THE MONKS OF ELY FEAST.
It was on a wet evening in Autumn, as the rain was descending in
torrents upon swamps that seemed to have collected all the rains that
had been falling since the departure of summer, and just as the monks
of Ely were singing the Ave Maria (_Dulce, cantaverunt Monachi in
Ely!_)[63] that Elfric, the whilom novice of Spalding, surrounded by
some of the Lord Abbat’s people, and many of the town folk, who were
all laughing and twitching at his cloak, arrived at the gate of the
hospitium.[64] Our Lord Abbat Frithric had brought with him two holy
books. Elfric, our novice, had brought with him two grim Norman heads,
for he had not been idle on the road, but had surprised and killed on
the borders of the fen country, first one man-at-arms, and then
another; and the good folk of Ely were twitching at his mantle in order
that they might see again the trophies which he carried under his broad
sleeve. At his first coming to the well-guarded ford across the Ouse,
the youth had made himself known. Was he not the youngest son of
Goodman Hugh, who dwelt aforetime by Saint Ovin’s Cross, hard by the
village of Haddenham, and only a few bow-shot from the good town of
Ely.[65] And when the Saxons had seen the two savage Norman heads, and
had looked in the youth’s face, the elders declared that he was the
very effigies of the Goodman Hugh; and some of the younkers said that,
albeit his crown was shorn, and his eye not so merry as it was, they
recalled his face well, and eke the days when Elfric the son of Goodman
Hugh played at bowls with them in the bowling-alley of Ely, and bobbed
for eels[66] with them in the river, and went out with them to snare
wild water-fowl in the fens. Judge, therefore, if he met not with an
hospitable reception from town and gown, from the good folk of Ely, and
from all the monks!
So soon as Elfric had refreshed himself in the hospitium, he was called
to the presence of Abbat Thurstan, and in truth to the presence of all
the abbat’s noble and reverend guests, for Thurstan was seated in his
great hall, where the servitors were preparing for the supper. Elfric
would have taken his trophies with him, but the loaf-man who brought
the message doubted whether the abbat would relish the sight of dead
men’s heads close afore suppertime, and told him that his prowess was
already known; and so Elfric proceeded without his trophies to the
great hall, where he was welcomed by the noble company like another
David that had slain two Goliaths.[67] When he had told the story of
Ivo Taille-Bois’ long persecution and night attack, and his own flight
and journey, and had answered numerous questions put to him by the
grave assembly, Abbat Thurstan asked him whether he knew what had
happened at Spalding since his departure, and what had become of Father
Adhelm and his monks, and what fate had befallen the good Abbat of
Crowland.
“After my flight from the succursal cell,” said the youth, “I dwelt for
a short season at Crowland, hidden in the township, or in Deeping-fen,
whither also came unto the abbey Father Adhelm and the rest of that
brotherhood of Spalding; and there we learned how Ivo Taille-Bois had
sent over to his own country to tell his kinsmen that he had to offer
them a good house, convenient for a prior and five friars, ready built,
ready furnished and well provided with lands and tenements; and how
these heretical and unsound Norman monks[68] were hastening to cross
the Channel and take possession of the succursal cell at Spalding. My
Lord Abbat of Crowland, having what they call the king’s peace, and
holding the letters of protection granted by Lanfranc”.... “They will
protect no man of Saxon blood, and the priest or monk that accepts them
deserves excommunication,” said Frithric, the Abbat of Saint Albans.
“Amen!” said Elfric; “but our Abbat of Crowland, relying upon these
hollow and rotten reeds, laid his complaints before the king’s council
at that time assembled near unto Peterborough, and sought redress and
restitution.[69] But the Normans sitting in council not only refused
redress and absolved Taille-Bois, but also praised him for what he had
done in the way of extortion, pillage, sacrilege, and murder; and”....
“My once wise brother thy Abbat of Crowland ought to have known all
this beforehand,” said the Abbat of Saint Albans; “for do not these
foreigners all support and cover one another, and form a close league,
bearing one upon another, even as on the body of the old dragon scale
is laid over scale?”
“_Sic est_, my Lord Abbat,” said the youth, bowing reverentially to the
dignitary of the church and the best of Saxon patriots, “so is it my
lord! and dragons and devils are these Normans all! Scarcely had the
decision of the king’s council reached our house at Crowland, ere it
was surrounded by armed men, and burst open at the dead of night, as
our poor cell at Spalding had been, and Father Adhelm and all those who
had lived under his rule at Spalding, were driven out as disturbers of
the king’s peace! I should have come hither sooner, but those to whom
my obedience was due begged me to tarry awhile. Now I am only the
forerunner of Father Adhelm and his brethren, and of my Lord Abbat of
Crowland himself; for the abbat can no longer bear the wrongs that are
put upon him, and can see no hope upon earth, and no resting-place in
broad England, except in the Camp of Refuge.”
“Another abbat an outcast and a wanderer! This spacious house will be
all too full of Saxon abbats and bishops: but I shall make room for
this new comer,” said Frithric of Saint Albans to Egelwin, Bishop of
Durham.[70]
Divers of the monks of Ely, and _specialiter_ the chamberlain, who kept
the accounts of the house, and the cellarer, who knew the daily drain
made on the winebutts, looked blank at this announcement of more
guests; but the bounteous and big-hearted Abbat of Ely said, “Our
brother of Crowland, and Father Adhelm of Spalding, shall be welcome
here—yea, and all they may bring with them; but tell me, oh youth, are
they near at hand, or afar off in the wilderness?”
“The feet of age travel not so fast as the feet of youth,” said Elfric,
“age thinks, youth runs. I wot I was at Ramsey[71] mere before they got
to the Isle of Thorney, and crossed the Ouse before they came to the
Nene, but as, by the blessing of the saints,” and the youth might have
said, in consequence of exercise and low living, “Father Adhelm’s
podagra hath left him, they can hardly fail of being here on the day of
Saint Edmund,[72] our blessed king and martyr, and that saint’s day is
the next day after to-morrow.”
“It shall be a feast-day,” said Thurstan; “for albeit Saint Edmund be
not so great a saint as our own saint, Etheldreda, the founder of this
house, and the monks of Saint Edmund-Bury (the loons have submitted to
the Norman!) have more to do with his worship than we have, King Edmund
is yet a great saint—a true Saxon saint, whose worship is old in the
land; and it hath been the custom of this house to exercise hospitality
on his festival. Therefore will we hold that day as we have been wont
to hold it; and our brothers from Crowland and Spalding, who must be
faring but badly in the fens, shall be welcomed with a feast.”
So bounteous and open-handed was the true Saxon Abbat of Ely. But the
chamberlain set his worldly head to calculate the expense, and the
cellarer muttered to himself, “By Saint Withburga[73] and her holy
well, our cellars will soon be dry!”
On Saint Edmund’s eve, after evening service in the choir and after
saying his prayers apart in the chapel of Saint Marie, Frithric, the
Abbat of Saint Albans departed this life. His last words were, that
England would be England still;[74] and all those who heard the words
and had English hearts, believed that he was inspired, and that the
spirit of prophecy spoke in his dying voice. The Abbat of Crowland was
so near, that he heard the passing-bell, as its sad sounds floated over
the fens, telling all the faithful that might be there of their duty to
put up a prayer for the dead. On Saint Edmund’s day the way-farers from
Crowland arrived, and that abbat took possession of the cell, and of
the seat in the refectory which had been occupied by Frithric. Fitting
place was also found for Father Adhelm, who had grown so thin upon the
journey that even Elfric scarcely knew him again. The feast in the hall
was as magnificent as any that had been given there to King Canute, or
even to any that had been given in the happy days of King Edward the
Confessor; and the appetites of the company assembled were worthy of
the best times. Fish, flesh, and fowl, and pasties of venison—nothing
was wanting. The patrimony of Saint Etheldreda, the lands and waters
appertaining unto the abbey, and administered by the bountiful abbat,
furnished the best portions of the feast. Were there in the world such
eels and eel-pouts as were taken in the Ouse and Cam close under the
walls of the abbey? Three thousand eels, by ancient compact, do the
monks of Ramsey pay every Lent unto the monks of Peterborough, for
leave to quarry stone in a quarry appertaining to Peterborough Abbey;
but the house of Ely might have paid ten times three thousand eels, and
not have missed them, so plenty were there, and eke so good![75] The
fame of these eels was known in far countries; be sure they were not
wanting on this Saint Edmund’s day. The streams, too, abounded with
pike, large and fit for roasting, with puddings in their bellies; and
the meres and stagnating waters swarmed with tench and carp, proper for
stewing. Ten expert hinds attended to these fresh-water fisheries, and
kept the abbat’s stews and the stews of the house constantly filled
with fish. It is said by an ancient historian that here in the fenny
country is such vast store of fish as astonishes strangers; for which
the inhabitants laugh at them: nor is there less plenty of
water-fowl;[76] and for a single halfpenny five men may have enough of
either, not only to stay their stomachs, but for a full meal! Judge,
then, if my Lord Abbat was well provided. It was allowed on all sides
that, for the Lenten season, and for all those fast-days of the Church
when meat was not to be eaten, no community in the land was so well
furnished as the monks of Ely; and that their fish-fasts were feasts.
While the brethren of other houses grew thin in Quadragesima, the monks
of Ely grew fat. Other communities might do well in roast meats and
baked meats; but for a fish dinner—for a banquet in Lent—there was
not in the land anything to compare with the dinners at Ely! Nor was
there lack of the fish[77] that swim the salt sea, or of the shell-fish
that are taken on the sea-coast, or of the finny tribes that come up
the river to spawn; the fishermen of Lynn were very devout to Saint
Etheldreda, and made a good penny by supplying the monks; they ascended
the Ouse with the best of their sea-fish in their boats, and with every
fish that was in season, or that they knew how to take. And so, at this
late November festival there were skates and plaice, sturgeon and
porpoises, oysters and cockles spread upon my Lord Abbat’s table. Of
the sheep and beeves we speak not; all men know the richness of the
pasture that springs up from the annually inundated meadows,[78] and
the bounty of the nibbling crop that grows on the upland slopes with
the wild thyme and the other savoury herbs that turn mutton into
venison. Of the wild boars of the forest and fen only the hure or head
was served up in this Aula Magna, the inferior parts being kept below
for the use of the lay-brothers and hinds, or to be distributed by the
hospitaller to the humbler degrees of pilgrims and strangers, or to be
doled out to the poor of the town of Ely—for wot ye, when the Lord
Abbat Thurstan feasted in Ely none fasted there: no! not the poorest
palmer that ever put cockle-shell in his cap or took the pilgrim’s
staff in his hand to visit the blessed shrine of Saint Etheldreda! Of
the wild buck, though less abundant in this fenny country than the
boar, nought was served up for my Lord Abbat and his own particular
guests except the tender succulent haunch; the lay-brothers and the
loaf-eaters of the house, and the poor pilgrims and the poor of the
town, got all the rest. The fat fowls of Norfolk, the capons of Caen in
Normandie, and the pavoni or peacocks that first came from Italie a
present from the _Legatus à latere_ of his holiness the Pope, were kept
and fattened in my Lord Abbat’s farm-yard; and well did his coquinarius
know how to cook them! To the wild-fowl there was no end, and Elfric,
our bold novice, the son of Goodman Hugh, who dwelt by Saint Ovin’s
Cross, hard by the village of Haddenham, and who had been a fen-fowler
from his youth, could have told you how facile it was to ensnare the
crane[79] and the heron, the wild duck and teal, and the eccentric and
most savoury snipe. Well, we ween, before men cut down the covering
woods, and drained the marshes, and brought too many people into the
fens and too many great ships up the rivers, the whole land of Saint
Etheldreda was like one great larder; and my Lord Abbat had only to
say, “Go forth and take for me so many fowl, or fish, or boars,” and it
was done. It is an antique and venerable proverb, that which sayeth
good eating demands good drinking. The country of the fens was not
productive of apple-trees, and the ale and beer that were drunk in the
house, and the mead and idromel likewise, were brought from Norfolk and
other neighbouring countries; but the abbat, and the officials, and the
cloister monks drank better wine than apple-wine, better drink than
mead or than pigment, for they drank of the juice of the generous vine,
which Noah planted on the first dry hill-side he found. The monks of
Glastonbury and Waltham, and of many other houses of the first
reputation, cultivated the grape on their own soil, where it seldom
would ripen, and drank English grape-wine much too sour and poor. Not
so our lordly monks of Ely! They sent the shipmen of Lynn to the Elbe,
and to the Rhine, and to the Mosel, to bring them more generous drink;
and they sent them to the south even so far as Gasconie and Espaing for
the ruby wine expressed from the grapes which grow in the sunniest
clime. In the good times four keels, two from the German Ocean and two
from the Gulf of Biscaye, steered every year through the sand-banks of
the Wash to Lynn,[80] and from Lynn up the Ouse even unto Ely, where
the tuns were landed and deposited in the cellars of the abbey, under
the charge of the sub-cellarer, a lay-brother from foreign parts, who
had been a vintner in his youth. And in this wise it came to be a
passant saying with men who would describe anything that was
super-excellent—“It is as good as the wine of the monks of Ely!”
Maugre the cellarer’s calculation of quantities, the best wine my Lord
Abbat had in hand was liberally circulated at the feast in silver cups
and in gold-mounted horns. Thus were the drinks equal to the viands, as
well in quantity as in quality; and if great was the skill of the
vintner, great also was the skill of the cook. In other houses of
religion, and in houses, too, of no mean fame, the monks had often to
lament that their coquinarius fed them over long on the same sort of
dishes; but it was not so with our monks of Ely, who possessed a cook
that had the art of giving variety to the selfsame viands, and who also
possessed lands, woods, and waters that furnished the most varied
materials for the cook to try his skill upon. As Father Adhelm finished
his last slice of porpoise,[81] curiously condimented with Eastern
spices, as fragrant to the nose as they were savoury to the palate, he
lifted up his eyes towards the painted ceiling, and said, “I did not
hope, after the death of Oswald our cook at Spalding, to eat of so
perfect a dish on this side the grave!”
Flowers[82] there were none to strew upon the floor; but the floor of
the hall was thickly strewed with sweet-smelling hay, and with the
rushes that grow in the fens; and the feet of the loaf-men of the abbat
and of the other servitors that waited on the lordly company made no
noise as they hurried to and fro with the dishes and the wine-cups and
drinking-horns. While dinner lasted, nought was heard but the voice of
the abbat’s chaplain, who read the Psalms in a corner of the hall, the
rattle of trenchers and knives, and, timeously,[83] such ejaculations
as these! “How good this fish! how good this flesh! how good this fowl!
how fine this pasty! how rich this wine!” But when the tables were
cleared, and grace after meat had been said, and my Lord Abbat’s
cupbearer had filled the cup of every guest with bright old Rhenish,
Thurstan stood up at the head of the table, and said, “Now drink we
round to the health of England’s true king, and this house’s best
friend, the Saxon-hearted Harold,[84] be he where he will! And may he
soon come back again! Cups off at a draught, while we drink Health to
King Harold!”
“We drink his health, and he is dead—we wish him back, and he is lying
in his coffin in the church of the abbey of Waltham, safe in the
keeping of the monks of Waltham! The wine is good, but the toast is
foolish.” Thus spake the envious prior to the small-hearted cellarer.
But the rest of the goodly company drank the wassail with joy and
exultation, and seemingly without any doubt that Harold was living and
would return. In their minds[85] it was the foul invention of the
enemy—to divide and discourage the English people—which made King
Harold die at Hastings. Who had seen him fall? Who had counted and
examined that noble throng of warriors that retreated towards the
sea-coast when the battle was lost by foul treachery, and that found
boats and ships, and sailed away for some foreign land? Was not Harold
in that throng, wounded, but with no deadly wound? Was it not known
throughout the land that the Normans, when they counted the slain, not
being able to find the body of Harold, sent some of our Saxon slaves
and traitors to seek for it—to seek but not to find it? Was it not a
mouldering and a mutilated corpse that the Normans caused to be
conveyed to Waltham, and to be there entombed, at the east end of the
choir, as the body of King Harold? And did not the monks of Waltham
close up the grave with brick-work, and inscribe the slab, HIC JACET
HAROLD INFELIX,[86] without ever seeing who or what was in the coffin?
So reasoned all of this good company, who loved the liberties of
England, and who had need of the sustaining hope that the brave Harold
was alive, and would come back again.
Other wassails followed fast one upon the other. They were all to the
healths of those who had stood out manfully against the invader, or had
preferred exile in the fens, and poverty in the Camp of Refuge to
submission to the conqueror. “Not less than a brimming cup can we drink
to the last arrived of our guests, our brother the Lord Abbat of
Crowland, and our brother the prior of Spalding,” said Thurstan,
filling his own silver cup with his own hand until the Rhenish ran over
upon the thirsty rushes at his feet.
“Might I be allowed,” said Father Adhelm at a later part of the feast,
“might my Lord Abbat vouchsafe me leave to call a wassail for an humble
and unconsecrated member of the Saxon church—who is nevertheless a
child of Saint Etheldreda, and a vassal of my Lord Abbat, being native
to this place—I would just drink one quarter of a cup, or it might be
one half, to Elfric the Novice, for he travelled for our poor succursal
cell when we were in the greatest perils; he carried my missives and my
messages through fire and water; he forewarned us of our last danger
and extremity; and, albeit he had not our order for the deed, and is
thereby liable to a penance for disobedience—he slew with his arrow
Ivo Taille-Bois’ man-at-arms that had savagely slain good Wybert our
wheel-wright.”
“Aye,” said Thurstan, “and he came hither across the fens as merry as
David dancing before the ark; and he brought with him the heads of two
Norman thieves who, with their fellows, had been murdering our serfs,
and trying to find an opening that should lead them to the Camp of
Refuge! Father Adhelm, I would have named thy youth in time; but as
thou hast named him, let us drink his name and health even now! And let
the draught be one half cup at least;—‘Elfric the novice of Spalding!’”
“This is unbecoming our dignity and the dignity of our house: next we
shall waste our wine in drinking wassail to our loaf-eaters and
swineherds,” muttered the cellarer to the prior.
But while the cellarer muttered and looked askance, his heart not being
Saxon or put in the right place, the noblest English lords that were
there, and the highest dignitaries of the church, the archbishop and
the bishops, the Lord Abbats, and the priors of houses, that were so
high that even the priors were styled Lords, _Domini_,[87] and wore
mitres, stood on their feet, and with their wine-cups raised high in
their hands, shouted as in one voice, “Elfric the novice;” and all the
obedientiarii or officials of the abbey of Ely that were of rank enow
to be bidden to my Lord Abbat’s table, stood up in like manner and
shouted, “Elfric the novice!” and, when the loud cheering was over, off
went the wine, and down to the ringing board the empty silver cups and
the golden-bound horns. He who had looked into those cups and horns
might have smiled at Father Adhelm’s halves and quarters: they were
nearly all filled to the brim: yet when they had quitted the lip and
were put down upon the table, there was scarcely a heel-tap to be found
except in the cup of the cellarer and in that of the envious prior of
Ely. So strong were the heads and stomachs of our Saxon ancestors
before the Normans came among us and brought with them all manner of
people from the south with all manner of effeminacies.
Judge ye if Elfric was a proud man that day! At wassail-time the wide
doors of the Aula Magna were thrown wide open; and harpers, and
meni-singers, and men that played upon the trumpet, the horn, the
flute, the pipe and tabor, the cymbal and the drum, or that touched the
strings of the viola, assembled outside, making good music with
instrument and voice; and all that dwelt within the precincts of the
abbey, or that were lodged for the nonce in the guest-house, came, an
they chose, to the threshold of the hall, and saw and heard what was
doing and saying inside and what outside. Now Elfric was there, with
palmers and novices trooping all around him, and repeating (albeit
dry-mouthed and without cups or horns to flourish) the wassail of the
lords and prelates, “Elfric the novice!” If at that moment my Lord
Abbat Thurstan or Father Adhelm had bidden the youth go and drive the
Normans from the strong stone keep of their doubly-moated and
trebly-walled castle by Cam-Bridge, Elfric would have gone and have
tried to do it. He no longer trod upon base earth, his head struck the
stars, as the poets say.
The abbat’s feast, which began at one hour before noon, did not end
until the hour of Ave Maria; nay, even then it was not finished, but
only suspended for a short season by the evening service in the choir;
for, after one hour of the night, the refectoriarius, or controller of
the refectory, re-appeared in the hall with waxen torches and bright
lanterns, and his servitors spread the table for supper.
As Abbat Thurstan returned to the refectory, leading by the hand his
guest the Abbat of Crowland, that dispossessed prelate said to his
host, “Tonight for finishing the feast; to-morrow morning for counsel.”
“Aye,” responded Thurstan, “to-morrow we will hold a chapter,—our
business can brook no further delay—our scouts and intelligencers
bring us bad news,—King Harold comes not, nor sends—the Camp of
Refuge needs a head—our warriors want a leader of fame and experience,
and one that will be true to the Saxon cause, and fearless. Woe the
while! where so many Saxons of fame have proved traitors, and have
touched the mailed hand of the son of the harlot of Falaise in
friendship and submission, and have accepted as the gift of the butcher
of Hastings the lands and honours which they held from their ancestors
and the best of Saxon kings—where, I say, may we look for such a Saxon
patriot and liberator? Oh, Harold! my lord and king, why tarriest thou?
Holy Etheldreda, bring him back to thy shrine, and to the Camp of
Refuge, which will cease to be a refuge for thy servants if Harold
cometh not soon! But, courage my Lord of Crowland! The Philistines are
not upon us; our rivers and ditches and marshes and meres are not yet
drained, and no Saxon in these parts will prove so accursed a
traitor[88] as to give the Normans the clue to our labyrinths. The
saint hath provided another joyous meal for us. Let us be grateful and
gay to-night; let us sup well and strongly, that we may be invigorated
and made fit to take strong and wise counsel in the morning.”
And heartily did the monks of Ely and their guests renew and finish
their feast, and hopefully and boldly did they speak of wars and
victories over the Normans, until the drowsiness of much wine overcame
them, and the sub-chamberlain of the house began to extinguish the
lights, and collect together the torches and the lanterns, while the
cellarer collected all the spoons, taking care to carry the Lord
Abbat’s spoon in his right hand, and the spoons of the monks in his
left hand, according to the statutes of the Order. It was the last time
that the feast of Saint Edmund the Martyr was kept in the true Saxon
manner in the great house at Ely. The next year, and the year following
that, the monks had little wine and but little ale to drink; and after
the long years of trouble although the cellars were getting filled
again, the true old Saxon brotherhood was broken up and mixed, a
foreigner was seated in the place of Abbat Thurstan,[89] and monks with
mis-shaven tonsures and mis-shaped hoods and gowns filled all the
superior offices of the abbey, purloining and sending beyond sea what
my Lord Thurstan had spent in a generous hospitality, among true-born
and generous-hearted Englishmen. But in this nether world even the
gifts of saints and the chartered donation of many kings are to be kept
only by the brave and the united: conquest recognises no right except
as a mockery: the conquered must not expect to be allowed to call their
life and limbs their own, or the air they breathe their own, or their
wives and children their own, or their souls their own: they have no
property but in the grave, no right but to die at the hour appointed
for them. Therefore let men perish in battle rather than outlive
subjugation, and look for mercy from conquerors! and, therefore, let
all the nations of the earth be warned by the fate of the Anglo Saxons
to be always one-hearted for their country.
This patriotic and eloquent appeal may be very appropriately
reiterated at the present day. The sentiment which it inculcates is
as essential now as it was when the Saxons were defending the “Camp
of Refuge.” Is it not consolidation rather than extension which is
needed for the well being of our country? Will not the future
greatness of our nation hinge upon the development of the highest
principles of humanity—the unity, loyalty and virtue of its
peoples?