WIMBORNE MINSTER
WIMBORNE MINSTER or “Warborne” in _Two on a Tower_—is, or was, for the
Romans and their works are altogether vanished from the town, the
_Vindogladia_ of the Antonine Itinerary. If you speak of it in the curt
irreverent way of railways and their time-tables, or in the equally curt,
but only familiar, manner of its inhabitants, it is merely “Wimborne.”
In their mouths, elision of the “Minster” merely connotes affection and
use, as one drops the titles or the “Mister” of a friend, in speaking of
him; but in the case of railway usage it is the offensive familiarity of
the ill-bred, or, at the least, a derogatory saving of space and type.
This common practice is all the more historically an outrage, for had
there been no Minster, there would have been no town of Wimborne. It
derives from an early religious settlement, founded in A.D. 700 near the
site of the forgotten Roman station, by Cuthburga, one of those
unsatisfactory princess spouses of the pietistic period of Saxon
dominion, who, married to the King of Northumbria, refused him conjugal
rights and finally established herself here, living a life of “continual
watchings and fastings,” and finally dying of them. We are not concerned
to follow the mazes of the early history of town and church. It suffered
the usual plunderings and burnings, the nuns were occasionally carried
off, sometimes against their will, at other times with their consent, and
at last, somewhere about A.D. 902, monks replaced them. The whole
foundation was re-established by Edward the Confessor, and remained as a
Collegiate church until 1547, when it was disestablished, its revenues
seized, and the building wholly converted to the purposes of a parish
church.
[Picture: Sturminster Marshall]
[Picture: Anthony Etricke’s Tomb, Wimborne Minster]
Wimborne Minster might be made the subject of a lengthy architectural
disquisition. Its two towers, western and central, are themselves
pointers to its history; for they show, not in the different periods at
which they were built, but in the richness of the one and the comparative
plainness of the other, the combined uses of the building in days of old.
The central tower, of transitional Norman design, and remarkably like the
towers of Exeter cathedral, was originally surmounted by a stone spire,
which fell in 1600. Its elaboration is explained by its having been a
part of the monastic church, while the western tower erected about 1460,
belonged to the parochial building.
The church, endowed with two—and two dissimilar—towers, is a splendid
feature in the streets of the old town. It and the town gain dignity and
interest in an amazing degree, and here in Wimborne the pinnacled
battlemented outlines “make” both town and Minster, in the pictorial
sense. They bulk darkly and largely across the yellow sandiness of the
broad market-place, and sort themselves into endless and changeful
combinations down the narrower streets. Apart, too, from these important
considerations, the Minster is exceptionally rich in curious features,
outside its architectural details.
Our ancestors possessed a quaint mixture of serious devotion and
light-hearted childishness, and we are the richer for it. Thus, high up
on the external wall of the western tower, the observant will notice the
odd little effigy, carved, painted and gilt, resembling a grenadier of a
century ago, or a French gendarme of a past _régime_: it is difficult to
assign it with certainty, and assuredly it does not look so old as 1600,
the date when it is stated to have been placed here. His business is
that of a quarter-jack, and he strikes the quarters upon a bell on either
side of him. The clock within, an astronomical contrivance made in 1320
by that same ingenious Glastonbury monk, Peter Lightfoot, who was the
author of the famous clock of Wells Cathedral, represents the courses of
the sun, moon, and stars.
The Minster, in short, is a museum of antiquities, found particularly
interesting by the half-day excursionists from Bournemouth who are its
chief visitors and carry away a fine confused recollection of their
scamper round it. Here, in a room above the vestry, is the Chained
Library, a collection of over two hundred and forty volumes, mostly
chained to iron rods. Some of the books are very early, but the
collection was formed in 1686. Perhaps, for the sake of its story, the
copy of Sir Walter Raleigh’s “History of the World” is even more
interesting than “The Whole Duty of Man” and the “Breeches Bible,” for it
still displays the carefully mended hundred leaves burnt through when the
boy, afterwards poet, Prior fell asleep over his reading of it and upset
the candle, with this result. Each damaged page was neatly mended by him
and the missing letters so carefully restored that it is difficult, until
attention is drawn to the repair, to detect anything exceptional. Prior
was born at Wimborne in 1664, as a brass tablet in the western tower to
his “perennial and fragrant” memory tells us.
[Picture: The Wimborne Clock-Jack] But of paramount interest to
sightseers, far transcending the ironbound deed-chests, some hollowed
from a single trunk, and the tombs of the noble and knightly, is the last
resting-place of Anthony Etricke, in the south wall of the choir aisle.
Anthony Etricke was a personage of some local distinction in his day, for
besides being a man of wealth, he was first Recorder of Poole. He has
also won a little niche in the history of England by no effort of his
own: a distinction thrust upon him by circumstance, and one which might
have fallen upon any other local magistrate. Sentimentally speaking, it
is also a wholly invidious and undesirable fame or notoriety, and was so
regarded by the good folk of the town. Etricke, residing at Holt, near
the spot where the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth was captured, was the
magistrate before whom the wretched fugitive was brought. Another might
possibly, greatly daring, have secured the escape of that romantic
figure, and by so doing at the same time have altered the course of
English history and earned the admiration of those who admire chivalric
deeds. But Etricke was not of this stamp, and was, moreover, of that old
faith which the bigoted James was striving to reintroduce: while Monmouth
was the Protestant champion. Alas! poor champion. Etricke at once
performed his bounden duty as a magistrate, and also satisfied his own
private feelings; and Monmouth ended miserably.
Etricke never regained popularity in his district, and lived for eighteen
years longer, a shunned and soured man. The story tells how he took what
may surely be regarded as the odd and altogether insufficient revenge of
declaring that he would be buried neither in the church of Wimborne nor
out of it, and accordingly in his lifetime had a niche prepared here, in
the wall, where the polished black slate sarcophagus, still seen above
ground, was placed. He was eccentric beyond this, for he had conceived
the date of his death and caused it to be boldly carved on the side,
between two of the seven shields of arms that in braggart fashion are
made to redound to the glory of the Etricke family. That year he had
imagined would be 1691, but he actually survived until 1703, and the date
was accordingly altered (as seen to this day) when at last, to the
satisfaction of Wimborne, he did demise. For the keeping of his tomb in
good repair he left twenty shillings annually, a sum still administered
by the Charity Commissioners; and it certainly cannot be said that he
does not receive value for his money, because his eccentric lair is
maintained, heraldic cognisances and all, in the most perfect condition.
Any ill-will this solemn personage may have felt towards Wimborne is
altogether robbed of satisfaction nowadays, and his gloomy ghost may, for
all we know, be enraged at the thought of the attraction his eccentricity
has for visitors and the trade in photographs it has provoked, much to
the material well-being of the town.
[Picture: Wimborne Minster; The Minster and the Grammar School]
The pilgrim of the Hardy country, come to Wimborne—I should have said
“Warborne”—to see that Grammar School where, to quote Haymoss Fry, “they
draw up young gam’sters’ brains like rhubarb under a ninepenny pan, my
lady, excusing my common way,” is like to be disappointed, for the place
where “they hit so much larning into en that ’a could talk like the day
of Pentecost” is no longer an ancient building. ’Tis true, the
foundation is what the country folk might call an “old arnshunt” thing
enough, being the work indeed of that very great founder of schools and
colleges, the Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII.
It was refounded by Queen Elizabeth, who stripped all the credit of this
good deed in a naughty world from the memory of the pious countess, and
willed that it should be styled “The Grammar School of the Foundation of
Queen Elizabeth in Wimborne Minster in the County of Dorset.” That was
pretty bad, but worse came with the whirling years. James I., like the
shabby fellow he was, raised a question respecting the validity of its
charter, and was only bought off with £600; and Charles I., unlike the
noble, magnanimous sovereign he is commonly thought to be, bled the
institution to the tune of another £1,000, by a similar dodge. The
wonder is that it has survived at all, and not only survived, but
flourished and was able, so long ago as 1851, to build itself that new
and substantial home which is so scholastically useful, but at the same
time disappointing to the literary pilgrim who, at the place where
Swithin St. Cleeve was educated, hoped to find a picturesque building of
mediæval age.