ard I.,
wrested from the Scots. Behind the portrait a piece of tapestry, which
used to be in the great schoolroom, recalls the fact that the whole
sanctuary was hung with arras and also wainscoted in Queen Anne's time.
The remains of the sedilia south of the altar date from Edward the
First's time, and were for long believed to form the canopy of an ancient
Saxon tomb, which the monks moved here from the Norman Chapter House and
called by the name of King Sebert, their traditional founder. We can see
this better from the ambulatory, also the curious skull and cross-bone
ornament which is all that is left of the tomb of Anne of Cleves, Henry
{62} the Eighth's repudiated wife, the only one of all his wives who was
buried in the Abbey. She was interred here with a pompous funeral
service by order of her friend and step-daughter Queen Mary.

Let us return now to the iron gate which divides the south ambulatory
from the transept. Just inside is a small chapel, called after St.
Benedict, the founder of the Benedictines, to which order the Westminster
monks belonged, and where his head was long kept. The chapel is not
open, but easily seen from outside. Within is the fine altar tomb of
Simon Langham, first Abbot of Westminster, then Archbishop of Canterbury,
through whose munificent bequest his energetic successor, Litlington, was
able to add to the monastic buildings and cloisters. Other burials of
interest took place in this chapel. The tomb which usurps the place of
the altar is that of Frances, Countess of Hertford, daughter-in-law to
the Protector Somerset, by whose orders these altars were destroyed, and
sister to that famous Admiral, Lord Howard of Effingham, whose fleet
drove the Spanish Armada from our shores. A well-preserved
seventeenth-century brass, raised a few inches above the floor, gives us
the portrait of Dr. Bill, the first Dean after Elizabeth reconstituted
the {63} collegiate body, which had been originally founded by her
father, Henry VIII., but was suppressed by her sister Mary. Bill lived
only a year at the Deanery, but during that short period he drafted the
statutes, the nucleus of which remains unaltered to the present day,
although the details have been considerably changed. His successor,
Gabriel Goodman, whose kneeling statue is against the south wall, was in
office throughout nearly the whole long reign of Queen Elizabeth, dying
only two years before his friend and patroness. We must n