HC Deb 24 July 1863 vol 172 cc1400-5
MR. MONCKTON MILNES

I rise, Sir, to call attention to the Fees demanded by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster for the erection of Public Monuments in Westminster Abbey. In this closing Parliamentary conversation of the year I do not think that the few remarks which I have to make on this subject will be regarded as intrusive, because it is one of considerable interest; and it is also one which for some time has not engaged the attention of the House. I wish to make a few remarks on the circumstances connected with the erection of the monuments of illustrious men in Westminster Abbey. The last time when this subject came under the attention of the House was in 1854, when I brought it forward in connection with a monument to the poet Campbell—a statue erected by subscription, and which his friends and admirers desired to place in the Abbey, where he was buried The Dean and Chapter of that day asked a fee of £200 before they would allow this full-length statue to be erected. Sir William Molesworth was then at the Board of Works, and promised to give the subject his serious consideration. He afterwards made a strong remonstrance to the Dean and Chapter, and in consequence the fee was either wholly remitted or considerably reduced; but that concession was followed by a resolution in the Chapter that they would admit no other monument into the Abbey, however illustrious was the person in whose memory it was to be erected. Now, I desire to recall those circumstances to the House, because I conceive that such a resolution on the part of the Dean and Chapter was one which did not carry with it either the consent of Parliament or the assent of the country. It had, indeed, so little effect that from that time to the present continual applications have been made to the Dean and Chapter, and have either been met by a refusal, or else, as in a case which has lately occurred, by a most inordinate demand. A short time after the appointment of the present Dean an application was made for permission to erect a monument to a Prime Minister, whose name is associated with many very important public measures. The Dean refused to admit such a monument, on the plea that there was no room in the Abbey for any more statues, The same excuse was made when it was proposed to erect monuments to Lord Macaulay and also to Mr. Hallam. In the case of the statue to Mr. Hallam, I was a member of a Committee whose duty it was to go over the Abbey and see whether this assertion was well founded; and I am bound to say that it was my conviction, and that of the other members of the Committee, that there was plenty of room for the erection of this and of many other monuments. Another case—that of the late Earl Canning—has brought the matter strongly before the public. In the Abbey stands a statue over the grave of Mr. Canning. The son has followed the father into that illustrious repose; and the friends of the family, representing here the instincts of public opinion, strongly desired that some memorial should exist there of the son as well as of the father, that posterity may see what their contemporaries thought of these two illustrious men. That proposal has also been met by a positive refusal, although it is the impression of Earl Canning's remaining relatives and friends that there is nothing in the locality to prevent the erection of such a monument. Again, there was a modest proposal to place in Westminster Abbey the bust of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, a name so freshly as well as so regretfully remembered among us here that it sounds almost strangely in connection with those mournful associations. The Dean and Chapter, however, said, if ever they did make an exception in the admission of a tablet and bust, they should demand the sum of £200. Now, they seem to rise somewhat in their demands, for they asked only £200 for the full-length statue of Campbell. Of course, this question might be dealt with by a Royal Commission, or an Act of Parliament might be passed to place these monuments, and the sites for monuments, at the disposal of the Board of Works or the Crown; for I cannot admit that there is in the Dean and Chapter any such vested right in Westminster Abbey as that which is assumed to exist in other cases. The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary lately read a letter from the Dean, who stated that these monuments very much intruded upon the worshippers, and therefore it was not intended to allow any more of them; and he justified the large demand made for the tablet and bust by saying that it was necessary in order to operate as an exclusion. Now, such an argument seems invalid, because we know that in this wealthy country £200 is not such a sum as would prevent the intrusion of the remains of unworthy persons into the Abbey. I do trust, therefore, that the Dean and Chapter of Westminster may be brought to a more just consideration of this matter, and one more consonant to the feelings of this House and of the country, and that it will not be necessary to have recourse to such extreme measures as those I have alluded to. I know the present Dean of Westminster intimately, and I know him to be a man whose motives are as little sordid as possible, who is full of high and patriotic sentiments, and who in early life ventured his person in the cause of national freedom. I cannot suppose him to be naturally deaf to argument; such an act on his part would give some justification to an opinion I have heard expressed—namely, that there is something in high ecclesiastical office which tends to blunt the feeling and to stifle the patriotism of a man. It should be remembered that Westminster Abbey cannot be placed in the category of ordinary cathedrals. It is the place, above all other ecclesiastical edifices, where the great, the wise, and the illustrious of England have desired to repose. There, as it has been said— Through the dim aisles all shapes of empire gleam, Near the dim 'Corner' of the poet's dream. We must have some place for the monuments of our illustrious dead, and the jealousy of a free Government would naturally render it very difficult to determine between the claims of those whose friends might seek their admission to a secular building like, for example, the Houses of Parliament. On the other hand, the sense of religion and the sacredness attaching to the edifice, would render it far more easy to obtain a general acquiescence in the determination of the Dean and Chapter in such cases. I trust Her Majesty's Government will seriously remonstrate with the Dean and Chapter on this subject. It is not true that there is no room in the Abbey. There is room between the several arches throughout the whole have for a full-length statue of some illustrious person, which would add very much to the decoration of the building, and be in harmony with the solemnity of the place. A great many of the chapels are no doubt crowded, and a great many of the monuments are not so well exhibited as we could wish, but we must take this as an accident, for it is much better to have a plethora of the monuments of remarkable personages there than to be deprived of the advantage of having them there at all. I trust the Dean and Chapter will reconsider this matter, and find means to reconcile the convenience of worshippers with the wishes of the country, and not insist on their inordinate demands. That an ecclesiastical Corporation should require to be paid £200 for admitting the bust of a great man shows a want of sympathy with that great man, and indicates a feeling which I should be sorry the country should believe that they entertained. The excuse that those fees are necessary to keep up the fabric is utterly futile; the sums thus obtained are not considerable, and the fabric might be sustained either out of the large corporate funds belonging to the Abbey or from some other collateral source in the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. I trust, if the question be seriously considered, that several of the members of the Chapter will feel ashamed of the spirit which has been exhibited, and that they will induce their recalcitrant colleagues to yield to the wishes of the country.

MR. F. S. POWELL

said, the more the House and the country considered the condition of the Abbey, the more they must be convinced that some change was required in order to bring it into harmony with the sacred purpose for which it was designed. The hon. Gentleman who introduced the subject seemed to regard the Abbey, not so much in the light of a national church as of a national museum, and to think that the more it was dissociated from the religious sentiment the better pleased the House and the country would be. It was the opinion of eminent men who had studied ecclesiastical art, that in the grandeur of its proportions, the beauty of its details, and the religious sentiment which breathed from every feature, Westminster Abbey was at once unrivalled and unequalled. But if that were so, there was another judgment which was arrived at by no less common consent—namely, that there was no building dedicated to ecclesiastical purposes which was so degraded in regard to monumental taste by everything which aimed at beauty, but succeeded only in reaching the highest point of the deformed and contemptible. His desire was, not to add to this aggregation of monuments, but to remove some of them from the aisles and the nave. There were some monuments there which were Hindoo, and some which were classical, but not one which was Christian. [Sir GEORGE BOWYER: Hear, hear!] In a former generation there was in that House a distinguished man who had accomplished the emancipation of the slaves—Mr. Wilberforce; but no one could walk in the Abbey without being struck with his painful contortion as he was represented in marble, and the expression of misery he seemed to evince at the company amongst whom he was placed. A suggestion had been made by Mr. Beresford Hope, that at some future time, when the Chapter House was restored by the munificence of Churchmen, the Dean and Chapter might, under proper regulations, admit into that building, not dedicated to the highest sacred purposes, but of a semi-secular character, the monuments of men distinguished in every department of civilization. That seemed to be a reasonable proposition. He hoped, in this case, the Dean and Chapter would be firm in maintaining that the Church over which they were constituted guardians was a building intended for the worship of God, in which congregations of Christian people were accustomed to meet for holy purposes one generation after another, and not a mere hall in which an enormous mass of marble might be erected in every corner, and that there should be a clear space in which worship might be conducted in a decent manner. As to the suggestion that there should be monuments under every arch, he doubted whether the hon. Gentleman had ever attended service in the nave. [Mr MONCKTON MILNES: I have, several times.] If so, the hon. Gentleman must have felt that the have was already sufficiently cumbered. It was not for him to defend so distinguished a man as the Dean; but he thought the duty of Churchmen was rather to diminish than increase the number of monuments in the Abbey; and on that account it was that he had not remained silent.