“Observe.—­Effigies in south cloister of several of the early abbots; large blue stone, uninscribed, (south cloister), marking the grave of Long Meg of Westminster, a noted virago of the reign of Henry VIII.”

This amazon is often alluded to by our old writers.  Her life was printed in 1582; and she was the heroine of a play noticed in Henslowe’s Diary, under the date February 14, 1594.  She also figured in a ballad entered on the Stationers’ books in that year.  In Holland’s Leaguer, 1632, mention is made of a house kept by Long Meg in Southwark:—­

“It was out of the citie, yet in the view of the citie, only divided by a delicate river:  there was many handsome buildings, and many hearty neighbours, yet at the first foundation it was renowned for nothing so much as for the memory of that famous amazon Longa Margarita, who had there for many yeeres kept a famous infamous house of open hospitality.”

According to Vaughan’s Golden Grove, 1608,—­

    “Long Meg of Westminster kept alwaies twenty courtizans in her
    house, whom, by their pictures, she sold to all commers.”

From these extracts the occupation of Long Meg may be readily guessed at.  Is it then likely that such a detestable character would have been buried amongst “goodly friars” and “holy abbots” in the cloisters of our venerable abbey?  I think not:  but I leave considerable doubts as to whether Meg was a real personage.—­Query.  Is she not akin to Tom Thumb, Jack the Giant-killer, Doctor Rat, and a host of others of the same type?

The stone in question is, I know, on account of its great size, jokingly called “Long Meg, of Westminster” by the vulgar; but no one, surely, before Mr. Cunningham, ever seriously supposed it to be her burying-place.  Henry Keefe, in his Monumenta Westmonasteriensa, 1682, gives the following account of this monument:—­

“That large and stately plain black marble stone (which is vulgarly known by the name of Long Meg of Westminster) on the north side of Laurentius the abbot, was placed there for Gervasius de Blois, another abbot of this monastery, who was base son to King Stephen, and by him placed as a monk here, and afterwards made abbot, who died anno 1160, and was buried under this stone, having this distich formerly thereon: 

      “De regnum genere pater hic Gervasius ecce
      Monstrat defunctus, mors rapit omne genus.”

Felix Summerly, in his Handbook for Westminster Abbey, p. 29., noticing the cloisters and the effigies of the abbots, says,—­

“Towards this end there lies a large slab of blue marble, which is called ‘Long Meg’ of Westminster.  Though it is inscribed to Gervasius de Blois, abbot, 1160 natural son of King Stephen, he is said to have been buried under a small stone, and tradition assigns ‘Long Meg’ as the gravestone of twenty-six monks, who were carried off by the plague in 1349, and buried together in one grave.”

The tradition here recorded may be correct.  At any rate, it carries with it more plausibility than that recorded by Mr. Cunningham.