PILGRIMS’ INNS AND MONASTIC HOSTELS (_continued_)
At St. Albans we have still something in the way of a pilgrim’s inn. St.
Albans was, of course, the home of the wonder-working shrine of St. Alban,
the proto-martyr of Britain, and by direct consequence a place of great
pilgrimage and a town of many inns. Here is the “George,” one of the
pleasantest of the old inns remaining in the place, with an old, but
scarce picturesque frontage, relieved from lack of interest by a quaint
sundial, inscribed _Horas non numero nisi serenas_, and a more than
usually picturesque courtyard.
The house is mentioned so early as 1448 as the “George upon the Hupe.” In
those times it possessed an oratory of its own, referred to in an ancient
licence, by which the Abbot authorised the innkeeper to have Low Mass
celebrated on the premises, for the benefit of “such great men and nobles,
and others, as shall be lodged here.”
Let us try to imagine that inn, licensed for the sale of wine and
spirituous liquors and for religious services! It seems odd, but after all
not so odd as these mad times of our own, when public-houses are converted
into missions, and ordained clergymen of the Church of England become
publicans and serve drinks across the counter in the interest of
temperance and good behaviour.[14]
No traces of that oratory now remain in the “George.” It is one of the
most comfortable of old houses, and full of old panelling and old prints
and furniture, but the “great men and nobles” have long ceased to lodge
here, and it is now only frequented by “others.” The chapel was desecrated
at the time of the Reformation, and was afterwards in use as part of the
stables.
The carving seen in the illustration over the archway is no integral part
of the inn, but was brought from old Holywell House in 1837, on the
destruction of that mansion, of which it formed the decorative pediment.
The Church, as already shown, was the earliest innkeeper in those days
when travellers travailed in difficulties and dangers; and semi-religious
bodies often acted the same hospitable part. The Knights Templars and the
Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem kept hostelries at various
places, prominent among them the old house which is now the “Angel” at
Grantham.
The “Angel,” in common with other inns of the same name, derived its sign
in the far-off thirteenth century from a religious picture-sign of the
Annunciation, and we may readily see how, in the fading of the picture,
the rest of the group gradually sank out of sight, leaving only that
bright announcing messenger visible to passers-by. Undoubtedly the “Angel”
at Islington obtained its name in this way: staggering though the thought
may be to those who know that merely secular public-house, in that roaring
vortex of London traffic.
[Illustration: THE “GEORGE,” ST. ALBANS.]
The attitude of greeting in the pose of the angelic figure led in course
of time to such a sign being often called the “Salutation”: hence the
various old inns of that name in different parts of the country were
originally “Angels.”
The “Angel” at Grantham is a quaint admixture of ancient and modern. It
was a hostel, and bore this name even so early as the reign of King John,
for beneath its roof that monarch held his Court in the February of 1213.
We do not, however, find anything nowadays so ancient in the “Angel,” for
every vestige of the building in which that shifty and evasive monarch
lodged has disappeared. This is by no means to say that the “Angel” is of
recent date. It belongs in part to the mid-fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries--a more than respectable age. From the midst of the town of
Grantham it looks out upon the Great North Road, and in truth, facing a
highway of so great and varied historic doings, no building can have
witnessed more in the way of varied processions. History, made visible,
has passed by, in front of these windows, for at least five hundred years,
beginning with the gorgeous cavalcades of kings and courts and armies
going or coming on missions of peace or war to and from Scotland, and at
last--what a contrast!--ending with the hotel omnibus to or from the
railway-station, with the luggage of “commercials.”
[Illustration: THE “ANGEL,” GRANTHAM.]
A very tragical incident in history was enacted in the great room, now
divided into three, that once extended the whole length of the frontage on
the first floor. Perhaps it was in the bay of the beautiful Gothic oriel
window lighting this room that Richard the Third signed the death-warrant
of the Duke of Buckingham, October 19th, 1483. That it was signed in this
room we know. What was his manner when he put his hand to that deed? Did
he declaim anything in the “off with his head; so much for Buckingham,”
dramatic way, as we are led by Colley Cibber’s stage-version of
Shakespeare’s _Richard the Third_ to suppose he did? Or did he silently
treat it as a matter of stern, imperious necessity of statecraft? Had he
possessed the dramatic sense, he certainly would have mouthed some such
bloodthirsty phrase, and, turning on his heel in the self-satisfied
attitude of triumphant villainy we know so well, would have made a
striking exit, as per stage directions, curling a villainous and
contemptuous lip, in the manner that never yet failed to bring down the
heartfelt hatred, and the hisses, of the gallery.
It is, however, to be sadly supposed that the King did nothing of that
sort. He could not play to the gallery--for it was not there; he probably
did not turn upon his heel, nor curl his lip, for the Stage, whence you
learn the trick of these things, had not yet come into existence. And if
you do but consider it, most of the great doings of the world, bloody or
legislative, or what not, have been done--not, if it please you,
“enacted”--without a due sense of their dramatic and spectacular
possibilities. They all came in the day’s work, and the issues were too
tremendous, the risks too great and impending, for the personages involved
in them to enjoy the leisure for posing.
The old embayed stone frontage of the “Angel” has survived many a shock
and buffet of Time, and, although the mullions of most of its windows have
long since been removed, in the not unnatural demand for more light, the
antiquity of the house is manifest to the most commercial, and least
antiquarian, traveller. On either side of the Gothic archway by which you
enter, the carved heads of Edward the Third and his heroic Queen Philippa
still appear, and at the crown of the arch, serving the purpose of a
supporting corbel to the beautiful oriel window above, is a sculptured
angel supporting a shield of arms.
The historic “Angel,” scene of so many centuries of conviviality, has long
been made to foster the cause of temperance. Indeed, for two hundred years
past, ages before Temperance became a Cause with capital letters and
capital endowments, the rent of the house went towards this object, under
the will of one Michael Solomon, who, dying in 1706, directed that a
sermon should be annually preached in Grantham church, “strongly
denouncing drunkenness,” the cost to be met out of the rental of the
“Angel.” But the most cynical stroke of chance befell in November, 1905,
when the preacher of this counterblast against drink, paid for out of the
profits of a licensed house, was the Reverend Gerald Goodwin, son of the
chief proprietor of a prominent Newark brewery.
The “George,” at Norton St. Philip, claiming to have been licensed in
1397, has stirring history, as well as antiquity and beauty, to recommend
it. You who are curious as to where the village of Norton stands may take
the map of Somerset and presently, scanning the county to the south of
Bath, discover it set down about seven miles to the south of that ancient
city, in a somewhat sequestered district. The reason of so large and so
grand a hostelry being in existence since the Middle Ages in so small a
village is not, at the first blush, evident, and it is only when the
ancient history of Norton itself is explored that the wherefore of it is
found.
It seems, then, that the land hereabout was in those far-off times the
property of the old Priory of Hinton Charterhouse--that old Carthusian
house whose brethren were the best farmers, wool-growers, and
stock-raisers of their time in the West Country. As early as the reign of
Henry the Third the monastery was licensed to hold a fair here in May, on
the vigil, the feast, and the morrow of the festival of SS. Philip and
James; and again, in 1284, secured a charter conferring the right of
holding a market at “Norton Charterhouse” every Friday, instead of, as
formerly, at the bleak and much-exposed Hinton. In 1345 the Priory was
further empowered to annually hold a fair on the feast of the Decollation
of St. John at Norton: an institution that, although the Priory went the
way of all its kind over five hundred and fifty years ago, remained a
yearly fixture on August 28th and 29th until quite recent times. It was
known locally, for some reason now undiscoverable, as “Norton Dog Fair.”
The fair in its last years degenerated into the usual thing we understand
nowadays as a fair: a squalid exhibition of Fat Women and Two-headed
Calves; a gaudy and strepitous saturnalia of roundabouts and mountebanks;
but it was--or they were, for, as we have already seen, there were at one
time two--originally highly important business conventions. The principal
business then transacted was the selling of wool and cloth, and it was for
the purpose of helping their trade as wool-growers, and for the benefit
generally of their very lucrative fairs, that the monks of Hinton
Charterhouse in the fourteenth century built as a hostel that which is
to-day the “George” inn.
[Illustration: THE “GEORGE,” NORTON ST. PHILIP.]
For generations the merchants and wool-staplers exposed their wares and
did their business in the street, or in a large upper room of the house,
and long continued to do so when in course of time the whole thing had
been altogether secularised.
The cyclist who comes to Norton St. Philip from Bath has a weary time of
it, among the hills, by Odd Down, Midford, and Freshford; and only when he
has come uphill to windy Hinton Charterhouse are his toils over, and the
rest of the way easy. It is a broad, modern road, but the observant may
yet see the disused Abbot’s Way going, narrow, and even more steep, over
the fields, to the left hand; and we may well imagine the joy of the old
travellers along it when they saw the grey church tower in the village,
nestling in a fold of the hills, and heard those sweet-toned bells of
Norton that still sound so mellow on the ear, and are the identical “very
fine ring of six bells” that Pepys heard on June 12th, 1668, and
pronounced “mighty tuneable.”
The “George” keeps unmistakable evidences of its semi-ecclesiastical
origin, and the Gothic character of the solid stonework in the lower
storey points to the latter half of the fourteenth century. The curious
and exceedingly picturesque contrast between the massive masonry below and
the overhanging timbered upper part has led, without any other evidence,
to the conjecture that the house must at some time have suffered from
fire, or otherwise been injured and partly rebuilt; but such instances of
mixed methods in ancient building are numerous.
History of a romantic kind has been enacted here, for it was in the street
of Norton St. Philip, that a furious skirmish was fought, June 26th, 1685,
between the untrained and badly armed rustics of the rebel Duke of
Monmouth, and the soldiers of King James, under command of the weak and
vacillating Lord Feversham. The rebel peasantry, armed only with pikes,
scythes, and billhooks, that day withstood and routed their enemies, and
they held the village that night, Monmouth himself sleeping in one of the
front bedrooms of the “George.” It was while dressing at this window the
following morning that he was fired at by some unknown person desirous of
earning the reward offered by James for the taking of his nephew’s life.
The bullet, however, sped harmlessly by that preserver and champion of the
Protestant liberties of the country: hence the invincible anonymity of the
firer of that shot. Had Monmouth died thus, it is conceivable he would
have come down to us a more manly historic figure.
The interior of the “George” is woefully disappointing, after the
expectations raised by the noble exterior. It was obviously never ornately
fitted, and long generations of neglect and misuse have resulted in the
house being, internally, little better than a mere wreck, with the
installation of a vulgar bar to insult the Gothic feeling of the place.
The property now belongs to the Bath Brewery Company, and is not merely
that abomination, a “tied house,” but is maintained in a barely habitable
condition, the Company being reported of opinion that the Somersetshire
Archæological Society--interested, as all archæologists must be, in a
house so architecturally and historically interesting--should restore the
building. If that report be true, it is a striking example of colossal
impudence.
On the ground-floor, the present Tap-room keeps a large fire-place with
old-fashioned grate. Above, mounting by a stone spiral staircase to the
first floor, is the room used by Monmouth (the one to the right hand in
the view), and known as the “King’s Room.” Its door, floor, and walls are
of the roughest, as also are those of the adjoining room. On the floor
above, running the whole length of the building, under the roof, is the
long room used by the old wool-merchants as their market: and a darksome
and makeshift place, under the roof-timbers, it is, and must have been at
the best of times. To-day the floor is rotten, and you must go delicately,
lest you fall through to the next floor, and then through that to the
ground, where only the explorer can feel secure.
It is the same tale of far-gone decay in the yard, to which you enter, as
also to the house itself, by the great archway in the village street. It
was always a small yard, but was partly galleried. The tottering remains
of the gallery, with brewhouse below, are left, still filled with the
enormous casks built in the brewhouse itself, and only to be removed by
demolishing them. The rooms are mere ruins. If ever the interior and the
yard of the “George” are restored it will be a great and an expensive
work; but it is to be feared that, Norton St. Philip being an unlikely
place for lengthened resort--visitors coming from curiosity from Bath for
merely an hour or so--such a work will never be undertaken.
In even worse case, from an archæologist’s point of view, is the “George”
at Winchcombe, in Gloucestershire; for it stands in the High Street of a
busy little town, and has been disastrously altered in recent years by the
brewers who own it. Brewers have no undue leanings toward historic or
architectural sentiment, and in this instance their object was to fit
their house for use as a commercial hotel. Accordingly, they caused the
ancient stone face to be pulled down and have replaced it by an imitation
timbered gabled front. Something of what the old front was like may be
discovered at the back, where the date, 1583, may be seen on the
stonework, together with an inscription to the effect that it was restored
in 1706.
The “George” was originally built as a pilgrims’ inn by the Abbots of
Winchcombe and Hayles, whose noted West Country shrines attracted many
thousands of the pious and the sinful in days gone by. At Winchcombe they
had the body of St. Kenelm, the Saxon boy-king who succeeded to the
throne of Mercia in A.D. 822, and, according to legendary lore, was
murdered at the instigation of his sister Cwoenthryth, who desired his
place. Kenelm was but seven years of age, but already so pious, if we are
to believe the story, that the poisons at first administered to him
refused their customary effects, and there was nothing for it but to
strike his head off. Piety, therefore, was not proof against cold steel.
[Illustration: YARD OF THE “GEORGE,” NORTON ST. PHILIP.]
His tutor, the treacherous Askobert, was induced to perform this act, in
the lonely forest of Clent. To the astonishment of Askobert, a white dove
flew from the severed neck and soared away into the sky. Naturally
surprised by such a marvel, he nevertheless was not unnerved, and buried
the body under a thorn-bush and went his way. Cwoenthryth in due course
succeeded, and reigned for some two years, when the inevitable vengeance
fell. It came about in a curious way--as do all these retributions in
monastic legends. The Pope was celebrating Mass in his Cathedral of St.
Peter when a dove that had been observed there poised itself over the high
altar and dropped from its beak a piece of parchment inscribed, “In Clent
in Cowbach Kenelm Kynge’s child lieth under a thorn, his head taken from
him.”
This strange message was conveyed to England, and an expedition, formed of
the monks of Winchcombe and Worcester, set off to the forest of Clent.
Arrived there, the expeditionary force was guided to the thorn-tree by a
white cow, and duly found the body. After disputing whose property it was
to become, they decided that, as they were all wearied with the journey
and their exertions, they should, every one, lie down and rest, the body
to become the possession of those who should first arise. The Winchcombe
men were first awake, and were well away over the hills with their prize
before the monks of Worcester ceased from their snoring, yawned, opened
their eyes, and found the treasure gone.
The miraculous power of St. Kenelm manifested itself on the way, for the
men of Winchcombe, fainting on their journey for lack of water, prayed,
for the love of him, to be guided to some spring; when immediately a gush
of water burst forth from the hillside. Thus refreshed, they came into
Winchcombe, where the wicked Cwoenthryth, whom later generations have
agreed to name, in more simple fashion, Quenride, was reading that very
comminatory Psalm, the 109th, wherein all manner of disasters are invoked
upon the Psalmist’s enemies. There has ever been considered some especial
virtue in reciting prayers and invocations backwards, and Quenride, having
gone through the Psalm in the ordinary way, was proceeding to take it in
reverse when the procession came winding along the street. At that moment
her eyes fell out; and, to bear witness to the truth of the story, the
Abbey of Winchcombe long exhibited, among the greatest of its treasures,
the blood-stained psalter on whose pages they fell--which, of course, was
convincing.
Can we wonder that, in those credulous ages, pilgrimage to Winchcombe
should have been a popular West Country practice? And if not to St.
Kenelm’s shrine, there was the peculiarly holy relic of the neighbouring
Abbey of Hayles, where the monks treasured nothing less tremendous than a
bottle of Christ’s blood. This in after years--as was to be supposed--was
discovered to be a blasphemous imposture, the precious phial being
declared by the examining Commissioners in the time of Henry the Eighth to
contain merely “an unctuous gum, coloured.”
[Illustration: YARD OF THE “GEORGE,” WINCHCOMBE.]
A pilgrims’ inn at Winchcombe was, in view of the crowds naturally
resorting to either or both of these Abbeys, a very necessary
institution, and for long the “George” so remained.
The ways of the brewers with the old house have been already in part
recorded and the destruction of much of interest deplored, but there still
remains a little of its former state. There is, for instance, the great
archway at the side, with the oaken spandrels carved with foliage and the
initials R. K.; standing for Richard Kyderminster, Abbot of Winchcombe at
some period in the fifteenth century. Through this archway runs the yard,
down to the back of the town, and there is what is still called the
“Pilgrims’ Gallery,” on one side. One scarcely knows which of the two
courses adopted by the brewers with this old inn was the most disastrous:
the actual demolition of the old frontage, or the “restoration” of the
Pilgrims’ Gallery in so thorough a manner that it is, in almost every
respect, a new structure. Nor does it, as of old, conduct to bedrooms, for
that part of the house giving upon it has been reconstructed as a large
room, available for entertainments or public dinners.
There is something peculiarly appropriate in the refectory of a monastic
house becoming an inn. Such is the history of the “Lord Crewe Arms,” at
Blanchland.
It is a far cry to that picturesque and quiet village, in stern and rugged
Northumberland; but you may be sure that, however wild and forbidding the
surrounding country, the site and the immediate neighbourhood of an
ancient abbey will prove to be fertile, sheltered, and beautiful; and
Blanchland, the old home of an Abbey of Præmonstratensian canons, is no
exception to this rule.
Whichever way the traveller comes into Blanchland, he comes by hills more
or less precipitous, and by moors chiefly remarkable for their savage and
worthless nature, and it is a welcome change when, from the summit of a
steep hill, he at last looks down upon the quiet place, nestling in a
hollow on the Northumbrian side of the little river Derwent, that here
separates the counties of Northumberland and Durham.
Down there, still remote from the busy world, the village is slowly but
surely fading out of existence, as we learn from the cold, dispassionate
figures of the Census returns, which record the fact that in 1811 the
inhabitants numbered 518, while in 1901 they were but 232.
It is a compact little place. There is the ancient bridge, built by the
monks, across the Derwent, still, in the words of Froissart, “strong and
rapid and full of large stones and rocks”; and there are the church-tower,
the old Abbey gatehouse, the “Lord Crewe Arms,” and some few houses,
forming four sides of a square. “The place,” as Walter Besant truly says
in his novel, _Dorothy Forster_, “has the aspect of an ancient and decayed
college.”
Blanchland owes everything to its old abbey, conducted under the rules of
the original brethren of Prémonté, and even derived its name of Blanche
Lande from the white habits of the monks; just as Whitland in
Carmarthenshire, took its name from a similar history.
The Abbey of Blanchland was founded here, at “Wulwardshope,” as the place
was originally named, in 1163, and, rebuilt and added to from time to
time, flourished until the heavy hand of Henry the Eighth and his
commissioners ended it, in 1536. In all those long centuries it had
remained obscure, both in its situation and its history; and was indeed so
difficult to come to that tradition tells a picturesque story of mediæval
Scottish raiders failing to find the place and so returning home, when its
situation was revealed to them by the bells the monks were ringing, to
express joy at their deliverance. Alas! it was their own funeral knell the
brethren rang; for, guided by the sound, those Border ruffians entered
Blanchland, burnt its Abbey and slew the monks.
Shortly after the suppression of the Abbey under Henry the Eighth, the
monastic lands became the property, and the domestic buildings of the
Abbey the home, of the Radcliffe family, and afterwards of the Forsters,
who, according to the wholly irreverent, and half-boastful, half-satirical
local saying, were older than the oldest of county families, for “the
Almighty first created the world and Adam and Eve, and then He made the
Forsters.”
Blanchland was at last lost to that long-descended race by the treason of
General Forster, who was concerned in the rising of 1715, and so
forfeited his estates; and in 1721 the property was purchased by Nathaniel
Crewe, Bishop of Durham, who at the age of sixty-seven had married Dorothy
Forster, at that time twenty-four years of age.
[Illustration: THE “LORD CREWE ARMS,” BLANCHLAND.]
The present inn, the “Lord Crewe Arms,” is a portion of the old refectory
buildings on the west side of the cloister garth, but many alterations and
additions have been made since those times, and the actual oldest part is
the ancient monastic fireplace, very much disguised by later generations,
and in the fact that it is now in use as the fireplace of the modern
kitchen.
In the fine drawing-room of the inn, formerly the ball-room of the Forster
mansion, hangs a portrait of Lord Crewe, that time-serving reactionary
sycophant under James the Second and would-be toady to William the Third.
His public life was a version, on a higher plane, of that of the
celebrated Vicar of Bray, and he succeeded admirably in his determination
to stick to his principles--to live and die Bishop-Palatine of Durham; for
as Lord Bishop he remained until his death, aged eighty-nine, in 1722, in
the reign of George the Second.
But he well deserves the honour of the inn being named after him, for he
left his wealth in various charities, the rent of the inn itself forming a
portion of the income of the Crewe trustees.
Our ultimate example of a monastic hostel is found at Aylesbury, a town
whose name would, to imaginative persons, appear at the first blush to
indicate a happy hunting-ground for old inns; but although--Shakespeare to
the contrary--there is usually very much in a name, the meaning is not
always--and in place-names not often--what it would seem to be. Thus,
Aylesbury is not the town of ale, but (a very different thing),
Aeglesberge, _i.e._ “the Church Town,” a name it obtained in Saxon times,
when the surrounding country was godless, and this place exceptionally
provided.
At the same time, Aylesbury--the place also of ducks and of dairies--_was_
once notable for an exceedingly fine inn: none other than the great
galleried “White Hart,” first modernised in 1814, when its gabled,
picturesque front was pulled down and replaced by a commonplace red-brick
front, in the style, or lack of style, then prevalent; and finally cleared
away in 1863, to make room for the existing Corn Exchange and Market
House.
[Illustration: THE “OLD KING’S HEAD,” AYLESBURY.]
Coming into Aylesbury, in quest of inns, one looks at that building with
dismay. Was it really to build such a horrific thing they demolished the
“White Hart”? How deplorable!
Aylesbury is a town where, late at night, the police foregather in the
reverberative Market Square, instead of going their individual beats; and
there, through the small hours, they talk and laugh, hawk and spit, and
make offensive noises, until the sleepless stranger longs to open his
window and throw things at them. Happy he whose bedroom does not look upon
their rendezvous! But this is merely incidental. More germane to the
matter under consideration is the fact that, although the “White Hart” be
gone, Aylesbury still keeps a remarkably fine inn, of the smaller sort, in
the “Old King’s Head,” which, if not indeed a pilgrims’ inn, seems to have
been originally built by some religious fraternity as a hospice or
guest-house for travellers. Of its history and of the original building
nothing is known, the present house dating from 1444-50. You discover the
“Old King’s Head” in a narrow street off the market-place, and at the
first glimpse of it perceive that here is something quite exceptionally
fine. A sketch is, if it be any good at all, always worth a page of
description, and so we will let the accompanying illustration take the
place of mere verbiage. Only let it be observed that the larger gable and
the window in it are new, having been rebuilt in 1880.
The great window, entirely constructed of oak, is the chief feature of the
exterior, just as the noble room it lights is the principal object of
interest in the house itself. The point most worthy of consideration here
is that in this remarkably fine window, and in the room itself, you have
an unaltered and unrestored work of the fifteenth century. In early ages
the house was an inn with some ecclesiastical tie, and when it passed from
the hands of the brotherhood (whoever they may have been) that once owned
it, and became a secularised hostelry, it seems to have continued its
career with very little alteration beyond that of adopting as a sign the
“King’s Head”: that king doubtless originally Henry the Eighth himself.
The house was, in the seventeenth century, one of the Aylesbury inns that
issued tokens, for in museums and private collections are still to be
found copper pieces inscribed “At ye King’s Head In Aillsburey, W.E.D.
1657.” There still existed, until comparatively recent times, traces of
old galleries in the extensive yard, but modern changes have at last
completely abolished them.
The fine room of which the great window forms one complete side was no
doubt originally the common-room of the hostel. It is now the tap-room. A
fine lofty hall it makes: oaken pillars, black with age, springing from
each corner, based upon stone plinths and supporting finely moulded beams
that, crossing in the ceiling, divide it into nine square compartments.
The great window, divided by mullions and a transom into twenty lights, is
of course seen to best advantage from within, and still keeps much of the
original armorial stained glass.