Westminster Hall and Its Echoes [pp. 417-424]

418 WESTMINSTER HALL AND ITS ECHOES.
his coronation - feast - where London
goldsmiths officiated as butlers, and
Winchester tradesmen served up the
viands, while archbishops and bishops,
earls and barons, knights and gentle men were seated at the royal tables, and
the wine-cups went round, and the rude
music of the minstrels mingled with the
ruder merriment of the guests-began
that quarrel which grew into a massacre,
so that before morning broke the streets
of Westminster and Ldndon were stained with the blood of hundreds of the
descendants of Abraham! Here, amid
great festivities, were celebrated the espousals of the third Henry to Eleanor of
Provence; the coronation of Richard II.,
when, from marble pillars, wine gushed
out, to be freely taken by all comers;
and the crowning of Henry V.'s Queen,
during Lent, when the banquet was composed of fish. Here, too, echoed through
the oaken rafters the challenge of Richard III., by his champion riding up and
down the hall: "If any man pretend right
to the crown of England, let him appear!"
When Elizabeth was married to Henry VII., it is curious to notice that the
queen presided at the banquet, the king
and his mother looking on; and so, when
Anne Boleyn passed through the dazzling dream of royalty, and sat enthroned in Westminster Hall as wife of Henry VIII., he, with divers embassadors,
stood, to behold the scene, in a little
closet.
The reign of Henry VIII. was the
climacteric of that long age of feudal
splendor which threw a blaze of illusive
glory over the sombre hall. Civilization
was on the edge of a crisis. The festivities of English kings, though proud as
ever, came to wear an affected garishness. The growth of one age, transplanted into the soil of another, degenerates into a sickly exotic. What was
once natural becomes fantastic. The
life and meaning of a thing gone out of
it, an unkerneled shell alone remains.
Middle Ages pageantry in modern times
is but an empty husk.
Westminster Hall, in I653, witnessed
a scene somewhat different from regal
banquetings-a grand inauguration without a feast. Oliver Cromwell was sworn
in Lord Protector. There were the can opy of state, and the coronation-chair,
and the velvet-covered table, and the
sword, sceptre, and Bible; there were
the Speaker, and the Lord Mayor, and
the aldermen; and there was his Highness, in the seat where kings had worn
their crowns, wearing a black velvet
cloak and suit, and a broad gold band
around his hat: "fifty-four years old,
gone April last, with hair and mustache
getting gray; massive stature; big, massive head, of somewhat leonine aspect;
wart above the right eyebrow; nose of
considerably blunt aquiline proportions;
strict, yet copious lips, full of all tremulous sensibilities, and also, if need were,
of all fiercenesses and vigors; deep, loving eyes- call them grave, call them
stern-looking from under those craggy
brows, as if in life-long sorrow, thinking
it only labor and endeavor; on the whole,
a hero face." But England has never
yet been ready to bear the repetition of
that; and so the coronation - chair went
back to Westminster Abbey, and coronation - banquets for Annes and Williams, Georges and Victorias, were restored in Westminster Hall.
But it is as a place of justice rather than
an edifice for banquets that memories to
an American cluster about the old Gothic pile. Passing by the Saxon and Norman Chancellors- canceling (cancelli,
the lattice-work that separates the court
from the crowd) what was contrary to
law-we come to the reign of Henry
VIII., when two remarkable men, one
succeeding the other-Cardinal Wolsey
and Sir Thomas More-sat in the marble chair. The former had touched the
highest point of greatness. Before or
[Nov.