Despite being a fair size, St Margaret is often overlooked because it is dwarfed by its proximity to Westminster Abbey, the entrance to which stands only a few yards away. The mighty Gothic colossus that is the Houses of Parliament dominates the view to the east, and it is unsurprising that the casual visitor to Westminster might miss this treasure of a church, sandwiched as it is between two famous and towering edifices.
St Margaret owes its existence to the Benedictine monks of Westminster Abbey. Finding themselves constantly disturbed by local residents turning up at the Abbey to hear Mass, they erected a church – only a few years after the consecration of the Abbey itself – so that the population of Westminster could worship in their own space while leaving their Benedictine neighbours to their private devotions. The church was dedicated to St Margaret of Antioch. It was originally Romanesque, but was replaced in the Perpendicular style during the fourteenth century, at broadly the same time that the Abbey itself was being rebuilt by Henry III. In 1482 the church underwent its last major reconstruction, under the charge of Robert Stowell, and this rebuilding lasted until 1523. This is the church which, despite various alterations over the centuries, stands proudly today. It was during the Stowell restoration that the churchyard received one of the earliest of its many famous interments: William Caxton, the pioneer of print, who died in 1491 after revolutionising Literature and allowing authors such as Chaucer and Malory to reach a wide audience. In 1529 an early Poet Laureate, John Skelton, was also interred here.
The Dissolution saw the end of Benedictine life at the Abbey, and with it their control of St Margaret’s. Under Elizabeth Tudor, the Abbey and the Church became – like the Temple Church – a ‘Royal Peculiar’, directly under the charge of the Monarch, although since 1972 it has been in the care of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster. However, St Margaret’s closest association today is with the House of Commons, an association dating from 1614 when the entire House took Holy Communion on Palm Sunday.
The seventeenth century saw St Margaret’s at its zenith for notable associations with famous historic figures. In 1618, Sir Walter Raleigh was executed close by in Old Palace Yard. A renowned courtier and explorer, history popularly (and erroneously!) portrays Raleigh as the man who introduced tobacco and the potato to Europe, although his greatest success was probably the founding of Virginia. Popular in Elizabethan times, he fell out of favour with the subsequent Jacobean court and was held at the Tower of London for many years. Freed to attempt one last exploration, the quest for El Dorado, his failure was followed by his beheading. He was interred in the chancel, followed there in 1666 by his son Carew.
During the Interregnum, St Margaret hosted the wedding of Samuel Pepys to Elizabeth. It was not to be the Diarist’s last visit to the Church. He wrote in 1667 of a visit, which he spent surveying his fellow worshippers through a perspective glass, ‘…by which I had the great pleasure of seeing and gazing at many fine women; and what with that and sleeping, I passed away the time till sermon was done.’ Priceless. The year after Pepys’ s wedding, John Milton married the second of his three wives there.
After the Stuart Restoration, Charles II was keen to hang, draw and quarter various regicides and Parliamentarians, only to find that some of them had already died and wee resting in Westmoinster Abbey. This minor inconvenience did not deter his vengeance. The bodies of Oliver Cromwell and two others were disinterred and gibbeted at Tyburn, while other notable Parliamentarians were removed from the Abbey and deposited in the less noble yard of St Margaret. These include John Pym, one of Charles I’s greatest opponents in the Commons, Isaac Dorislaus who drew up the capital charges against the ill-fated monarch, and Cromwell’s most able seaman Admiral Robert Blake. They were joined in 1677 by the engraver Wenceslas Hollar. Although he was prolific, Hollar’s best-known work – thanks to its value as a historic text – shows a vista of the pre-Fire City of London, with the stews and theatres of the South Bank in the foreground and the Thames flowing in between. Because the dominant building in this engraving is St Saviour’s (Southwark Cathedral), Hollar’s principal monument can be found there rather than at St Margaret’s.
A few decades earlier, in 1640, an additional burial ground for St Margaret’s had been created at what is now the junction of Victoria St and Broadway. Often referred to as Tothill Fields, it was provided with its own chapel called Christ Church and also received notable interments: Sir William Waller (d.1668), Parliamentary commander whose victory at Cheriton provided the Roundheads with their first significant win. He was also the man who suggested a National army rather than regional militia – an idea which laid the foundation for the New Model Army. Also laid to rest here, in 1680, was the great Jacobean rogue Colonel Thomas Blood. Born to a gentrified family in Ireland, Blood came over to fight for the King in the Civil War, only to switch sides when he saw in which direction the wind was blowing. Fleeing abroad at the Restoration, he became embroiled in two plots to kidnap the Governor of Ireland and, returning to England under an assumed identity, organised the brazen but famous attempt to purloin the Crown Jewels in 1671. Dragged before Charles II, he so impressed the Merry Monarch with his audacity and charm that the King pardoned him and gave him a pension. So notorious was Blood that he was exhumed shortly after his death to scotch rumours that he had faked it!
In Georgian times, the future Prime Minister Lord Liverpool and the dandy ‘Beau’ Brummell were baptised at St Margaret’s. In 1780 the black writer Ignatius Sancho, friend of Johnson, Sterne and Garrick, was laid to rest in Tothill Fields. James Rumsey, the inventor of the steamship who had demonstrated his creation on the Potomac for the benefit of George Washington, died during a London lecturing tour and was buried in the yard on Christmas Eve 1792. In 1814, Captain Sir Peter Parker died in action on the Chesapeake while commanding the frigate ‘Menelaus’. At one time a subordinate of Nelson and an officer on the ‘Victory’, Parker was returned to St Margaret for burial.
In Victorian times, the condition of the yard received censure and in the 1850’s the grounds were closed to further burials. St Margaret’s yard now is a bland expanse of turf, while Tothill Fields is a public garden. In the twentieth century, a 1908 wedding took place between Sir Winston Churchill and Clementine, and the church later received wartime damage – some of which is still visible.
The exterior of the church was faced in Portland stone in 1735, and a walk around the exterior betrays a couple of features: a plaque commemorating the Parliamentarians who were expelled from their Abbey tombs, and a bust of Charles I in a niche on the east wall, solemnly gazing across the busy road at the statue of his nemesis Oliver Cromwell.
The church is entered through the Victorian west porch, and its size can be fully appreciated from the view straight down the length of the interior. The entrance is flanked by two monuments showing Elizabethan women kneeling in prayer: Blanche Parry, the Queen’s nurse, and Lady Dorothy Stafford, Mistress of the Robes. A stroll down the north aisle has to be slow, in order to properly appreciate the monuments on display. Memorials to Parker and Hollar are here, as well as the colourful bust of an Elizabethan Yeoman of the Guard named Cornelius Van Dun. Nearby is the blackened monument to Reverend James Palmer, its damage caused by an oil bomb during the Second World War. Fire damage can also be traced on some of the pews. Although some of the windows in this aisle are clear, having been replaced after the war damage, there is the Milton window, showing scenes of the poet’s life and images from both Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Fragments of glass exist in another window, showing Caxton demonstrating his printing press to Edward IV and his Queen Elizabeth Woodville. Other windows show scenes of Blake’s life and funeral(s), and a Nativity scene commemorates Edward Morris. The windows were all installed during a Victorian restoration by George Gilbert Scott.
Before the chancel stand the eye-catching lectern and pulpit, dating from 1878. The former was a gift from Thomas Vacher to commemorate his parents, the latter is a memorial to Vacher himself. He founded the reference book Vacher’s Parliamentary Companion. The chancel contains a Crucifixion window, a 1905 reredos and a fifteenth century statue of St Margaret of Antioch, carved in wood. The window, described in the church guide as ‘containing some of the finest pre-Reformation Flemish glass in London’, shows Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon kneeling in prayer.
The south aisle contains memorials to Caxton, Raleigh, Rumsey and holds the tomb of Lady Mary Dudley (d.1600). Most of the stained glass in this aisle is modern, much of it designed in the 1960’s by John Piper. Memorialised in the windows are Edward Fitzroy, a Commons Speaker buried in te chancel in 1943, and Phillip Brooks, a Massachusetts bishop who wrote ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’. A nearby brass plaque remembers Thomas May (d.1886), who wrote Treatise on the Law and Usage of Parliament, a procedural guide. The westernmost window commemorates Lord Cavendish (d.1882), Chief Secretary for Ireland.
The visitor is now back at the west porch, and should look up at the West Window. Dating from 1888, it is a monument to Walter Raleigh and depicts famous figures from his lifetime, as well as scenes from his life.
St Margaret is a perfect complement to the grandeur of Westminster Abbey. One is the burial place of Royalty, the other is steeped in Parliamentary history. The Commons symbol of the portcullis can be found on the church doors, kneelers and curtains. The relationship between the church and the Commons, begun on that Palm Sunday in 1614, continues still. Perhaps that vengeful action by Charles II has actually proved appropriate, as the Parliamentarians ruthlessly re-interred in St Margaret’s Churchyard are now in their spiritual home!
Author Mark McManus
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