n
honoured with a visit from the reigning sovereign _in propria persona_.
At great functions, such as public funerals, the heir-apparent is
occasionally present, but the Crown is usually represented by a Court
official, and the Dean's stall, which is only vacated for the reigning
king or queen, has been occupied on very rare occasions in the last
hundred years. The Latin {7} play acted by the Westminster scholars
every winter term, was formerly a gala occasion on which royalty used
often to be present, but the old custom was gradually dropped. In the
year 1903, for the first time within the memory of this generation, a
royal person, H.R.H. the Duchess of Argyll, was present at the
performance.

With the last of the Tudors there is no doubt that the strong and
living bond between the palace and the Abbey was slackened, although it
has never been altogether snapped, nor will it be as long as the
coronation of our sovereigns continues to take place in Westminster
Abbey. Then and then only does the king resume all his ancient rights,
the collegiate body is practically deposed, and people realise that
their national church is really a royal peculiar. For while the kings
came less and less to St. Edward's shrine, their subjects in
ever-increasing numbers, like the pilgrims in olden times, were and are
drawn hither as by a magnet, till Westminster has become the sanctuary
of a nation, and is no longer the sepulchre of the seed royal. A plain
English squire, one of that "happy breed of men" to whom his native
land--"this little world, this precious stone set in a silver sea"--was
dearer than the blood of kings, was destined to inaugurate a new epoch
in the {8} annals of the Abbey. To this man, Oliver Cromwell, it is
that we owe the first conception of this church as a fitting
burial-place for our national worthies. From the State obsequies of
Admiral Blake, which were held here by Cromwell's command, has
germinated the seed which has borne fruit in the public funerals and in
the monuments, ordered and paid for by Parliament, of statesmen,
soldiers and sailors. The nineteenth century has closed, and there is
little space available in the Abbey for the worthies of the twentieth,
but the national feeling still turns instinctively to Westminster on
the death of a great man. For a long time past memorial services have
been substituted for the grave or cenotaph, so lavishly granted to
practically the first comer only a hund