REPAIRS OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY . 
237- 
noise intolerable, got one of the masters (Weare, second 
master) to enter the Green and stop the fight, which, as I 
learnt afterwards, had lasted an hour and five minutes. I 
believe there is an account of this fight in the old ledgers 
of the centre boarding-house in Little Dean’s Yard. I 
was put into a cab and sent home, where my mother and 
sisters, somewhat dismayed, took charge of me, and I was 
made to stay for a day or two in bed. 
“ Within a month I got a clerkship in the Privy Council 
Office, and had to appear with blackened eyes and a bruised 
face. The Lord President, Lord Lansdowne, and two 
senior clerks, Harry Chester and Charles Villiers Bayley, 
were greatly interested in my fight, and I think helped me 
in getting promoted afterwards. 
“ More than twenty years after this event I was staying 
with my father in Rome, and when dining at a very large 
hotel dinner I recognised my old antagonist and spoke to 
him. He was a clergyman in poor health, and died a few 
years later. Some ten or twelve years later I was dining 
at the house of our neighbours in Earl’s Court, Mr. and 
Mrs. Bliss, and met there Bishop Short of Adelaide, and 
got introduced to him and asked him about his consecra¬ 
tion. Yes, he was consecrated with three other colonial 
bishops in the Abbey in 1847. I asked him if he could 
remember anything unusual that happened, and he at once 
said, ‘ Oh yes, there was a fight of Westminster boys, and 
the noise was so great that we had to complain.’ He was 
surprised and amused when I told him that I was one of 
the combatants.” 
Nor did Westminster School monopolise Buckland’s 
attention. It is almost needless to say that the Abbey 
itself occupied much of his care. “ He paid the greatest 
attention,” his son Frank writes, “ to the keeping in repair of 
the monuments, etc., inside the Abbey, and the reparations 
of its external walls, applying his fund of general know¬ 
ledge to the minutest details.” 
