Note 74 — Chapter VII · The Cathedral

A similar legend is told of the consecration of Westminster Abbey. ‘One stormy Sunday night during the reign of King Sebert, the eve of the day fixed by Mellitus, Bishop of London, for the consecration of Sebert’s newly-finished church at Thorney, it happened that one Edrie, a fisherman, was casting his nets into the Thames. His attention was arrested by a voice calling from the opposite shore at Lambeth. He crossed, and found there a venerable stranger in foreign garb, who desired to be ferried over to Thorney Isle. Edrie complied with the request. The stranger landed and went at once to the church. And while Edrie waited on the bank, suddenly the air grew bright with celestial splendours, there was no darkness more or shadow in the monastery, and choirs of angels he beheld ascending and descending on a ladder which reached from heaven to earth, with song and flaming tapers and sweet odours of incense. The fisherman remained gazing at these wonders and caught nothing all night. At last the stranger returned and said unto Edrie, “I am Peter, keeper of the keys of Heaven. When Mellitus comes to-morrow, tell him all that you have seen, and show him that I, S. Peter, have consecrated my own Church of S. Peter, Westminster.” ‘