As a child, Henry III (1207-72) saw his father, King John, lose most of his continental lands in a disastrous war with the French king. Henry came to the throne at the age of just nine, in 1216, following John's death during a further war against his barons. At the time, half the country, including London, was in the control of rebel barons, and Henry was unable to be crowned in Westminster Abbey until 1220.

Find out about King John and Magna Carta here.

New French churches

While King John was humiliated in his wars, the French monarchy was growing in prestige, wealth and power. French kings demonstrated their power by building massive churches. Under King Louis IX (ruled 1226-70), the Cathedral of Rheims, site of royal coronations, and the Church of St Denis, where the French kings were buried, were both rebuilt in the Gothic style. In the centre of Paris, Louis also built Sainte-Chapelle, a shrine for his most prized possession, a relic of the Christ's crown of thorns.

Henry visited France in 1243, and was amazed by Louis' new churches. His envy of Sainte-Chapelle was mocked in a satirical French song, in which the English king is made to say, "Paris is a fine city. In it is a chapel I long to have carried off in a rolling cart, straightaway to London."

Henry's plan for Westminster

The French churches inspired Henry to rebuild Westminster Abbey, as a way of rivalling King Louis and restoring the battered prestige of the English monarchy. He saw that the abbey could combine the functions of France's three royal churches. It was already used for coronations, like Rheims, and it could serve as a future site of royal burials, like St Denis. It was also a reliquary, like Sainte-Chapelle.

Westminster already possessed several valuable relics. These included bones of the Holy Innocents (the children killed by King Herod); stones used to kill St Stephen, the first Christian martyr; a tooth of one of the Three Wise Men and a girdle belonging the Virgin Mary. Most important for Henry's purpose, there was the body of Edward the Confessor, who was not just a saint but an English king too.

Henry, a religious man who loved to hear Mass several times a day, was particularly devoted to Edward the Confessor. He had portraits of the saint painted on his thrones and on the wall of his bedchamber. Henry also named his first born son, the future Edward I, after the Confessor. Henry's cult of St Edward gave him another powerful motive for rebuilding the Confessor's shrine. He would be imitating Edward, who had himself spent much of his reign rebuilding the abbey in the Romanesque style.

The abbey rebuilt

The new abbey was designed by the royal master mason, Henry de Reyns (Rheims). We do not know if he was French or English, though he had certainly studied a number of continental churches. Westminster Abbey is more French in style than any other English church. The apse (semicircular eastern end), with its radiating chapels, was modelled on the Cathedral of Amiens, while the style of the chapels was copied from Rheims. At 101ft 8ins (31m) high, the nave would be the tallest in England, and the closest to a French cathedral.

In 1245, the old church was pulled down as far west as the nave and rebuilding started at the eastern end. In place of the old massive walls and thick columns, slender columns rose, and the walls were given soaring windows with pointed arches and stained glass. The weight of the new walls was transferred outside the building to the ground, through the French system of flying buttresses - half arches built against the walls.

Christ's blood brought to Westminster

Henry collected new relics to rival Louis's crown of thorns. In 1247, he got hold of a stone marked with a footprint of Christ when he ascended into heaven, and, most prized of all, a crystal phial of Christ's blood -  a present from the Patriarch of Jerusalem. On October 13, 1247, after a night spent in prayer and fasting, Henry walked barefoot from St Paul's to Westminster, carrying his phial of blood. The St Albans monk, Matthew Paris, described the king's journey:

"He carried it with both hands and even when he came to a rough or uneven section of the road, he kept his eyes fixed always either on heaven or the container itself... Two assistants supported the king's arms lest his strength should fail during his exertions... Bishops, abbots and monks to a number of a hundred or more, tearfully singing and exulting in the holy spirit, went out to meet the king as he arrived... Finally he presented and offered this rich and priceless gift, which had made all England illustrious, to God, to the church of St Peter at Westminster, to his beloved Edward, and to the holy monks who minister there to God and his saints."

Henry's epitaph

Henry died in 1272 and was buried in the abbey close to the Confessor, whose body he had placed in a beautiful new shrine. A Latin epitaph to Henry (later added to the original French one) reflected his pride in his church, and his lifelong horror of war:

Tertius Henricus est Templi conditor huius.
Dulce bellum inexpertis.

(Henry the Third is the builder of this Temple.
War is sweet to those who have not tasted it.)

Later work

On Henry's death, the nave was incomplete, and building work was abruptly abandoned. Unlike his father, Edward I was a soldier king who needed money to fight wars, against the French, Welsh and Scots, rather than to build churches. He ignored Henry's will, which asked him to continue paying for the abbey. The monks now had to raise the money themselves, although both Richard II and Henry V were to provide funds.

Construction only resumed in the 1390s, continuing on and off until the church was all but finished in 1532. Just eight years later, the abbey was dissolved on the orders of Henry VIII. (The upper sections of the western towers were finally added in 1745, to a design by Nicholas Hawksmoor.)