4. Publications of the Statistical Bureau Christiania. 384

V.--A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe, Esq.;

Secretary, first to the Council of State, and afterwards to

the Two Protectors, Oliver and Richard Cromwell. In Seven

Volumes, containing authentic Memorials of the English

affairs from the year 1638 to the Restoration of King

Charles II. Vol. III. London, 1742. 414

VI.--1. Oceana, or England and her Colonies. By James

Anthony Froude. London, 1886.

2. Through the British Empire. By Baron von Huebner. 2. vols.

London, 1886.

3. The Western Pacific and New Guinea. By Hugh Hastings

Romilly, Deputy Commissioner of the Western Pacific. London,

1886. 443

VII.--The Apostolic Fathers: S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp.

Revised Texts, with Introductions, Notes, Dissertations, and

Translations. By J. B. Lightfoot, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D.,

Bishop of Durham. London, 1885. 2 vols. 467

VIII.--1. An Address delivered to the Students of Edinburgh

University on Nov. 3, 1885. By the Earl of Iddesleigh, Lord

Rector of the University of Edinburgh.

2. Hearing, Reading and Thinking: an address to the Students

attending the Lectures of the London Society for the

Extension of University Teaching. By the Rt. Hon. G. J.

Goschen, M.P.

3. The Choice of Books and other Literary Pieces. By

Frederic Harrison. London, 1886. 501

IX.--1. Popular Government. Four Essays. By Sir Henry Sumner

Maine. Second Edition. London, 1886.

2. Democracy in America. By Alexis de Tocqueville.

Translated by Henry Reeve. New Edition. London, 1862.

3. On the State of Society in France before the Revolution

of 1789. Translated by Henry Reeve. Second Edition. London,

1873. 518

And other Works.

X.--1. Fourth Midlothian Campaign. Political Speeches

delivered, November, 1885, by the Right Hon. W. E.

Gladstone, M.P. Edinburgh, 1886.

2. John Morley: The Irish Record of the New Chief Secretary,

1886.

3. Ireland: A Book of Light on the Irish Problem. Edited by

Andrew Reid. London, 1886. 544

And other Works.

ART. I.--_Matthaei Parisiensis, Monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica Majora._

Edited by Henry Richards Luard, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College,

Registrary of the University, and Vicar of Great St. Mary's, Cambridge.

Published by the Authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's

Treasury, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. 7 vols. 8vo.

London, Vol. I. 1872--Vol. VII. 1883.

Some of our readers are not likely yet to have forgotten the remarkable

essay which the late Professor Brewer contributed to our pages in 1871,

and which has since been reprinted in the volume of 'English Studies,'

published shortly after the author's death in 1879. English History owes

a larger debt to few men of our time than it owes to Mr. Brewer. As a

teacher whose pupils were always eager to listen to all that fell from

his lips, and whose enthusiasm never failed to awake a kindred spark in

the minds of those who looked to him for light in dark places and

guidance along tortuous paths of research, Mr. Brewer has had few

equals, and perhaps has left no successor who can compare with him. As a

writer he was always brilliant, lucid, and vigorous, and his unrivalled

'Introductions' to the Calendars of Letters and Papers, concerned with

the reign of Henry VIII., will long continue to be read by all students

of our History, as necessary and indispensable interpreters of the vast

storehouses of original documents which he did so much to rescue from

the oblivion or obscurity to which they had previously been consigned.

But it was as an organizer of research that Mr. Brewer earned his

greatest fame and achieved his greatest success, and it was to him more

than to any one man, to his immense persistence in urging upon the

powers that be a more generous freedom of access to our Records, and to

his prodigious powers of work in arranging and tabulating the enormous

masses of documents of all kinds which constitute the _Apparatus_ of

English History, that this country stands indebted, and will remain

indebted as long as our literature lasts.

In the Essay on 'New Sources of English History' the learned author has

given us a startling account of the deplorable condition into which some

of the most precious of our national manuscripts had been allowed to

fall--of the utterly chaotic state of our depositories--of the

hopelessness, the despair which must needs have come upon one student

after another who might be fortunate enough to be turned loose into the

various prison-houses of our muniments--and of the efforts made, and

happily at last made with splendid success, to cleanse the Augean

stable, and to let the world know something of the wealth it contained.

With characteristic modesty Mr. Brewer said nothing of his own part in

all that laborious and sagacious organization which resulted in our

obtaining the magnificent _Calendars_, which have opened out to us all

'that new world which is the old' that had become almost forgotten or

unknown. He was not the man to assert himself, he knew that posterity

would give him his due, but with a simple desire to stimulate research,

and to show how much remained to be done, and how much to be discovered

and made known, he drew the attention of his readers chiefly and

primarily to the value of the Calendars, and to the important results

which those Calendars had already produced, and were destined to produce

hereafter. He had quite enough to say upon this point, and if his life

had been spared, it is probable that he would eventually have given us a

more comprehensive account of the series of volumes which, though now

issuing from the press _pari passu_ with the Calendars, were originally

undertaken a little later. Such an Essay by such a master would indeed

have been an important aid to the student, but at the time of Mr.

Brewer's lamented death the day had hardly come for such a _resume_; and

even now, though so much has been achieved, so much and so well, the

hour has hardly arrived nor the man for taking a comprehensive survey,

and giving to the public an intelligent and intelligible account of that

other Library of Chronicles, and biographies, and letters, and

cartularies, and those other memorials of the Middle Ages in England,

which it is to be feared are hardly as well known as they ought to be,

nor as widely studied as they deserve.

Meanwhile it is high time that attention should be drawn to that noble

series of volumes now issuing from the press under the editorship of

scholars whose reputation is assured, and whose work continues to

enhance their reputation--high time that we should begin to do something

like justice to the labourers, who have deserved so well at the hands

of such Englishmen as have any sentiment of loyalty to the great

thoughts, the great doings, and the noble lives of their forefathers.

The philosopher, who 'holds the mirror up to nature,' has not of late,

as a rule, missed his reward. The historian, who in his dogged, patient,

toilsome fashion holds the mirror up to the life of bygone ages, has

received among us scant recognition, and generally is rewarded with but

barren honour. What has been done and still is doing will be best

understood by briefly reviewing the progress of that movement, which has

brought about the great revival of English Historical study, and under

the influence of which the opinions and convictions of educated men have

passed through a very decided change, one destined to produce still

greater and more unlooked for changes of sentiment and belief before the

present century shall have closed.

It is just fifty years since 'the Father of Record Reform,' as he has

been justly called, received his patent creating him Master of the

Rolls. Although as far back as the year 1800 a Commission was issued for

the methodizing and digesting the National Records, and for printing

such calendars and indexes as should be thought advisable; and though

during the next twenty-seven years many works of supreme interest and

importance were printed at the public expense, the enormous extent of

our National Records were known to few, and the difficulty of consulting

them, (dispersed as they were through a score of different depositories)

was enough to deter all but the most resolute enquirers. It was Lord

Langdale who first set himself to reduce the chaos of our archives into

something like order. When the old Record Commission expired in 1837, it

was by Lord Langdale's influence that the Public Record Act was passed

on the 14th of August, 1838, whereby the Records named therein were

placed under the custody of the Master of the Rolls for the time being,

and hereupon a new era began. Nevertheless it was not till July 1850

that a vote was obtained from the Treasury for the erection of a

national depository, wherein our vast archives should be assembled under

a single roof, and not till 1855 that the magnificent _Tabularium_ in

Fetter Lane was opened for the reception of our muniments.

Lord Langdale died in April 1851;[1] he was succeeded in the Mastership

of the Rolls by Lord Romilly, then Sir John. A happier choice could not

have been made. To Lord Langdale belongs the credit of carrying out the

grand scheme for consolidating the various collections of documents,

which, as we have said, had up to this time been widely dispersed, and

the very existence of the larger mass of which was known only to a few

experts. To Lord Romilly we owe it that the great original sources of

English History so assembled have been rendered accessible to any

student who desires to consult them; and it is to him, too, that we are

indebted for the issue of that unrivalled series of 'Chronicles and

Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland, from the Invasion of the Romans

to the Reign of Henry VIII.,' which has laid the foundation for a

science of history firmer and deeper and wider than before was believed

to be even attainable.

Great men are at once the leaders and the product of their age. When

Lord Langdale set himself to his task he was only attempting that which

had been talked of since the reign of Edward II. For five centuries the

unification of our National Records had been recommended and advised by

lawyers, statesmen, and scholars from generation to generation, but no

practical scheme had ever been suggested, and the difficulties in the

way of reform were supposed to be insuperable. It was a Herculean task,

and one that grew ever more arduous the longer it was postponed. During

the first quarter of the present century profound dissatisfaction had

begun to be felt at the condition of our historical literature. The

ordinary text-books were full of fables, more than suspected to be

fables, and which yet it was extremely difficult to disprove

satisfactorily. Theories which had long passed current were being rudely

assailed, and yet--in the face of the obstacles that hindered

research--stubbornly held their ground, or were repeated with peremptory

dogmatism. A deep distrust of the old methods and the old assumptions

had given rise to a widespread desire to drag forth from their

hiding-places any documents, however dry or recondite, which might throw

some clear light upon our national life and manners, and not only upon

mere events of national importance during Medieval times. A desire to

know the truth was _in the air_. The science of history had passed out

of its infancy, and the stirrings of a new craving--the passion of

Research--were making themselves felt in that mysterious restlessness

which indicates that the old smooth-faced docility, the old childish

submission to tutelage, the old unquestioning acceptance of authority,

has gone for ever, and a new life has begun. The year before Lord

Langdale received his appointment as Master of the Rolls, the Surtees

Society had been founded for the printing of unedited MSS. illustrative

of the history of the northern counties; and in the same year that the

old Record Commission expired, the English Historical Society was

started, a society which numbered amongst its promoters such men as the

late Mr. Kemble, Mr. H. O. Coxe, Sir T. Duffus Hardy, and Mr.

Stevenson--the leaders and teachers of that school of younger men who

have so ably followed in the steps of their seniors, and who, mounting

on the shoulders of the giants, have gained a wider view than it was

given to those others to attain. The five years that followed saw the

foundation of the Camden, the Percy, and the Chetham Societies, not to

mention many another that has done useful work in its way. The labours

of these pioneers soon made it quite apparent that the sources of our

national history--social, ecclesiastical, and political--were quite too

voluminous for private enterprise to deal with, and would demand the

co-operation of a body of trained scholars and the resources of the

public exchequer to make them available as apparatus for the teachers of

the future.

On the 26th of January, 1857, Sir John Romilly submitted to the Treasury

his memorable proposal for the publication of certain materials for the

History of England;[2] and on the 9th of February a Treasury Minute was

put forth approving of the plan that had been drawn up as one 'well

calculated for the accomplishment of this important national object in

an effectual and satisfactory manner within a reasonable time.'

Forthwith arrangements were made for the issue of that series of works

which is now known as the 'Rolls Series,' a collection which has already

extended to upwards of 200 volumes.

The lines laid down by Sir John Romilly were almost exactly those which

had been followed by the English Historical Society. Every editor was to

'give an account of the MSS. employed by him, of their age and their

peculiarities;' he was to add 'a brief account of the life and times of

the author, and any remarks necessary to explain the chronology; _but no

other note or comment_ was to be allowed, except what might be necessary

to establish the correctness of the text.' The restriction was

absolutely necessary if only for this, that when the 'Rolls Series' was

first commenced even the most accomplished of its editors were mere

learners. The time had not yet arrived for comments. The text was wanted

first in its completeness and integrity.

Looking back to this period--little more than a quarter of a century

ago--it is difficult for us to realize the deplorable condition into

which our historical literature had been allowed to fall. Kemble's great

work, the 'Codex Diplomaticus aevi Saxonici,' the first volume of which

appeared in 1839, and his 'History of the Saxons in England,' published

in 1849, came upon the great body of intelligent men as the revelation

of new things. It is sufficient to turn to the chapter on the

Constitutional History of England before the Conquest, in Hallam's

'History of the Middle Ages,' to be assured how meagre and superficial

even Hallam's knowledge was of everything before the Norman invasion. It

was no fault of his; he made good use of all such materials as were then

accessible to the student--that is, all such as had been printed; for

that incomparably larger _apparatus_ which since Hallam's days has been

published to the world, it was for all practical purposes as if it had

never existed at all. Even men of culture and learning were persuaded

that all that was ever likely to be known about the religious houses had

been collected in the new edition of Dugdale's 'Monasticon.' It is

hardly too much to say that of the history of English monasticism Hallam

knew nothing. Dr. Lingard himself had very little more to say of the

great Abbeys than his predecessors, and had a very inadequate conception

of the part they played in the development of our institutions; and when

Dr. Maitland wrote his brilliant 'Essays on the Dark Ages,' he hardly

names St. Edmundsbury or St. Alban's, and though one of his most

fascinating chapters is concerned with the early days of Croyland, his

only authority for the beautiful story, which he has handled so

skilfully, is a romantic narrative attributed to Ingulphus, which has

been demonstrated to be a somewhat clumsy though a clever forgery. Of

the Mendicant Orders--of the work they did, of the influence they

exercised, and of the attitude adopted towards them in the 13th century

by the parochial clergy on the one hand, and by the monks on the

other--even less was known, if less were possible, than of their

wealthier rivals.

Two years had scarcely elapsed since the issue of the Treasury Minute of

February, 1857, before it began to be said that the history of England

would have to be written anew. In the single year 1858 _eleven_ works of

the highest importance were printed, and it was evident that neither

original materials nor scholarly editors would be wanting to make the

'Rolls Series' all that it was desired it should become. The 'Chronicles

of the Monasteries of Abingdon and of St. Augustine at Canterbury,' the

contemporary 'Life of Edward the Confessor,' and the priceless

'Monumenta Franciscana,' telling the wonderful story of the settlement

of the Minorites among us, were printed from unique MSS. Next year the

'Chronicle of John of Oxnedes' was brought out by Sir Henry Ellis, and

the 'Historia Anglicana' of Bartholomew Cotton, by Dr. Luard, neither

work having ever before been printed. Volume followed volume in rapid

succession, a steady improvement becoming observable in the style of

editing, as the several editors became more familiar with the results of

their predecessors' labours.

It was while working at Bartholomew Cotton that Dr. Luard was brought

into intimate relations with the 13th century. Hitherto the _composite_

character of such chronicles as had been published had indeed been

perceived, but no attempt had been made to trace the original authority

for statements repeated in the same words by one writer after another.

Dr. Luard opened out a new line of enquiry, and in his edition of

Cotton's Chronicle he endeavoured to distinguish in every instance the

material which might fairly be called original from that which his

author had borrowed from older writers and incorporated into his text.

The borrowed matter was printed in smaller type, and the sources from

which it had been derived were indicated by references given at the foot

of the page. Cottons' own additions were printed in a bolder type, so as

at once to catch the eye. While conducting the laborious researches

necessitated by this new method of editing his text, it became clear to

Dr. Luard that Cotton had borrowed largely from Matthew Paris--who had

lived just a generation before him--and that he had also borrowed from a

mysterious writer much read in the 14th and 15th centuries, who went by

the name of Matthew of Westminster. As to this Matthew of Westminster,

Dr. Luard postponed dealing with him till some future time. He might

prove a mere mythic personage, and it was suspected he would; but

Matthew Paris was certainly no shadow, but a very real man, whose

greatness seemed to grow greater the more he was studied and the better

he was known. Yet as Dr. Luard became more familiar with the text of

Paris, he was soon convinced that in its printed form it was bristling

with the grossest inaccuracies of all kinds. Originally it had been

published under the authority of Archbishop Parker in 1571; and though

other editions had appeared, in this country and on the Continent,

several times since then, Paris's great work had remained exactly in the

same state as Parker (or whoever his agent was) had left it three

centuries ago. That is to say, that by far the most important work on

English history during the 13th century--not to mention European

affairs--and by far the most minute and trustworthy picture of English

life and manners during the reign of Henry III.--a record, too, drawn

up by a contemporary writer of rare genius and literary skill--was

defaced by blunders, audacious tampering with the text and gross

inaccuracies, to such an extent that no conscientious student could

allow himself to quote the printed work without first referring to one

of the very MSS. which the Archbishop professed to have used.

Nevertheless, the task of bringing out a critical edition of the

'Chronica Majora' did not appear less formidable as fresh sources of

information cropped up; and Dr. Luard shrank from the immense labour

that such an edition involved, it was because he had formed a correct

notion of its magnitude. In 1861 he brought out in the same series the

'Letters of Robert Grosseteste,' the heroic and magnanimous Bishop of

Lincoln; and while working at this volume, the England of the 13th

century became more and more alive and present to the mind of the

student.

But distinctly and grandly as one noble character after another revealed

itself, there was a strange mist that required to be dispelled before

even the importance of great events could be rightly estimated. The

inner life of the monasteries, great and small, must be enquired into,

so far as it was possible to get any information on so obscure a

subject; and, above all, the paramount influence which so magnificent an

institution as the Abbey of St. Alban's exercised upon the intellectual

life of the country must be studied with patient impartiality. Before a

scholar with so lofty an ideal of an editor's duty could venture upon

his _magnum opus_, there was indeed an enormous mass of preliminary work

to get through. The horizon seemed to widen everywhere as the years of

historical discovery went on. It was left to Mr. Riley to attack that

wonderful collection of documents to which he gave the title of

'Chronica Monasterii Sancti Albani'--a series occupying twelve thick

volumes, and which furnish us not only with a priceless _apparatus_, by

the help of which a hundred problems perplexing the historian are

furnished with a clue towards their solution--but which afford such an

insight into the life of the greatest monastery in England during its

best times as nobody expected could ever be forthcoming. While Mr. Riley

was occupied with the _Chronicles_ of St. Alban's and the lives of its

Abbots, Dr. Luard was engaged in collecting all the _Annals_ of the

lesser monasteries which he could lay his hands on. Some of these had

already been printed more or less carelessly; others had never seen the

light since they were written. Such as were printed were extremely

difficult to procure--scarce and costly. Dr. Luard took six years in

bringing out his five volumes--volumes referring to the golden age of

English Monasticism, which threw all sorts of side-light upon Mr.

Riley's 'Chronicles,' while they were in turn continually being

explained and illustrated by them.

While the 'Monastic Annals' were passing through the press, a very

startling announcement was made by no less a person than Sir Frederick

Madden, Keeper of the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum.

Sir Frederick declared that he had come upon a copy of what was commonly

called the 'Historia Minor' of Matthew Paris, not only written by the

author himself, but actually annotated, corrected, and illustrated with

drawings by his own hand. Such an announcement made by an expert of

European reputation, one who had been handling MSS. all his life,

necessarily created a sensation in the literary world. If it were

accepted and proved true, it was one of the most curious romances in the

history of literature. But was it true? To most critics the antecedent

improbability of the theory put forth by Sir Frederick was so great as

to relegate it to the domain of extravagant paradox; but the name and

fame of its supporter were too high to allow of its being dismissed

without refutation. For two or three years no one ventured to enter the

lists against so formidable a champion who had staked his reputation

upon the issue. At last another great specialist, not a whit less

competent than the other, came forward to controvert the opinions and

theory which had been so confidently maintained by Sir Frederick. In

1871 Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy brought out the third volume of his

_Catalogue_, and it was in the famous Introduction to this volume that

the Madden Hypothesis was first assailed with damaging effect. Sir

Thomas, it must be remembered, was Deputy Keeper of the Records. Sir

Frederick was Keeper of the Department of Manuscripts at the British

Museum. Each was the representative man in his own department, and a

very pretty quarrel arose. Into the merits of that quarrel it is

impossible to enter here; it is a matter for specialists, not for

outsiders, to pronounce upon. This, however, may be said with

confidence, that if we except that school of very able and accomplished

experts which the British Museum has trained, experts whose _range_ of

diplomatic knowledge must needs be wider than that of any 'Record man,'

the refutation of Sir Frederick Madden by Sir Thomas Duffus was

generally regarded as unanswerable and triumphant. With the exception

indicated--a very important exception indeed--the Madden Hypothesis was

believed to be utterly demolished, in fact 'blown into the air.'

Nevertheless there are those, from whom something may be expected some

day in the way of rejoinder who are by no means sure that the last word

on this question has been said that deserve to be said, and even so

scrupulous and sagacious a critic as Dr. Luard seems to be less certain

than he was that Madden was quite wrong in _all_ he affirmed, and Hardy

quite right in _all_ he denied.

The attention which had been drawn to Matthew Paris by this remarkable

controversy could not but have its effect in awakening a desire for that

critical edition of the larger Chronicle which Dr. Luard had been so

long preparing. The way was cleared for such an edition now; it was not

likely that any more MSS. of the author would be discovered. Such as

were deposited in the various libraries had been carefully scrutinized,

or their homes were known, and the long years of preparatory study had

been turned to good account--no pains had been spared nor any labour

grudged. In 1872 the first volume of the 'Chronica Majora' appeared in

the 'Rolls Series.' In 1884 the seventh and last volume was issued,

containing the learned editor's last preface, glossary, and emendations,

and an Index to the whole work, extending over nearly 600 pages. It is a

long time since an English scholar has had the good fortune to carry to

its completion so important a work as this, projected on so large a

scale, executed with such conscientious care--characterized by so much

critical skill and scrupulous accuracy--all this achieved single-handed

in the midst of other duties, professional and academical, which would

be quite sufficient to exhaust the energies of an ordinary man.

Now that the work has been done, and done so thoroughly that it may

safely be asserted the _standard edition_ of the 'Chronic Majora' has

been published once for all, we are in a better position than we ever

were heretofore for taking a survey of the life and labours of its

author, and for answering the enquiries which of late have been made

with increasing frequency, and made too among those who might have been

expected to be able to answer them. Who and what was Matthew Paris? What

did he do, and what did he write that the learned few should speak of

him with so much reverence, though to the unlearned many he is little

more than a famous and familiar name?

Perhaps before dealing with his personal history, or entering into any

examination of his literary labours, it will be well first to answer the

question--_What_ was Matthew Paris? for it is simply impossible to

estimate rightly the debt we owe to him, or to understand the brief

account that could be drawn up of his career till we have learned to

know something of the _profession_ to which he belonged, and the great

foundation of which he was so distinguished an ornament. By profession

Matthew Paris was a monk. A monk 'professed' is a term indicating the

higher grade to which not every brother in a monastery attained. The

very term 'profession' may be traced to the cloister. In its usual

acceptation it is modern.

To dilate upon the various monastic orders, which were almost as

numerous in the 13th century as the different religious denominations

are in the 19th, would be out of place here. Suffice it to say that the

English monasteries in Henry III.'s time counted by hundreds. But there

were monasteries and monasteries. Some the homes of the scholar, the

devout and the high-minded, the seats of learning and the resting-places

of the studious and the aged, who hated war and tumult, and only longed

for repose. Some that were mere hiding holes for the lazy and the

incompetent, the failures among the younger sons of the gentry, who had

not the power of pushing their way in the world, or whose career had

been a disappointment. Such men, where all else failed, could get

themselves admitted into some smaller religious house by the interest of

the patron; sometimes bringing in a trifling addition to the common

property, sometimes simply 'pitchforked' into a vacancy, it is difficult

to say how. Then they became 'brethren' of the monastery, and sharers in

most of the good things that it could offer; they were almost exactly in

the same position as Fellows of Colleges were twenty years ago, holding

their preferment for life, with this difference, that a Fellowship at

the smallest College in Oxford or Cambridge always implied _some_

qualification for the post. A College Fellow, at the worst, must have

had some claims to learning or culture; whereas in the smaller and more

remote monasteries a man might be scandalously ignorant, and yet gain

admittance as a brother of the house.

Between the highest and the lowest of that great army of monks,

dispersed through the length and breadth of the land, when English

monarchism had declined from its earlier ideal, there was as great a

distance as there is at this moment between the Fellows of Balliol or

Trinity, and the poor brethren of the Charterhouse, or the bedesmen in

the cathedrals of the old foundation.

In the first half of the 13th century English monarchism was at its

best; the 12th century was emphatically the reformation age of British

monarchism. All the many schemes for starting new orders with improved

_Rules_, and all the efforts to improve the discipline of the religious

houses and fan the fire of devotion among their members, assumed that

the monasteries were then living institutions with vast powers for good;

and institutions which needed only to be reformed to make them all that

the most earnest and ardent enthusiast claimed that they ought to be,

and might become. In the fifty years preceding the accession of King

John, more than 200 monasteries had been built and endowed--some of them

munificently endowed, and the only purely English order (that of St.

Gilbert of Sempringham) had been founded, and in little more than fifty

years could count no less than fourteen considerable houses. Englishmen

believed in the monastic system as they have never believed in anything

else since then; never have such prodigious sacrifices been made, never

has such lavish munificence been shown by the _upper classes_ as during

the century ending with the accession of Edward I. In the next hundred

years they were chiefly the townsmen and traders, not the landed

proprietors, who emptied their money-bags into the lap of the Begging

friars. Certainly the great religious houses at the end of the 13th

century had the entire confidence of the country, and it is impossible

to understand the long reign of Henry III. unless we are fully awake to

the fact that then, too, the monasteries were not only thriving and

powerful, but were institutions on whose help and power the people leant

with an assured confidence, because they were pre-eminently the people's

friends. But between the old foundations which had a history and the new

houses that were springing up in every shire, some feeling of jealousy

and soreness was sure to arise. The old abbeys, with a history that

looked back into a past all clouds and mist, but none the less glorious

for that, affected a supercilious tone towards the mushrooms that had of

late sprouted into vigorous life. A man need not be an old man who can

remember when the Eton and Winchester boys at the Universities affected

an air of contempt for all the 'modern' places of education, and

disdained to number such institutions as Cheltenham or Clifton among the

'public schools.' These were all very well in their way, but where were

their traditions? So with the older and grander Benedictine monasteries,

with charters from Saxon kings, let alone anything else. Glastonbury,

where men said two of the Apostles had built themselves a house of

prayer, and where St. Patrick and St. Dunstan lay entombed; Canterbury,

where Augustine, the English apostle, found a home; Malmesbury, where

St. Aldhelm preached to the barbarous people, and when they tired of his

sermon played to them upon his harp, and, anticipating Mr. Sankey, sang

David's Psalms to the crowds that moved by him as they passed over the

bridge of Avon. These venerable foundations, about whose origin a

glamour of mystery had gathered, whose history had become strangely

obscured by the body of myths that had grown up in the lapse of

centuries--which had survived pillage and anarchy, and all the horrors

of fire and sword, desolating, devastating--were there before men's

eyes, testifying to the amazing vitality which a millennium of strange

vicissitude had not only not destroyed, but not even impaired. Such a

mighty pile of buildings, as had risen up to heaven there in the old

Roman town of Verulam, appealed to the imagination of mankind--the very

materials of the massive tower, ruddy in the blaze of the noon-day, must

have been a wonder and astonishment to many an awe-struck pilgrim

perplexed at the first sight of Roman bricks burnt on the spot a

thousand years ago. There stood the mighty Roman rampart, vast,

enormous--the ground beneath his feet teeming with the tangible memories

of grisly conflict, or of an old civilization that had been blotted out

long ago--the swords of Roman legionaries, the bones of British heroes,

coins with legends that few could read turned up by the ploughman's

share. Yonder, men said, away there at Redburn, the heathen pursuers had

come upon England's proto-martyr and slain the saint of God, whose bones

since then had been gathered up, and were now resting in their sumptuous

shrine. When the Norman came, and the new order was set up in the

land--not a day before it was needed--the thirteenth Abbot of St.

Alban's was of the blood royal, and heir, they said, to Cnut, the Danish

king, who had passed away. It was to him that the awful Conqueror made

oath he would bind himself by the Confessor's laws, an oath which, if he

ever meant to keep, he meant to interpret according to his mood. Even

the very laxity and shortcomings of the abbots of generations back,

which tradition, and something more to be trusted than tradition,

declared to have been matters of scandal, proved no more than that the

great Abbey could live through evil times, outride the storms which

would wreck weaker vessels, and right itself, though overloaded with

abuses which timid pilots would have shrunk from throwing overboard: and

now that 400 years had passed since Offa, the Saxon king--(stirred

thereto by Karl, the Emperor)--had founded the monastery in St. Alban's

honour, and from generation to generation vast building operations had

been going on almost without interruption, and the old Abbey still held

up its head proudly, its Abbot taking precedence of every other in the

land; any man might be excused for thinking that to become a monk of St.

Alban's Abbey was to become a personage of no small consideration.

Verily it was a great abbey in the days of King John. There, in the

eighth year of that King's reign, was held that memorable council

which, if it had been let alone, would doubtless have issued its protest

against the intolerable aggression of the Pope and his _curia_. There,

six years afterwards, another assembly was convened; the first occasion

on which we find any historical proof that representatives were summoned

to a national council in England. Eight times during his reign the

ruffian King was himself a guest at the Abbey. Once after John's death,

when Louis was desperately struggling to hold his own against young

Henry's friends and supporters, he too came to St. Alban's, and

threatened to give it over to fire and sword: only money saved it from a

sack. There was always something to take, and yet always wonderful state

kept up. The magnates in Church and State were for ever going in and

out; the mere domestic expenditure was enormous. Yet, even when the

country was groaning under horrible anarchy, and grinding taxation, and

war and poverty, the building went on as if men lived only to glorify

the great house, and to raise its church tower, or beautify the west

front, or fill the windows with stained glass, or erect the splendid

pulpit in the nave--a miracle of art.

It would be a very great mistake to conclude that all this lavish

expenditure implied the enjoyment of large rents from land. The revenue

derived from the tenants of the Abbey and the profits of farming were no

doubt considerable; but that revenue could never have sufficed alone to

defray the cost of keeping up the establishment. In point of fact, when

a monastery, great or small, depended wholly upon its landed property,

it invariably got into debt; sometimes it got hopelessly into debt. It

is clear that before the Dissolution a very large number of the

religious houses were insolvent. The striking paucity in the number of

'religious' at the time of the suppression--for hardly one house in ten

had its full complement of inmates--is by no means wholly to be

attributed to the reluctance on the part of people in general to take

upon themselves the monastic vows. Where a monastery was financially in

a critical condition, the brotherhood resorted to the expedient which is

at this moment being carried out at more than one College in Oxford and

Cambridge. Now, when times are bad, we temporarily suppress a

Fellowship; then, on the death of a brother of the house, they chose no

monk into his place.

The income from landed estates at St. Alban's was probably at no time

equal to what may be called the extraordinary income. The offerings at

the shrines of SS. Alban and Amphibalus, the proceeds of the offertory

at those magnificent and dramatic functions in which the multitude

delighted, and the _douceurs_ that were always expected and almost

always given in return for hospitality, which only in theory was

free,--these and many another source of profit, which the universal

habit of giving money for 'pious uses' supplied, all made up a sum

total, in comparison with which the proceeds of the rent-roll were

insignificant. In the taxation of Pope Nicholas (A. D. 1291) the whole

revenue of the Abbey from rent and dues in the liberty of St. Alban's is

set down at 392l. 8s. 3-1/4d., a sum which in those days would go as far

as 5000l. a-year now. Even granting that this was only half the net

income derivable from the Abbey's estates, which were widely

distributed, an expenditure of 10,000l. a year would go in our own time

a very little way towards meeting the charges which such an enormous

establishment involved. The mere keeping up the buildings at all times

entailed a very heavy annual outlay. Already in the 13th century the

precincts of the Abbey were overcrowded with palatial edifices, which

were never pulled down except to make room for larger ones. There were

acres of roofs within the Abbey walls.

And what return was being made to the nation, that every rank and every

class were keeping up a rivalry in munificence in favour of such an

institution as this? What had they done, what were they doing, these

seventy men, with their Abbot at their head, who were in the enjoyment

of an income larger than that of many a principality? How was it that no

one _in those days_ accused them of being indolent drones? Mere burdens

upon the earth, as they were called frequently enough, and loudly

enough, and angrily enough, three centuries later? It was the age for

the expansion of the monastic system--none then wished to sweep the

monks away. One of the reasons why the monasteries had retained their

hold upon the affection of the people, and were regarded with reverence

and pride and confidence, lay in this, that they had moved with the

times, and that the monasticism of the 13th was very different indeed

from the monasticism of the 9th century. The primitive asceticism had

almost vanished; it had not, however, died, leaving nothing in its

place. No one now expected to find the religious houses filled with

religious people, everyone holy, devout, and fervent; the personal

sanctity of the inmates was one thing, the sanctity of their churches

and shrines was quite another. In the old days the monks were separate

from the world, living to save their own souls at best; examples to such

as trembled at the wrath of God, and longed for the life to come. As

time went on they mixed more boldly with the sinful world, and gradually

they became more and more the illuminators of the darkness round them.

Now they were regarded as in great measure the salt of the earth, and if

that salt should lose its savour, where was such virtue elsewhere to be

found? Personally, the men might be worldly--vicious, as a rule, they

certainly were not--they were, _mutatis mutandis_, what in our time

would be called cultured gentlemen, courteous, highly educated and

refined, as compared with the great mass of their contemporaries; a

privileged class who were not abusing their privileges; a class from

whence all the art and letters and accomplishments of the time emanated,

allied in blood as much with the low as the high, the aristocracy of

intellect, and the pioneers of scientific and material progress. The

model farming of the 13th century would be regarded as barbaric by our

modern theorists; but such as it was, it was only to be met with on the

demesne lands of the larger monasteries, and was a prodigious advance

upon the _petite culture_ of the open fields. The Priory at Norwich made

an income out of its garden in the days of Edward III., and probably

much earlier; the pisciculture of the religious houses remains a mystery

as yet unsolved; the skill exhibited in the management of the

water-power of many a district round even the smaller houses, still

awakes wonder in those who think it worth their while to study it. At

St. Alban's, as at Glastonbury, St. Edmund's Abbey, and elsewhere, the

culture of the vine was made profitable for generations. The monasteries

were the first to give personal freedom to the villeins, and the first

to commute for money payments the vexatious _services_ which worried the

best men and maddened the worst. The landlords in the 13th century were

real _lords_ of the _land_. They were, as a class, very poor, spite of

the privileges they enjoyed and the power that they possessed of making

themselves disagreeable; and though the constitution of a _manor_ was a

limited monarchy, and the _limits_ were very many, yet the lord could

exercise a great deal of petty tyranny in his little kingdom if he were

so disposed. In the manors which were in the possession of the religious

houses the lord was necessarily non-resident, and the tenants were left

to manage their own affairs with very little interference. The tenants

of the monasteries were in a far more favoured condition than the

tenants of some small lord, needy and greedy, who extorted his dues

literally to the last farthing, and who knew exactly what the best beast

was, on the land that owed him a heriot; and, when the tenant was _in

extremis_, kept a sharp look-out that a fat bullock or a promising young

horse should not be driven off before the owner died.

So the monasteries at the time we are now concerned with were regarded

at once with pride and affection by the great bulk of the people; they

were places of refuge where, in a turbulent time, men and women who had

been stricken, bereaved or wronged, might find a quiet refuge and hide

their heads and be forgotten and fall asleep, with the prayers of other

sufferers to console and support them in their passage through the

valley of the shadow of death. The gentlest spirits here could taste the

bliss of a holy tranquillity; the ascetic could indulge his most

fantastic self-immolation; the morbid visionary could dream at his will

and give his imagination full play, none hindering him; evil demons

might chatter and gibe and twit him at his prayers; choirs of angels

might calm his despair with celestial lullabies; awful forms might rise

from clouds of incense as the gorgeous procession moved along the vast

church aisles, or stopped before some glittering shrine. What then? Who

would question the reality of a miracle, or doubt that sublime

revelations might be made to any holy monk as he wrestled in prayer with

a rapture of the soul, and found himself lifted to the seventh heaven in

ecstasy unutterable?

What has been said applies mainly to the older houses, those which were

under what may be called the _primitive_ Benedictine rule. If men were

moved to rigid asceticism, however, and had a taste for bald simplicity;

if art, and music, and ornate architecture, had no charm for them, and

they dreamt that God could only be sought and found in the wilderness,

the Cistercian houses offered such a congenial asylum. The Cistercians

were the Puritans of the monasteries, and appealed to that mysterious

sentiment which makes some minds shrink with fear from the touch of

luxury, and regard culture as antagonistic to personal holiness. The

sentiment was strong in the reign of Henry II., when nineteen Cistercian

houses were founded; but it is not improbable that other motives, beside

mere taste for a stricter discipline, led to the foundation of eight

more in the reign of King John. Meanwhile the Benedictines had become by

far the most learned and most _educating_ body in the land, and

pre-eminent above them all was the great Abbey of St. Alban's. If it was

not at this time the centre of intellectual life in England, it was

because at this time centralization was unknown. Eadmer, Florence of

Worcester, Gervase of Canterbury, William of Malmesbury, Simeon of

Durham, were all 12th-century Benedictines. They were all students and

writers of history, and history meant _literature_ till Peter Lombard

arose at the end of the 12th century and revolutionized the world of

thought--at any rate the domain of logic. John of Salisbury fiercely

assails the intellectual innovators of his time on the ground that the

new lights of the 12th century disdained to be students of history and

affected contempt for the past. It was the old story; literary culture

found itself in antagonism with scientific culture, and the vigorous

childhood of scientific research was aggressive, insolent, and noisily

insubordinate. The old seminaries, whose homes were in the Benedictine

monasteries, refused to welcome the new learning. Its teachers settled

themselves elsewhere; at Paris, on the other side of the water, they had

a hard fight of it. Once in 1209 the Synod of Paris actually prohibited

the reading of Aristotle's 'Metaphysics.' At Oxford they seem to have

met with a more generous reception. Perhaps it was because that

reception was too enthusiastic that King Stephen at the close of his

miserable reign expelled Vacarius, the first teacher of scientific law

in England. Whereupon young men of parts and ambition crossed the

Channel, seeking and finding at Pavia and Bologna what was not to be had

at home. The monastic schools held their own, and went on in the old

groove; the intellectual revolution which soon came about by the agency

of the Mendicant Orders was not yet dreamt of. St. Alban's, Malmesbury,

and other such mighty foundations, stuck to the old studies, just as

Eton and Winchester stuck to Latin Verse as the one thing needful, and

reluctantly gave into the newfangled notion of having a 'modern side.'

Outside the Abbey precincts, a hundred yards from the great gate, and

separated from it by the _Rome land_, which may possibly have served the

boys as a playground, stood the Grammar School. Whether it offered a

different training from that which was usually supplied to the scholars

who were under training in the cloister, it is difficult to say. Within

the precincts, when the 13th century began, there stood the great

church--enriched by the accumulated offerings of centuries, and glowing

with dazzling splendour of jewels and cloth of gold, and glass that

glorified the very sunshine, and wonders of sculpture and colour and

needlework filling the heart to overflowing with inexplicable hopes and

longings for an ideal that seemed possible of realization, if only the

Church in heaven should be as far removed above the actual of the Church

on earth, as the glories of the Church on earth were removed above the

squalid life of the common workday world. All this in witness that the

great Abbey was, first and foremost, a religious foundation, raised in

the first instance to the glory of God, and meant to help forward the

worship of God, and make the worship worthy of the Most High.

But besides being primarily and emphatically a religious foundation, the

Abbey in the 13th century had grown into something else, and had become

the home of a corporation of scholars and students, who were the leaders

of art and culture in an age when art and culture were to be met with

nowhere outside the walls of a great monastery. There, in what might be

called the museum of the Abbey, you might see no mean collection of

antique gems that had once been the pride of Roman magistrates.

Mysterious specimens of barbaric goldwork, fashioned by unknown

craftsmen for the necks of nameless chieftains who had drawn the sword

and perished, none knew when. Engraved gems that had been dug up in

mysterious sepulchres, about which even imagination despaired of telling

any story; relics of saints and martyrs, charters of Saxon kings,

granted centuries before the Normans came to ring out the old and ring

in the new. The wealth of mere archaeological specimens at St. Alban's

made it such a museum of antiquities as provokes wonder and bitterness,

as we read the catalogue of what was once there, and has perished

utterly and for ever.[3]

The range of buildings to the south of the church covered a far larger

area than that which the church itself occupied. Uncertain though the

exact site may be and is, there had already been added in Brother

Matthew's time what we should now call an Art school, a Library, and,

almost more famous than all, the Scriptorium. By-and-bye, too, came the

printing-press which John Herford set up in 1480. Wynkyn de Worde was

sometime schoolmaster of Saint Alban's, and Lady Juliana Berners' famous

volume issued from the Abbey Press, while Caxton was still pursuing his

craft in the almonry of another monastery at Westminster.

In the days of King John, however, people had so little idea of the

possibility of the printing-press, that they were almost equally

ignorant of such a material as paper for literary purposes. Yet it is a

huge mistake which has not yet been exploded, as it ought to be, that

reading and writing were rare accomplishments in the 13th century.

Knowledge of a certain kind was disseminated far more effectively and

far more universally than is generally believed. The country parson was

expected to be the schoolmaster of his parish, and generally was so, and

there was hardly a village in England during the reign of Henry III, in

which there were not one or more persons who could write a _clerkly_

hand, draw up accounts in _Latin_, and keep the records of the various

petty courts and gatherings that were continually being held, sometimes

to the annoyance and grievous vexation of the rural population. The

professional _writers_ were so numerous, and their training so severe,

that they had got for themselves privileges of a very exceptional kind;

the _clerk_ took rank with the _clergyman_, and the _writer_ of a book

was almost as much esteemed as its _author_.

The scriptorium of a great monastery was at once the printing-press and

the publishing office. It was the place where books were written, and

whence they issued to the world. With the traditional exclusiveness of

the older monasteries there was less desire, no doubt, to diffuse and

disperse than to accumulate books, but the composing and the

multiplication of books was always going on. The scriptorium was a great

writing school too, and the rules of the art of writing which were laid

down there were so rigidly and severely adhered to, that to this day it

is difficult to decide at a glance whether a book was written in St.

Alban's or St. Edmund's Abbey. Sometimes as many as twenty writers were

employed at once, and besides these there were occasionally

supernumeraries, who were professional scribes, and who were paid for

their services; but nothing short of perfect penmanship, such trained

skill, for instance, as would now be required for an engraver, would

qualify a copyist to take part in the finished work, which the copying

of important books required.

One of the conclusions which Sir Thomas Hardy arrived at during the

course of his minute examination of Sir Frederick Madden's theory is so

curious, and opens out such an unexpected view of the way in which our

monasteries may have been brought under the influence of foreign

literature, that it is worth while in this connection to quote the great

critic's own words:

'After minutely examining every page of the manuscripts in

question, as well as others, which were undoubtedly written

in the monastery of St. Alban's, and comparing them with

others executed in various parts of England and on the

Continent, I can come to no other conclusion than that

during the latter half of the 13th century, and perhaps a

little earlier, there prevailed among the scribes in the

Scriptorium of St. Alban's, a peculiar character of writing

which is not recognizable in any other religious house in

England during that period; but which is traceable in some

foreign manuscripts, and even in private deeds executed in

England in the neighbourhood of St. Alban's during the 12th

and 13th centuries. These facts lead me to the inference,

that _the schoolmaster who taught the art of writing to

Matthew Paris and the other members and scholars of the

establishment at St. Alban's was a foreigner_; that his

pupils not only imitated their instructor in the formation

of his letters, but also in his exceptional orthography.'

What questions suggest themselves as we accept the conclusion arrived

at! Who was he, this 'foreigner,' who had come from across the sea to

bring in his outlandish novelties into the great scriptorium? Was he

some 'Frenchman' imported from sunny Champagne, where Thibaut, the

mawkish singer was making verses which his people loved to listen to?

Did he teach the young novices French as well as writing? Did he touch

the lute himself on Feast-days, and charm them with some new lyric of

Gasse Brusle, or delight them with one of Rutebeuf's merry ditties?

France was all alive with song at this time, and princes were rivals now

for poetic fame. It may be that this 'foreigner' brought in a taste for

light literature as well as for a new fashion in penmanship, and made

known to his pupils such alluring novelties as the 'Roman d'Alexandre,

soon to be eclipsed by the 'Roman de la Rose.'

The scriptorium at St. Alban's was founded by Abbot Paul, a kinsman of

Archbishop Lanfrance, when the great Abbey had already existed for three

centuries. Paul became Abbot eleven years after the Conquest, and he

showed himself an able and earnest administrator. From this time

learning and a love of books became a tradition of the house. Abbot

after abbot continued to add to the collection of MSS., and to increase

the value of the library. But St. Alban's had never had a great

historian of its own. Strange and shameful fact! East and west and north

and south, all over the land, there were great writers holding up their

proud heads. Out in the desolate wilds there at Peterborough, they had

been actually keeping up a chronicle for centuries--aye, and written in

the vernacular too. The lonely monastery of Ely, among the swamps, had

its historian. Malmesbury boasted her learned William; and Worcester,

which St. Wulstan had raised from the dust, as it were, only the other

day, had already her Florence. In the great houses of the Northern

Province there had been no lack of writers to whom the past was an open

book. Even Westminster had long ago had her _chronographer_, and far

away in furthest Wales, Geoffrey, the Monmouth man, was making men open

their eyes very wide indeed with tales--idle tales they might be, but

they were well worth the reading--and there was talk too of another

young Welshman, Giraldus, who was on the way towards outdoing the other

by-and-bye. What are we coming to? Holy St. Alban, shalt thou and thy

house be put to shame?--that be far from us!

Thus it came to pass that about a century after the foundation of the

scriptorium, and when the library had grown to an imposing size, Abbot

Simon bestirred himself, and a new office was created in the Abbey, to

wit, that of Historiographer. In our time we should have given this

functionary a grander title, and called him Professor of History; but in

the 12th century, they called him what he was, a writer of history, and

from this time, in fact, the writing of history, after a certain

authorized method, began, and what had been called, and deserves to be

called, the St. Alban's School of History took its rise.

It is evident that before the 13th century had well begun, an historical

compendium of great value had already been drawn up, which must have

been compiled by careful students with a command of books such as during

this age was rare.

'The compilation,' says Dr. Luard, 'whenever and by

whomsoever it was written must be regarded as a very curious

and remarkable one. The very large number of sources

consulted, the miscellaneous character of many of the

extracts, the mixture of history and legend, the giving

fixed years to stories which even writers like Geoffrey of

Monmouth had left undated, the care at one time and the

carelessness at another, the slavishness with which one

authority is followed, and the recklessness with which

another is altered, the frequent confusion of dates, their

ignorance and want of care, the blunders displayed in many

instances from the compiler not understanding the author

whom he is copying, as is especially the case in the

extracts from the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle;" all these

characteristics may well earn for the author the title that

Lappenberg has given to him, though under the name of

"Matthew of Westminster," namely, that of the "Verwirrer der

Geschichte." At the same time there is no doubt that he had

access to some materials which we no longer possess: and my

object has been to trace all his statements, where possible,

to their source, and to distinguish any additions that the

compiler has made when they are merely rhetorical

amplifications of his own, or when they are really from some

source not now extant.'--Pref. to vol. i., p. xxxiii.

After all that can be said, the work surprises us by the erudition it

displays. Nor is that surprise lessened when we have gone through the

masterly analysis of its contents, which Dr. Luard has given us in the

Preface to his first vol. Such as it was, it became the great text-book

on which Roger of Wendover founded his own labours when he incorporated

it into the chronicle which he left behind him. Roger of Wendover did

good work, and laboriously epitomized, supplemented and improved, but he

was a mere literary monk after all; a student, a bookworm, simple,

conscientious, and truthful; a trustworthy reporter, 'a picker-up of

learning's crumbs,' a monkish historiographer, in short; but by no means

a historian of large views and of original mind. Roger of Wendover died

in 1236, and Matthew Paris succeeded to his office and work.

From what has been said, the reader may be presumed to have gained

something like an answer to our first question: _What_ was Brother

Matthew? Briefly, he was a representative monk of the most powerful

monastery in England during the 13th century, when that monastery was at

its best, and doing the work which in after times the Universities and

great schools of the country took out of the hands of the religious

houses; work, too, which since those days has been done by the

printing-press, and by many other institutions better fitted to deal

with the requirements of an immensely larger population, and to be the

instruments of diffusing culture and refinement through the nation after

it had outgrown the older machinery.

When we come to look into the personal history of Brother Matthew, the

details of his biography need not detain us long. Sir Henry Taylor's

famous line is only half true, after all;

'The world knows nothing of its greatest men'

really means that the world knows less about them than it would like to

know. And yet the world knows almost as much about them as is good for

it. The leading facts of a man's career are all that concern most of

us--the main lines--not the details. Of Matthew Paris we know enough,

because he has himself given us so faithful a picture of his times, and

so charming an insight into the daily life which he led.

Unnecessary doubt has been suggested as to his parentage, and whether

his extraction was or was not from a stock that could boast of gentle

blood. For our part we incline strongly to the belief, that Brother

Matthew was called Paris because that was his name, and had been his

father's name before him. A family of that name held lands in

Bedfordshire in Henry III.'s time; others of the same stock were settled

in Lincolnshire earlier still; and the Cambridgeshire family (one of

whom was among the visitors of the monasteries under Henry VIII.)

boasted of a long line of ancestors, and retained their estates in the

Eastern Counties till late in the 17th century. Young Matthew probably

received his education in the school at St. Alban's, and soon showed a

decided taste for learning and the student's life, and that in the 13th

century meant an inclination for the life of the cloister. Many a

precocious lad is even now taught from his childhood to look forward to

the glories of a College Fellowship, and the career which such an

academic success may open to him; and in the 13th century a schoolboy's

ambition was directed to the goal of admission to a great

monastery--that step on the ladder which whosoever could reach, there

was no knowing how high he might climb--how high above the common sons

of earth or, if he preferred it, how high towards the heaven that is

above the earth.

Matthew was probably born about the year 1200, and in January 1217 he

became a monk at St. Alban's, _i. e._, he became a _novice_. At this

time a lad could commence his noviciate at 15; but the age was

subsequently advanced to 19, the younger limit having been found, as a

rule, too early even for the preliminary discipline required. On the day

after the lad was admitted, a frightful scene took place in the

monastery. A band of Fawkes de Breaute's cut-throats had stormed the

town of St. Alban's, burst into the Abbey, and slaughtered at the door

of the church one Robert Mai, a servant of the Abbot. William de

Trumpington was Abbot at this time, a vigorous and resolute personage,

who ruled the convent with a firm hand. Like all really able men, he was

ably seconded, for he knew how to choose his subordinates. At first the

monks had repented of their choice, and there were quarrels and

litigation and appeals to the Pope, and many serious 'unpleasantnesses;'

but as time went on, Abbot William had won the allegiance of all the

convent, and they were proud of him. He was a man of books, among his

other virtues, and had an eye for bookish men; and when he deposed Roger

de Wendover from being Prior of Belvoir with a somewhat high hand, and

brought him back to St. Alban's, he doubtless did so because he knew

that at Belvoir he was a square man in a round hole, while in the

scriptorium of the Abbey he would be in his right place. Certainly the

event proved that the Abbot was right, and it was to this judicious

removal of a student and man of letters to his proper home that we owe

so much of our knowledge of those interesting minutiae of English history

which the writer has revealed. It was under the eye of Robert de

Wendover that Matthew Paris grew up, rendering him every year more and

more substantial assistance in the library and in the scriptorium.

But the young man was not only a bookworm and a copyist, he soon got to

be looked upon as a prodigy. He was a universal genius; he could do

whatever he set his hand to, and better than any one else. He could

draw, and paint, and illuminate, and work in metals. Some said he could

even construct maps; he was versed in everything, and noticed everything

from 'the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop upon the wall;' he was

an expert in heraldry; he could tell you about whales, and camels, and

buffaloes, and elephants--he could even draw an elephant--illustrate his

history, in fact, with the elephant's portrait, the first elephant, he

says, that had ever been seen in our northern climes. It was centuries

before men had dreamt of what the science of geology would one day

reveal. Then, too, he had vast capacity for work, and was a courtly

person, and he had the gift of tongues, and had been a great traveller;

he had early been sent by the convent to study at the University of

Paris, and wherever he went, he was the man to make friends. When the

Benedictines in Norway had convinced themselves that there was sore need

of a reform of their rule and discipline, they applied to Pope Innocent

IV. to send them a Visitor furnished with the necessary authority for

carrying out so delicate and difficult a mission, and they made choice

of Matthew Paris as the fittest possible person for such a work.

Reluctantly Brother Matthew was compelled to undertake the task; he

started on his northern voyage in 1248, and was absent about a year. In

Norway he soon grew into high favour with King Hacon, who peradventure

would have kept him at his side if he could. This seems to have been the

most important episode in his otherwise uneventful life. But the

advantages and opportunities which were at the command of any ambitious

and studious young monk at St. Alban's were in themselves extraordinary.

We have said that building was always going on. It was going on on a

very large scale indeed in Abbot William's time. That means that there

were the plans and sections and working drawings to be copied for the

architect, and measurements and calculations by the thousand to be

made--_a school of architecture_, in short: and besides that, what Roger

de Wendover was in the scriptorium, that Walter of Colchester, _pictor

et sculptor incomparabilis_, was in the painting room. Walter was a

sculptor; indeed he wrought at his marvellous pulpit which the Abbot set

up in the middle of the church: and he carved the story of St. Alban

upon the great beam over the high altar, and did many another thing of

which we have only too brief descriptions. Then, too, there was Richard,

the monk who decorated the grand new guests' hall _deliciose_, as we are

told, and who painted pictures and carried out other works of

embellishment at a pace which none could have kept up, but that he had

his father to help him with his brush, and another artist, John of

Wallingford, to carry out his great designs, and many more skilled

limners whose names have gone down into silence.

When Abbot William's reign came to an end, the monks were unanimous in

choosing John of Hertford as his successor, and the new Abbot lost no

time in showing favour to Matthew Paris. Next year Roger de Wendover

died, and who could there be so worthy to succeed him as historiographer

as the versatile and accomplished brother, who by this time was the

boast of the great house? And historiographer accordingly Matthew

became--_mutatis mutandis_, a sort of 13th-century editor of the

'Times;' his business was to gather from all points of the compass, if

not the latest news, yet the best and most trustworthy reports upon

whatever was worth recording. He had his correspondents all over Europe,

and that he sifted the evidence as it came to him we know.

Wherever there was any great event that deserved a place in the Abbey

Chronicle, some splendid pageant to describe, some battle, or treaty, or

pestilence, or flood, or famine, straightway tidings came to the

vigilant historiographer; and there was a comparison of the evidence

brought in, and some testing of witnesses, and finally the narrative was

drawn up and incorporated into Matthew's history. Again and again it

happened that a great personage who, while himself _making_ history, was

anxious that his own part in a transaction should be represented

favourably, would try and get the right side of the famous chronicler,

and would furnish him with private information. Even the King himself

thought it no scorn to communicate facts and documents to Brother

Matthew. Once when Henry saw him in a crowd on a memorable occasion, he

picked him out, and bade him take his seat by his side, and see to it

that he made a true and faithful report of what was going on; and it is

evident that the royal favour which he enjoyed through life must have

extended to furnishing him with many a story and many a detail which

none but the King could have supplied. The minute account of the attempt

to assassinate Henry in 1238; the curious State paper giving a narrative

of the dispute between the King and his nobles in 1242; the strange

scene at the tomb of William Marshall in 1245, and scores of other

incidents in the career of Bishop Grossteste and Richard of Cornwall,

were evidently 'inspired,' and can only have come from eye-witnesses of

the events recorded. Nevertheless Matthew, though he was willing enough

to receive information, and to utilise facts and documents, was by no

means the man to reproduce them exactly in the form in which they came

to him. More than once he ventured to remonstrate with the King, and

very much oftener than once he expresses his opinion of him in no

measured terms. Some of the severest censures he had marked for

omission, and some expressions he modified considerably, for we have the

good fortune to possess his chronicle both in an earlier and in a later

form; but even though the fuller and more outspoken record had perished,

we should still have had enough proof to make it clear that we have in

Matthew Paris an instance of a born historian, one who never consented

to be a mere advocate, taking a side and seeing only half the truth of

anything; but a man gifted with the judicial faculty, that precious gift

without which a man may be anything you please--a rhetorician, a special

pleader, a picturesque writer, a laborious collector of facts; but an

historian never. And yet Matthew Paris was a magnificent hater, with a

fund of indignant scorn and righteous anger which never fails him upon

occasion. Friend of King and nobles as he was, he will not spare his

words of wrathful censure upon the tyrant, or upon any that he held

deserving of rebuke for cruelty, oppression and avarice. When he has to

lay the lash on such as had proved themselves enemies to his much-loved

Abbey, or who had wronged and defrauded it, he is well-nigh as fierce as

Dante. He singles them out--the doomed wretches--and holds them, as it

were, over the fire of hell before he drops them down into the burning

flame.

Did Ralph Cheinduit, that blustering, burly knight, cry aloud 'A fig for

St. Alban and his monks! Since they excommunicated me--look you! I have

only increased in girth, behold me fat and jolly, in faith almost too

big for my saddle. A fig for them all!' Did he say so, the impious

wretch? Be it known that from that very day Sir Knight began to shrink

and waste and pine, and if he had not repented and been absolved in

time, he had gone down to the bottomless pit with never a hope of

deliverance.

Did not Sir Adam Fitz William show the evil spirit that was in him when

he sided against us time and again? And now, look to his awful end!

Gorged with meat and drink one night, he sprawled upon his bed,

_indigestus_, as you may say, and he never woke more. Aye! and he died

intestate too. And as though that was not bad enough, his wife too died,

straightway, like another Sapphira slain by the shock of the tidings.

And then there was Alan de Beccles, too, always notorious for setting

himself against us and our house, he too perished as the other did, for

he loved choice dainties overmuch, and he dined late and he ate as none

should eat, and when he could eat no more, suddenly his speech failed

him and his veins burst, smitten with an apoplexy. And many another,

whom it would take too long to name, following his evil course, and

being prosecutors of Holy Alban's Church, perished for ever by God's

vengeance.

It is no longer the fashion now to denounce the Pope and his myrmidons,

but if the rage of Exeter Hall should ever recur, and the orators of the

old platform should revive a taste for anti-papal agitation, they might

find in Matthew Paris as rich a repertory of testimonials against Roman

aggression and greed as the most rabid Irish Protestant could desire. 'O

thou Pope,' he bursts out once, 'thou the father of all the fathers in

Christ, how it is that thou sufferest the realms of Christendom to be

fouled by such creatures as are thine?' The 'creatures' were the papal

legates and nuncios and all their belongings, who were plundering

England without shame. 'Harpies they were and blood-suckers,' says

Matthew, 'mere plunderers, skinning the sheep, not shearing them only.'

Then there were the King's Justiciars--'Justice'--nay, with that they

had nothing to do. Why tell of their unrighteous deeds? he asks. 'Better

forbear from vainly writing about the _wrongers_, and return to the

story of the wronged.'

Of course the friars come in for their share of strong words--chiefly

because the Pope made use of them so vilely, and not less because they

set themselves above their betters--us, to wit--monks of the old houses.

'They started with such fair professions, they were going to

be so very poor, and so very unworldly, and were going to

supplement our work and interfere with nobody, and give us

all a helping hand. Look at them now!' says Matthew; 'they

march through the streets in pompous array with banners

flaunting in the sun and waxen tapers, and rich burghers in

holiday garments joining in the long train, and if they have

no land they have money, good store, and as for their

churches, they are eclipsing us all. Their invasion of our

territory is a dreadful scandal, and they sneer at us and at

all other religious men and women and they flout the parish

priests and call them humdrums, and schism is at work

horribly, and the people are running away from the old

guides, and there is no end to them. Actually in the year of

grace 1257,' he says, 'a new order of these fellows turned

up in London. Friars of the sack, forsooth, because they

were clothed in sackcloth! Of course they came armed with a

papal licence as usual. What did these fellows come for? Was

it to make confusion worse confounded? Alas! Alas! If we had

only been as we were in the golden age, these friars would

never have had a chance--not they! We too are not as the

monks of old were; they lived the guileless life--austere,

hard, self-denying, saintly! What are we in comparison with

them?

'Did not we find the bones of our brethren there, hard by

the High Altar, when we were beautifying the same? O ye

degenerate sons of this degenerate age! Two centuries ago

and our monks were men of faith and prayer. In the year of

grace one thousand two hundred and fifty-one, we found more

than thirty of them buried together, and their bones were

lying there, white and sweet, redolent with the odor of

sanctity every one; each man had been buried as he died, in

his monastic habit, and his shoes upon his feet too. Aye,

and _such_ shoes--shoes made for wear and not for

wantonness. The soles of these shoes were sound and strong,

they might have served the purpose for poor men's naked feet

even now, after centuries of lying in the grave. Blush ye!

ye with your buckles, and your pointed toes and your fiddle

faddle. These shoes upon the holy feet that we dug up were

as round at the toe as at the heel, and the latchets were

all of one piece with the uppers. No rosettes in those days,

if you please! They fastened their shoes with a thong, and

they wound that thong around their blessed ankles, and they

cared not in those holy days whether their shoes were _a

pair_. Left foot and right foot each was as the other: and

we, when we gazed at the holy relics--we bowed our heads at

the edifying sight, and we were dumbfounded, even to awe, as

we swung our censers over the sacred graves of the ages

past!'

The anecdotes and out-of-the-way pieces of information in the 'Chronica

Majora,' which may be said to represent the _paragraphs_ of modern

journalism, are countless. Brother Matthew enlivens his history with

these cross-lights at every page, and what gives to these scraps an

added charm is that Matthew himself seems to be always with us when he

prattles on. Not even Herodotus has succeeded more entirely in

impressing his quaint personality upon his narrative. It is always

something which he has seen, or heard from some living man who saw it

with his own eyes.

'There was my friend John of Basingstoke, had studied at

Paris, and a wonder of learning he was, but he told me

himself that his best teacher by far was the young lady

Constantina, daughter of an archbishop she. Archbishop of

Athens, too--archbishops may marry out there! Before she was

twenty she knew all that men may know; she was worth two

universities of Paris any day; she foretold the coming of

plagues and storms, and eclipses--and--more wonderful

still--the coming of earthquakes too: and John of

Basingstoke was her scholar, and whatever he knew that was

deep and rare, he learnt it of the lady Constantina, the

Archbishop's daughter.'

Matthew is very great when he has to tell of omens and portents:

'We were scurvily treated by Pope Innocent III.,' he says,

'in the days of Abbot John. Spite of all our privileges and

indulgences, the Pope would have him come to Rome every

third year; a sore burden and harm to us all. Forthwith evil

omens came. Thrice in three years was our tower struck by

lightning. After that wrong of his Holiness it was no wonder

that the impression of the papal seal in wax, which we had

taken good care to fix on the top of the steeple, availed

not to keep off the thunderbolt--small good you see in that

kind of thing.'

Besides the miscellaneous paragraphs, there are periodical reports of

the weather, and the storms, and the droughts, and the harvests.

Moreover, there are what answer to our police reports, and details of

criminal proceedings against Jew and Gentile, and births and deaths and

marriages, and now and then brief notes upon the state of the markets,

and sometimes hints and reflections upon the desirability of certain

reforms in Church and State; and all this not in the spirit of modern

journalism, which at its best too often bears the marks of haste, and

betrays the literary soldier of fortune paid for his work at so much a

column, but genuine, hearty, throbbing with a certain passionate loyalty

to a tradition, or an idea which you may say is exploded, grotesque, or

fanciful, but which in the 13th century honest men and devout ones lived

by and lived for, and were trying in their own way to carry out into

action.

But now that we have got this precious 'Chronicle,' not to mention other

works in the composition of which Brother Matthew had at least a large

share--though our space forbids us dwelling upon them or their contents,

and we must refer our readers to Dr. Luard's elaborate prefaces if they

would desire to know all about them--another question suggests itself,

which sooner or later will become a pressing question--What are we going

to do with such a national work of which this country has great reason

to be proud?

The days are gone by when a man was supposed to be educated in

proportion as he was familiar with the literature of Greece and Rome and

ignorant of everything else. Already at Oxford candidates for the

highest honours in the final schools think it no shame to read their

Plato or their Aristotle in English translations, and in half the time

that was needed under the old plan they get a mastery of their

Thucydides or Herodotus, devoting themselves to the subject-matter after

they have proved at 'Moderations' that they have a respectable

acquaintance with the language of the authors.

May the day be far off when Homer and AEschylus shall cease to be read in

the original! The great writers of Hellas and Italy were poets or

orators, great teachers or great thinkers; but they were something more.

They were perfect instrumentalities too. Their thoughts, their lessons,

their aspirations, their regrets, you may interpret and transfer into

the speech and the idioms of the moderns; but the music of their

language, the subtleties of melody and rhythm, and harmony and tone, can

no more be translated than a symphony for the strings can be adequately

represented upon the organ. You may persuade yourself that you have got

the substance; you have missed the perfection of the form. Yet who but a

narrow pedant will insist that the study of any literature, ancient or

modern, is valuable chiefly for familiarizing us with the language, not

for enriching our minds with the subject matter? Do we desire to

understand the past and so to be better able to estimate the importance

of great movements that are going on in the present or, by the help of

the experience of bygone ages, to forecast the future? Then it behoves

us to see that our induction shall be made from as wide a view as may

be, and to avail ourselves of any light that may be gained. But it is

mere waste of time to be for ever staring at the lamp which may be

pretty to look at in itself, but is then most precious when it serves as

a means to an end. If we are ever to construct a Science of History, the

old methods must give place to something which may approximate to

philosophic enquiry. When we come to think of it, how very small an area

of time or space is covered by the historians of Greece and Rome: how

small an area and how superficially dealt with! Even Thucydides hardly

ventures to lift the veil which separates the civilization of his own

age from that of an earlier period; he lifts it for a moment, then drops

the curtain and passes on. It is true indeed that Herodotus introduces

us to a world that is not Hellenic, and brings us into some sort of

relation with men whose habits and art and religion had a character of

their own; but then these nations were not as we, and not as men even of

our race could ever become. We never seem to be _in touch_ with Egypt or

Assyria, and when he prattles on about these nations it is less as a

historian than as an observant traveller that Herodotus delights and

allures. Xenophon's passing notices of the manners and education, of the

_feudalism_ and the social life of the Medes, are too brief to be

anything but tantalizing; but the neglect of Xenophon by professed

students is not creditable, however significant. Perhaps of all the

Greek writers Polybius was the man who had the truest conception of the

historian's vocation; perhaps, too, it was just because he was so much

before his age that his voluminous and ambitious work has come down to

us little more than a fragment. Because he was something better than a

compiler of annals, they who read history only to be amused found him

dull, and the moderns have not yet reversed the verdict which was passed

upon him. Who ever heard of a candidate for honours taking Polybius into

the schools?

It is from the Latin historians that we might have expected so much and

from whom we get so little. What do they tell us of ancient Spain--the

Spain that Sertorius pretended he was going to regenerate, and whose

civilization, literature, and national life he did so much to

extinguish? If it were not for what Aristotle has told us in the

_Politics_, what should we know of that mighty commercial Republic which

monopolized the carrying trade of the old world? It never seems to have

occurred to Livy that the political organization of Carthage could be

worth his notice. His business was to glorify Rome, and to tell how Rome

grew to greatness--grew by war and conquest and pillage, and the

ferocious might of her relentless soldiery. The 'Germania' of Tacitus

stands alone--unique in ancient literature; but what would we not give

for such a monograph upon the Britain which Caesar attempted to conquer,

or the Gaul which he plundered and devastated? The great captain's

famous missive might be inscribed as the motto of his 'Commentaries.'

Veni! vidi! vici! sums up in brief the substance of what they contain.

It was always Rome's way! Rome swept a sponge that was soaked in blood

over all the past of the nations she subdued. She came to obliterate,

never to preserve. Her chroniclers disdained to ask how these or those

doughty antagonists had grown formidable, how their national life had

developed; whether their progress had been arrested by the conquerors or

whether they had become weak and enervated by social deterioration or

moral corruption. Enough that they were _Barbarians_.

The science of history can be but little advanced by writers such as

these, who pass from battlefield to battlefield--

'Crimson-footed, like the stork,

Through great ruts of slaughter,'

and to whom the silent growth of institutions and the evolution of

ethical sentiments and the development of the arts of peace were matters

which never presented themselves as worthy of their attention. You may

call this history if you will, in truth it is little better than

Empiricism. The world is a larger world than Rome or Athens dreamt of,

and students of history are beginning to realize that not quite the last

thing they have to do is 'to look at _home_.' Such a work as the

'Chronica Majora' of Matthew Paris is a national heritage which it is

shameful to allow much longer to be known only by the curious and

erudite. Now that there is no excuse for our neglect, is it too much to

hope that the day may not be far distant when the name of this great

Englishman may become as familiar to schoolboys as that of Sallust or

Livy, of Cornelius Nepos or Caesar--his name as familiar, and his

writings better known and more loved?