WILLIAM DE COLCHESTER
ABBOT OF WESTMINSTER

BY
E. H. PEARCE
CANON OF WESTMINSTER

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE
LONDON: Northumberland Avenue, W.C.
New York: E. S. GORHAM
1915

TO
J. D. AND H. R. D.
WITH AFFECTION

CONTENTS

NOTE

Having had the honour of an invitation to deliver in May last a "Friday Evening Discourse" at the Royal Institution on the Archives of Westminster Abbey, I thought it best to confine what I could say within an hour to the career of a single man, preferably one whose record had not hitherto been written. I have here expanded the lecture to some extent, and have added references. I am indebted to Mr. David Weller, the Dean's Virger, for some excellent pictures.

E. H. P.

3, Little Cloisters,
September, 1915.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

WILLIAM DE COLCHESTER

I

A WINDOW IN THE NAVE

When the body of the late Lord Kelvin was laid to rest, by a right which there was none to dispute, in the Abbey Church of Westminster, it was placed, by the same kind of right, close to the grave of Sir Isaac Newton. In the same corner there are the graves, or the memorials, of Darwin and Herschel, of Joule and Gabriel Stokes and John Couch Adams, to be joined shortly by tablets in memory of Alfred Russel Wallace, of Sir Joseph Hooker, and of another Joseph, who died Lord Lister. It was not likely that Kelvin would long lack some memorial more impressive than the slab which covers his remains, and it was a happy and appropriate impulse which caused the representatives of engineering science on both sides of the Atlantic to undertake the task of providing one. But what form could it best take? The walls of the church have been overcrowded, to the grievous destruction of some precious features. The floor-space, as the centuries following the Reformation were apt to forget, is intended to serve the purposes of public worship. But the large windows of the Nave offer to those who would honour and foster the memory of the great dead a means of fulfilling their desire, and of adorning the fabric at the same time. In this case the chance was welcomed, and Kelvin has his Abbey memorial in stained glass. The window is one of a series projected in 1907 by Dr. Armitage Robinson, now Dean of Wells, and loyally accepted by his successor in the Deanery of Westminster—a series in which there are placed side by side a King of England who contributed either to the greatness of the foundation or to the majesty of the building, and the Abbot through whom the King worked his pious will. The King