little company at Canterbury gained for them the warm support and
friendship of all classes. They had a very hard time of it. Sometimes a
kind soul would bring them actually a dish of meat, sometimes even a
bottle of wine, but as a rule their fare was bread--made up into
_twists_, we hear, when it was specially excellent--wheat-bread,
wholesome and palatable; but, alas, sometimes barley-bread, washed down
with beer too sour to drink undiluted with water. Alexander, the master
of the Priest's House at Canterbury, soon after gave them a piece of
ground and built them a temporary chapel, but when he was for
presenting them with the building, he was told that they might not
possess houses and lands, and the property was thereupon made over to
the corporation of Canterbury to hold in honourable trust for their
use, the friars _borrowing_ it of the town. Simon Langton too,
Archdeacon of Canterbury, the primate's brother, stood their friend,
and one or two people of influence among the laity, as Sir Henry de
Sandwich, a wealthy Kentish gentleman, and a lady whom Eccleston calls
a "noble countess," one Inclusa de Baginton, warmly supported them and
liberally supplied their necessities. It is worthy of notice that at
Canterbury their first friends were among the wealthy, _i.e._, those
among whom a command of English was not necessary.
While Agnellus and his brethren were waiting patiently at Canterbury,
Ingworth and young Richard of Devon with the two Italians had made
their way to London and had been received with enthusiasm. Their first
entertainers were the Dominican friars who, though they had been only
two years before them, yet had already got for themselves a house, in
which they were able to entertain the new-comers for a fortnight. At
the end of that time they hired a plot of ground in Cornhill of John
Travers, the Sheriff of London, and there they built for themselves a
house, such as it was. Their cells were constructed like sheep-cotes,
mere wattels with mouldy hay or straw between them. Their fare was of
the meanest, but they gained in estimation every day. In their humble
quarters at Cornhill they remained preaching, visiting, nursing,
begging their bread, but always gay and busy, till the summer of 1225,
when a certain John Iwyn--again a name suspiciously like the phonetic
representative of the common Norfolk name of _Ewing_--a mercer and
citizen, offered them a more spacious and comfortable dwelling in the
parish of St. Nicholas. As their brethren at Canterbury had done, so
did they; they refused all houses and lands, and the house was made
over to the corporation of London for their use. Not long after the
worthy citizen assumed the Franciscan habit and renounced the world, to
embrace poverty.
In the autumn of 1225 Ingworth and the younger Richard left London,
Agnellus taking their place. He had not been idle at Canterbury, and
his success in making converts had been remarkable. At Canterbury and
London the Minorites had secured for themselves a firm footing. The
Universities were next invaded. The two Richards reached Oxford about
October, 1225, and as before were received with great cordiality by the
Dominicans, and hospitably entertained for eight days. Before a week
was out they had got the loan of a house or hall in the parish of St.
Ebbs, and had started lectures and secured a large following. Here
young Esseby joined them, sent on it seems by Agnellus from London to
assist in the work; a year or so older than when he first landed, and
having shown in that time unmistakable signs of great capacity and
entire devotion to the work. Esseby was quite able to stand alone.
Once more the two Richards moved on to Northampton, where an "opening
from the Lord" seemed to have presented itself. By this time the whole
country was on the tip-toe of expectation and crowds of all classes had
given in their adhesion to the new missionaries. No! it was _not_
grandeur or riches or honour or learning that were wanted above all
things--not these, but Goodness, Meekness, Simplicity, and Truth. The
love of money was the root of all evil. The Minorites were right. When
men with a divine fervour proclaim a truth, or even half a truth, which
the world has forgotten, there is never any lack of enthusiasm in its
acceptance. In five years from their first arrival the Friars had
established themselves in almost every considerable town in England,
and where one order settled the other came soon after, the two orders
in their first beginning co-operating cordially. It was only when their
faith and zeal began to wax cold that jealousy broke forth into bitter
antagonism.
In no part of England were the Franciscans received with more
enthusiasm than in Norfolk. They appear to have established themselves
at Lynn, Yarmouth, and Norwich in 1226. Clergy and laity, rich and
poor, united in offering to them a ready homage. To this day a certain
grudging provincialism is observable in the East Anglian character. A
Norfolk man distrusts the settler from "the Shires," who comes in with
new-fangled reforms. To this day the home of wisdom is supposed to be
in the East. When it was understood that the virtual leader of this
astonishing religious revival was a Norfolk man, the joy and pride of
Norfolk knew no bounds. Nothing was too much to do for their own hero.
But when it became known that Ingworth had been welcomed with open arms
by Robert Grosseteste, the foremost scholar in Oxford--he a Suffolk
man--and that Grosseteste's friend, Roger de Weseham, was their warm
supporter, son of a Norfolk yeoman, whose brethren were to be seen any
day in Lynn market--the ovation that the Franciscans met with was
unparalleled. There was a general rush by some of the best men of the
county into the order.
Already St. Francis had found it necessary to include in the fraternity
a class of recognized associates who may be described as the
_unattached_. These were the _Tertiaries_--laymen who were not prepared
to embrace the vows of poverty and to surrender their all--but
well-wishers pledged to support the Minorites, and to co-operate with
them when called upon, showing their good-will sometimes in visiting
the sick and needy, sometimes in engaging in the work of teaching, or
accompanying the preachers when advisable, and bound by their
engagement to set an example of sobriety and seriousness in their dress
and manners.
Up to this time the word _religious_ had been applied only to such as
were inmates of a cloister. Now the truth dawned upon men that it was
possible to live the higher life even while pursuing one's ordinary
vocation in the busy world. The tone of social morality must have
gained enormously by the dissemination of this new doctrine, and its
acceptance among high and low. It became the fashion in the upper
classes to enrol oneself among the Tertiaries, and every new enrolment
was an important accession to the stability, and, indeed, to the
material resources of the Minorites; and when, apparently within a few
days of one another--no less than five gentlemen of knightly rank, of
whom at least one, Sir Giles de Merc, had only recently been employed
as an envoy by the king to his brother Richard in Gascony, and another,
Sir Henry de Walpole, was amongst the most considerable and wealthy men
in the eastern counties, Henry the Third spoke out his mind and showed
that he was not too well-pleased. Really these friars were going on too
fast--turning men's heads! At Lynn the Franciscans were specially
fortunate in their warden, whose austerity of life, gentle manners, and
profoundly sympathetic temperament obtained for him unbounded
influence. Among others Alexander de Bassingbourne [Footnote: The name
is again changed into _Bissing_burne by Eccleston, who writes it as he
heard it from Norfolk people.]--seneschal of Lynn for Pandulph, Bishop
of Norwich, and, as such, a personage of importance, became his convert
and joined the new order; but the number of Norfolk clergy and scholars
who actually became friars must have been very large indeed; they were
quite the picked men among the Franciscans in England. Of the first
eighteen masters of Franciscan schools at Cambridge, at least ten were
Norfolk men, while of the first five Divinity readers at Oxford whose
names have been recorded, after those of Grosseteste and Roger de
Weseham, four were unmistakably East Anglians. No one familiar with
Norfolk topography could fail to be struck by this fact, and the queer
spellings of some places, which puzzled even Mr. Brewer, are themselves
suggestive. [Footnote: _E.g._, Turnham represents the Norfolk
pronunciation of _Thornham_. Heddele is _Hadleigh_, in Suffolk spelt
phonetically; Ravingham is _Raveningham_, Assewelle is _Ashwell_ [cf.
p. 93, Esseby for Ashby], Sloler is _Sloley_, Leveringfot is
_Letheringset_.]
St. Francis died at Assisi on October 4, 1226. With his death troubles
began. Brother Elias, who was chosen to succeed him as Minister General
of the Order, had little of the great founder's spirit, and none of his
genius. There was unseemly strife and rivalry, and on the Continent it
would appear that the Minorites made but little way. Not so was it in
England; there the supply of brethren animated by genuine enthusiasm
and burning zeal for the cause they had espoused was unexampled.
Perhaps there more than anywhere else such labourers were needed,
perhaps too they had a fairer field. Certainly there they were truer to
their first principles than elsewhere.
Outside the city walls at Lynn and York and Bristol; in a filthy swamp
at Norwich, through which the drainage of the city sluggishly trickled
into the river, never a foot lower than its banks; in a mere barn-like
structure, with walls of mud, at Shrewsbury, in the "Stinking Alley" in
London, the Minorites took up their abode, and there they lived on
charity, doing for the lowest the most menial offices, speaking to the
poorest the words of hope, preaching to learned and simple such
sermons--short, homely, fervent, and emotional--as the world had not
heard for many a day. How could such evangelists fail to win their way?
Before Henry III.'s reign was half over the predominance of the
Franciscans over Oxford was almost supreme. At Cambridge their
influence was less dominant only because at Cambridge there was no
commanding genius like Robert Grosseteste to favour and support them.
St. Francis's hatred of book-learning was the one sentiment that he
never was able to inspire among his followers. Almost from the first
scholars, students, and men of learning were attracted by the
irresistible charm of his wonderful moral persuasiveness; they gave in
their adherence to him in a vague hope that by contact with his
surpassing holiness virtue would go out of him, and that somehow the
divine goodness which he magnified as the one thing needful would be
communicated to them and supply that which was lacking in themselves;
but they could not bring themselves to believe that culture and
holiness were incompatible or that nearness to God was possible only to
those who were ignorant and uninstructed. We should have expected
learning among the Dominicans, but very soon the English Franciscans
became the most learned body in Europe, and that character they never
lost till the suppression of the monasteries swept them out of the
land. Before Edward I. came to the throne, in less than fifty years
after Richard Ingworth and his little band landed at Dover, Robert
Kilwarby, a Franciscan friar, had been chosen Archbishop of Canterbury,
and Bonaventura, the General of the Order, had refused the
Archbishopric of York. In 1281 Jerome of Ascoli, Bonaventura's
successor as General, was elected Pope, assuming the name of Nicholas
IV.
Meanwhile such giants as Alexander Hales and Roger Bacon and Duns
Scotus among the Minorites--all Englishmen be it remembered--and Thomas
Aquinas and Albertus Magnus among the Dominicans, had given to
intellectual life that amazing lift into a higher region of thought,
speculation, and inquiry which prepared the way for greater things
by-and-by. It was at Assisi that Cimabue and Giotto received their most
sublime inspiration and did their very best, breathing the air that St.
Francis himself had breathed and listening day by day to traditions and
memories of the saint, told peradventure by one or another who had seen
him alive or even touched his garments in their childhood. It may even
be that there Dante watched Giotto at his work while the painter got
the poet's face by heart.
* * * * * * *
To write the history of the Mendicant Orders in England would be a task
beyond my capacity, but no man can hope to understand the successes or
the failures of any great party in Church or State until he has arrived
at some comprehension, not only of the objects which it set itself to
achieve, but of its _modus operandi_ at the outset of its career.
The Friars were a great party in the Church, organized with a definite
object, and pledged to carry out that object in simple reliance upon
what we now call the _Voluntary Principle_. St. Francis saw, and saw
much more clearly than even we of the nineteenth century see it, that
the Parochial system is admirable, is a perfect system for the village,
that it is unsuited for the town, that in the towns the attempt to work
it had ended in a miserable and scandalous failure. The Friars came as
helpers of the poor town clergy, just when those clergy had begun to
give up their task as hopeless. They came as missionaries to those whom
the town clergy had got to regard as mere _pariahs_. They came to
strengthen the weak hands, and to labour in a new field. _St. Francis
was the John Wesley of the thirteenth century, whom the Church did not
cast out_.
Rome has never been afraid of fanaticism. She has always known how to
utilise her enthusiasts fired by a new idea. The Church of England has
never known how to deal with a man of genius. From Wicklif to Frederick
Robertson, from Bishop Peacock to Dr. Rowland Williams, the clergyman
who has been in danger of impressing his personality upon Anglicanism,
where he has not been the object of relentless persecution, has at
least been regarded with timid suspicion, has been shunned by the
prudent men of low degree, and by those of high degree has
been--forgotten. In the Church of England there has never been a time
when the enthusiast has not been treated as a very _unsafe_ man. Rome
has found a place for the dreamiest mystic or the noisiest
ranter--found a place and found a sphere of useful labour. We, with our
insular prejudices, have been sticklers for the narrowest uniformity,
and yet we have accepted, as a useful addition to the Creed of
Christendom, one article which we have only not formulated because,
perhaps, it came to us from a Roman Bishop, the great sage
Talleyrand--_Surtout pas trop de zèle!_
The Minorites were the Low Churchmen of the thirteenth century, the
Dominicans the severely orthodox, among whom spiritual things were
believed to be attainable only through the medium of significant form.
Rome knew how to yoke the two together, Xanthos and Balios champing at
the bit yet always held well in hand. At the outset the two orders were
so deeply impressed by the magnitude of the evils they were to combat
that they hardly knew there was anything in which they were at
variance. Gradually--yes, and somewhat rapidly--each borrowed something
from the other. The Minorites found they could not do without culture;
the Dominicans renounced endowments; by-and-by they drew apart into
separate camps, and discord proved that the old singleness of purpose
and loyalty to a great cause had passed away. Imitators arose.
Reformers they all professed to be, improvers of the original idea,
Augustinian Friars, Carmelites, Bethlehemites, Bonhommes, and the rest.
Friars they all called themselves--all pledged to the Voluntary
Principle, all renouncing endowments, all professing to live on alms.
I have called St. Francis the John Wesley of the thirteenth century.
The parallels might be drawn out into curious detail, if we compared
the later history of the great movements originated by one or the other
reformer. The new orders of Friars were to the old ones what the
Separatists among the Wesleyan body are to the Old Connexion. They had
their grievances, real or imagined, they loudly protested against
corruption and abuses, they professed themselves anxious only to go
back to first principles. Rome absorbed them all; they became the
Church's great army of volunteers, perfectly disciplined, admirably
handled; their very jealousies and rivalries turned to good account.
When John Wesley offered to the Church of England precisely their
successors, we would have no commerce with them; we did our best to
turn them into a hostile and invading force.
The Friars were the Evangelizers of the towns in England for 300 years.
When the spoliation of the religious houses was decided upon, the
Friars were the first upon whom the blow fell--the first and the last.
[Footnote: The king began with the Franciscan convent of Christ Church,
London, in 1532; he bestowed the Dominican convent at Norwich upon the
corporation of that city on the 25th of June, 1540.] But when their
property came to be looked into, there was nothing to rob but the
churches in which they worshipped, the libraries in which they studied,
and the houses in which they passed their lives. Rob the county
hospitals to-morrow through the length and breadth of the land, or make
a general scramble for the possessions of the Wesleyan body, and how
many broad acres would go to the hammer?
Voluntaryism leaves little for the spoiler.
As with the later history of the Friars in England, so with the
corruptions of the Mendicant orders--though they were as great as
malice or ignorance may have represented them--I am not concerned. That
the Minorites of the fourteenth century were very unlike the Minorites
of the thirteenth I know; that the other Mendicant orders declined, I
cannot doubt--
What keeps a spirit wholly true
To that ideal which he bears?
What record? Not the sinless years
That breathed beneath the Syrian blue.
The Rule of St. Francis was a glorious ideal; when it came to be
carried into practice by creatures of flesh and blood, it proved to be
something to dream of, not to live. And yet, even as it was, its
effects upon the Church, nay, upon the whole civilized world, were
enormous. If, one after another, the Mendicant orders declined, if
their zeal grew cold, their simplicity of life faded, and their
discipline relaxed; if they became corrupted by that very world which
they promised to purify and deliver from the dominion of Mammon--this
is only what has happened again and again, what must happen as long as
men are men. In every age the prophet has always asked for the
unattainable, always pointed to a higher level than human nature could
breathe in, always insisted on a measure of self-renunciation which
saints in their prayers send forth the soul's lame hands to clutch-in
their ecstasy of aspiration hope that they may some day arrive at. But,
alas! they reach it--never. And yet the saint and the prophet do not
live in vain. They send a thrill of noble emotion through the heart of
their generation, and the divine tremor does not soon subside; they
gather round them the pure and generous--the lofty souls which are not
all of the earth earthy. In such, at any rate, a fire is kindled by the
spark that has fallen from the altar. By-and-by it is the fuel that
fails; then the old fire, after smouldering for a while, goes out, and
by no stirring of the dead embers can you make them flame again. You
may cry as loudly as you will, "Pull down the chimney that will not
draw, and set up another in its place!" That you may do if you please;
another fire you may have, but the new will not be as the old.
II.
_VILLAGE LIFE SIX HUNDRED YEARS AGO_.
"The rude forefathers of the hamlet..."
[In the autumn of 1878, while on a visit at Rougham Hall, Norfolk, the
seat of Mr. Charles North, my kind host drew my attention to some large
boxes of manuscripts, which he told me nobody knew anything about, but
which I was at liberty to ransack to my heart's content. I at once
dived into one of the boxes, and then spent half the night in examining
some of its treasures. The chest is one of many, constituting in their
entirety a complete apparatus for the history of the parish of Rougham
from the time of Henry the Third to the present day--so complete that
it would be difficult to find in England a collection of documents to
compare with it.
The whole parish contains no more than 2,627 acres, of which about
thirty acres were not included in the estate slowly piled up by the
Yelvertons, and purchased by Roger North in 1690.
Yet the charters and evidences of various kinds which were handed over
with this small property, and which date _before_ the sixteenth
century, count by thousands. The smaller strips of parchment or
vellum--for the most part conveyances of land, and having seals
attached--have been roughly bound together in volumes, each containing
about one hundred documents, and arranged with some regard to
chronology, the undated ones being collected into a volume by
themselves. I think it almost certain that the arranging of the early
charters in their rude covers was carried out before 1500 A.D., and I
have a suspicion that they were grouped together by Sir William
Yelverton, "the cursed Norfolk Justice" of the Paston Letters, who
inherited the estate from his mother in the first half of the fifteenth
century.
When Roger North purchased the property the ancient evidences were
handed over to him as a matter of course; and there are many notes in
his handwriting showing that he found the collection in its present
condition, and that he had bestowed much attention upon it. Blomefield
seems to have been aware of the existence of the Rougham muniments, but
I think he never saw them; and for one hundred and fifty years, at
least, they had lain forgotten until they came under my notice. Of this
large mass of documents I had copied or abstracted scarcely more than
five hundred, and I had not yet got beyond the year 1355. The court
rolls, bailiffs' accounts, and early leases, I had hardly looked at
when this lecture was delivered.
The following address gives some of the results of my examination of
the first series of the Rougham charters. It was delivered in the
Public Reading-room of the village of Tittleshall, a parish adjoining
Rougham, and was listened to with apparent interest and great attention
by an audience of farmers, village tradesmen, mechanics, and labourers.
I was careful to avoid naming any place which my audience were not
likely to know well; and there is hardly a parish mentioned which is
five miles from the lecture-room.
When speaking of "six hundred years," I gave myself roughly a limit of
thirty years before and after 1282, and I have rarely gone beyond that
limit on one side or the other.
They who are acquainted with Mr. Rogers' "History of Prices" will
observe that I have ventured to put forward views, on more points than
one, very different from those which he advocates.
Of the value of Mr. Rogers' compilation, and of the statistics which he
has tabulated, there can be but one opinion. It is when we come to draw
our inferences from such returns as these, and bring to bear upon them
the sidelights which further evidence affords, that differences of
opinion arise among inquirers. I really know nothing about the Midlands
in the Middle Ages; I am disgracefully ignorant of the social condition
of the South and West; but the early history of East Anglia, and
especially of Norfolk, has for long possessed a fascination for me; and
though I am slow to arrive at conclusions, and have a deep distrust of
those historians who, for every pair of facts, construct a Trinity of
Theories, I feel sure of my ground on some matters, because I have done
my best to use all such evidence as has come my way.]
* * * * * * *