WESTMINSTER ABBEY CONSECRATED | Dec. 28, 1065

Edward the Confessor (last of the great Anglo-Saxon kings)
directs construction of the Abbey. Drawing by Richard
Caton Woodville of Baltimore, Maryland, or his son.

December 28, 2019 – Westminster Abbey is today 954 years old.

The abbey church is formally called the Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster.

It is known as Westminster Abbey but is officially neither an abbey nor a cathedral. 

Elizabeth I made it a Royal Peculiar in 1560, which means that the church's dean and chapter report directly to the monarch. 

Henry III began building the present church in 1245. He  selected the site for his burial.

An abbey has existed on the site since around 1060, and the English Congregation of Benedictine monks occupied the area from  about 970.

King Edward the Confessor began building an abbey in 1042. On December 28, 1065, the abbey church was consecrated, a week before he died.

His successor Harold II was probably crowned there, but nobody much cares because he wasn't king very long. Harold was defeated and killed by William the Conqueror at Hastings. William was crowned on December 25, 1066 at the abbey.

Since then every English and British monarch has been crowned at the Abbey. Many royal weddings and funerals have been held there. Other notable people buried there include 16 monarchs, eight Prime Ministers and famous writers, actors, scientists and military leaders.

The Art. The impressive art showing Edward the Confessor directing construction in a manner that might ordinarily be better associated with leading a country into war, is signed by Richard Caton Woodville, although the History Today article that included the article says that the artists is "Unknown". Possibly the artist is Woodville's son, who had the same name and was also an artist and the "Jr." may have been stylized. See 

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/consecration-westminster-abbey, retrieved January 4, 2020. 

Your blogger has notified History Today that Richard Caton Woodville's name appears in the lower left of the art and he is a distinguished artist from Baltimore, Maryland. Baltimore's greatest 19th-century artist, Woodville was from a prominent family in the city. He was probably considered a black sheep for becoming an artist rather than a doctor or businessman, by marrying his first wife against their wishes, and then by divorcing and getting remarried to a fellow artist at the Düsseldorf Arts Academy in Germany, where he studied. He died in London in 1855, at just 30 years old, leaving behind only a few dozen works. His 16 known paintings were in a 2013 exhibition, “New Eyes on America: The Genius of Richard Caton Woodville,” at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. He died of a morphine overdose, and no one knows why, said Joy Peterson Heyrman, who curated the exhibition. 

Woodville was survived by his second wife, Antoinette Marie Schnitzler and their two children, one of whom was artist Richard Caton Woodville Jr.  He became a famous British battle scene painter. Woodville also fathered two children by his first wife. See the story by Philip Kennicott in the Washington Post, March 8, 2013.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/walters-art-museum-exhibits-baltimore-artist-woodville/2013/03/07/99cecf22-85dc-11e2-98a3-b3db6b9ac586_story.html.

ENGLISH MONARCHY | Nov. 17, Elizabeth Becomes Queen after Mary, 1558

November 17, 2017 – This day in 1558, Queen Elizabeth I became England's monarch. Her late father, Henry VIII, had broken with the Catholic Church to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and marry Anne Boleyn.

He wanted a male heir. Elizabeth when born was a disappointment. He declared Elizabeth illegitimate and had Anne Boleyn beheaded.

England almost broke out in civil war after the death of Henry VIII.  First Edward VI ruled from the age of nine. The adults who ruled in his name tried to impose Protestantism on the country, including a common prayer book. He died in 1553 at 15 of tuberculosis.

Edward VI specified in his will that he wanted Lady Jane Grey to succeed him as Queen, probably because she was a staunch Protestant. However, Mary had so much popular support that the directive was overturned within two weeks (she is called the "nine-day queen" but in fact her reign was a few days longer).

Instead of Jane, Elizabeth’s half-sister, Mary Tudor, came to power, for a reign nearly as short  as Edward VI. Although she was called "Bloody" Mary, she was not as reckless as her father when it came to making use of the executioner in the Tower of London. Mary tried to restore England to allegiance to the Pope, and she met with resistance. She died five years after becoming queen, leaving behind continued divisions in the country.

Because Elizabeth was a potential heir to the king, her life was in danger from birth. Mary had her in prison for a while. When Elizabeth took the throne, she was 25. She restored England to Protestantism, yes, but she had the good sense not to hunt down Catholics. She required attendance at the Church of England on Sunday, and the same prayer book, but people could believe what they wished.

Easing restrictions on theaters, she opened the way for Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare. It was a time of peace. With the invention of the Gutenberg press, people could afford books. Elizabeth helped the English to have pride in their history and language. Her 45-year reign was one of the great English eras. She said to her subjects late in life:

Though God hath raised me high, yet this I count the glory of my crown: that I have reigned with your loves. And though you have had, and may have, many mightier and wiser princes sitting in this seat; yet you never had, nor shall have any that will love you better.

She also said:

I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too. 

England was less divided at the end of her reign. She was the last of the Tudors. How much the country owed to her would become crystal clear after her death, as internal strife intensified under James I, Charles I and the Parliamentary rule of Oliver Cromwell. This was a time when many English people left for the American colonies to escape the religious wars in the Mother Country.

BIRTH | Dec. 8–Mary ("Queen of Scots") Stuart

Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587)

On this day in 1542 was born Mary Queen of Scots in Linlithgow Palace, West Lothian, Scotland. She was the daughter of James V of Scotland and his second wife, Mary of Guise. The Catholic Guise family, from Lorraine, was influential at court in Paris. Mary's father died when she was only 6 days old, at which point she was crowned Mary, Queen of Scots.

Henry VIII of England, her great-uncle, saw an opportunity to try to bring Scotland and England closer together. He formally suggested betrothal of Mary to his son Edward and followed up with a six-year campaign.

As a preemptive strike against the suggestion, Mary's mother negotiated a deal with her family in France, Scotland's old ally. From the age of five, Mary Stuart grew up in France, in the court of Henry II, a Catholic.

Mary received a good education in France - in music, dancing, and horsemanship, and in classical and modern languages. At 16 she married Henry's eldest son, Francis, who was 14 and entitled to rule. His father died in an accident and Francis became king in 1559. Six months later, Mary's Protestant cousin once removed, Elizabeth, became Queen. Mary was second in line.

Francis II, never healthy, died, widowing Mary at 18. She returned to Scotland to rule in 1561, but it was now a different country, largely converted to Protestantism. Although Mary showed great religious tolerance and was beautiful and talented, she was viewed as a foreigner in Scotland. Elizabeth meanwhile feared Mary had designs on the English crown.

In 1565 Mary married her cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and they had a son, James. However, Henry drank too much and was unpopular, so he was murdered in 1567. Mary married the chief suspect, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, after being abducted. Bothwell was exiled by Scottish nobles, and Mary was deposed in favor of James.

In 1568, Mary foolishly left Scotland to seek the help of Elizabeth I, who saw her opportunity and promptly put Mary in prison for the murder of Darnley. In 1587, Elizabeth was informed of a  Catholic plot to assassinate her. She decided that Mary's existence was unhealthy for her, and had her tried for treason and executed on February 8, 1587.

Mary's son James did not object to the beheading of his mother and was rewarded for his filial indifference in due course by becoming James VI of Scotland (1567) and then succeeding Elizabeth in 1603 as James I of England, the first of the Stuart kings, uniting the the thrones of England and Scotland and becoming the first king of the United Kingdom.

However, his son Charles did not fare so well. He became king in 1625 when his father James I of England died. He fought for the divine right of kings to rule in the face of Oliver Cromwell's Roundhead Parliament. Charles I became the first English king ever executed by Parliament, in 1649; also the last (apparently the message was received at Buckingham Palace). But that's another story.