Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 October 1883 — The Chair of State in Westminster Abbey. [ARTICLE]

The Chair of State in Westminster Abbey.

Many things were strange to me in this Pantheon of Britain, where each loyal Englishman covets a place, but the strangest sight was the Queen’s chair, used only on coronation days in that ceremonial of utmost pomp and splendor. I had supposed the chair of state, which took part in the most spfendid pageant of the proudest city on the face of the earty, was of ivory and precious stones, cloth of gold, jeweled and dazzling to the sight. But no, as the the ancestors of the Empress of India, so sits she. This old arm chair is of carved oak, almost black, very dirty and dilapidated. Part of the carven back is broken off, the remainder scrbbled over; the velvet covering, if velvet it was, is worn down to the ragged foundation. The arms thereof are covered with dirt, as if greasy fingers had been wiped on them. Perhaps they are regal finger-prints, and the divinity which doth hedge a king forbids them with the work of plebeian hands. On its own merits it would hardly bring $lO in a furniture shop, unless some crazy .hunter of antique bric-a-brac should take an insane liking to the four badly-carved lions which support the heavy seat. The historic chair holds associations more precious than gold, than much fine gold; phantoms from out the stillness of the past flit before us as we stand beside the time-worn, dusty relic. Long lines of Kings “come like shadows, so (Jepart;” for in this chair every English sovereign from Edward I.—second founder of the Abbey, who lies in its center (1065) —to the time of Victoria (1837) has been inaugurated and enthroned. Edward I. originally intended the seat of the chair should be of bronze; but afterward had it adapted to the Stone of Scone, on which the Scottish Kings were crowned, which is imbedded in the Plantagenet oak. It was his latest care for the Abbey, and brings to the place a mythic charm with its many legends and varied traditions. They veil the nakedness and shabbiness of the antique seat with such grace that we begin to comprehend why it is allowed to remain unaltered in the alterations of many centuries.—lndependent.