from it by the Pope on the condition that he should found or re-endow a
monastic church dedicated to St. Peter. This, therefore, was the origin
of the great West Minster, and in afterdays the tomb of St. Edward the
Confessor within its walls attracted pilgrims here, and made the
building a peculiarly sacred one. Here the Sovereigns of England were
always crowned, often married, and until the time of George III. usually
buried.

The earliest coronation of which there is historic certainty was that of
Edward's friend and former protector, the Conqueror, William I. As the
last Saxon King of the race of Ethelred was the first Sovereign who was
buried at Westminster, so the head of the Norman line of English Kings
was the first who was hallowed to the service of God and of his people
on this historic spot. No trace is left of Edward's Norman monastery,
save the foundations of some of the pillars and a round arch in the
cloisters; but we know that his church was nearly on the same place as
the present Abbey, and that the old Norman nave stood for many hundred
years joined on to the choir and transepts of the new Early English
building, and was pulled down bit by bit as the later church grew. For
the beautiful Abbey which we see before us now, in the heart of a busy
thoroughfare, is the work, not of one generation, but of five hundred
years. The central part was built in the thirteenth century. The
Confessor had been canonized by the Pope in 1163, and a century later
Henry III., who was a fervent admirer of the saint, caused a splendid
shrine to be made by Italian workmen, which was to replace the old one
of Henry II.'s time. The new style of pointed architecture was just
coming in, and the Abbot of Westminster, Humez, had added a Lady Chapel
to the old Norman church when Henry III. was a boy. As the King grew to
manhood he saw the contrast between the two styles of architecture, and
while the Italian shrine was still only half finished he caused the
central part of the Confessor's Norman church to be demolished, and in
its place an Early English choir and transepts were gradually
constructed during the last twenty-seven years of Henry's reign, with a
series of little chapels round the principal one where the shrine was to
be placed. In 1269 the new church was ready for service, and the chapel
was prepared for the shrine.

The shrine, and within it the Confessor's coffin, still stands in the
centre of this royal chapel of S