Sir J. Reynolds. Lady Elizabeth Montagu, Duchess of Buccleuch -a most noble portrait.

Lely. Lady Elizabeth Percy, Duchess of Northumberland (ob. 1722), as a child, with a dog.

Walker. Portrait of Oliver Cromwell.

Dobson. Portrait of Thomas Hobbes.

Drawing Room.

Rembrandt.

Portraits of Himself and his Mother.

D. Teniers. The Harvest Field-at the artist's château of Perck.
Vandevelde. Shipping—a beautiful specimen of the master.
Murillo. St. John and the Lamb.

Andrea Mantegna. A Sibyl and Prophet-in monochrome.
Rubens. The Watering Place.

Music Room.

Raffaelle. Fragment of a Cartoon.

Dining Room.

Vandyke. James Stuart, Duke of Richmond and Lennox.
Vandyke. James Hamilton, Duke of Hamilton.

Mengs. John, Marquis of Monthermer.

Vandyke. Henry Rich, Earl of Holland.

Vandyke. George Gordon, second Marquis of Huntly.
Lely. Anna Maria Brudenel, Countess of Shrewsbury.

Lely. Lady Dorothy Brudenel, Countess of Westmoreland.

Richmond Terrace occupies the site of Richmond House (burnt 1791), built by the Earl of Burlington for Charles, second Duke of Richmond.

On the right is the turn into King Street, now a by-way, but long the principal approach to Westminster, in which divers people were smothered when pressing to see Queen Elizabeth and her nobles ride to open Parliament. Here it was that Edmund Spenser the poet "died for lacke of bread," having refused twenty pieces of silver sent him by Lord Essex when it was too late, saying he was "sorry he

had no time to spend them." Here lived Thomas Carew, who wrote

"He that loves a rosy cheek,

Or a coral lip admires," &c.

Here also, in a house now destroyed, near Blue Boar's Head Yard, resided Mrs. Cromwell, the anxious mother of the Protector, never happy unless she saw her son twice a

day, and calling out, whenever she heard the report of a gun, "My son is shot." Oliver Cromwell was living here

himself when Charles I. was carried in a sedan chair through the street to his trial in Westminster Hall, and hence, six months after the king's execution, he set off in his coach drawn by "six gallant Flanders mares," to his campaign in Ireland. It was down King Street that the

Protector's funeral passed from Whitehall to the Abbey, with his waxen effigy lying upon the coffin.

Behind King Street is Delahay Street, where Judge Jeffreys lived in a house marked by its picturesque porch. It was the only house which was allowed to have a private entrance to the Park on the other side. To the left of Parliament Street is Cannon Row (originally Channel Row, from a branch of the Thames which once helped to make Thorney Island), where the widow of the Protector Somerset lived. Here is the Office of the Civil Service Commission. Dorset Court, opening from hence, formerly commemorated the birthplace of Anne Clifford, "Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery."

But we must hasten on, for down Parliament Street we look into a sunlit square, and beyond it rise, in a grim greyness which is scarcely enlivened by their lace-like fretwork, the wondrous buttresses of the most beautiful chapel in the world-that of Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey.

TH

CHAPTER VI.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.-I.

HE first church on this site was built on the Isle of Thorns —“Thorney Island an almost insulated peninsula of dry sand and gravel, girt on one side by the Thames, and on the other by the marshes formed by the little stream Eye,* which gave its name to Tyburn, before it fell into the river. Here Sebert, King of the East Saxons, who died in 616, having been baptized by Mellitus, is said to have founded a church, which he dedicated to St. Peter, either from an association with the great church in Rome, from which Augustine had lately come, or to balance his rival foundation in honour of St. Paul upon a neighbouring hill. Sulcard, the first historian of the Abbey, relates that on a Sunday night, being the eve of the day on which the church was to be consecrated by Bishop Mellitus, Edric the fisherman was watching his nets by the bank of the island. On the opposite shore he saw a gleaming light, and, when he approached it in his boat, he found a venerable man, who desired to be ferried across the stream. Upon their arrival at the island, the myste

* The Eye, now a sewer, still passes under New Bond Street, the Green Park, and Buckingham Palace, to join the Thames near Vauxhall Bridge.

rious stranger landed, and proceeded to the church, calling up on his way two springs of water, which still exist, by two blows of his staff. Then a host of angels miraculously appeared, and held candles which lighted him as he went through all the usual forms of a church consecration, while throughout the service other angels were seen ascending and descending over the church, as in Jacob's vision. When the old man returned to the boat, he bade Edric tell Mellitus that the church was already consecrated by St. Peter, who held the keys of heaven, and promised that a plentiful supply of fish would never fail him as a fisherman if he ceased to work on a Sunday, and did not forget to bear a tithe of that which he caught to the Abbey of Westminster.

On the following day, when Mellitus came to consecrate the church, Edric presented himself and told his story, showing, in proof of it, the marks of consecration in the traces of the chrism, the crosses on the doors, and the droppings of the angelic candles. The bishop acknowledged that his work had been already done by saintly hands, and changed the name of the place from Thorney to Westminster, and in recollection of the story of Edric a tithe of fish was paid by the Thames fishermen to the Abbey till 1382,* the bearer having a right to sit that day at the prior's table, and to ask for bread and ale from the cellarman.

Beside the church of Sebert arose the palace of the Anglo-Saxon monarchs, to which it served as a chapel, as

* In 1231 the monks of Westminster went to law with the vicar of Rotherhithe for the tithe of salmon caught in his parish, protesting that it had been granted by St. Peter to their Abbey at its consecration.-Flete.