on
to both.

The Palace Precinct had three gates: one on the north, one on the
east--leading to the Bridge, _i.e._, the jetty where the state barges
and the boats lay--and a postern leading into the Abbey. Westminster was
at first a large rural manor belonging to the Abbey before the erection
of the Palace.

A large part of Thorney Island is still only slightly above the level of
high-tide. King Street was 5 feet 6 inches only above high-water mark.
This was the foundation of Westminster. It was a busy place long before
London Bridge was built--a place of throng and moil as far back as the
centuries before the coming of the Romans. A church was built in the
most crowded part of it; monks in leathern jerkins lived beside the
church, which lay in ruins for two hundred years, while the pagan Saxon
passed every day beside it across the double ford. During the two
hundred years of war and conquest by the Saxons, Westminster, quite
forgotten and deserted, lay with its brambles growing over the Roman
ruins, and the weather and ivy pulling down the old walls of villa and
stationary camp piecemeal. Perhaps--rather probably--there had been a
church upon the island in the third or fourth century. Soon after the
conversion of the Saxons another church was erected here with a monastic
house. Then there was another destruction and another rebuilding, for
this place was deserted by the monks; perhaps they were murdered during
the Danish troubles. It was King Edgar who restored the Abbey, to which
Dunstan brought twelve monks from Glastonbury.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

(MRS. A. MURRAY SMITH.)

On the sacred island the last great Prince of the Saxon race, Edward,
son of Ethelred the Unready, found Dunstan's little brotherhood of
Benedictine monks, who were living in mud huts round a small stone
chapel. Out of this insignificant beginning grew a mighty monastery, the
West Minster, dowered with royal gifts and ruled over by mitred Abbots,
who owned no ecclesiastical authority save that of the Pope, bowed to no
secular arm save that of the Sovereign himself. The full title of the
Abbey, which is seldom used nowadays, is the Collegiate Church of St.
Peter's.

King Edward had vowed, during his long exile in Normandy, that if he
ever sat on the throne of his fathers he would go on a pilgrimage to St.
Peter's shrine at Rome. But after his accession the unsettled state of
the kingdom made it impossible to keep this vow, and he was absolved