Perhaps the fairest and most beautiful embodiment in wood and stone of the continuity of the Anglican Church is expressed in the ancient Abbey of Westminster, the church used by the monks of the great Benedictine Monastery from the time of Edward the Confessor, A.D. 1060, to the time of Henry VIII., 1540. Though long before the time of the Confessor tradition informs us that a church stood upon the same spot and that in the reign of King Sebert the Saxon a church was consecrated there, the place being then known as the "Isle of Thornes, so called because it was covered with tangled thickets and thorns, among which the red deer and the wild oxen strayed," and as if to corroborate this tradition, a few years ago, when the underground railway was being constructed, the workmen found the bones and antlers of oxen and deer close to Westminster Station.
