Andre's Monument

Near the center of the south wall of the nave is a monument to Major Andre of Revolntionary note. The very ov% inscription npon it bgins, "Sacred to the memory of Major John Andre, who, raised by his inerit, at an early period of life, to the rank of adjutant general of the British' forcea in America, and employed in an important buthazardous enterprise, feil a sacrifice to hiszeal for his king and country, on the 2d of October, 1780, aged 29, universally beloved and esteemed by the army in which he eerved and lamented even by his foes. " About the base of the monument, whioh is a panel set against the wall, are several siuall figures. These project from the panol, and represent the presentaron of Major Andre's letter to General Washington on the night before his execution. The ease with which the heads of these figures could be broken off has been too great a teraptation to relie hunters, and most of the heads have been knocked off and stolen. That such vandalism is not wholly modern ie shown from the fact that Charles Lamb writes of the def acing of this very monument in this way in his "Essays of Elia. " Southey, the poet, when a boy, was a pupil at the Westminster school. Later in life he was exceediugly sensitive in regard to his political principies, and for a time a serious quarrel existed between himself and Lamb, because the latter, speaking in regard to this injnry to Andre's monument, described it as the "wanton mischief of some schoolboy, fired perhaps with raw notions of transatlantic freedom. " Then, addressing Southey, he added, "The mischief was done about the time that yon were a scholar there. Do you know anything about the unfortunate relie?" There is now fastened upon the wall of the nave, above the monument, a wreath of oak leaves which Dean Stanley, when he visited America, gathered near the spot on the bank of the Hudson river where Andre was executed. Although Andre died in 1780, it was not until 182] that, at the request of the Duke of York, his bones were exhumed and taken to England to be buried in the abbey. The box in which they were placed for the voyage is still preserved in the oratory over St. Islip's chapel,