t. Edward--a battered wreck, yet bearing
traces of its former beauty--and round it is a circle of royal tombs,
drawn as by a magnet to the proximity of the royal saint. Henry III.,
the second founder, is here himself. At his head is his warlike son
Edward I., the Hammer of the Scots, with his faithful wife, Eleanor of
Castile, at his feet. On the other side are the tombs of another
Plantagenet, Edward III., the "mighty victor, mighty lord," and his good
Queen, the Flemish Philippa. In a line with them is their handsome,
unfortunate grandson Richard II., whose picture hangs beside the altar.
Here also is the Coronation Chair, which encloses the Stone of Scone,
and upon this "Seat of Majesty," ever since the time of Edward I., who
reft the ancient stone from the Scots, all our Sovereigns have been
seated at the moment of their coronation. On the west of the royal
chapel a screen depicts the legends of the Confessor's life; on the east
is the mutilated tomb of Henry V., the victor of Agincourt; above it the
Chantry Chapel, where, after centuries of neglect, rest the remains of
his wife, the French Catherine, ancestress of the great Tudor line.

While the different dynasties succeeded one another, the building of the
monastery and church went on slowly but surely under different Abbots,
the monastic funds helped by gifts of money from the Kings and Queens
and from the pilgrims who visited the shrine. Edward I., for instance,
continued his father's work from the crossing of the transepts to one
bay west of the present organ-screen, while after him Richard II. and
Henry V. were the principal benefactors to the fabric. The west end was
not reached till early in the sixteenth century, in the reign of Henry
VII., when Abbot Islip superintended the completion of the west front
and placed in the niches statues of those Kings who had been
benefactors. The towers were not built till 1740, after the designs of
Sir Christopher Wren, who died before they were finished. The great
northern entrance has been called "Solomon's Porch" since the reign of
Richard II., who erected a beautiful wooden porch outside the north
door. This was destroyed in the thirteenth century, and the end of the
north transept was changed into the classical style under Dean
Atterbury, to whom, it is fair to add, we owe the fine glass of the
rose-window. Within recent years the north front has again been restored
on the lines of the original thirteenth-century arch