22 WESTMINSTER ABBEY AND ITS MONUMENTS. 
enough remains to show what it was originally like. It stands in 
the centre of a chapel commonly called the chapel of Edward 
the Confessor, surrounded by the tombs of most of the Plan- 
tagenet kings. Outside the chapel is an ambulatory, which is 
surrounded by a wreath of chapels. The style and ground plan 
of this portion of the building are French rather than English, 
but the nave, choir, and transept present a splendid example of 
Early English. Although the nave was not completed till well 
into the sixteenth century, the same style was continued, contrary 
to the almost universal custom of medizval builders. 
Henry VII., whose hereditary claim to the throne was of the 
most shadowy nature, strove to emphasize that claim by extrava- 
gant devotion to the memory of his predecessors ; and the chief 
medium of this devotion consisted, as usual, of benefactions and 
additions to what might fairly be called the Royal Monastery. 
And just as the Confessor had pulled down the earlier Church, 
and Henry III. in turn had pulled down the Confessor’s, so did 
Henry VII. pull down, not indeed the whole church, but a very 
important part of it, viz., the lady chapel, and erected in its place 
that which we still know as Henry VII.’s chapel, a fine specimen 
of the Later Perpendicular style. In the centre of the nave of 
this chapel stands the splendid shrine of Henry VII., beneath 
which he and his queen are buried; quite unaccountably the 
coffin of James I. has also been discovered here. Dean Stanley, 
who made this discovery, has given a most interesting account of 
it in his ‘“* Memorials.” This shrine, in the Renaissance style, 
the forerunner of many similar but less splendid ones, has always 
been attributed, in the main no doubt correctly, to the famous 
Italian artist Torregiano ; but I was assured by Mr. St. John Hope 
that the form of the heraldic devices on the large shields at either 
end shows that they are of English design. 
Westward of this shrine, under an altar, also the work of 
Torregiano, Edward VI. was buried. No monument was erected 
to his memory, but the altar over his grave was looked upon as 
his memorial. Curiously enough this, though thus associated 
with the name of England’s first “ Protestant” sovereign, was the 
