1904.] Westminster Abheij. 51^ 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, April 29, 1904. 



Sir William Crookes, F.R.S., Honorary Secretary and 

 Vice-Presideut, in the Chair. 



Westminster Abbey in the early yart of the Seventeenth Century. 



By the Dean of Westminster. 



The most conspicuous of the churchmen who helped to make English 

 history in the first half of the seventeenth century had nearly 

 all been connected at some period of their lives with Westminster 

 Abbey. Andrewes and Neile were successively Deans ; Williams 

 and Laud were together as Dean and Prebendary ; Heylyn, Laud's 

 biographer, who wrote the Church history of the period as we still 

 read it to-day, was a Prebendary ; and Hacket, the biographer of 

 Williams, who wrote it from the opposite point of view, as no one 

 cares to read it now, had gone up to Cambridge as a Westminster 

 scholar in 1608, together with his schoolfellow, the delightful 

 George Herbert. The story of their times has been often told, and I 

 have no claim to tell it afresh. The story of the Abbey, too, is 

 accessible to all in Stanley's brilliant pages, and in the more recent 

 ' Annals ' by which our late Dean's daughter has admirably supple- 

 mented that unique book. I have gleaned where they have already 

 reaped : but the gleanings of such a history as ours are not to be 

 neglected ; and it has seemed wortli while to piece together a number 

 of hitherto unnoticed facts, inserting a well-known story now and 

 then in the hope of giving a little life to what might otherwise be a 

 dull picture. 



We must of necessity begin by seeking an introduction to the 

 early Deans. In the first year of the century the Dean was a very 

 aged man. The Pdght Worshipful Mr. Gabriel Goodman, Doctor of 

 Divinity (to give him his title as it appears in contemporary docu- 

 ments), had been Dean for forty years. He had in 1561 succeeded 

 Dr. Bill, Queen Elizabeth's first Dean, who had succumbed after a 

 year's endeavour to preside simultaneously over three of the greatest 

 educational establishments in England, as Master of Trinity, Provost 

 of Eton, and Dean of Westminster. Dr. Bill's memory was cherished 

 in Westminster Scbool for many generations ; for in 1622, sixty-one 

 years after his death, the Treasurer's accounts contain the entry of a 

 sum ' paid to Thomas Brering for mending the scholer's coverletts 

 given by Doctor Bill sometyme Deane of this Colledge.' 



But we are now concerned with Dr. Goodman, who specially 



