285

A Westminster Boy 289

THE CHILDREN OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

CHAPTER I.

THE BUILDING OF THE ABBEY.

Twelve hundred years ago, in the reign of King Sebert the Saxon, a poor
fisherman called Edric, was casting his nets one Sunday night into the
Thames. He lived on the Isle of Thorns, a dry spot in the marshes, some
three miles up the river from the Roman fortress of London. The silvery
Thames washed against the island's gravelly shores. It was covered with
tangled thickets of thorns. And not so long before, the red deer, and
elk and fierce wild ox had strayed into its shades from the neighboring
forests.[1]

Upon the island a little church had just been built, which was to be
consecrated on the morrow. Suddenly Edric was hailed from the further
bank by a venerable man in strange attire. He ferried the stranger
across the river, who entered the church and consecrated it with all the
usual rites--the dark night being bright with celestial splendor. When
the ceremony was over, the stranger revealed to the awestruck fisherman
that he was St. Peter, who had come to consecrate his own Church of
Westminster. "For yourself," he said, "go out into the river; you will
catch a plentiful supply of fish, whereof the larger part shall be
salmon. This I have granted on two conditions--first, that you never
again fish on Sundays; and secondly, that you pay a tithe of them to the
Abbey of Westminster."[2]

The next day when bishop and king came with a great train to consecrate
the church, Edric told them his story, presented a salmon "from St.
Peter in a gentle manner to the bishop," and showed them that their
pious work was already done.

So runs the legend. And on the site of that little church dedicated to
St. Peter upon the thorn-grown island in the marshes, grew up centuries
later the glorious Abbey that all English and American boys and girls
should love. For that Abbey is the record of the growth of our two great
nations. Within its walls we are on common ground. We are "in goodly
company;" among those who by their words and deeds and examples have
made England and America what they are. America is represented just as
much as England "by every monument in the Abbey earlier than the Civil
Wars."[3] And within the last few years England has been proud to
enshrine in her Pantheon the memories of two great and good
Americans