave, which served as a parish house of worship until the nineteenth century. ”

“ Her biographer tells us that ‘at the principal council thus held she, with a few of her own ecclesiastics, contended for three days with the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, against the supporters of these strange customs; while her royal husband, who was equally well acquainted with the Anglic language and with his native Gaelic, acted as interpreter.’ [664]
Margaret began by pointing out that they who agreed with the Catholic Church in worshipping one God, in one faith, should not differ in regard to certain new and strange practices. ”

“ Roman Catholic churches are sometimes found to have unorthodox alinements, but not so generally as is commonly believed. Frequently, the so-called lack of orientation simply means that the position of the altar is reversed. Thus, St George’s Cathedral, in Westminster, like St Peter’s at Rome, has its altar at the West end. But since the axis in these cases, as in that of the little Anglican church at Well, previously mentioned, lies East and West, I prefer to consider these churches as not fundamentally violating the rule. ”

“ So, at the state service in the Abbey on this occasion, the Mass was celebrated with the usual ritual, though the sermon was preached by a certain Doctor Cox, who was a vigorous Protestant.
Elizabeth's first Parliament gave over to her all the religious houses revived by her sister, and she decided to once more make Westminster a Cathedral church, though without a bishopric. Possibly if Fakenham had been a more time-serving man, he might have managed to stay on under the new regime as Dean, but he was uncompromisingly true to his principles ”

“ All the village churches in England of my heart are entrancingly holy and human places, but it is not always that one finds a church so rare as that of St Margaret in Darenth. For not only is it built of Roman rubble or brick, the work of the Saxons, the Normans, and of us their successors, but it boasts also an arch of tufa, has an Early English vaulted chancel of two stories, and a Norman font upon which are carved scenes from the life of St Dunstan, to say nothing of a thirteenth-century tower. ”

“ This rather confounded the bishop, who rode off without answering a word.
ST. MARGARET OF SCOTLAND LEARNED IN THE SCRIPTURES (A.D. 1080) .
St. Margaret, a great-niece of Edward the Confessor and granddaughter of Edmund Ironsides, married Malcolm, King of Scotland, in 1069. She was of a saintly mind, and showed a genius for self-mortification and fasting, and also for charity to the poor. The King was accustomed to offer coins of gold in the church at High Mass, but the Queen devoutly pillaged them and bestowed them on the beggars who besought her help. ”

“ Saviour's, as it is now, is one of the most striking churches in London; its interior appeals at once to the eye and to the imagination. The long aisles are restful and harmonious; the Early-English architecture is severely pure; the fine effect of the beautifully-restored nave and transepts is not, as too often in Westminster Abbey, spoiled by the introduction of ornate tombs and sprawling angels. The church, restored by Blomfield in 1890-96, is already a collegiate church, and is worthy to become, as it probably will, the cathedral for South London. ”

“ Probably the absence of decoration and ornament struck her painfully, accustomed as she was to palaces of a very different kind—for almost the first thing we hear in the contemporary history written by her confessor Theodoric, afterwards a monk at Durham, is of the workshops and rooms for embroidery and all the arts which were established in Dunfermline, presumably in the palace itself under Margaret's own eye, for the beautifying of the great church which she founded there, and also no doubt for her own house. ”

“ She immensely admires the piety that prompts him to say his prayers in church, on his return from an intrigue with the wife of his friend. She, the patroness of ideal goodness, cannot find any praise for an honest young girl who refuses the illegal love of the King. It is the impudence and not the virtue of such a refusal that amazes her. In her book, as in her life, Margaret's idolatry for her brother paralyses her judgment and her conscience. ”

“ Margaret. I find the images of St. Laurence, St. Margaret, St. Christopher, St. Erasmus, our Lady of Pity, St. Augustine, &c. mentioned to be in this church, together with the rood altar, &c. but that which brought most profit to the convent, was the chapel of our Lady in this church, called Scala Celi, to which people were continually coming in pilgrimage, and offering at the altar there; most folks desired to have masses sung for them here, or to be buried in the cloister of Scala Celi, that they might be partakers of the many pardons and indulgences granted by the Popes to this place ”