as is plain to see from the second pillar from the tower being, as is the
case in Peterborough Cathedral, composed of a broad mass of wall with a
respond on either side, the western respond being of much later character
than the eastern. If the chancel was originally as it is now, it must
have been as long as the nave, but the nave then perhaps included two of
the chancel bays. At present the lengthening of the nave westward and the
adding of the tower has made the nave twice the length of the chancel.
At first the church had just a nave and a chancel, but, about 1180,
aisles were added to the nave; to do this the nave walls were taken down
and the eastern responds made, which we have just spoken of, and the
beautiful clustered columns of the arcades, three on each side, set up.
The aisles were narrow and probably covered by a lean-to roof. The arches
springing from these columns would be round-headed, the pointed arches
we see now being the work of a century later, when much wider north and
south aisles were built; that on the north being on a particularly grand
and massive scale. The westernmost bay on either side was made nearly
twice the width of the others so as to correspond with the breadth of the
tower, because one of the features of the church is that the two aisles
run out westwards and align with the tower, and as the chapels on either
side run out in the same way eastwards, as far as the chancel, we get
the parallelogram above mentioned. As you enter the west door you are
at once struck by the great size of the tower piers, and next you will
notice the beauty of the tower arch, with its mouldings five deep. There
is no chancel arch, and the church has one long roof from end to end.
The aisles are very wide, and the pillars tall and slender, so that you
are able to see over the whole body of the church as if it were one big
hall. Curiously, the west window of the south aisle is not in the centre
of the wall, and looks very awkward. Below it is a bookcase lined with
old books. There are two arched recesses for tombs in the south wall,
and there is a monument between two of the south arcade pillars, where
a black marble top to an altar tomb is inscribed to Francis Malham de
Elslacke, 1660. The east end of the north aisle is used as a morning
chapel. A tall gilt reredos much blocks the chancel east window. When
I last visited the church the north and south doorways being wide open
gave the church plenty of wholesome fresh air, so different from the
well-known Sabbath “frowst” which, in the days of high pews, and when a
church was only opened on Sunday, never departed from the building.
[Sidenote: THE TOWER]
The north porch is very large, and has a passage-way east and west right
through; it was built with the north aisle about 1280, and was extended
and a room built over it about 1325, when the head of the north doorway
was much mutilated to let the floor in, at the same time a Lady chapel
was constructed on the south side of the chancel, and with a double
vaulted crypt, entered from outside, and also from the chancel, by a
beautiful staircase with richly carved doorway. The rood screen was also
built now, on which was an altar served by the chaplain daily at 5 a.m.
“after the first stroke of the bell which is called Daybelle.” It is
said that this bell is still rung daily from Lady Day to Michaelmas, but
whether at 5 o’clock deponent sayeth not. The Lincoln daybell rang at 6.
To reach this rood loft there is an octagon turret with a staircase on
the south side at the junction of the nave and chancel. The south porch
has also a staircase to the upper chamber, and the north porch has two
turreted staircases, probably for the ingress and egress of pilgrims
to the sacred relics kept there. Besides this there were at least five
chantries attached to the church; the latest of these were the fifteenth
century Corpus Christi chapel along the north side of the chancel, and
the contiguous “Hall” chapel which dates from the fifteenth century.
There is a good corbel table all along the aisles outside, and the west
front is very fine and striking.
But the great glory of the building is the steeple. We have seen that
the nave runs up to the large eastern piers of the tower, and the aisles
run on past each side of it as far as the western piers, and so with the
tower form a magnificent western façade, examples of which might even
then have been seen at Newark, which was begun before Grantham, and at
Tickhill near Doncaster.
[Sidenote: LINCOLNSHIRE SPIRES]
The tower, one of the finest bits of fourteenth century work in the
kingdom, has four stages: first, the west door and window, both richly
adorned with ballflower, reminiscent of the then recent work at
Salisbury, to which North and South Grantham were attached as prebends.
Then comes a stage of two bands of arcading on the western face only,
and a band of quatrefoil diaper work all round. In the third stage are
twin deep-set double-light windows and then come two very lofty double
lights under one crocketed hood mould. Both this stage and the last
show a very strong central mullion and the fourth, or belfry stage, has
statued niches reaching to the parapet and filling the spandrils on
either side of the window head. Inside the parapet at the south-west
corner is a curious old stone arch like a sentry-box or bell turret. The
magnificent angle buttresses are crowned by pinnacles, from within which
rises the spire with three rows of lights and lines of crockets at each
angle running up 140 feet above a tower of equal height. It seems at that
distance to come to a slender point; but we are told that when it was
struck by lightning in 1797 a mill-stone was set on the apex into which
the weathercock was mortised. There are ten bells, a larger ring than is
possessed by any church in the county but one, viz., Ewerby near Sleaford.
The date 1280 is assigned to the tower and north aisle because the
windows of that aisle reproduce in the cusped circles of their
head-lights the patterns of windows which had just a few years before
been inserted in Salisbury chapter-house, and the west window of the
aisle is a reduction to six lights of the great eight-light east window
at Lincoln; but neither Lincoln great tower nor Salisbury spire had yet
been built, and as they are the only buildings which are admitted to
surpass Grantham steeple—the former in richness of detail, the latter in
its soaring spire—and as Boston was not built till a hundred years later,
nor Louth till 200 years after Boston, it is clear that in 1300 Grantham
for height and beauty stood without a rival. Now-a-days, of course, we
have both Boston and Louth, and have them in the same county, and though
Sir Gilbert Scott puts Grantham as second only to Salisbury among English
steeples, and though in the grandeur and interest of its interior as well
as in the profuse ornamentation of its exterior Louth cannot compete with
it at all, yet there is in the delicate tapering lines of Louth spire
and the beautiful way in which it rises from its lofty tower-pinnacles
connected with their four pairs of light flying buttresses a satisfying
grace and a beauty of proportion which no other church seems to possess;
and when we look closely at the somewhat aimless bands of diaper work
and arcading in the second stage of Grantham tower and then turn to
the harmonious simplicity of the three stages in the Louth tower and
the incomparable beauty of the belfry lights with their crocketed
hood-mouldings which are carried up in lines ascending like a canopy to
the pinnacled parapet, it seems to satisfy the eye and the desire for
beauty and symmetry in the fullest possible measure.
The church has not a great number of monuments; that to Richard de
Salteby, 1362, is the earliest, and there is, besides the Malham tomb,
one of the Harrington family, and a huge erection to Chief Justice Ryder,
whose descendants derive their title of Harrowby from a hamlet close by.
There are two libraries in the church, one with no less than seventy-four
chained books. But a church forms a bad library, and many are gone and
some of the best are mutilated, for as Tennyson says in “The Village
Wife”:—
“The lasses ’ed teäred out leäves i’ the middle to kindle the fire.”
Only here it was not the lasses but the mediæval verger.
[Illustration: _Grantham Church._]
The bowl of the font has most interesting carved panels of the
Annunciation, the Magi, the Nativity, Circumcision, Baptism, Blessing of
Children, the Sacrifice of Isaac, and one other. The oak chancel screen
and the parcloses by Scott, the reredos by Bodley, and the rest of the
oak fittings by Blomfield, are all very good. The screen takes the place
of the old stone screen which is quite gone. There is some excellent
modern glass, and for those who understand heraldry, I might mention that
in the east window were once many coats of arms of which Marrat gives a
list with notes by Gervase Holles, from which I gather that the armorial
glass was very fine, and that the arms of “La Warre” are “G. crusily,
botony, fitchy, a lion rampant or.” It is pleasant to know this, even if
one does not quite understand it.
[Sidenote: THE MARKET CROSS]
The extending of the church westwards encroached upon the open space in
which stood the reinstated “Applecross,” at one time replaced by a quite
uncalled-for stone obelisk in the market-place, opposite the Angel, with
an inscription to say that the Eleanor Cross once stood there, which was
not true, as that was set up in the broad street or square called “St.
Peter’s Hill,” where now the bronze statue of Newton stands. In Finkin
Street the town, until ten years ago, preserved a splendid chestnut tree,
and other fine trees near the church add a beauty which towns now-a-days
rarely possess.
As at Lincoln, the Grey Friars first brought good drinking water to the
town, and their conduit is still a picturesque object in the market
square. It is on the south side, close to the Blue Sheep. Blue seems to
have been the Grantham colour, for there are at least twelve inns whose
sign is some blue thing—Bell, Sheep, Pig, Lion, Dragon, Boy, etc. Blue
pill is almost the only thing of that colour not represented.
The connection of Grantham with Salisbury is a very old one, as far
back as 1091 the lands and endowments of the church were granted to St.
Osmund, and by him given to his new cathedral at Old Sarum, the site of
which is now being cleared in much the same manner as has been adopted
at Bardney Abbey. The Empress Maud added the gift of the living and the
right of presentation, so the prebendaries of North and South Grantham
became the rectors; North Grantham comprising Londonthorpe and North
Gonerby, and South Grantham South Gonerby and Braceby. Later, about 1225,
vicars were appointed, but there was no vicarage, and the work was mainly
done by the chaplain and the chantry priests. In 1713 the dual vicars
were merged in one, and since 1870 the presentation has been in the hands
of the Bishop of Lincoln.
[Sidenote: THE CHANTRIES]
We have spoken often of chantries. A chantry was a chapel endowed with
revenues for priests to perform Mass therein for the souls of the donors
or others. Hence we have in Shakespeare—
“Five hundred poor I have, in yearly pay,
Who twice a day their wither’d hands hold up
Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built
Three Chantries where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard’s soul.”
_Henry V._ iv. i.
CHAPTER VII
ROADS FROM GRANTHAM
Syston Hall—Belton—Harlaxton—Denton—Belvoir
Castle—Allington—Sedgebrook—Barrowby—Gonerby-hill—Stubton
—Hough-on-the-Hill—Gelston—Claypole.
The main South Lincolnshire roads run up from Stamford to Boston, to
Sleaford and to Grantham; here of the six spokes of the wheel of which
Grantham is the hub, three going westwards soon leave the county. That
which goes east runs a very uneventful course for twelve miles till,
having crossed the Bourne and Sleaford road, it comes to Threckingham,
and in another six or seven miles to Donington where it divides and,
after passing many most remarkable churches, reaches Boston either by
Swineshead or by Gosberton, Algarkirk and Kirton, which will be described
in the route from Spalding. The Great Road north and south from Grantham
is full of interest, and passes through village after village, and on
both the northern and western sides the neighbourhood of Grantham is
extremely hilly and well wooded, and contains several fine country seats.
Belvoir Castle (Duke of Rutland), Denton (Sir C. G. Welby), Harlaxton (T.
S. Pearson Gregory, Esq.), Belton (Earl Brownlow), and Syston (Sir John
Thorold).
[Sidenote: BELTON AND BARKSTON]
_Syston Hall_, Sir John Thorold’s place, looks down upon Barkstone. It is
grandly placed, and the house, which was built in the eighteenth century,
contains a fine library. The greatest treasure of this, however, the
famed Mazarin Bible, was sold in 1884 for £3,200. A mile to the south
lies _Belton_. Here the church is filled with monuments of the Cust
and Brownlow families, and the font has eight carved panels with very
unusual subjects—a man pulling two bells, a monk reading, a priest with
both hands up, a deacon robed, a monster rampant with a double tail,
a man with a drawn sword, a naked babe and a rope, a man with a large
bird above him, and a tree; also among the monuments is one of Sir John
Brownlow, 1754, and one dated 1768 of Sir John Cust, the “Speaker.” In
this a singularly graceful female figure is holding the “Journals of the
House of Commons.” The monument of his son, the first Baron Brownlow,
1807, is by Westmacott. The family have added a north transept for
use as a mortuary chapel. Here, amongst others, are monuments of the
first Earl Brownlow, 1853, by Marochetti, and of his two wives with a
figure emblematic of Religion, by Canova. The village is always kept
in beautiful order; adjoining it is the large park with fine avenues
and three lakes in it. The house, built in the shape of the letter H,
was finished from Sir Christopher Wren’s designs in 1689, and the park
enclosed and planted in the following year by Sir John, the third Baronet
Brownlow, who entertained William III. there in 1695. His nephew, Sir
John, who was created Viscount Tyrconnel in 1718, formed the library
and laid out the gardens. In 1778 James Wyatt was employed to make
improvements. He removed Wren’s cupola, made a new entrance on the south
side, and raised the height of the drawing-room to twenty-two feet. All
the rooms in the house are remarkably high, and the big dining-room is
adorned with enormous pictures by Hondekoeter.
Wonderful carvings by Grinling Gibbons are in several rooms, and also in
the chapel, which is panelled with cedar wood.
[Sidenote: ON THE WITHAM]
_Barkston_ is near the stream of the Witham, and is thence called
_Barkston-in-the-Willows_; and ten miles off, on the county boundary near
Newark, is _Barnby-in-the-Willows_, also on the Witham, which has arrived
there from Barkston by a somewhat circuitous route.
Barkston Church is worth seeing by anyone who wishes to see how a
complete rood-loft staircase was arranged, the steep twelve-inch risers
showing how the builders got the maximum of utility out of the minimum
of space. The last three steps below appear to have been cut off to let
the pulpit steps in. There is a similar arrangement at Somerby, where
the steps also are very high. A very good modern rood screen and canopy,
somewhat on the pattern of the Sleaford one, has been put up by the
rector, the Rev. E. Clements. There are two squints, on either side of
the chancel arch, one through the rood staircase. The church has a nave
and a south aisle, and the plain round transition Norman pillars are
exactly like those at Great Hale, but are only about one-half the height.
The arches are round ones, with nail head ornament, and from the bases of
these pillars it is clear that the floor once sloped upwards continuously
from west to east, as at Colsterworth and Horkstow. The chancel arch
is made lofty by being set on the stone basement of the rood screen.
The transitional tower has a beautiful Early English window in the west
front, and the Decorated south aisle has a richly panelled parapet; but
the Perpendicular porch is not so well executed, and cuts rudely into two
pretty little aisle windows, and a niche over the door. It has over it
this rhyming inscription carved in stone.
[Illustration: _Withamside Boston._]
Me Thomam Pacy post mundi flebile funus
Jungas veraci vite tu trinus et unus
Dñe Deus vere Thome Pacy miserere.
And under the capital of one of the doorway pillars is the line, rather
difficult to construe, but in beautiful lettering:—
Lex et natura XRS simul omnia cura.
The severe three-light east window has good glass by Kempe. The spire,
a very good one, is later than the tower, and built of squared stones,
different in colour from the small stones of the tower. Two half figures
incised in bold relief on fourteenth century slabs, are built into the
north wall, opposite the south door.
[Sidenote: HONINGTON AND CAYTHORPE]
Keeping along the Lincoln road the next place we reach is _Honington_.
The Early English tower of the church is entered by a very early pointed
arch, the nave being of massive Norman work with an unusually large
corbel table. There are the remains of a stone screen, and a canopied
aumbry in the chancel was perhaps used as an Easter sepulchre. The
chantry chapel has monuments of the Hussey family, and one of W. Smith,
1550, in gown and doublet. An early slab, with part of the effigy of a
priest on it, has been used over again to commemorate John Hussey and his
wife, he being described on it as “A professor of the Ghospell,” 1587.
To the south-east of the village is what was once an important British
fort with a triple ditch, used later by the Romans whose camp at Causennæ
on the “High Dyke” was but four miles to the east. Less than two miles
brings us to _Carlton Scroop_, with a late Norman tower and Early English
arcade, also some good old glass and a Jacobean pulpit. The remains of a
rood screen and the rood loft steps are still there.
A mile further on is one of the many _Normantons_, with Early English
nave, decorated tower, fine west window, and Perpendicular clerestory.
[Sidenote: FULBECK AND LEADENHAM]
Two miles on we come to _Caythorpe_, which is built on a very singular
plan, for it has a double nave with a buttress between the two west
windows to take the thrust of the arches which are in a line with the
ridge of the roof. This forms the remarkable feature of the church
interior. There are short transepts, and the tower rises above the four
open arches. Over one of these there is a painting of the Last Judgment.
There are fine buttresses outside with figures of the Annunciation
and the Coronation of the Virgin, and one of our Lord on the porch.
The windows are large. The spire is lofty but unpleasing, as it has a
marked “entasis” or set in, such as is seen in many Lincolnshire and
Northamptonshire spires, which hence are often termed sugar-loafed.
Before its re-building, in 1859, after it had been struck by lightning,
the entasis was still more marked than it is now. The singularly thin,
ugly needle-like spire of Glinton, just over the southern border of the
county near Deeping, has a slight set in which does not improve its
appearance. A mile to the north the road passes through the very pretty
village of _Fulbeck_. The dip of the road, the charming old houses, grey
and red, the handsome church tower with its picturesque pinnacles, and
the ancestral beauty of the fine trees, make a really lovely picture.
Fine iron gates lead to the Hall, the home of the Fanes, an honoured
name in Lincolnshire. Many of the name rest in the churchyard, and
their monuments fill the dark church, which has a good Norman font.
The tampering with old walls and old buildings is always productive of
mischief, and, as at Bath Abbey, when, to add to its appearance, flying
buttresses were put up all along the nave, the weight began to crush in
the nave walls, and the only remedy was to put on, at great expense,
a stone groined roof, which is the real _raison d’être_ of flying
buttresses, so here at Fulbeck, when they pulled down the chancel and
built it up again with the walls further out, the consequence was that
the east wall of the nave, missing its accustomed support, began to lean
out eastwards.
Another mile and a half brings us to _Leadenham_, where the east and
west road from Sleaford to Newark crosses the Great North road. The fine
tall spire is seen from all the country round, for it stands half way up
the cliff. But this and the rest of the road to Lincoln is described in
Chapter XIII.
[Sidenote: HARLAXTON AND DENTON]
If you go out of Grantham by the south-west, you should stop at a very
pretty little village to the south of the Grantham and Melton road, from
which a loop descends to an old gateway, all that is left of the old
_Harlaxton_ Manor, a pretty Tudor building now pulled down, the stone
balustrades in front of it having been removed by Mr. Pearson Gregory to
his large house a mile off, built on the ridge of the park by Salvin in
1845. The Flemish family of De Ligne lived in the old Hall in Jacobean
times, and their predecessors are probably represented by the fine but
mutilated alabaster recumbent effigies now in the northern, or Trinity,
chapel of the church. In the north-east angle of this chapel is a very
graceful canopied recess on a bracket, much like those at _Sedgebrook_,
about five miles off on the border of the county.
The north aisle and nave are older than the tower and south aisle; and a
curious staircase ascends at the east of the south aisle wall, from which
a gangway crossed to the rood loft.
There are many aumbries in various parts of the church, and a tall,
Decorated font, with grotesque faces in some panels, and in others sacred
subjects oddly treated, such as our Lord crowned and holding a Chalice.
In the south aisle is an old oak post alms-box resembling one at Halton
Holgate.
A doorway leads out from the south side of the east end, an entrance
probably to an eastern chapel. The two doorways, one on each side of the
altar, at Spalding may have led to the same, or possibly to a vestry, as
in Magdalen Chapel, Oxford.
The spire has a staircase, passing curiously from one of the pinnacles.
A very massive broken stone coffin, removed from a garden, lies in the
south chapel. The fine row of limes, and the ivy-grown walls of old
Harlaxton Manor, add to the beauty of this quiet little village, and a
group of half-timbered brick buildings, said to be sixteenth century,
though looking more modern, which are near the church, are a picturesque
feature.
[Sidenote: BELVOIR CASTLE]
_Denton Manor_, the seat of Sir C. G. E. Welby, Bart., is just beyond
Harlaxton, and there one might once have seen a fine old manor house,
now replaced by a large modern hall of fine proportions; the work is by
Sir A. W. Blomfield, good in design and detail, and containing a notable
collection both of furniture and pictures. St. Christopher’s Well, a
chalybeate spring, is in the park, and in the restored church are a good
recumbent effigy of John Blyth, 1602, and a figure of Richard Welby,
1713, with angels carefully planting a crown on his wig. After this the
road passes into Leicestershire, so we turn to the right and in less than
four miles, halfway between the Melton road and the Nottingham road,
and more in Leicestershire than in Lincolnshire, we come to _Belvoir
Castle_. The mound on which it stands is over the border and is not a
natural height, but was thrown up on a spur of the wold as early as
the eleventh century by Robert de Todeni, who thence became known as
Robert de Belvedeir. Certainly the pile is grandly placed, and has a
sort of Windsor Castle appearance from all the country round. It has
been in possession of the Manners family now for four hundred years. The
celebrated Marquis of Granby, a name well known in all the neighbourhood
as a public-house sign, was son of the third Duke. He was “Col. of the
Leicester Blues” in 1745, and General and Commander-in-Chief of the
British contingent at Minden, where the English and German forces, under
the Duke of Brunswick, defeated the French in 1759, and he distinguished
himself in battle in each of the three following years. The castle,
destroyed by order of Parliament in the civil wars, was rebuilt in 1668,
and again in 1801, but a fire having destroyed part of it in 1816 it was
restored at the worst of all architectural periods, so that at a near
view it does not fulfil the expectation raised by its grand appearance
when seen from a distance. As at Windsor there is a very fine “Guard
Room,” and many large rooms hung with tapestry or pictures, and a picture
gallery of unusual excellence. The Duchess’s garden in spring is one of
the finest horticultural sights in the kingdom. The greater part of the
castle is most liberally thrown open daily to the public.
Returning from Belvoir we can pass by Barrowby to join the Nottingham and
Grantham road, which leaves the county at Sedgebrook, on either side of
which are seen the churches of _Muston_ and _East_ and _West Allington_,
where Crabbe, the poet, was rector 1789-1814. West Allington church
stands in Mr. Welby’s park, and close by, a salt well is marked on the
map. At _Sedgebrook_ is a farm house which was built as a manor-house
by Sir John Markham in the sixteenth century, when he was Lord Chief
Justice of the King’s Bench. He it was who received the soubriquet of
“The upright Judge,” on the occasion of his being turned out of office by
Edward IV., because of his scrupulous fairness at the trial of Sir Thomas
Coke, Lord Mayor of London.
From Sedgebrook to _Barrowby_ is three miles of level ground, and then
the road rises 150 feet to the village, which commands a splendid view
over the vale of Belvoir. Leaving this you descend a couple of miles to
Grantham.
[Sidenote: GONERBY HILL]
At the outskirts of the town the road meets two others, one the northern
or Lincoln road, and the other the north-western or Newark road. This
is the Great North Road, and it starts by climbing the famous _Gonerby
Hill_, the terror and effectual trial ground of motors in their earliest
days, and described by “mine host” in _The Heart of Midlothian_ as
“a murder to post-horses.” The hill once gained affords a fine view
eastwards, _Foston_ and _Long Bennington_ (which has a large church with
a handsome porch, a good churchyard cross, and a mutilated market cross),
are the only villages, till the road crosses the county boundary near
_Claypole_, and runs on about four miles to Newark, distant fifteen miles
from Grantham. Long Bennington is a mile north-east of Normanton Lodge,
where Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, and Leicestershire touch.
_Stubton_, a couple of miles to the east, has a fine group of yew trees
growing round the tomb of Sir George Heron, one of the family from
Cressy Hall, Gosberton, I suppose, who built the hall now occupied by G.
Neville, Esq.
Between Stubton and the Grantham-and-Lincoln road are many winding lanes,
by a judicious use of which you may escape the fate that overtook us of
landing after a steep and rather rough climb from Barkstone at two farms
one after the other, beyond which the road did not even try to go. If
you have better luck you will reach the out-of-the-way parish church of
_Hough-on-the-Hill_.
[Sidenote: HOUGH-ON-THE-HILL]
This, the last resting-place of King John, when on his journey to Newark
where he died, has a church whose tower is singularly interesting, being
akin to St. Peter’s at Barton-on Humber, and the two very old churches in
Lincoln, and one at Broughton, near Brigg, and we may add, perhaps, the
tower at Great Hale.
The work of all these towers is pre-Norman, and it is not unlikely that
the church, when first built, consisted of only a tower and two apses. At
Hough, as at Broughton, we have attached to the west face of the tower a
Saxon circular turret staircase, built in the rudest way and coped with a
sloping top of squared masonry, of apparently Norman work. The tower has
several very small lights, 12 to 15 inches high, and of various shapes,
while the west side of the south porch is pierced with a light which
only measures 8 inches by 4, but is framed with dressed stone on both
the wall-surfaces. The two lower stages of the square tower, to whose
west face the round staircase-tower clings, are all of the same rough
stone-work, with wide mortar joints, but with two square edged thick
string-courses of dressed stone, projecting 6 inches or more. The upper
stage is of much later date. The Early English nave, chancel, and aisles
are very high, and are no less than 20 feet wide, mercifully (for it was
proposed to abolish them and substitute a pine roof) they still retain
their old Perpendicular roofs with the chancel and nave timbers enriched
with carving. The sedilia are of the rudest possible construction.
[Illustration: _Hough-on-the-Hill._]
[Sidenote: A SAXON TOWER]
The staircase turret has two oblong Saxon windows, like those at Barnack,
about four feet by one, in the west face, three small round lights on
the north, and four on the south, one square and one diamond-shaped and
two circular. The turret is of the same date as the tower, but appears to
have been built on after the tower was finished; and it almost obscures
the two little west windows of the tower, one on each side of it, and
near the top. A round-headed doorway leads from the tower to the turret,
inside which the good stone steps lead up to a triangular-headed door
into the tower, where now is the belfry floor, from which another similar
doorway leads into the nave. Close to the top of the old Saxon tower
walls are very massive stone corbels for supporting the roof. The Newel
post of the old tower is a magnificent one, being eighteen inches thick.
This, where the upper stage was added, is continued, but with only half
that thickness.
There was once a porch with a higher pitched roof, as shown by the
gable roof-mould against the aisle. On the stone benches are three of
the solitaire-board devices, with eight hollows connected by lines all
set in an oblong, the same that you see often in cloisters and on the
stone benches at Windsor, where monks or chorister boys passed the time
playing with marbles. It is a truly primitive and world-wide amusement.
The natives of Madagascar have precisely the same pattern marked out
on boards, seated round which, and with pebbles which they move like
chessmen, they delight themselves, both young and old, in gambling.
The church used to go with the Head-Mastership of Grantham Grammar
School, seven miles off, and some of the Headmasters were buried
here; one, Rev. Joseph Hall, is described as “Vicar of Ancaster and
Hough-on-the-Hill, Headmaster of Grantham Grammar School, and Rector of
Snelland, and Domestic Chaplain to Lord Fitzwilliam”—he died in 1814.
[Sidenote: THE WAPENTAKE]
It stands on a high knoll, whence the churchyard, which is set round with
yew-trees, slopes steeply to the south. The Wapentake of Loveden takes
its name from a neighbouring round-topped hill, and the old tower of
Hough-on-the-Hill may well have been the original meeting-place; just as
Barnack was, where the triangular-headed seat for the chief man is built
into the tower wall. The term “Wapentake” means the taking hold of the
chief’s weapon by the assembled warriors, or of the warriors’ weapons by
the chief, as a sign that they swear fealty to him, and then the name was
applied to the district over which a particular chief held rule. The
native chiefs of India, when they come to a Durbar, present their swords
to the King or his representative in a similar manner, for him to touch.
Just south of Hough is the hamlet of _Gelston_, where, on a triangular
green, is all that is left of a wayside cross, a rare thing in this
county. Only about two feet of the old shaft is left and the massive base
block standing on a thick slab with chamfered corners. This is mounted on
three steps and is a very picturesque object.
There are some two dozen Wapentakes within the county, some with odd
names, _e.g._, Longoboby; of these, eight end like Elloe in _oe_, which,
I take it, means water.
[Sidenote: CLAYPOLE]
From Hough-on-the-Hill the byway to the Grantham and Newark road, with
villages at every second milestone, runs through _Brandon_, where a
small chapel contains a Norman door with a tympanum and a rather unusual
moulding, very like one we shall see in the old church at Stow, and then
through _Stubton_, to _Claypole_, close to the county boundary. The
beautiful crocketed spire of this fine church is a landmark seen for
miles; as usual, it is Perpendicular, and on an Early English tower,
which is plastered over with cement outside and engaged between the
aisles inside. It is a cruciform building, and in the Early English
south transept are three beautiful sedilia, not at all common in such a
position. The flat coloured ceiling of the nave is old, though, since
the restoration by C. Hodgson Fowler in 1892, the high pitch of the roof
over it has been reverted to, both on chancel and nave. The nave is large
with four wide bays, supported on clustered pillars, the capitals being
all different and all ornamented with singularly bold foliated carving
of great beauty. The chancel arch exhibits brackets for the rood beam.
The large clerestory windows were probably in the nave before the aisles
were added. Another set of sedilia in the chancel are of the Decorated
period, and most of the windows have flowing tracery. On the north side
of the chancel is a Sacristy, containing an altar slab in situ with its
five dedication crosses. The porch has a very deep niche over it, for a
statue, and there is another niche at the east end of the nave; the fine
Perpendicular parapet leading to it being, like the rest of the church,
embattled. The screen is a good Perpendicular one, and the desk of the
well-carved pulpit was once part of it, this now is oddly supported by
the long stem of a processional cross. The font, which is hexagonal, is
of the Decorated period.
One of the most unusual features in the church is to be found in the
stone seats which surround the bases of the pillars in the south arcade.
This is to be seen also at Bottesford and at Caistor.
A short distance to the south-west of the church there was, until quite
recently, a charming old stone bridge, over a small stream, but this
has now, I regret to say, been superseded by one of those iron girder
structures, so dear to the heart of the highway surveyor.
In the church the hook for the “Lenten Veil” still remains at the end of
the sedilia, and a staple over the vestry-door opposite.
In pre-reformation days there was a regular “office” or service for the
Easter sepulchre, in which the priests acted the parts of the three
kings, the angel, and the risen Lord, at which time a line was stretched
across the chancel to support the “Lenten Veil” which served as a
stage-curtain.
CHAPTER VIII
SLEAFORD
Ewerby—Howell—Use of a Stone Coffin—Heckington—Great Hale—Outer
Staircase to Tower—Helpringham—Billinghay—North and South
Kyme—Kyme Castle—Ancaster—Honington—Cranwell.
[Sidenote: SLEAFORD CHURCH]
Six roads go out of Sleaford, and five railways. Lincoln, Boston, Bourne
and Grantham have both a road and a railway to Sleaford, Spalding has
only a railway direct, and Horncastle and Newark only a road. At no
towns but Louth and Lincoln do so many routes converge, though Caistor,
Grantham and Boston come very near. The southern or Bourne road we have
traced from Bourne, so we will now take the eastern roads to Boston and
Horncastle. But first to say something of Sleaford itself. The Conqueror
bestowed the manor on Remigius, first Bishop of Lincoln. About 1130
Bishop Alexander built the castle, together with that at Newark, which
alone in part survives. These castles were seized by Stephen, and here
King John, having left Swineshead Abbey, stayed a night before his last
journey by Hough-on-the-hill to Newark, where he died 1216. Henry VIII.,
with Katherine Howard, held a council here on his way from Grimsthorpe to
Lincoln, 1541, dining next day at Temple-Bruer, which he gave in the same
year to the Duke of Suffolk. He had here in 1538 ordered the execution
of Lord Hussey. Murray’s guide-book tells us that Richard de Haldingham,
1314, who made the famous and curious “Mappa Mundi,” now kept in Hereford
Cathedral, was born at Holdingham close by. The church is one of four in
this neighbourhood dedicated to St. Denis. The lower stage of the tower
dates from 1180. The spire, a very early one, built about 1220, being
struck by lightning, was taken down and put up again by C. Kirk in 1884.
It is only 144 feet in height. As at Grantham and Ewerby the tower is
engaged in the aisles; its lower stage dates from 1180. The nave has
eight three-light clerestory windows, with tall pinnacles rising from the
parapet. The aisles have a richly carved parapet, without pinnacles; but
the beauty and extreme richness of the western ends of the aisles, where
they engage with the massive tower, surmounted as they are by turrets,
bellcots and pinnacles, and niches, some still containing their statues,
is not surpassed in any church in England.
The doorway, which is in the west end of the north aisle, cuts into the
fine window above, and opens upon the baptistery.
[Sidenote: THE NORTH TRANSEPT]
The nave and aisles are all very lofty; and the grand proportions of the
church give one the feeling of being in a cathedral. There is an outer
north aisle, now screened off by a good modern oak screen, and fitted
with an organ and an altar with modern painted reredos depicting the
Crucifixion. The tracery of the big window is good, but that in the north
transept (there is no south transept) is one of the finest six-light
windows to be seen, and is filled with first-rate modern glass by Ward
and Hughes. The supporting arch at the west of the north aisle has an
inverted arch, as at Wells, to support the tower. At the end of the south
aisle, a tall half-arch acts as a buttress to the other side of the
tower arch. The chancel was once a magnificent one, but was rebuilt and
curtailed at a bad period.
The fine monuments on each side of the chancel arch—one having two
alabaster recumbent figures, much blocked by the pulpit, are all of the
Carre family; and a curious carved and inscribed coffin lid, showing just
the face, and then, lower down, the praying hands of a man, apparently
a layman, with long hair, is set up in the transept against the chancel
pier. At Hartington in Derbyshire is one showing the bust and praying
hands together, and then, lower down, the feet. An old iron chest is in
the south aisle, and the church has a very perfect set of consecration
crosses both inside and out.
The rood screen is especially fine, in fact, the finest in the country,
having still its ancient canopy projecting about six feet, with very
graceful carving on the heads of the panels below it. Two staircases in
the chancel piers still remain, opening on to the rood loft on either
side.
The west end of the church overlooks the market, where there is always a
gay scene on Mondays—stalls and cheap-jacks and crowds of market folk
making it almost Oriental in life and colour.
The street runs along the south side of the church, across which is seen
the excellent but not beautiful Sleaford almshouse.
[Illustration: _North Transept, St. Denis’s Church, Sleaford._]
[Sidenote: EWERBY]
Eastwards on the Swineshead road, and within half-a-dozen miles of
Sleaford, is a cluster of especially good churches—Ewerby, Asgarby,
Heckington, Howell, Great Hale and Helpringham. Four of these six have
fine spires, and are seen from a long distance in this flat country.
_Ewerby_ is just on the edge of Haverholme Priory Park, and the building
rooks who have chosen the trees at the village end of the park for their
colony, gave, when we visited it, pleasant notification of the coming
spring.
The tower is at the west end, engaged in the two aisles, and, adjoining
the churchyard, a little green with remains of the old village cross
leaves room for the fine pile of building to be seen and admired. The
roof line of nave and chancel is continuous, and the broach spire, a
singularly fine one, perhaps the best in England, is 174 feet high. It
is probably the work of the same master builder who planned and built
Heckington and Sleaford. The tower has a splendid ring of ten bells
(Grantham alone has as many) for the completion of which, as for much
else, Ewerby is indebted to the Earls of Winchelsea.
Internally, the walls are mostly built of very small stones, like those
in a roadside wall. In the tower are good Decorated windows, in the lower
of which, on the western face, is a stained glass window. This was struck
by lightning in 1909, and all the faces of the figures were cut right
out, the rest of the glass being intact. A lightning-conductor is now
installed, but the faces are not yet filled in.
There is a most beautiful little window at the west end of the north
aisle. Under the tower are three finely proportioned arches, and a stone
groined roof. The ten bells are rung from the ground. The nave pillars
are clustered, each erected on an earlier transition-Norman base; and
the base of the font is also Norman. The porch is unusual in having a
triangular string-course outside the hood-moulding. Besides the Market
Cross, there are parts of two others, in the church and churchyard.
There is a grand old recumbent warrior, probably Sir Richard Anses,
with fourteenth century chain mail and helmet, and gorget, but the most
interesting thing of all is a pre-Norman tomb-cover on the floor of the
north aisle, with a rude cross on it, and a pattern of knot-work all over
the rest of the slab. This is covered by a mat, but it certainly ought to
have a rail round it for permanent protection, for it is one of the most
remarkable stones in the county. An old oak chest with carved front is
in the vestry. The whole church is well-cared-for, but at present only
seated with chairs.
[Sidenote: HOWELL PORCH]
From Ewerby, two miles bring us to _Howell_, a small church with neither
spire nor tower, but a double bell-gable at the west end of the nave;
the porch is Norman, and a large pre-Norman stone coffin slab has been
placed in it. The transition pillars have huge mill-stone shaped bases;
and there is only a nave and north aisle. On the floor of the aisle is
a half figure of a mother with a small figure of her daughter, both
deeply cut on a fourteenth century stone slab. It is curious to come on
a monument to “Sir Charles Dymok of Howell, 2nd son to Sir Edward Dymok
of Scrielsby”—whose daughter married Sir John Langton. The tomb, with
coloured figures of the knight and his lady kneeling at an altar, was put
up about 1610 by his nephew, another Sir Edward Dymok.
There is a broken churchyard cross, the base inscribed to John Spencer,
rector, 1448. The church is dedicated to St. Oswald. Ivy is growing
inside the nave, having forced its way right through the wall—a good
illustration of the mischief that ivy can do.
The mention of the stone coffin in Howell church porch calls to mind a
similar case in a Cumberland church, where the sexton, pointing it out to
a visitor, said: “Ah think thet a varra good thing; minds ’em o’ their
latter end, ye knaw; an’ its varra useful for umberellas.”
_Heckington_ is a town-like village on the main road, and its splendid
church, which faces you at the end of the street, as at Louth, is one of
the wonders of Lincolnshire. It is entirely in the Decorated style, with
lofty spire and four very high pinnacles. It owes its magnificence to the
fact that the great abbey at Bardney, which had a chantry here, obtained
a royal licence in 1345 to appropriate the church. Certainly it is the
most perfect example of a Decorated church in the kingdom.
The nave is remarkably high and wide, and the building of it, as in the
case of Wilfrid’s great church at Hexham, apparently took thirty-five
years. The dimensions are 150 feet by eighty-five, and the masonry, owing
probably to the leisurely way in which it was built, is remarkably good
throughout. The statue niches have a few of their figures still. The
porch, with its waved parapet richly carved, with a figure of our Lord
above, still has its original roof. On either side are double buttresses,
each with its canopied niche; and the nave ends with handsome turrets.
The transept windows are very fine, and the seven-light east window,
a most superb one, is only surpassed in its dimensions and beautiful
tracery by those at Selby and Carlisle. It is filled with good glass by
Ward and Hughes, put up in memory of Mr. Little, by his wife, 1897.
[Illustration: _Heckington Church_]
[Sidenote: HECKINGTON]
A massive timber gallery crosses the west end, above the tower arch,
giving access to the belfry above the groined roof of the tower. The
clock struck while we were in the church, and gave evidence of at least
one of the peal being of unusual magnificence of tone.
[Sidenote: THE EASTER SEPULCHRE]
On the south side of the chancel is one window beneath which is a
canopied credence table; and west of this, three tall and richly carved
sedilia with figures of our Lord and the Virgin Mary and Saints Barbara,
Katherine and Margaret; but the gem of the building is the Easter
sepulchre on the north side, where there are no windows. This is only
surpassed by one at Hawton, near Newark. Below are the Roman guards
asleep, in fourteenth century armour. On each side of the recess for the
sacred elements, which once had a door to it, are two figures of women
and a guardian angel, and above them, the risen Christ between two flying
angels. This is a truly beautiful thing, enshrined in a worthy building.
Outside is a broken churchyard cross, and the slender chancel buttresses
are seen to have each a niche for a figure. The magnificent great
“Dos-D’Âne” coping-stones on the churchyard wall, both here and at Great
Hale, are a pleasure to see.
There was a church at Heckington before the Conquest, and a second was
built about 1100. The income of this, as well as of that of Hale Magna,
was given in 1208 by Simon de Gant and his wife Alice to support the
church of St. Lazarus outside the walls of Jerusalem, and this endowment
was confirmed by King John. The rector of Hale Magna in his parish
magazine points out that the enormous amount of land which was constantly
passing to the churches and monasteries in the Middle Ages became a
distinct danger, and that an Act was passed to prevent it, called the
Statute of Mortmain, under which licence had to be obtained from the
Crown.
Consequently we find that in the fourth year of Edward II. (1310)
inquisition was taken on a certain Sunday before Ranulph de Ry, Sheriff
of Lincoln, at Ancaster “to inquire whether or not it be to the damage
of the King or others if the King permit Wm. son of Wm. le Clerk of St.
Botolph (Boston) to grant a messuage and 50 acres of land in Hekyngton
and Hale to a certain chaplain and his successors to celebrate Divine
service every day in the parish church of Hekyngton for the health of
the souls of the said Wm. his father, mother and heirs, &c., for ever,”
etc. The jury found that it would not be to the damage or prejudice of
the king to allow the grant. They also reported that Henry de Beaumont
was the “Mesne,” or middle, tenant between the king and William Clerk of
Boston for twenty-eight acres, and between the king and Ralph de Howell
for the other twenty-two acres, he holding from the king “by the service
of a third part of a pound of pepper,” and subletting to the others, for
so many marks a year. The land apparently being valued at about 1_s._
8_d._ an acre. From other sources we find that land thereabouts varied in
value from 4_d._ to 8_s._ an acre yearly rent.
In 1345 when the abbot and abbey of Bardney by royal licence received
the churches and endowments of Hale and Heckington for their own use,
the abbot became rector and appointed a vicar to administer each parish.
The name of the abbot was Roger De Barrowe, whose tomb was found by the
excavators at Bardney in 1909.
The building of the present beautiful church was completed by Richard de
Potesgrave, the vicar, in 1380. He doubtless received help from Edward
III., to whom he acted as chaplain. That he was an important person in
the reigns of both Edward II. and III. is shown by the former king making
over to him the confiscated property of the Colepeppers who had refused
to deliver Leeds Castle, near Maidstone, to Queen Isabella, wife of
Edward II., in 1321; while he was selected by Edward III. to superintend
the removal of the body of Edward II. from Berkeley Castle to Gloucester.
His mutilated effigy is under the north window of the chancel, and in a
little box above it with a glass front is now preserved the small chalice
which he used in his lifetime.
[Sidenote: CHURCHWARDENS’ BOOKS]
The churchwardens’ account book at Heckington begins in 1567, and in 1580
and 1583 and 1590 “VIˢ VIIIᵈ” is entered as the burial fee of members of
the Cawdron family, whose later monuments are at Hale.
[Sidenote: WHIPPING FOR TRAMPS]
Another entry which constantly occurs in the sixteenth century is “for
Whypping dogges out of Church,” and in the seventeenth century not
“dogges” only but vagrants are treated to the lash, _e.g._:—
“April 21, 1685. John Coulson then whipped for a vagrant rogue
and sent to Redford.
“Antho. Berridge (Vicar).”
And in 1686:—
“Memorand. that John Herrin and Katherine Herrin and one child,
and Jonas Hay and wife and two children, and Barbary Peay and
Eliz. Nutall were openly whipped, at Heckington, the 28th day
of May, 1686—and had a passe then made to convey them from
Constable to Constable to Newark, in Nottinghamshire, and
Will Stagg was at the same time whipped and sent to Conton in
Nottinghamshire.”
A good, sound method of dealing with “Vagrom men,” but for the women and
children one wonders the parson or churchwardens were not ashamed to make
the entry.
[Illustration: _Great Hale._]
The book also shows the accounts of the “Dike-reeve” (an important
officer) for what in another place is called “the farre fenne.”
[Sidenote: HALE MAGNA]
We have already spoken of _Great Hale_ or _Hale Magna_. It is very near
Heckington, and was once a large church. Long before the abbey of Bardney
appropriated it, in 1345, it had both a rector and a vicar, the two being
consolidated in 1296. In 1346 the vicarage was endowed, and on the
dissolution the rectorial tithes were granted, in 1543, to Westminster
Abbey; but within four years they reverted to the Crown by exchange, and
in 1607 were sold by James I., and eventually bought by Robert Cawdron,
whose family were for many years lay rectors. Robert probably found the
chancel in a bad state, and rather than go to the expense of restoring
it, pulled it down and built up the chancel arch, and so it remains. But
the great interest of the building lies at the west end. Here the tower
arch is a round one, but the tower into which the Normans inserted it
is Saxon, probably dating from about 950. It is built of small stones,
and the line of the roof gable is still traceable against it outside.
It has also a curious and complete staircase of the tenth century in a
remarkably perfect condition, though the steps are much worn. The outer
walls of this are built of the same small thin stones as are used in the
tower, in the upper stage of which are deeply splayed windows with a
baluster division of the usual Saxon type.
The nave pillars are Early English and slender for their height, for they
are unusually tall, recalling the lofty pillars in some of the churches
in Rome. The arches are pointed. Among the monuments are those of Robert
Cawdron, and his three wives, 1605, and of another Robert, 1652, father
of twenty children, while a large slab with the indent of a brass to some
priest has been appropriated to commemorate a third of the same name.
The Cawdron arms are on a seventeenth century chalice. The old registers,
which are now well cared for, are on paper, and have suffered sadly from
damp and rough handling. The first volume begins in 1568, the second
in 1658, and the list of vicars is complete from 1561. To antiquarians
I consider that this is one of the most interesting of Lincolnshire
churches. Two miles west is _Burton Pedwardine_, with fine Pedwardine and
Horsman tombs, and a pretty little square grille for exhibiting relics.
The central tower fell in 1862.
[Sidenote: HELPRINGHAM]
The road which runs south from Heckington to Billingborough and so on
by Rippingale to Bourne, passes by Hale Magna to _Helpringham_. Here is
another very fine church, with a lofty crocketed spire, starting from
four bold pinnacles with flying buttresses. The tower is engaged in the
aisles, as at Ewerby and Sleaford, and as at Ewerby it opens into nave
and aisles by three grand arches. The great height of the tower arch into
the nave here and at Boston and Sleaford was in order to let in light
to the church from the great west window. The main body of the building
is Decorated and has fine windows; the chancel with triplet window is
Early English. The font, Early English transition, the rood screen is of
good Perpendicular design, and the effect of the whole building is very
satisfying, especially from the exterior. It is curious that the lord
of the manors of Helpringham and Scredington, who since the sixteenth
century has been the Lord Willoughby De Broke, was in the fourteenth
century the Lord Willoughby D’Eresby.
[Illustration: _Helpringham._]
[Sidenote: SWATON]
South of Helpringham, and situated half-way between that and Horbling,
and just to the north of the Sleaford-and-Boston road is _Swaton_ with
a beautiful cruciform church in the earliest Decorated style; indeed,
looking at the lancet windows in the chancel, one might fairly call it
transitional Early English. The simple two-light geometrical window at
the east end with the mullions delicately enriched outside and in, form
a marked contrast to the rich but heavy Decorated work of the four-light
west window. At the east end the window is subordinated to the whole
design. At the west end the windows are the predominant feature of the
building, and nowhere can this period of architecture be better studied.
The roof spans both nave and aisles, as at Great Cotes, near Grimsby, so
though the nave is big and high it has no clerestory. The tower arches
are very low. The font is a very good one of the period, with diaper work
and ball-flower.
We have dwelt at some length on Sleaford and its immediate neighbourhood,
and not without cause, for there are few places in England or elsewhere
in which so many quite first-rate churches are gathered within less than
a six-mile square. They are all near the road from Sleaford to Boston, on
which, after leaving Heckington, nothing noticeable is met with for seven
miles, till Swineshead is reached, and nothing after that till Boston.
The north-eastern road from Sleaford to Horncastle passes over a flat and
dull country to Billinghay and Tattershall, and thence by the interesting
little churches of Haltham and Roughton (pronounced Rooton) to
Horncastle. The road near _Billinghay_ runs by the side of the Old Carr
Dyke, which is a picturesque feature in a very Dutch-looking landscape.
[Sidenote: KYME TOWER AND PRIORY]
[Sidenote: SOUTH KYME]
This road crosses the Dyke near _North Kyme_, where there is a small
Roman camp. The Normans have left their mark in the name of “Vacherie
House” and Bœuferie Bridge, close to which is “Decoy House,” and two
miles to the south is the isolated village of _South Kyme_. Here is the
keep of a thirteenth century castle, which is nearly eighty feet high,
a square tower with small loophole windows. The lower room vaulted and
showing the arms of the Umfraville family, to whom the property passed
in the fifteenth century from the Kymes by marriage, and soon afterwards
to the Talboys family, and, in 1530, to Sir Edward Dymoke of Scrivelsby,
whose descendants resided there till 1700. The castle was pulled down
about 1725, after which the Duke of Newcastle bought the estate and
sold it twenty years later to Mr. Abraham Hume. The existing tower
communicated from the first floor with the rest of the castle. The upper
floors are now gone.
Close by was a priory for Austin canons, founded by Philip de Kyme in
the reign of Henry II., but all that now remains of it is in the south
aisle of the church, which, once a splendid cruciform building, has been
cut down to one aisle and a fine porch; over this is represented the
Coronation of the Virgin. A bit of very early carved stonework has been
let into the wall, and a brass inscription from the tomb of Lord Talboys
1530.
[Illustration: _South Kyme._]
The western road from Sleaford has no interesting features, till at about
the fifth milestone it comes to _Ancaster_, the old Roman ‘Causennæ’;
here it crosses the Ermine Street, which is a fine wide road, but fallen
in many parts into disuse. The Ancaster stone quarries lie two miles to
the south of the village in Wilsford heath on high ground; the Romans
preferred a high ridge for their great “Streets,” but at Ancaster the
Ermine Street descends 100 feet, and from thence, after crossing it, our
route takes us by a very pretty and wooded route to _Honington_, on the
Great North Road.
[Illustration: _South Kyme Church._]
We will now go back to Sleaford and trace out the course of its other
western road to Newark, leaving the north or Lincoln Road to be described
from Lincoln.
[Sidenote: HOUR-GLASS STANDS]
This road starts in a northerly direction, but splits off at _Holdingham_
before reaching _Leasingham_, of which Bishop Trollope of Nottingham, who
did so much for archæology in our county, was rector for fifty years.
The church has a fine transition tower with curiously constructed
belfry windows and a broach spire. Two finely carved angels adorn the
porch, and the font, of which the bowl seems to have been copied from an
earlier one, though only the stem and base remain, exhibits very varied
subjects, among them The Resurrection, Last Judgment, The Temptation,
The Entry into Jerusalem, Herodias and Salome, and the Marriage of the
Virgin. Fixed to one of the pillars is the old hourglass stand, of which
other specimens, but usually fixed to the pulpit, are at Bracebridge near
Lincoln, Sapperton near Folkingham, Hameringham near Horncastle, and
Belton in the Isle of Axholme.
But the Newark road holds westwards, and, leaving the tower of Cranwell,
with its interesting “Long and Short” work, to the right, climbs to
the high ground and crosses the Ermine Street by Caythorpe Heath to
_Leadenham_, eight miles. Here it drops from “the Cliff” to the great
plain, drained by the Wytham and Brant rivers, and at _Beckingham_ on the
Witham reaches the county boundary. The Witham only acts as the boundary
for two miles and then turns to the right and makes for Lincoln. Half way
between this and the lofty spire of Leadenham the road passes between
_Stragglethorpe_ and _Brant-Broughton_ (pronounced Bruton), which is
described later.
CHAPTER IX
LINCOLN, THE CATHEDRAL AND MINSTER-YARD
The city of Lincoln was a place of some repute when Julius Cæsar landed
B.C. 55. The Witham was then called the Lindis, and the province
Lindisse. The Britons called the town Lindcoit, so the name the Romans
gave it, about A.D. 100, “Lindum Colonia,” was partly Roman and partly
British. The Roman walled town was on the top of the hill about a quarter
of a mile square, with a gate in the middle of each wall. Of their four
roads, the street which passed out north and south was the Via Herminia
or Ermine Street. The east road went to “Banovallum”—Horncastle (or the
Bain)—and “Vannona”—Wainfleet—and the west to “Segelocum”—Littleborough.
The Roman milestone marking XIV miles to Segelocum is now in the
cathedral cloisters.
[Sidenote: ROMAN ARCH]
This walled space included the sites of both cathedral and castle, and
was thickly covered with houses in Danish and Saxon times. We hear of
166 being cleared away by the Conqueror to make his castle. The Romans
themselves extended their wall southward as far as the stone-bow in order
to accommodate their growing colony. Their northern gate yet exists. It
is known as “Newport Gate,” and is of surpassing interest, as, with the
exception of one at Colchester, there is not another Roman gateway in the
kingdom. Only last October the foundations of an extremely fine gateway
were uncovered at _Colchester_, the Roman “Camelodunum”; apparently
indicating the fact that there were two chariot gates as well as two side
entrances for foot passengers. The Newport Gate is sixteen feet wide, and
twenty-two feet high, with a rude round arch of large stones without a
key, the masonry on either side having stones some of which are six feet
long. On each side of the main gate was a doorway seven feet wide for
foot passengers. A fifth Roman road is the “Foss Way,” which came from
Newark and joined the Ermine Street at the bottom of Canwick Hill, a mile
south of Lincoln.
[Illustration: _Newport Arch, Lincoln._]
From the junction of these two roads a raised causeway, following the
line of the present High Street, ran over the marshy ground to the gate
of the walled town. This causeway, bearing in places the tracks of Roman
wheels, is several feet below the present level, and even on the top of
the hill several feet of debris have accumulated over the Roman pavements
which were found in the last century where the castle now stands.
Doubtless, as years went on, many villas would be planted outside the
walls of the Roman city, but we know little of the history of the colony,
except that it was always a place of considerable importance.
[Sidenote: BISHOP REMIGIUS]
To come to post-Roman times, Bede, who died in 785, tells us that
_Paulinus_, who had been consecrated Bishop of York in 625, and had
baptised King Ædwin and a large number of people at York in the church
which stood on the site afterwards occupied by the Minster, came to
Lincoln, and, after baptising numbers of people in the Trent, as he had
previously done in the Swale near Richmond in Yorkshire, built a stone
church in Lincoln, or caused his convert Blaeca, the Reeve of the city,
to build it, in which he consecrated Honorius Archbishop of Canterbury.
Bede saw the walls of this church which may well have stood where the
present church of St. Paul does. William the Conqueror in 1066 built the
Norman castle on the hill to keep the town, which had spread along the
banks of the Witham, in order. It was about this time that Remigius, a
monk of Fécamp, in Normandy, who had been made by William, Bishop of
Dorchester-on-Thames in 1067, as a reward for his active help with a
ship and a body of armed fighting men, got leave, after much opposition
from the Archbishop of York, to build a cathedral at Lincoln on the hill
near the castle. So, next after the Romans (and perhaps the Britons
were there before them), it is to him that we owe the choice of this
magnificent site for the cathedral. Remigius began his great work in
1075, of which the central portion of the west front, with its plain rude
masonry and its round-headed tall recesses on either side of the middle
door, and its interrupted band of bas-reliefs over the low Norman arches
to right and left of the tall recesses, is still _in situ_. The sixteen
stone bas-reliefs are subjects partly monkish, but mostly Scriptural,
concerning Adam, Noah, Samuel, and Jesus Christ. They are genuine Norman
sculptures, and they are at the same level as Welbourn’s twelve English
kings under the big central window, but these are of the fourteenth
century.
The church of Remigius ended in an apse, of which the foundations are
now under the stalls about the middle of the choir. It probably had two
towers at the west end, and possibly a central tower as well. The church
of St. Mary Magdalene was swept away to clear the site, and a chapel at
the north west end of the new building allotted to the parishioners in
compensation. Like the Taj at Agra it was seventeen years in building,
and its great founder died, May 4, 1092, a few months before its
completion. This was in the reign of Rufus, a reign notable for the
building of the great Westminster Hall.
[Illustration: _Gateway of Lincoln Castle._]
[Sidenote: LINCOLN CASTLE]
[Sidenote: BISHOP ALEXANDER]
The wide joints of the masonry, and the square shape of the stones, and
the rude capitals of the pilasters are distinctive of Remigius’ work.
_Bloet_ succeeded Remigius, and during his thirty years he did much for
the cathedral staff, but not very much to the fabric. His successor,
_Bishop Alexander_, 1123, was a famous builder, and besides the castles
of Sleaford, Newark and Banbury, the first two of which Stephen forced
him to give to the Crown, he built the later Norman part of the west
front, raising its gables and putting in three doors and the interlaced
arcading above the arches of Remigius. He also vaulted the whole nave
with stone, after a disastrous fire in 1141. There had been a previous
fire just before Alexander was consecrated Bishop in 1123, of which
Giraldus Cambrensis, writing about 1200, says that the roof falling on
it “broke the stone with which the body of Remigius was covered into two
equal parts.” This richly carved and thus fractured stone you may see
to-day, where it is placed close to the north-west arch of the nave and
north aisle. Bishop Alexander’s work is richer than that of Remigius,
and the shafts and capitals of his west doors are beautifully carved. In
these, according to Norman custom, hunters are aiming at the birds and
beasts in the foliage. This is best seen in the north-west doorway. King
Stephen came to Lincoln in 1141, the year of the fire, and it was there
that, after a fierce fight which raged round the castle and cathedral, he
was taken prisoner and sent to Bristol, but in the following year terms
were arranged between him and the Empress Maud, and he was crowned at
Christmas in Lincoln cathedral. After that date Bishop Alexander carried
forward his work on the cathedral without intermission till his death in
1047, putting in the central western gable and the two gables over the
arcading, vaulting the whole west front with stone, and adding the little
north and south gables against the towers and the Norman stages of the
towers, of which the northern tower was a little the highest, but looked
less high because the south tower had its angles carried up higher than
the walls of the square.
Bishop Alexander, like St. Hugh, died of a fever, which he caught at
Auxerre in France, where he had been to meet the Pope. Those French towns
seem to have been pretty pestilential at all times. _Bishop Chesney_
succeeded him, and either he or Bishop Bloet began the episcopal palace.
He assisted at the Coronation of Henry II. in Lincoln, and founded St.
Catharine’s Priory. He died in 1166, and, after the lapse of six years,
_Geoffrey Plantagenet_, son of Henry II. by Fair Rosamund, held the See
for nine years, but was never consecrated. In 1182 he resigned, and was
afterwards made Archbishop of York. He gave many gifts to the cathedral,
and notably two “great and sonorous bells,” the putative parents of
“Great Tom.” _Walter de Constantiis_ followed him, but was in the very
next year translated to Rouen, 1184, and again the See was vacant for the
space of two years.
[Sidenote: ST. HUGH]
In 1185 an earthquake did great damage, and in the following year _Hugh
of Avalon_, the famous St. Hugh of Lincoln, was appointed Bishop by Henry
II. He widened the west end by putting a wing to each side of the work
of Remigius, and put a gable over the central arch, and began his great
work of making a new and larger cathedral with double transepts and a
choir 100 feet longer and a nave ten feet wider than that of Remigius,
starting at the east and building the present ritual choir and both the
eastern and western transepts. In this his work was of a totally new
character, with pointed arches, and “is famous as being the earliest
existing work of pure English Gothic.” But Early English work, so says
Murray, was already being done at Wells in 1174, twelve years earlier,
and it was there that the Gothic vaulting and pointed arch was first seen
in England. From the great transept to the angel choir is all his design,
and it bears no trace of Norman French influence in any particular.
The name of Hugh’s architect is Geoffrey de Noiers, his work is more
remarkable for lightness than for strength, and in about fifty years
Hugh’s tower fell, setting thereby a bad example which has been followed
so frequently that Bishop Creighton’s first question on visiting a new
church used generally to be, “When did your tower fall?”
[Sidenote: BISHOP GROSTESTE]
Hugh of Avalon died in London in 1200, and _William de Blois_ (1201) and
_Hugh of Wells_ (1209) went on with the building. The latter particularly
kept to Hugh of Avalon’s plan of intercalating marble shafts with those
of stone. Other characteristics of St. Hugh’s work are the double
arcading in the transept and the little pigeon-hole recesses between
the arcade arches, a trefoil ornament on the pillar belts and on the
buttresses, and the deep-cut base mouldings. He put in the fine Early
English round window in the north transept called the “Dean’s eye,” which
has plate tracery. The five lancet lights, something after the “Five
Sisters” window at York, were a later addition. The end of his work is
easily distinguishable in the east wall of the great transept. He also
built the Galilee porch, which was both a porch and an ecclesiastical
court, and the Chapter house, with its ten pairs of lancet windows, its
arcading and clustered pillars and beautiful central pillar to support
the roof groining. He was succeeded, in 1235, by the famous _Robert
Grosteste_, a really great man and a fine scholar, who had studied both
at Oxford and Paris. He opposed the Pope, who wished to put his nephew
into a canonry, declaring him to be unfit for the post, and stoutly
championed the right of the English Church to be ruled by English and
not Italian prelates. In his time the central tower fell, and he it was
who built up in its place the first stage at least of the magnificent
tower we have now. He also added the richly arcaded upper portion of the
great west front, and its flanking turrets crowned by the figures of the
Swineherd of Stow with his horn, on the north, and Bishop Hugh on the
south. _Henry Lexington_, Dean of Lincoln, succeeded him as Bishop in
1254, and during his short episcopate of four years Henry III. issued a
royal letter for removing the Roman city wall further east to enable the
Dean and Chapter to lengthen the cathedral for the Shrine of St. Hugh
after his canonisation. Then began the building of the ‘Angel Choir,’
which “for the excellence of its sculpture, the richness of its mouldings
and the beauty of its windows, is not surpassed by anything in the
Kingdom” (Sir C. Anderson). Its height was limited by the pitch of the
vaulting of Hugh’s Ritual Choir, just as the height of Grosteste’s tower
arches had been. The Angel Choir was finished by Lexington’s successor
_Richard of Gravesend_, 1258-1279, and inaugurated in the following year
with magnificent ceremony under _Bishop Oliver Sutton_, Edward I. and
Queen Eleanor both being present with their children to see the removal
of St. Hugh’s body from its first resting-place before the altar of the
Chapel of St. John the Baptist in the north-east transept, where it had
been placed in 1200 when King John himself acted as one of the pall
bearers, to its new and beautiful gold shrine in the Angel Choir behind
the high altar.
[Sidenote: JOHN DE WELBOURN]
The whole cost of the consecration ceremony was borne by Thomas Bek, son
of Baron d’Eresby, who was on the same day himself consecrated Bishop of
St. David’s, his brother Antony being Bishop of Durham, and Patriarch
of Jerusalem. Bishop Sutton, in 1295, built the cloisters and began the
charming little “Vicar’s court.” He died in 1300, his successor was
_Bishop John of Dalderby_, the same who had a miracle-working shrine of
pure silver in the south transept, and whom the people chose to call
_St._ John of Dalderby, just as they did in the case of Bishop Grosteste,
though the Pope had refused canonisation in each case. He finished the
great tower, which, with its beautiful arcaded tower stage, its splendid
double lights and canopies above, and its delicate lace-like parapet,
seems to me to be quite the most satisfying piece of architecture that
this or any other county has to show. It is finished with tall pinnacles
of wood covered with lead. The exquisite stone rood-screen and the
beautiful arches in the aisles were put in at the same time, the work on
the screen being, as Sir C. Anderson remarks, very like the work on the
Eleanor’s Cross at Geddington. He died in 1320, and the lovely tracery of
the circular window in the south transept, called “The Bishop’s eye,” was
inserted about 1350 above his tomb.
_John de Welbourn_, the munificent treasurer, who died in 1380, gave the
eleven statues of kings beneath the window at the west end, which begin
with William the Conqueror and end with Edward III., in whose reign they
were set up. Among other benefactions Welbourn gave the beautifully
carved choir stalls, and he also vaulted the towers. These were all, at
one time, finished by leaded spires. Those of the western tower being 100
feet high, and that on the great central or rood tower soaring up to a
height of 525 feet. This was blown down in 1547, and the western spires
were removed in 1807-08, a mob of excited citizens having prevented their
removal in 1727, but eighty years later the matter made no great stir,
and though their removal may by some be regretted, I think it is a matter
of pure congratulation that the splendid central tower, whose pinnacles
attain an altitude of 265 feet, should have remained as it is. The
delicate lace-like parapet was added in 1775. It is not very likely that
anyone should propose to raise those spires again, but dreadful things do
happen; and quite lately one of our most eminent architects prepared a
design for putting a spire on the central tower at Peterborough. Think of
that! and ask yourself, is there any stability in things human?
Apart from its commanding situation, the whole pile is very magnificent,
and, viewed as a whole, outside, it has nothing to touch it, though
the west front is not to compare in beauty with that of Peterborough.
Inside, York is larger and grander, and Ely surpasses both in effect. But
if we take both the situation and the outside view and the inside effect
together, Lincoln stands first and Durham second.
[Sidenote: GREAT TOM]
[Sidenote: THE CENTRAL TOWER]
I was once at an Archæological society’s meeting in Durham when Dean Lake
addressed us from the pulpit, and he began by saying: “We are now met
in what by universal consent is considered the finest church in England
but one; need I say that that one is Lincoln?” The chuckle of delight
which this remark elicited from my neighbour, Precentor Venables, was
a thing I shall never forget. We will now take a look at the building,
and begin first with the outside, and, starting at the west, walk slowly
along the south side of the close. If we begin near the Exchequer Gate
we see the west front with its fine combination of the massive work of
Remigius, the fine Norman doors of Alexander (with the English kings over
the central door), the rich arcading of Grosteste along the top and at
the two sides, and the flanking turrets with spirelets surmounted by the
statues of St. Hugh and the Stow Swineherd. We look up to the gable over
the centre flanked by the two great towers on either side of it. Norman
below, Gothic above, with their very long Perpendicular double lights,
octagonal angle buttresses and lofty pinnacles. The northern tower once
held the big bell “Great Tom,” and the southern (“St. Hugh’s”) has still
its peal of eight. Lincoln had a big bell in Elizabeth’s reign, which
was re-cast in that of James I., and christened “Great Tom of Lincoln,”
1610. This second great bell being cracked in 1828, was re-cast in 1855,
and the Dean and chapter of the time actually took down the beautiful
peal of six, called the “Lady Bells,” which had been hung in Bishop
Dalderby’s great central tower about 1311 and gave that tower its name of
the “Lady Bell Steeple,” and had them melted down to add to the weight of
“Great Tom,” thus depriving the minster, by this act of vandalism, of its
second ring of bells. The third, or new, “Great Tom,” now hangs alone in
the central tower. It weighs five tons eight hundredweight, and is only
surpassed in size in England by those at St. Paul’s, at Exeter Cathedral,
and Christ Church, Oxford. It is six feet high, six feet ten inches in
diameter, and twenty-one and a half feet round the rim, and the hammer,
which strikes the hours, weighs two hundredweight.
[Illustration: _The Rood Tower and South Transept, Lincoln._]
[Sidenote: THE SOUTH SIDE]
From the west front we should walk along the south side, passing first
the consistory court with its three lancet windows, and high pitched
gable, where is the little figure of “the devil looking over Lincoln.”
This forms a small western transept, and has a corresponding transept
on the north side, containing the ringers’ chapel and that of St. Mary
Magdalene.
[Sidenote: THE EAST END]
Going on we get a view of the clerestory windows in the nave, above which
is the parapet relieved by canopied niches, once filled with figures.
The flying nave buttresses now come into view, and next we reach, at
the south-western corner of the great transept, the beautifully built
and highly ornamented “Galilee Porch,” which was meant for the bishop’s
entrance from his palace into the cathedral. The room over it is now the
muniment room. From this point we get a striking view of the western
towers with the southern turret of the west front. The buttresses of the
transept run up to the top of the clerestory, and end in tall pinnacles
with statue-niches and crockets. The transept gable has a delicately
pierced parapet and lofty pinnacles. Above is a five-light Decorated
window, and below this a broad stone frieze, and then the large round
window, “The Bishop’s Eye,” with its unspeakably lovely tracery, a marvel
of lace-work in stone; below this comes a row of pointed arcading. The
eastern transept is the next feature, with another fine high-pitched
gable. Here the work of St. Hugh ends. The apsidal chapels of St. Paul
and St. Peter are at the east side of this transept, and then, along
the south side of the Angel Choir, the chapels of Bishops Longland and
Russell, with the splendid south-east porch between them. This, from
its position, is unique in English churches, and was probably designed
for the state entrance of the bishop after the presbytery had been
added, in place of the Galilee porch entrance. It has a deeply recessed
arch, with four canopied niches holding fine figures. The doorway has
two trefoil headed arches, divided by a central shaft with a canopied
niche above it, once containing the figures of the Virgin and Child.
Above this, and in the tympanum, is represented the Last Judgment. The
buttresses of the Angel Choir are beautifully and harmoniously enriched
with canopy and crocket, and the upper windows are perfect in design and
execution. Apart from its splendid position, it is this exquisite finish
to the beautifully designed building that makes Lincoln Cathedral so
“facile princeps” among English cathedrals. At the south-east buttress
are finely conceived figures of Edward I. trampling on a Saracen, and
his Queen Eleanor; and another figure possibly represents his second
queen, Margaret. Coming round to the east we look with delighted eyes
on what has been called “the finest example of Geometrical Decorated
Architecture to be found in the kingdom.” The window is not so fine as
that at Carlisle, and no east end competes with that at York, but York
is Perpendicular, and Lincoln is Geometrical. Here we have not only a
grand window, fifty-seven feet high, but another great five-light window
above it, and over that a beautiful figure of the Virgin and Child, and
all finished by a much enriched gable surmounted by a cross. The two
windows, one above the other, seem not to be quite harmonious, in fact,
one does not want the upper window, nor perhaps the windows in the aisle
gables, but the buttresses and their finials are so extraordinarily good
that they make the east end an extremely beautiful whole. Close to the
north-east angle is a little stone well cover, and the chapter-house,
with its off-standing buttress-piers and conical roof, comes into view
at the north. The north side is like the south, but has near it the
cloisters, which are reached by a short passage from the north-east
transept. From the north-east corner of these cloisters you get an
extremely good view of the cathedral and all its three towers. Steps
from this corner lead up to the cathedral library. The north side of
the cloisters of Bishop Oliver Sutton, unable to bear the thrust of the
timber-vaulted ceiling, fell, and was replaced in 1674 by the present
inharmonious pillars and ugly arches designed by Sir Christopher Wren.
We must now look inside the cathedral, and if we enter the north-east
transept from the cloisters we shall pass over a large stone inscribed
“Elizabeth Penrose, 1837.” This is the resting-place of “Mrs. Markham,”
once _the_ authority on English history in every schoolroom, and
deservedly so. She took her _nom de plume_ from the little village of
East Markham, Notts., in which she lived for many years.
[Sidenote: THE INTERIOR]
Passing through the north-east transept, with its stained glass windows
by Canon Sutton, and its curious “Dean’s Chapel,” once the minster
dispensary, and turning eastwards, we enter the north aisle of the Angel
Choir and find the chapel of Bishop Fleming, the founder of Lincoln
College, Oxford. In this the effigy of the bishop is on the south side,
and there is a window to the memory of Sir Charles Anderson, of Lea, and
a reredos with a painting of the Annunciation, lately put up in memory
of Arthur Roland Maddison, minor canon and librarian, who died April
24, 1912, and is buried in his parish churchyard at Burton, by Lincoln.
He is a great loss, for he was a charming personality, and, having been
for many years a painstaking student of heraldry, he was always an
accurate writer on matters of genealogy, and on the relationships and
wills of the leading Lincolnshire families, subjects of which he had a
special and unique knowledge. Bishop Fleming was not the only Bishop
of Lincoln who founded a college at Oxford, as William Smith, founder
of Brasenose, Cardinal Wolsey, founder of Christchurch, and William of
Wykeham, founder of New College, were all once bishops here. Opposite to
the Fleming chapel is the Russell chapel, just east of the south porch
and between these lies the Retro Choir, which contained once the rich
shrine of St. Hugh, its site now marked, next to Bishop Fuller’s tomb, by
a black marble memorial. Here is the beautiful monument to the reverend
Bishop Christopher Wordsworth. This is a very perfect piece of work,
with a rich, but not heavy, canopy, designed by Bodley and executed by
M. Guillemin, who carved the figures in the reredos of St. Paul’s. This
rises over a recumbent figure of the bishop in robes and mitre. The face
is undoubtedly an excellent likeness.
[Sidenote: THE CHOIR]
The view from here of the perfect Geometrical Gothic east window, with
its eight lights, is very striking; beneath it are the three chapels
of St. Catherine, St. Mary, and St. Nicholas, and on either side of it
are two monuments, those on the south side to Wymbish, prior of Nocton,
and Sir Nicolas de Cantelupe; and on the north side to Bishop Henry
Burghersh, Chancellor of Edward III., 1340, and his father, Robert. On
each tomb are canopied niches, each holding two figures, among which are
Edward III. and his four sons—the Black Prince, Lionel Duke of Clarence,
John of Gaunt, and Edmund of Langley. Adjoining the chapel of St.
Catherine, which was founded by the Burghersh family, is a fine effigy
of Bartholomew Lord Burghersh, who fought at Crécy, in full armour with
his head resting on a helmet. A fine monument of Queen Eleanor once stood
beneath the great window where her heart was buried before the great
procession to London began. The effigy was of copper gilt, but, having
been destroyed, it has been recently replaced by a generous Lincoln
citizen from drawings which were in existence and from a comparison with
her monument in Westminster Abbey. A stone at the west of St. Catherine’s
chapel shows a deep indentation worn by the scrape of the foot of each
person who bowed at the shrine. A similar one is to be seen at St.
Cuthbert’s shrine, Durham.
In the east windows of both the choir aisles is some good Early English
glass.
[Sidenote: THE PRESBYTERY]
We will now turn westwards, past the south porch, and come to the
south-east transept; here the line of the old Roman wall and ditch runs
right through the cathedral, the apsidal chapels of the eastern transepts
and the whole of the presbytery, as well as the chapter-house, lying
all outside it. Two apsidal chapels in this transept are dedicated to
St. Peter and St. Paul. It was in St. Peter’s that sub-dean Bramfield
was murdered by a sub-deacon, September 25, 1205, who paid the penalty
immediately at the hands of the sub-dean’s servants. The exquisite white
marble tomb and recumbent figure of John Kaye, bishop 1827 to 1853, by
Westmacott, is in this chapel. Opposite to these apsidal chapels are
the canons’ and choristers’ vestries; under the former is a crypt; the
latter has the monks’ lavatory, and a fireplace for the baking of the
sacramental wafers by the sacristan. Passing along the south choir-aisle
we reach the shrine of little St. Hugh, and here the work all around
us, in choir, aisles, and transepts, is that of the great St. Hugh. The
whole of the centre of the cathedral, with its double transept and the
choir between them, being his; and we must notice in two of the transept
chapels his peculiar work in the double capitals above slender pillars of
alternate stone and marble, and projecting figures of saints and angels
low down in each spandrel. We now enter the choir, and pause to admire
the magnificent work and all its beauty. On either side are the sixty-two
beautiful and richly carved canopied stalls. They are only excelled,
perhaps, by those at Winchester. The carving of the _Miserere_ seats
is much like that at Boston, where humorous scenes are introduced. The
fox in a monk’s cowl, the goose, and the monkey being the chief animals
represented. Here, on a poppy-head in the precentor’s seat, a baboon is
seen stealing the butter churned by two monkeys; he is caught and hanged,
and on the _Miserere_ he is being carried forth for burial. A finely
carved oak pulpit, designed by Gilbert Scott, is at the north-east end of
the stalls. The brass eagle is a seventeenth century copy of an earlier
one. We notice overhead the stone vaulting, springing from Purbeck
shafts; notice, too, the beauty of the mouldings and carved capitals, and
the groups of arches forming the triforium with clerestory window above,
which, however, only show between the ribs of the vaulting; and, then,
the length of it! For now, by taking in two from the Angel Choir, the
chancel has seven bays. It is a very striking view as you look eastwards,
but it has the defect of a rather plain, low vaulting, and west of it the
nave, which is a generation later, is more splendidly arranged, while
east of it the Angel Choir, which is nearly half a century later than the
nave, admittedly surpasses all the rest in delicacy and beauty. The choir
vaulting being low, caused both nave and presbytery to be lower than they
would otherwise have been, so that it has been said that when the tower
fell it was a pity the chancel did not fall with it, all would then have
been built with loftier roofs and with more perfect symmetry.
If we pass down the Ritual Choir eastwards, we enter the presbytery, and
at once see the origin of the name “Angel Choir” in the thirty figures of
angels in the spandrels. It was built to accommodate the enormous number
of pilgrims who flocked to St. Hugh’s shrine, and is, according to G. A.
Freeman, “one of the loveliest of human works; the proportion of the side
elevation and the beauty of the details being simply perfect,” and it
would seem to be uncontested that all throughout, whether in its piers,
its triforium, its aisles, or its carved detail, it shows a delicacy and
finish never surpassed in the whole history of Gothic architecture. One
of its large clerestory windows was filled, in 1900, with excellent glass
by H. Holiday, to mark the seven-hundredth anniversary of St. Hugh’s
death.
The angels sculptured in stone, and mostly carrying scrolls, fill the
triforium spandrels in groups of three, five groups on either side. They
are probably not all by the master’s hand. The Virgin and Child in the
south-west bay and the angel with drawn sword in the north-west seem
finer than the rest. The stone inscribed in Lombardic letters “Cantate
Hic,” marks the place for chanting the Litany; this is chanted by two
lay clerks. There are nine of these, one being vestry clerk; also four
choristers in black gowns with white facings (a reminiscence of the
earliest dress for the Lincoln choir, and a unique costume in England),
eight Burghersh choristers or “Chanters” (lineal descendants of the
Burghersh chantry of St. Catherine with its separate band of choristers),
and some supernumerary boys and men. There are four canons residentiary,
viz., the sub-dean, chancellor, precentor, and Archdeacon of Lincoln, and
fifty-three prebendaries.
In the first bay of the north side of the Angel Choir is a remarkable
monument, part of which once served for an Easter sepulchre. This, like
those of Navenby and Heckington of the same date, is richly carved with
oak and vine and fig-tree foliage, and shows the Roman soldiers sleeping.
Opposite, on the south side, are the tombs of Katharine Swynford of
Ketilthorpe, Duchess of Lancaster, Chaucer’s sister-in-law, whose
marriage to John of Gaunt took place in the minster in 1396. Like so many
of the monuments, these are sadly mutilated, and are not now quite in
their original position.
It is on one of the pillars of the east bay, the second from the east
end, that the curious grotesque, familiar to all as the “Lincoln Imp,” is
perched.
[Sidenote: THE NAVE]
If we now turn westwards we shall come to the fine stone organ screen,
and pass through to the tower, whose predecessor fell through faultiness
of construction, and was rebuilt by Grosteste as far as the nave roof,
and we shall look down the nave, which is forty-two feet wide, each
aisle being another twenty feet in width. The planning and execution
of the nave we owe to the two Bishops Hugh. Its great length (524 feet
with the choir and presbytery) makes the whole building, when viewed
from the west, look lower than it is, for it is really eighty-two feet
high. Looking west this is not felt so much, and there is a feeling of
great dignity which the best Early English work always gives. The piers
may seem lacking in massive strength, but they vary in pattern, those to
the east being the most elaborate, and so gain in interest. One curious
thing about the nave, though not discernible to the uninitiated, is that
the axis, which is continuous from the east end for the first five of
the seven bays, here diverges somewhat to the north, and so runs into
the centre of the Norman west front. The two western bays are five and
a quarter feet less in span than the others. Probably the architect, as
he brought the nave down westwards with that light-hearted disregard
of a previous style of architecture which characterised the medieval
builder and his predecessors of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
intended to sweep away all the old Norman work at the west end and carry
the line straight on with equal-sized arches, but funds failed and he had
to join up the new with the old as best he could; and we have cause to be
thankful for this, since it has preserved for us the original and most
interesting work of Remigius.
[Sidenote: THE TRANSEPTS]
Before we leave our place beneath the tower, we must look at the two
great transepts. These have piers, triforium and clerestory similar to
those in the choir, and each has three chapels along the eastern wall;
these, from north to south, are dedicated to St. Nicholas, St. Denis,
St. Thomas; and in the south transept to St. Edward, St. John and St.
Giles. Of these, St. Edward’s is called the chanters’ chapel, and it
has four little figures of singers carved in stone, two on each side of
the door. This was fitted up for use and opened in August, 1913, for
a choristers’ chapel, the tombstone of Precentor Smith, 1717, being
introduced for an altar. Everybody is attracted by the rose windows. That
to the north has beneath it five lancet windows, something like those at
York, filled with white silvery glass, but the rose above has still its
original Early English stained glass, and is a notable example of the
work of the period. A central quatrefoil has four trefoils outside it and
sixteen circles round, all filled with tall bold figures and strongly
coloured. It is best seen from the triforium. Below is the dean’s door,
with a lancet window on either side, and over it a clock with a canopy,
given in 1324 by Thomas of Louth. This canopy was carried off by the
robber archdeacon, Dr. Bailey, and used as a pulpit-top in his church at
Messingham, but was restored by the aid of Bishop Trollope.
The south transept, where Bishop John of Dalderby was buried, contains
what no one sees without a feeling of delight, and wonder that such
lovely work could ever have been executed in stone,—the great rose window
with its twin ovals and its leaf-like reticulations, which attract the
eye more than the medley of good old glass with which it is filled,
but which gives it a beautiful richness of effect. Below this are four
lancets with similar glass.
[Sidenote: THE FONT]
The aisles of the nave are vaulted, the groins springing from the nave
pillars on the inner, and from groups of five shafts on the outer side.
Behind these runs a beautiful wall arcade on detached shafts, continuous
in the north aisle, but only repeated in portions of the south aisle,
with bosses of foliage at the spring of the arches. In the aisle at the
second bay from the west is the grand old Norman font, resembling that
at Winchester. There is another at _Thornton Curtis_ in the north-east
of the county. Neither of the Lincolnshire specimens are so elaborately
carved as that at Winchester, which is filled with scenes from the life
of St. Nicholas, but all are of the same massive type, with dragons,
etc., carved on the sides of a great block of black basalt resting on a
round base of the same, with four detached corner pillars leading down
to a square black base. These early basalt fonts, of which Hampshire
has four, Lincolnshire two, the other being at Ipswich, Dean Kitchin
conclusively proved to have all come from Tournai, in Belgium, and to
date from the middle of the twelfth century, a time coinciding with the
episcopacy of Bishops Alexander and De Chesney at Lincoln, and Henry de
Blois at Winchester. The one at St. Mary Bourne is the biggest, and has
only clusters of grapes on it and doves. The other two are at East Meon
and at St. Michael’s, Southampton, and have monsters carved on them like
the Lincolnshire specimens.
Of brasses, in which the cathedral before the Reformation was specially
rich, having two hundred, only one now remains, that of Bishop Russell,
1494, which is now in the cathedral library; but in a record made in
1641 by Sir W. Dugdale and Robert Sanderson, afterwards Bishop, is the
following most charming little inscription to John Marshall, Canon of the
cathedral, 1446, beneath the figure of a rose:—
“Ut rosa pallescit ubi solem sentit abesse
Sic homo vanescit; nunc est, nunc desinit esse.”
which may be Englished
“As the rose loses colour not kissed by the sun,
So man fades and passes; now here, and now gone.”
The ascent of the towers gives magnificent views; from the central tower
one may see “Boston Stump” on one hand, and on the other Newark spire.
The big bell, too, has its attractions, but the greatest curiosity is the
elastic stone beam, a very flat arch connecting the two western towers,
made of twenty-three stones with coarse mortar joints, which only rises
sixteen inches, and vibrates when jumped on. Its purpose is not clear,
possibly to gauge the settlement of the towers. The north end now is
thirteen inches lower than the south. A gallery in the thickness of the
wall between the great west window and the Cinquefoil above it, allows
a wonderful view of the whole length of the cathedral. It is called Sir
Joseph Banks’ view.
[Sidenote: THE BISHOP’S PALACE]
[Sidenote: THE CHANCERY]
Within the Close, as we passed along looking at the cathedral, we had
our backs to the canons’ houses. First comes the precentory and the
sub-deanery near the Exchequer Gate, next the Cantilupe Chantry, with a
figure of the Saviour in a niche in the gable end, and a curious square
oriel window, and then the entrance to the Bishop’s palace opposite the
Galilee porch. The old palace, begun about 1150 or possibly earlier,
was a splendid building; the ruins of it are in the palace grounds.
Through a gateway or vaulted porch, where is now the secretary’s office,
you descend to the site of the magnificent hall, eighty-eight feet by
fifty-eight, built by St. Hugh, for, like Vicars Court, with its steep
flight of steps and its charming old houses, it is built on the slope of
the hill. Succeeding bishops added to the pile in which Henry VI. and
Henry VIII. were royally lodged and entertained, and the charges which
cost Queen Katharine Howard her life took their origin from her meetings
here and afterwards at Gainsborough with her relative Thomas Culpepper.
The palace was despoiled in the days of the Commonwealth, and little but
ruins now remain, but a part of it has been restored and utilised as a
chapel by the late Bishop King, perhaps the most universally beloved of
Lincoln’s many bishops. Buckden and Nettleham and Riseholme have supplied
a residence for successive bishops, and now the bishop is again lodged
close to his cathedral. But, in the grandiloquent language of a work
entitled ‘The Antiquarian and Topographical Cabinet, containing a series
of elegant views of the most interesting objects of curiosity in Great
Britain, 1809,’ “The place where once the costly banquet stood arrayed
in all the ostentatious luxury of Ecclesiastic greatness has now its
mouldering walls covered with trees.” The same authority, speaking of
Thornton Abbey, has this precious reflection, which is too good to lose:
“Here in sweet retirement the mind may indulge in meditating upon the
instability of sublunary greatness, and contemplate, with secret emotion,
the wrecks of ostentatious grandeur.” The Chancery, built by Antony Bek,
1316, faces the east end of the minster yard; it is distinguished outside
by an entrance arch and an oriel window. Inside, there are some very
interesting old doorways, and a charming little chapel, with a wooden
screen of c. 1490, the time of Bishop Russell, and two embattled towers
on the old minster yard wall in the garden, of the early fourteenth
century. The deanery is a modern building on the north side of the
minster.
[Illustration: _Pottergate, Lincoln._]
It was in the chapter house, probably, that Edward I. held his great
Parliament in 1301, which secured the Confirmation of Magna Charta.
Edward II. and Edward III. also each held a parliament here, and since
their time certainly seven kings of England have visited Lincoln.
[Sidenote: MINSTER OR CATHEDRAL?]
The cathedral precincts of Lincoln are called the “Minster Yard,” and the
church is called the Minster, though Lincoln was a cathedral from the
first; the term Minster being only properly applied to the church of a
monastery, such as York, Canterbury, Peterborough, Ripon, and Southwell;
of these, Canterbury is not often called a Minster, but York is always.
Lincoln was never attached to a monastery.
CHAPTER X
PAULINUS AND HUGH OF LINCOLN
Pope Gregory and St. Augustine—Calumnies against the Jews—The
Three “St. Hugh’s.”
Perhaps here it may be well to say something of the life of Paulinus, the
first Christian missionary in Lincoln. And in doing so I must acknowledge
the debt I owe to Sir Henry Howorth’s most interesting book, “The Birth
of the English Church.”
[Sidenote: PAULINUS BISHOP OF YORK]
When Pope Gregory, having been struck by the sight of some fair-haired
Anglian boys being sold as slaves in the Roman Forum, had determined to
send a Mission to preach the Gospel in their land, he chose the prior of
his own monastery of St. Andrew’s, which was on the site where now stands
the church of San Gregorio on the Cælian Hill in Rome. The name of the
prior was Augustine. With his companion monks, he set out, apparently
in the spring of 596. They went from Ostia by sea to Gaul, but lingered
in that country for above a year, and landed on the Isle of Thanet in
April 597. He was well received by Æthelbert King of Kent and his wife
Bertha, daughter of Charibert King of Paris. She was a Christian, and had
brought her Christian chaplain with her. This made Augustine’s mission
comparatively easy. Quarters were given him in Canterbury, and he began
to build a monastery and was allowed to make use of the little church
dedicated to St. Martin, where the Queen’s chaplain had officiated.
Having then sent to the Pope for more missionaries, he received
instructions from Gregory to establish a Metropolitan See in London
and other Bishoprics in York and elsewhere. At the same time several
recruits were sent to him among whom Bede particularises Mellitus,
Justus, Paulinus, and Rufinianus. The first three became respectively
Bishops of London, Rochester, and York, and Rufinianus Abbot of St.
Augustine’s monastery at Canterbury. By the Pope’s command all these
bishops were to be subject to Augustine during his life, and he was to
be the Archbishop of Canterbury. Augustine died in the same year as St.
Gregory, A.D. 604. A few years later, about 616, Mellitus and Justus
both withdrew for a year to Gaul, but were recalled by King Eadbald,
Justus to Rochester and Mellitus to become Archbishop of Canterbury after
Laurence, a priest whom Augustine himself had selected to succeed him in
604, and who died in 619. To this post Justus succeeded in 624, and, as
Archbishop, consecrated Romanus to the See of Rochester. Shortly after
this Paulinus was consecrated Bishop of York by Justus in 625, and he
accompanied Æthelbert’s daughter Æthelberga to the Court of Ædwin King
of Deira, who ruled from the Forth to the Thames and who had sought her
hand, promising that she should be free to worship as she liked and that
if on inquiry he found her religion better than his own he would also
become a Christian. He discussed the matter with Paulinus, and after many
months’ delay summoned a Witenagemote and asked each counsellor what he
thought of the new teaching, which at present had no hold except in Kent.
Coifi, the Chief Priest of the old religion, was the first to speak;
he said he had not got any good from his own religion though none had
served the gods more faithfully—so if the new doctrine held out better
hopes he would advise the king to adopt it without further delay. Coifi
was followed by another of the king’s Ealdormen. His speech was a very
remarkable one, and is accurately rendered by the poet Wordsworth in his
Sonnet called _Persuasion_, which runs thus:—
“Man’s life is like a sparrow, mighty King!
That—while at banquet with your Chiefs you sit
Housed near a blazing fire—is seen to flit
Safe from the wintry tempest. Fluttering,
Here did it enter; there, on hasty wing,
Flies out, and passes on from cold to cold;
But whence it came we know not, nor behold
Whither it goes. Even such that transient thing,
The human Soul; not utterly unknown
While in the Body lodged, her warm abode;
But from what world she came, what use or weal
On her departure waits, no tongue hath shown;
This mystery if the Stranger can reveal,
His be a welcome cordially bestowed!”
[Sidenote: THE FIRST ENGLISH BISHOP]
After this the king gave Paulinus permission to preach the Gospel
openly, and he himself renounced idolatry, and in April 627, with a
large number of his people, he was baptized at York in the little church
which was the first to be built on the site of York Minster. After this
Paulinus baptized in the river Swale, and later he came to the province
of “Lindissi,” and spent some time in Lincoln, converting Blaecca the
“Reeve” of the city, and baptizing in the presence of the king a great
number of people in the Trent either at Littleborough or Torksey.
He appears to have spent some time in Lincoln, and to have come back to
it after 633, for early in 635 he consecrated Honorius the successor to
Justus, and fifth Archbishop of Canterbury. The ceremony taking place
probably in the little “church of stone” that he had built, possibly
where St. Paul’s Church now stands. It was probably thatched with reeds,
for eighty years later Bede speaks of it as being unroofed. If St. Paul’s
church really was originally the church of Paulinus, it helps to remove
the stigma that though Paulinus preached and baptised with effect, unlike
Wilfrith, he founded nothing.
In 633 King Ædwin and both his sons were killed after a great battle
against Penda King of Mercia and Coedwalla King of the Britons, at
Haethfelth near Doncaster, and Christianity in Northumbria came to an
abrupt end; though, when Paulinus left, to escort the widowed queen back
to Kent, his faithful deacon James remained behind him, whose memorial we
probably have in the inscribed cross shaft with its unusual interlaced
pattern at Hawkswell near Catterick. To York Paulinus never returned;
but on the death of Romanus, who had been sent by Archbishop Justus on a
mission to the Pope but was drowned in the Bay of Genoa, he took charge
of the See of Rochester, and there he remained till his death on October
10, 644, after he had been Bishop at York for eight and at Rochester
for eleven years. Archbishop Honorius, who was consecrated just a year
before the death of a Pope of the same name, ordained Ithamar to succeed
Paulinus. He was a native of Kent and the first Englishman to be made
a bishop. After the death of Paulinus in 644, more than four centuries
passed before Remigius began to build the cathedral in 1075, which was
altered and amplified so remarkably about 100 years later by Hugh of
Lincoln.
HUGH OF LINCOLN
[Sidenote: BISHOP HUGH OF LINCOLN]
[Sidenote: CANONIZED]
“Hugh of Lincoln” is a title which, like Cerberus in Sheridan’s play,
indicates “three gentlemen at once,” and it will perhaps prevent
confusion if I briefly distinguish the three.
The first and greatest is the Burgundian, usually called from his
birthplace on the frontier of Savoy “Hugh of Avalon.” He went to a good
school in Grenoble, and, as a youth, joined the monastery of the Grande
Chartreuse, where he rose to be procurator or bursar. In 1175, at the
request of Henry II. who had, with difficulty, obtained the consent of
the Archbishop of Grenoble, he came to England to become the first prior
of the king’s new monastery at Witham in Somerset, the first Carthusian
house in England. In 1186, much against his will, he was, by the king’s
decree, elected Bishop of Lincoln, and took up his residence at Stow,
where he at once set to work to master the English tongue. His rule of
life was ascetic, and he made a practice of going every year in harvest
time to live as a simple monk at Witham. He was a strong man, with high
ideals, upright, unselfish and charitable, no believer in the miracles
of the day, and so free from prejudice that he always protected the
hated Jews, who wept sincere tears at his funeral. He was active in his
huge diocese, and was a maker of history, for, besides extending and
beautifying the cathedral of Remigius, he eventually became so powerful
that he joined the Archbishops in excommunicating their Sovereign, and in
1197 he successfully opposed King Richard I. and his “Justiciar,” who was
the great Archbishop _Hubert Walter_. Walter, when Bishop of Salisbury,
had accompanied Richard to the crusade, where he was the king’s chief
agent in negotiating with Saladin. He headed the first party of pilgrims
whom the Turks admitted to the Holy Sepulchre, led back the English host
from Palestine in the king’s absence to Sicily, whence he went to visit
Richard in captivity, and repaired to England to raise the £100,000
demanded for his ransom. He was made by the king’s command Archbishop of
Canterbury, crowned the king a second time in 1194 at Winchester, and as
“Justiciar” had the task of finding means to supply Richard’s ceaseless
demands for money for his wars. Hence it was that he had summoned a
meeting of bishops and barons at Oxford on December 7, 1197, at which he
proposed that they should agree to the king’s latest demand and should
themselves furnish him with three hundred knights to serve for twelve
months against Philip of France, or give him money which would suffice
to obtain them. This was strenuously and successfully opposed by Hugh,
seconded by Herbert Bishop of Salisbury, and this action is spoken of by
Stubbs as a landmark of constitutional history, being “the first clear
case of the refusal of a money grant demanded by the Crown.” Hugh was in
France when Henry II. died, but returned in time for the coronation of
Richard I. He several times attended both Richard and John to Normandy,
and when Richard died he buried him at Fontevrault in 1199, where Henry
II. and his wife, Eleanora of Guienne, and John’s wife, Isabella of
Angoulême, are also buried. He was back in England for John’s coronation
on May 27, but, going again to visit the haunts of his boyhood at
Grenoble, he caught a fever and, after a long illness, died next year
in the London house of the Bishops of Lincoln, at the “Old Temple.” He
was buried in his own cathedral, November 24, 1200, in the north-east
transept, King John, who happened to be then in Lincoln, to receive
the homage of the Scottish king, taking part as bearer in the funeral
procession. Worship of him began at once, and was greatly augmented when
the Pope canonized him in 1220. In 1230, when Richard of Gravesend had
completed the angel choir, St. Hugh’s body was translated to it in the
presence of King Edward I and Queen Eleanor and their children. This was
ten years before Eleanor’s death at Harby, near Lincoln. The only thing
recorded against Bishop Hugh is that he should have, upon Henry’s death,
ordered the taking up of Fair Rosamond’s bones from Godstow Priory.
The story of St. Hugh’s swan is curious but not incredible. Sir Charles
Anderson says: “It seems, from the minute description of the bill, to
have been a wild swan or whooper.” This swan was greatly attached to its
master, and constantly attended him when in residence at Stow Park, where
there was a good deal of water, and many wildfowl. It is said, also, that
on his last visit the bird showed signs of restlessness and distress. Sir
Charles sees no reason to withhold belief from the story, and instances
the case of a gander, within his own knowledge, which attached itself to
a farmer in the county, and used to accompany him daily for a mile and
a half, when he went to look after his cattle in the meadows, waddling
after him with the greatest diligence and satisfaction; and, whenever he
stopped, fondling his legs with neck and bill.
The “Magna Vita S. Hugonis” in the Bodleian, written by Adam, Abbot of
Evesham soon after his death, is the chief source of our information
about him; and a metrical life, also, in Latin, is both in the Bodleian
and in the British Museum.
[Sidenote: BISHOP HUGH OF WELLS]
Nine years after St. Hugh’s death, Hugh the Second, or “Hugh of Wells,”
was appointed bishop. He carried out the plans of his namesake, and
completed the aisles and transepts and added the nave-chapels at the west
end with their circular windows. He added to the episcopal palace begun
by St. Hugh, and built that at _Buckden_—a fine brick building which
later became the sole palace. The Bishops of Lincoln had a visitation
palace at Lyddington, near Rockingham, in which a singularly beautiful
carved wood frieze ran all round the large room. In the “Metrical Life of
St. Hugh” we read that what St. Hugh planned, but left unfinished, Hugh
of Wells completed.
“Perficietur opus primi sub Hugone secundo.”
[Sidenote: LITTLE ST. HUGH]
He died in 1235, and is buried in the north choir aisle. His extremely
harsh treatment of the Jews leads us to the curiously tragic events in
the life of the third Hugh, called the “Little St. Hugh.” He was born in
1246, and only lived nine years. That great man Grosteste, or Grostête,
had succeeded Hugh of Wells, and died after an active episcopate of
eighteen years, in 1254. His successor, Henry Lexington, had procured
leave to extend the cathedral close beyond the Roman city wall in order
to build the beautiful presbytery or angel choir for the shrine of Hugh
I. He was still engaged on this when the persecution which the Jews had
long endured produced such a bitter feeling that they were believed to
be capable of kidnapping and crucifying, or by less conspicuous methods,
putting to death a Christian boy when they had a chance. Hugh was said
to be a chorister who disappeared, and his mother, led by a dream,
discovered his body in a well outside the Newport Gate. A Jew called
Jopin, or Chopin, but in a French ballad Peitevin, was accused of his
murder, and is said to have confessed and to have been put to death with
others of his nation with no small barbarity. He has left his memory at
Lincoln in the name of “The Jews’ House,” which is given to the Norman
building on the steep hill. This story was not uncommon, and told with
much detail, as having really happened, in several places; nor is the
belief in it yet dead. The boy’s body was given to the canons of the
cathedral, who buried him with much solemnity in the south aisle of the
choir, and set a small shrine over him, to which folk came to worship,
and he received the title of “the Little St. Hugh.”
[Illustration: _St. Mary’s Guild, Lincoln._]
[Sidenote: THE JEWS]
This story is referred to by Chaucer, who wrote a hundred years later in
“The Prioress’ Tale”:—
“O younge Hew of Lincoln sleyn also
With cursed Jewes, as it is notable,
For it nis but a litel whyle ago.”
His story makes the murdered boy reveal himself by singing “O alma
Redemptoris Mater” “loude and clere,” although, as he says—
“My throte is cut unto my nekke-bon.”
and he does not stop singing till a ‘greyn’ is taken from his tongue by
the abbot
“and he yaf up the goost ful softely.”
Marlowe has a similar story in his “Jew of Malta,” and ballads constantly
were made on this theme. Sir Charles Anderson quotes one beginning:—
“The bonny boys of merry Lincoln
Were playing at the ball,
And with them stood the sweet Sir Hugh,
The flower of them all.
Whom cursed Jews did crucify,” &c.
He was buried, in 1255, next to Bishop Grosteste, who had died two years
before.
The persistence of this medieval accusation against the Jews is
singularly illustrated by a case which is reported in the papers of
October 9, 1913, headed “Ritual Murder Trial.” The trial is at Kieff in
Russia, of a perfectly innocent man called Beiliss, who has been more
than two years in prison without knowing the reason, and is charged with
the murder of a Christian boy called Yushinsky “to obtain blood for
Jewish sacrificial rites.” _The Times_ says that ritual murder is not
now mentioned in the indictment. But that so monstrous a charge should
be even hinted at shows how deeply these old malignant calumnies sank
into the medieval mind, and how prone to superstition and how ready to
believe evil we are even in the twentieth century of the Christian era.
The whole idea is on a par with the abominable cruelties of the days
when defenceless old women were burnt as witches, and is a cruel and
absolutely baseless calumny on a long-suffering and law-abiding people,
and yet there are plenty of people to-day in Russia who firmly believe in
it.
CHAPTER XI
LINCOLN.—THE CITY
The City—The Corporation—The City Swords—Tennyson’s Centenary
and Statue—Queen Eleanor’s Cross—Brayford Pool—Afternoon Tea.
[Sidenote: THE MINSTER YARD]
The rate at which the soil of inhabited places rises from the various
layers of debris which accumulate on the surface is well shown at
Lincoln. In Egypt, where houses are built of mud, every few years an
old building falls and the material is trodden down and a new erection
made upon it. Hence the entrance to the temple at Esneh from the present
outside floor level, is up among the capitals of the tall pillars; and,
the temple being cleaned out, the floor of it and the bases of its
columns were found to be nearly thirty feet below ground. Stone-built
houses last much longer, but when a fire or demolition after a siege
has taken place three or four times, a good deal of rubbish is left
spread over the surface and it accumulates with the ages. Hence, in
Roman Lincoln or “Lindum Colonia” pavements may be found whenever the
soil is moved, at a depth of seven or eight feet at least, and often
more. Thus the Roman West Gate came to light in 1836, after centuries of
complete burial, but soon crumbled away; and the whole of the hill top
where Britons, Romans, Danes, and Normans successively dwelt, is full of
remains which can only on rare occasions ever have a chance of seeing the
light. Still there is much for us to see above ground, so we may as well
take a walk through the city, beginning at the top of the hill. Here, as
you leave the west end of the cathedral and pass through the “Exchequer
Gate” with its one large and two small arches, under the latter of which
may be seen entrances to the little shopstalls where relics, rosaries,
etc., were once sold, you pass along the flat south wall of St. Mary
Magdalen’s Church, beyond which the outer Exchequer Gate stood till
1800. The wall in which this and other gates of the cathedral close were
inserted was built in the thirteenth or early fourteenth century, to
protect the close and the canons. The gateways were all double, except
the “Potter Gate,” which is the only other one now extant. It is said
that the Romans had a pottery near it; at present the road to the Minster
Yard goes both through it and round one side of it.
[Illustration: _The Pottergate, Lincoln._]
[Sidenote: THE CASTLE]
Passing from the Exchequer Gate you see a very pretty sixteenth century
timbered house, with projecting story, at the corner of _Bailgate_, now
used as a bank. Hard by on your right is the White Hart inn, and on your
left you have a peep down _Steep Street_ to the _House of Aaron the Jew_,
a money lender of the reign of Henry II. Near this was once the South
Gate of the Roman city, and some of the stones are still visible in the
pavement. The gate was destroyed in 1775. Looking straight ahead from
the Exchequer Gate you see the east gateway of the castle, a Norman arch
with later semi-circular turrets corbelled out on either side of it.
Inside is a fine oriel window, brought from John of Gaunt’s house below
the hill. The enclosure is an irregular square of old British earthworks,
seven acres in extent. The west gate is walled up and the Assize Court
within the castle enclosure is near it. In the angles on either side of
the east gate are two towers in the curtain wall, one, “the observatory
tower,” crowns an ancient mound, and on the south side is a larger mound,
forty feet high, on which is the keep, a very good specimen of very early
work, in shape an irregular polygon. The castle was one of the eight
founded by the Conqueror himself, apparently never so massive a building
as his castle, which is now being excavated at _Old Sarum_, the walls of
which, built of the flints of the locality, are twelve feet thick and
faced with stone. At Lincoln the Roman walls were ten to twelve feet
thick and twenty feet high. Massive fragments of this wall still exist in
different places, the biggest being near the Newport Arch. Near here too
is “The Mint Wall,” seventy feet long by thirty feet high, and three and
a half feet thick, which probably formed the north wall of the Basilica.
Most of the fighting in Lincoln used to take place around this spot,
as Stephen felt to his cost. The old West Gate of the Roman city was
found just to the north of the castle west gate. The line which joined
the Roman East and West Gates ran straight then, and crossed the Ermine
Street, now called here the Bailgate, near the church of St. Paulinus,
but the result of some destructive assaults must have so filled the road
that the street now called ‘East Gate’ was deflected from its course
southwards and has to make a sharp bend to get back to its proper line.
[Illustration: _The Jew’s House, Lincoln._]
[Illustration: _Remains of the Whitefriars’ Priory, Lincoln._]
[Sidenote: THE JEW’S HOUSE]
[Sidenote: THE FRIARS]
[Sidenote: ST. MARY’S GUILD]
Getting back to the ‘Bail,’ or open space between the castle gate and the
Exchequer Gate, we can go down that bit of the old Ermine Street called
“Steep Street” (and I don’t think any street can better deserve its name)
and come into the High Street of Lincoln. If we go right down this, we
shall see all that is of most interest in the town below the hill. First
is the “Jew’s House” where the murderer of Little St. Hugh is said to
have lived, a most interesting specimen of Norman domestic architecture,
and more ornate than that at Boothby-Pagnell of a similar date. The
house has a round-headed doorway, with a chimney-breast starting
from above the doorway arch, and showing that the upper floor had a
fireplace. On either side the door now are modern shop windows. Between
the stringcourses are two double light windows, with a plain tympanum
under a round arch. Belaset of Wallingford, a Jewess, lived here in the
reign of Edward I. She was hanged for clipping coin in 1290, the year of
the Jews’ Expulsion. At the bottom of the street, No. 333, is another
charming old structure called “White Friars’ House” with a projecting
timbered front, and a passage round one end like that at the old “God
begot” house at Winchester. All Friars, whether White (Carmelite), Black
(Dominican), Grey (Franciscan), or Black and White (Augustinian), were to
be found in Lincoln as well as at Stamford, and, with the exception of
the Dominicans, at Boston too. One more bit of old domestic building is
the hall of St. Mary’s Guild, commonly called John o’ Gaunt’s Stables.
Here you may see a combination of the round and the pointed arch, which
dates it as late Norman. The house is longer than the other two, and the
upper story mostly gone, but in Parker’s “Domestic Architecture” it is
spoken of as “probably the most valuable and extensive range of buildings
of the twelfth century that we have remaining in England.” The house
within has round-headed windows with a mid-wall shaft, and a fireplace.
The house just opposite was the palace built by John of Gaunt for
Katharine Swynford; from which the oriel window inside the castle gateway
was taken. These old Norman houses are all small. The really magnificent
building which was once the boast of Lincoln was a thousand years earlier
than these; this was the Roman Basilica, or Hall of Judgment, near
Bailgate, perhaps, the baths at the town of Bath alone excepted, the
finest Roman building in England. Figure to yourself a building 250 feet
long by seventy feet wide, with a triangular pediment rising from a row
of pillars thirty feet high, something like what we still see at Milan.
Alas! that only the pillar bases of this fine hall have been found. The
pillars ran along the west side of Bailgate facing east.
[Illustration: _St. Mary’s Guild and St. Peter’s at Gowts, Lincoln._]
[Sidenote: SAXON TOWERS]
[Sidenote: ST. BENEDICT’S]
As we pass down the High Street we shall see on our left the Saxon towers
of St. Mary le Wigford and of “St. Peters at Gowts.” The “gowts” or
sluices were the two watercourses for taking the waters of the “Meres”
into the Witham, originally there were small bridges on either side over
each, with a ford between them for carts. These towers are tall and
without buttresses, having the Saxon long and short work and the upper
two-light window with the mid-wall jamb, and only small and irregularly
placed lights below. They are in style much what you see in Italy,
though the Italian are higher, but certainly none in England are so
uncompromisingly plain as the towers at Ravenna and Bologna. St. Andrews
in Scotland comes nearest, and bears a really extraordinary likeness to
that of St. John the Evangelist at Ravenna. Near St. Mary le Wigford is
the picturesque little remnant of a beautiful but disused church, called
St. Benedict’s; only the ivy-clad chancel, a side chapel and the recent
low tower are left, a very picturesque and peaceful object in the busy
town. Its original tower held a beautifully decorated bell, called “Old
Kate,” the gift of the Surgeon Barbers in 1585, it used to ring at 6 a.m.
and 7 p.m., to mark the beginning and end of the day’s labour. It now
hangs in the tower of St. Mark’s.
The name of ‘le Wigford,’ Wickford or Wickenford, indicates the suburb
south of the river. In the days when kings used to wear their crowns, an
uneasy belief in the old saying—