This first Westminster, however, the Dean goes on to say, “seems to have been overrun by the Danes,” and it would have had no further history but for the combination of circumstances which directed hither the notice of Edward the Confessor.

I haven’t time to read you all the combination of circumstances.  The last clinching circumstance was this—­

“There was in the neighbourhood of Worcester, ’far from men in the wilderness, on the slope of a wood, in a cave deep down in the grey rock,’ a holy hermit ‘of great age, living on fruits and roots.’  One night when, after reading in the Scriptures ’how hard are the pains of hell, and how the enduring life of Heaven is sweet and to be desired,’ he could neither sleep nor repose, St. Peter appeared to him, ‘bright and beautiful, like to a clerk,’ and warned him to tell the King that he was released from his vow; that on that very day his messengers would return from Rome;” (that is the combination of circumstances—­bringing Pope’s order to build a church to release the King from his vow of pilgrimage); “that ’at Thorney, two leagues from the city,’ was the spot marked out where, in an ancient church, ‘situated low,’ he was to establish a perfect Benedictine monastery, which should be ’the gate of heaven, the ladder of prayer, whence those who serve St. Peter there, shall by him be admitted into Paradise.’  The hermit writes the account of the vision on parchment, seals it with wax, and brings it to the King, who compares it with the answer of the messengers, just arrived from Rome, and determines on carrying out the design as the Apostle had ordered.

“The ancient church, ‘situated low,’ indicated in this vision the one whose attached monastery had been destroyed by the Danes, but its little church remained, and was already dear to the Confessor, not only from the lovely tradition of its dedication by the spirit of St. Peter;” (you must read that for yourselves;) “but also because of two miracles happening there to the King himself.

“The first was the cure of a cripple, who sat in the road between the Palace and ‘the Chapel of St. Peter,’ which was ‘near,’ and who explained to the Chamberlain Hugolin that, after six pilgrimages to Rome in vain, St. Peter had promised his cure if the King would, on his own royal neck, carry him to the Monastery.  The King immediately consented; and, amidst the scoffs of the court, bore the poor man to the steps of the High Altar.  There the cripple was received by Godric the sacristan, and walked away on his own restored feet, hanging his stool on the wall for a trophy.

“Before that same High Altar was also believed to have been seen one of the Eucharistical portents, so frequent in the Middle Ages.  A child, ‘pure and bright like a spirit,’ appeared to the King in the sacramental elements.  Leofric, Earl of Mercia, who, with his famous countess, Godiva, was present, saw it also.

“Such as these were the motives of Edward.  Under their influence was fixed what has ever since been the local centre of the English monarchy.”