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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm fair Dowdy and I'm to blame a Chuck Rewarding

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Speaker 1: and this is our special royal weddings episode, Get Excited

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Speaker 1: Royal Weddings kind of kind of royal weddings because you know,

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Speaker 1: I thought about it for a while and I figured

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Speaker 1: that some of you might not really be that interested

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Speaker 1: in royal wedding figure. Yeah, I mean, just judging by

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Speaker 1: by the type of suggestions that we normally get. And actually,

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Speaker 1: Candice and I have already done a royal weddings episode,

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Speaker 1: so if you are the type who who loves that

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Speaker 1: type of thing, you can go back in the archive

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Speaker 1: and listen. But you know, this is still related, but

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Speaker 1: it's still has something kind of for everyone. And it

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Speaker 1: all goes back to the choice of William and Kate

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Speaker 1: to pick Westminster Abbey of our St Paul's Cathedral or

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Speaker 1: other potential sites for their wedding. And the question is,

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Speaker 1: you know, why did they pick that site over the others?

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Speaker 1: Part of the reason they think it's cozy again, go figure, yeah,

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Speaker 1: go figure. I mean I can see that it's a

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Speaker 1: beautiful space. It is beautiful. It has a lot of

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Speaker 1: stuff in it has a lot of connections to their family,

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Speaker 1: it does Williams. Yeah, according to William's private secretary, he

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Speaker 1: was quoted in People Is saying it's almost the feeling

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Speaker 1: of a parish church. And I mean that might be

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Speaker 1: kind of hard to understand if you visited Westminster Abbey

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Speaker 1: and it's been filled with tons of tourists and it

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Speaker 1: is a huge, soaring Gothic space, But maybe if you're

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Speaker 1: a Windsor, it is kind of a parish church in

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Speaker 1: a way. Yeah. Like we said, it's an important site

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Speaker 1: for the family and for British monarchs in general. It's

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Speaker 1: where they have their core nations, that's where many of

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Speaker 1: them are buried. And for William personally, it's the site

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Speaker 1: of his mother's funeral and his grandmother's wedding. Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: a lot of good and bad memories there personally. So

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Speaker 1: as you tune into the royal wedding on April twenty

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Speaker 1: nine this year, it is the history of the backdrop

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Speaker 1: that you're looking at. That's sort of the point of

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Speaker 1: this episode. I want to give you a few facts

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Speaker 1: to trade around with your friends while you're all watching

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Speaker 1: the royal wedding together, so you'll start sound like a

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Speaker 1: real smartie if you start with some facts about the backdrop,

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Speaker 1: which starts out with saints and kings. So obviously the

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Speaker 1: structure is old, and even older than it looks. The

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Speaker 1: history goes back away beyond even what you see. It

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Speaker 1: um starts appropriately with a legend. The first Christian king

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Speaker 1: of the East, Saxons, founded it near the Marshy banks

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Speaker 1: of the Thames on Thorny Island in the seventh century.

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Speaker 1: Not long after his rule, the Danes sacked the place, though, okay,

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Speaker 1: but it's likely that that's just a legend and no

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Speaker 1: more than that. What we know for sure is that

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Speaker 1: by the tenth century a group of Benedictine monks had

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Speaker 1: set up set up shop there essentially, and by nine

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Speaker 1: sixty St. Dunstan, who is then Bishop of London, remodeled

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Speaker 1: their monastery and built a new church. And it's also

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Speaker 1: around that same time that the church got its first

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Speaker 1: royal patron, which obviously started a long relationship between the

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Speaker 1: abbey and the royals, and that was King Edgar, and

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Speaker 1: he granted the monks a huge amount of land. And

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Speaker 1: if you have visited London, you would be blown away

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Speaker 1: if you saw this amount of land, like superimposed on

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Speaker 1: a modern map, because it's pretty much the whole West End.

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Speaker 1: And at this time the Benedictines, who of course have

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Speaker 1: taken vows with poverty, obedience and celibacy, they spent most

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Speaker 1: of their time farming that land and reading. Later, as

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Speaker 1: they grow more prosperous, they manage the land through their

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Speaker 1: entire history. There are probably only ever thirty to sixty monks,

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Speaker 1: but there would be a lot of lay serve at

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Speaker 1: one time. Yeah, craftsman almsman around there too. Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: you know, it's it's a pretty thriving community. But the

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Speaker 1: church that we know didn't start to take shape until

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Speaker 1: about a hundred years after that, when Edward the Confessor

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Speaker 1: set up his palace nearby the monastery. And you know,

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Speaker 1: he was a pretty pious guy, as we all know,

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Speaker 1: and he decided he wanted to to build a church,

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Speaker 1: a new church for the monks there, and it was

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Speaker 1: a Romanesque building. It was quite large, it was cruciform

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Speaker 1: cross shaped and it was consecrated December. Unfortunately for Edward,

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Speaker 1: he didn't exactly get to enjoy it because he died

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Speaker 1: seriously just a few days after it was consecrated and

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Speaker 1: he was buried there. But it's likely that he at

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Speaker 1: least had some intention to make the church a coronation

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Speaker 1: spot for British monarchs. Until then, it had been pretty haphazard.

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Speaker 1: They were crowned anywhere from Bath, you know, just pretty

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Speaker 1: much all over the country, So he was maybe hoping

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Speaker 1: for some sort of centralized location for this really important ceremony. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's possible that edwards immediate successor, Harold, acted on

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Speaker 1: this intention and was crowned there after Edward's death, but

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Speaker 1: we're not certain about that. Yeah, it's pretty pretty shaky

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Speaker 1: whether that actually happened. The first accepted coronation was appropriate

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Speaker 1: because it was way more dramatic. It just makes a

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Speaker 1: lot more sense if you're thinking of history as a

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Speaker 1: as a neat package. Instead of the defeated Harold, it

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Speaker 1: is the victor William the Conqueror, who brought Britain under

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Speaker 1: Norman rule after the Battle of Hastings in ten sixty six,

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Speaker 1: and he's the first one who is known to be

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Speaker 1: crowned there. And William's choice of the abbey for his

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Speaker 1: coronation on Christmas Day ten sixty six might have also

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Speaker 1: sort of been a pr move on his part to

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Speaker 1: stress his legitimacy as the new king, which as far

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Speaker 1: as blood claims went, it was not particularly strong. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but regardless of the reason, he sets a precedent by

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Speaker 1: doing that, and every monarch who has been crowned since

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Speaker 1: then has been crowned at Westminster, most recently, of course,

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Speaker 1: Queen Elizabeth the Second in nineteen fifty three. Thirty eight

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Speaker 1: of them and all coordinated there well, and interestingly the

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Speaker 1: only exceptions are the two uncrowned kings of England. Interestingly,

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Speaker 1: again both former podcast subjects. One ever the five, who

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Speaker 1: is one of the princes in the Tower. We talked

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Speaker 1: about him pretty recently with the Lambert Seminal episode, and

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Speaker 1: then the others Edward the Eighth who abdicated to Mary

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Speaker 1: Wallace Simpsons. So pretty strong record there on coronations at Westminster. Still,

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Speaker 1: though Edward the Confessor's church is not the church that

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Speaker 1: we know, so it's still transformed a lot from that time.

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Speaker 1: On October sixty five, the Pope made Edward a st

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Speaker 1: so then it becomes a pilgrimage site in addition to

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Speaker 1: a coronation site, so a lot going for it all

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Speaker 1: of a sudden, definitely, and that cache makes the Gothic

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Speaker 1: architecture aficionado Henry the Third decide to tear the thing

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Speaker 1: down and rebuild it totally in twelve. It's kind of

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Speaker 1: an ironic homage, I guess to somebody to tear down

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Speaker 1: his own church. But they were of the opinion new

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Speaker 1: is better, I guess. So the new Westminster is soaring.

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Speaker 1: It had pointed arches, there were flying buttresses, or I mean,

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Speaker 1: I should say there are that This is what still

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Speaker 1: exists today, flying buttresses, rib vaulting on the ceiling, rose

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Speaker 1: windows and apps added to the traditional cross shape. And

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Speaker 1: all of this is remarkably similar to the new Gothic

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Speaker 1: style cathedrals that were popping up all over France. In fact,

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Speaker 1: the three master Masons who supervised the work on Westminster

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Speaker 1: were definitely influenced by cathedrals and Amien and Shar and

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Speaker 1: most notably the cathedral in Reims, which was a coronation cathedral.

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Speaker 1: Because after all, Westminster is by this point pretty firmly

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Speaker 1: established as a coronation church, and so the needs of

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Speaker 1: the monks and and the kind of things they need

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Speaker 1: in the church have to be balanced with a large

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Speaker 1: audience that's going to be there for a coronation. It

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Speaker 1: has to be a theater in a way. So it

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Speaker 1: was a bit roomier, definitely, And this is more like

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Speaker 1: the cathedral that we know today, Sarah mentioned, but try

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Speaker 1: to imagine it without the clutter of the countless monuments

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Speaker 1: and the tombs. Instead, there were paintings, two of which

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Speaker 1: were found in the nineteenth pties. Yeah, relocated. So apparently

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Speaker 1: cathedrals take a really long time to build, because it

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Speaker 1: wasn't until October twelve, sixty nine at the choir in

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Speaker 1: the eastern parts were finished enough to re enter St.

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Speaker 1: Edward's bones and they're still there today. Yeah, and Henry

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Speaker 1: the third became the next monarch to be buried there.

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Speaker 1: His project definitely outlived him. He died part way into

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Speaker 1: the construction, and that's a two hundred year gap between

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Speaker 1: those Westminster Royal burials. But it starts a trend too.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I guess nobody really wanted to be buried

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Speaker 1: in Edwards Church for some reason. But Henry's Church is

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Speaker 1: the place to be if you're a royal because the

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Speaker 1: abbey becomes the top choice for royal burials for about

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Speaker 1: the next five hundred years. Their seventeen monarchs buried there

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Speaker 1: up until George the Second when basically they run out

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Speaker 1: of room and he had to start being buried at

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Speaker 1: Windsor instead. And it's not just monarchs like Elizabeth the

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Speaker 1: First and Mary, Queen of Scott's that are married there either.

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Speaker 1: There's some other very big names buried in Westminster Abbey

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Speaker 1: as well. For example, Jeffrey Chall, Sir. He was an

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Speaker 1: abbey tenant and was buried in the South Transept in

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Speaker 1: fourteen hundred and after that Westminster pretty much became the

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Speaker 1: place to be. Yeah, if you were an artist or

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Speaker 1: a poet, it definitely was the place to be. But ironically,

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Speaker 1: Chaucer is just there because he was the clerk of

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Speaker 1: works to the Palace of Westminster at the time, not

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Speaker 1: because he was one of the greatest writers of all time.

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Speaker 1: Sort of strange if you think about it. But today

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Speaker 1: Poets Corner has all sorts of notable authors who are

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Speaker 1: buried there. Edmund Spencer, Tennyson, Robert Browning, Samuel Johnson, Charles Dickens,

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Speaker 1: Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, and then there are a lot

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Speaker 1: who have monuments too, and I think people sometimes get

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Speaker 1: confused about that. They think that Shakespeare is buried at

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Speaker 1: Westminster Abbey, whereas of course he's not. He just has

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Speaker 1: a monument, Yeah, a monument. Yeah, in addition to him,

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Speaker 1: Milton Keats, Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, Blake, Jane Austen and Bronte,

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Speaker 1: all sorts of folks. But back to Henry the Third.

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Speaker 1: After his death, the construction continues according to plan for

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Speaker 1: about a hundred and fifty years. That doesn't mean distinctive

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Speaker 1: editions weren't added in later centuries though, Yeah. Most notably

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Speaker 1: there's the Lady Chapel of Henry the Seventh that was

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Speaker 1: started in fifteen oh three, and the Western Towers, which

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Speaker 1: that's probably if you look at a picture of the

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Speaker 1: exterior of the abbey, you're probably looking at that side.

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Speaker 1: They were built in the seventeen forties by Nicholas Hawksmore

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Speaker 1: and John James, and interestingly they're often misattributed to Sir

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Speaker 1: Christopher Wren. He's sort of the bigger name there of

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Speaker 1: architects of the time, and saw all sorts of articles

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Speaker 1: that had kept up that that misidentification of the architect

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Speaker 1: pretty strange. So we may have just illuminated the effect

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Speaker 1: that that could be a good fact for your friends,

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Speaker 1: I guess, um. But these towers were not just slapped

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Speaker 1: on for no reason. They were sort of built as

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Speaker 1: part of an overall renovation because the abbey had fallen

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Speaker 1: on pretty hard times between the dissolution of the monastery

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Speaker 1: is under Henry the Eighth and the Civil Wars. It

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Speaker 1: was really not in good shape at all. It needed

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Speaker 1: to be fixed up, some of the stone needed to

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Speaker 1: be replaced, just a lot of work. Yeah, and and

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Speaker 1: even underwent a name change after that, under Elizabeth the

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Speaker 1: First it became the Collegiate Church of St Peter, Westminster,

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Speaker 1: as it's properly known today. Um. It was also severely

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Speaker 1: damaged during the Blitz when fire bombs burned through the roof. Fortunately,

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Speaker 1: though most of the treasures had been evacuated. It's kind

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Speaker 1: of interesting how they managed to save some of these.

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Speaker 1: The tapestries, effigies, gates and manuscripts were whisked off two

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Speaker 1: country houses, glass was boarded up and sandbags covered the

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Speaker 1: tombs that couldn't be taken out, and the two most

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Speaker 1: precious abbey artifacts were also saved. Edward the first coronation

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Speaker 1: chair was one that went to Gloucester Cathedral and the

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Speaker 1: stone of Schoon was buried under the building. Yeah. But

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Speaker 1: my favorite thing that was saved, or the facts about

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Speaker 1: how it was saved. The wax effigies of the monarchs

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Speaker 1: went to the Piccadilly Tube station. I'm just imagining measuring

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Speaker 1: like wax royals sitting around waiting for the train. I'm

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Speaker 1: sure they were boxed properly, but some of them don't

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Speaker 1: fair so well though, right, No, no, they didn't at all. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: some of the effigies were still damaged and it allowed

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Speaker 1: them to only redisplay the heads after the war. So, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, wax didn't last forever. Yeah, hopefully they knew

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Speaker 1: that going in, going into it all. But you know,

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Speaker 1: wax heads are probably not putting you in the mood

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Speaker 1: for the Royal wedding. We're trying to psyche you up

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Speaker 1: here and not make you think of maccab wax figures.

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Speaker 1: So we're going to talk a little bit about the

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Speaker 1: history of royal marriages at Westminster because that's kind of

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Speaker 1: the whole point of this whole episode. Yeah, and it's

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Speaker 1: a surprisingly short history. They have really only been fifteen

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Speaker 1: royal weddings in the abbey. In the nineteenth century, royals

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Speaker 1: actually tended to favor St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle,

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Speaker 1: which was another royal peculiar like Westminster. Yeah, that's kind

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Speaker 1: of like it falls specifically under the monarchs domain, but

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Speaker 1: they often also chose the Chapel Royal of St James's Palace,

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Speaker 1: and that's definitely a pre television kind of location because

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Speaker 1: it only seats one hundred. Starting in the early twentieth century,

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Speaker 1: you really had to pick a venue where a lot

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Speaker 1: of people could see you. Um that Chapel Royal for

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Speaker 1: instances where Victoria and Albert were married. But Westminster Abbey

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Speaker 1: itself became fashionable when Victoria's granddaughter, Princess Patricia of Connaught

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Speaker 1: chose it to marry a commoner in nineteen nineteen, and

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Speaker 1: it was the first royal wedding there in six hundred

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Speaker 1: and fifty years. Yeah, but the ironic part about that

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Speaker 1: is that's for a royal wedding. It's ironic, I should say,

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Speaker 1: is that she was royal going in, but not coming

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Speaker 1: out since she was marrying a commoner. Usually goes the

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Speaker 1: other way by the nineteen twenties, George the fifth kids

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Speaker 1: had started getting married there too. Patricia had really started

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Speaker 1: a trend. I guess George's two sons were married there,

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Speaker 1: his daughter was married there um in nineteen twenty three,

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Speaker 1: his son, the future George the six married the future

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Speaker 1: Queen Mother. So Queen Elizabeth's parents were married there in

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenty three, and then Queen Elizabeth herself was married

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Speaker 1: there as Princess Elizabeth in nineteen forty seven, and her sister,

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Speaker 1: Princess Margaret was also married there in nineteen sixty, and

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth's daughter Princess Anne in nineteen seventy three. Then of

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Speaker 1: course her son Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson in nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighty six. So yeah, I know a lot of people

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Speaker 1: were surprised that Will and Kate had chosen Westminster Abbey

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Speaker 1: over St. Paul's because his parents were of course famously

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Speaker 1: married at St. Paul's. But when you learn all this,

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Speaker 1: it's not really that surprising. Definitely not, and makes a

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Speaker 1: lot more sense when you know the history. Yeah, definitely

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Speaker 1: a mix of family history and royal history in general.

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Speaker 1: There So if you are going to be watching the

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Speaker 1: Royal wedding and you have comments about Westminster Abbey that

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Speaker 1: you want to send us, definitely feel free to email

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Speaker 1: us at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: We're also on Twitter at misst in history and we're

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Speaker 1: on Facebook. So yeah, let us let us know what

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Speaker 1: you think, and let us know if you if you

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Speaker 1: notice anything cool about the abbey during the television ceremony,

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Speaker 1: and or if you know of any cool facts that

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Speaker 1: we left out. Yeah, and if you want to learn

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Speaker 1: a little bit more about the Royal wedding or royal

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Speaker 1: weddings in general. There is tons of content articles, Slade shows, quises,

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Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff on TLC weddings and her old

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Speaker 1: school stuff you missed in history class. Fans, you might

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Speaker 1: even find Candice's World Wedding commentary, so all sorts. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, there couldn't even be some articles on there,

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Speaker 1: don't you think, Sarah? That might help out Will and

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Speaker 1: Kate as they're getting ready I think to go down

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Speaker 1: the aisle. So they're maybe not too keen on reading

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Speaker 1: lots of articles about themselves, but maybe not about themselves,

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Speaker 1: but they could read about you know, how to how

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Speaker 1: to plan your wedding, how to pick out the wedding dress.

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Speaker 1: A lot of those content book canvases putting together So

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Speaker 1: Will and Kate. If you're out there, good luck to you,

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Speaker 1: and if you would like to read some of our content,

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Speaker 1: you can look get up by visiting our homepage at

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Speaker 1: www dot how staff works dot com. For more on

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Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on

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Speaker 1: the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage.

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Speaker 1: The how Stuff Works iPhone app has a rise. Download

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Speaker 1: it today on iTunes