THE MANXMAN'S BISHOP
Gilcrist Mylrea had been confirmed Bishop, and consecrated in England;
but he had to be installed in his cathedral church at Peeltown with all
the honors of the insular decrees. The ceremony was not an imposing one.
Few of the native population witnessed it. The Manxman did not love the
Church with a love too fervent. "Pazon, pazon," he would say, "what can
you expect from the like o' that? Never no duck wasn't hatched by a
drake."
It was no merit in the eyes of the people that the new Bishop was
himself a Manxman. "Aw, man," they would say, "I knew his father," and
knowledge of the father implied a limitation of the respect due to the
son. "What's his family?" would be asked again and again across the
hearth that scarcely knew its own family more intimately. "Maybe some of
the first that's going," would be the answer, and then there would be a
laugh.
The Bishop was enthroned by Archdeacon Teare, who filled his function
with what grace his chagrin would allow. Thorkell watched his
father-in-law keenly during the ceremony, and more than once his little
eyes twinkled, and his lips were sucked inward as if he rolled a
delectable morsel on his tongue. Archdeacon Teare was conscious of the
close fire of his son-in-law's gaze, and after the installation was
done, and the clergy that constituted priests and congregation were
breaking up, he approached the Deemster with a benevolent smile, and
said, "Well, Thorkell, we've had some disagreements, but we'll all meet
for peace and harmony in heaven."
The Deemster tittered audibly, and said, "I'm not so sure of that,
though."
"No?" said the Archdeacon, with elevated eyebrows. "Why--why?"
"Because we read in the Good Book that there will be no more _tears_,
Archdeacon," said Thorkell, with a laugh like the whinny of a colt.
The Bishop and his brother, the Deemster, got on their horses, and
turned their heads toward the episcopal palace. It was late when they
drove under the tall elms of Bishop's Court. The old house was lighted
up for their reception. Half-blind Kerry Quayle had come over from
Ballamona to nurse the Bishop's child, and to put him to bed in his new
home. "Och, as sweet a baby boy as any on the island, I'll go bail, as
the old body said," said Kerry, and the Bishop patted her arm with a
gentle familiarity. He went up to the little room where the child lay
asleep, and stooped over the cot and touched with his lips the soft lips
that breathed gently. The dignity of the Bishop as he stood four hours
before under the roof of St. German's had sat less well on this silent
man than the tenderness of the father by the side of his motherless
child.
Thorkell was in great spirits that night. Twenty times he drank to the
health of the new Bishop; twenty times he reminded him of his own
gracious offices toward securing the bishopric to one of his own family.
Gilcrist smiled, and responded in few words. He did not deceive himself;
his eyes were open. He knew that Thorkell had not been so anxious to
make him a Bishop as to prevent a place of honor and emolument from
going to any one less near to himself than his own brother. "Near is my
shirt," as Thorkell had told the Archdeacon, "but nearer is my skin."
Next day the Bishop lost no time in settling to his work. His people
watched him closely. He found his palace in a forlorn and dilapidated
state, and the episcopal demesne, which was about a square mile of
glebe, as fallow as the rough top of the mountains. The money value of
this bishopric was rather less than L500 a year, but out of this income
he set to work to fence and drain his lands, plant trees, and restore
his house to comfort, if not to stateliness. "I find my Patmos in
ruins," he said, "and that will oblige me to interrupt my charity to the
poor in some measure."
He assumed none of the social dignity of a Bishop. He had no carriage,
and no horse for riding. When he made his pastoral visitations he went
afoot. The journey to Douglas he called crossing the Pyrenees; and he
likened the toilsome tramp across the heavy Curraghs from Bishop's Court
to Kirk Andreas to the passing of pilgrims across a desert. "To speak
truth," he would say, "I have a title too large for my scant fortune to
maintain."
His first acts of episcopal authority did not conciliate either the
populace or their superiors in station. He set his face against the
contraband trade, and refused communion to those who followed it. "Och,
terrible, wonderful hard on the poor man he is, with his laws agen
honest trading, and his by-laws and his customs and his canons and the
like o' that messing."
It was soon made clear that the Bishop did not court popularity. He
started a school in each of the parishes by the help of a lady, who
settled a bounty, payable at the Bishop's pleasure, for the support of
the teachers. The teachers were appointed by his vicars-general. One day
a number of the men of his own parish, with Jabez Gawne, the sleek
little tailor, and Matthias Jubman, the buirdly maltster, at their head,
came up to Bishop's Court to complain of the schoolmaster appointed to
Kirk Michael. According to the malcontents, the schoolmaster was unable
to divide his syllables, and his home, which was the schoolhouse also,
was too remote for the convenience of the children. "So we beseech your
Lordships," said little Jabez, who was spokesman, "to allow us a fit
person to discharge the office, _and with submission we will recommend
one_." The Bishop took in the situation at a glance; Jabez's last words
had let the cat out of the bag, and it could not be said to be a Manx
cat, for it had a most prodigious tail. Next day the Bishop went to the
school, examined master and scholars, then called the petitioners
together, and said, "I find that James Quirk is qualified to teach an
English school, and I can not remove him; but I am of your opinion that
his house is in a remote part of the parish, and I shall expect the
parishioners to build a new schoolhouse in a convenient place, near the
church, within a reasonable time, otherwise the bounty can not be
continued to them." The answer staggered the petitioners; but they were
men with the saving grace of humor, and through the mouth of little
Jabez, which twisted into curious lines, they forthwith signified to his
Lordship their earnest desire to meet his wish by building their
schoolhouse within the churchyard.
Though a zealous upholder of Church authority, the Bishop was known to
temper justice with mercy. He had not been a month in the diocese when
his sumner told him a painful story of hard penance. A young girl from
near Peeltown had been presented for incontinence, and with the partner
of her crime she had been ordered to stand six Sundays at the door of
six churches. The man, who was rich, had compounded with the Archdeacon,
paying six pounds for exemption, and being thenceforward no more
mentioned; but the woman, being penniless and appalled at the disgrace
before her, had fled from the island. The Archdeacon had learned her
whereabouts in England, and had written to the minister of the place to
acquaint him that she was under the Church's censure. The minister, on
his part, had laid before her the terror of her position if she died out
of communion with God's people. She resisted all appeals until her time
came, and then, in her travail, the force of the idea had worked upon
her, and she could resist it no more. When she rose from bed she
returned voluntarily to the island, with the sign of her shame at her
breast, to undergo the penance of her crime. She had stood three Sundays
at the doors of three churches, but her health was feeble, and she could
scarcely carry her child, so weak was she, and so long the distances
from her lodging in Peeltown. "Let her be pardoned the rest of her
penance," said the Bishop. "The Church's censure was not passed on her
to afflict her with overmuch shame or sorrow."
It was not until years afterward that the Bishop learned the full facts
of the woman's case, and comprehended the terrible significance of her
punishment. She was Mally Kerruish.
The island was in the province of York, and bound by the English canons,
but the Bishop made his own canons, and none were heard to demur. Some
of his judgments were strange, but all leaned toward the weaker side. A
man named Quayle the Gyke, a blusterous fellow, a thorn in the side of
every official within a radius of miles, died after a long illness,
leaving nothing to a legitimate son who had nursed him affectionately.
This seemed to the Bishop to be contrary to natural piety, and in the
exercise of his authority he appointed the son an executor with the
others. Quayle the younger lived, as we shall see, to return evil for
the Bishop's good. A rich man of bad repute, Thormod Mylechreest, died
intestate, leaving an illegitimate son. The Bishop ordered the ordinary
to put aside a sum of money out of the estate for the maintenance and
education of the child. But Thorkell came down in the name of the civil
power, reversed the spiritual judgment, ordered that the whole
belongings of the deceased should be confiscated to the Lord of the
Isle, and left the base-begotten to charity. We shall also see that the
bastard returned good for Thorkell's evil.
The canons and customs of Bishop Mylrea not only leaned--sometimes with
too great indulgence--to the weaker side, but they supposed faith in the
people by allowing a voluntary oath as evidence, and this made false
swearing a terror. Except in the degree of superstition, he encouraged
belief in all its forms. He trusted an oath implicitly, but no man ever
heard him gainsay his yea or nay.
A hoary old dog known as Billy the Gawk, who had never worked within
living memory, who lived, as they said, "on the houses," and frequented
the pot-house with more than the regularity of religious observance, was
not long in finding out that Bishop's Court had awakened from its
protracted sleep. The Bishop had been abroad for his morning's ramble,
and sitting on the sunny side of a high turf hedge looking vacantly out
to sea, he heard footsteps on the road behind him, and then a dialogue,
of which this is a brief summary:
"Going up to the Coort, eh? Ah, well, it's plenty that's there to take
the edge off your stomach; plenty, plenty, and a rael welcome too."
"Ah, it's not the stomach that's bothering me. It's the narves, boy--the
narves--and a drop of the rael stuff is worth a Jew's eye for studdying
a man after a night of it, as the saying is."
"Aw, Billy, Billy--aw well, well, well."
The conversation died off on the Bishop's ear in a loud roystering laugh
and a low gurgle as undertone.
Half an hour later Billy the Gawk stood before the Bishop inside the
gates of Bishop's Court. The old dog's head hung low, his battered hat
was over his eyes, and both his trembling hands leaned heavily on his
thick blackthorn stick.
"And how do you live, my man?" asked the Bishop.
"I'm getting a bite here, and a sup there, and I've had terrible little
but a bit o' barley bread since yesterday morning," said the Gawk.
"Poor man, that's hard fare," said the Bishop; "but mind you call here
every day for the future."
Billy got a measure of corn worth sixpence, and went straightway to the
village, where he sold it at the pot-house for as much liquor as could
have been bought for three-halfpence. And as Billy the Gawk drank his
drop of the real stuff he laughed very loud and boasted that he could
outwit the Bishop. But the liquor got into his head, and from laughing
he went on to swearing, and thence to fighting, until the innkeeper
turned him out into the road, where, under the weight of his measure of
corn taken in solution, Billy sank into a dead slumber. The Bishop
chanced to take an evening walk that day, and he found his poor
penisioner, who fared hard, lodged on a harder bed, and he had him
picked up and carried into the house. Next morning, when Billy awoke and
found where he was, and remembered what had occurred, an unaccustomed
sensation took possession of him, and he stole away unobserved. The
hoary old dog was never seen again at Bishop's Court.
But if Billy never came again his kith and kin came frequently. It
became a jest that the Bishop kept the beggars from every house but his
own, and that no one else could get a beggar.
He had a book, which he called his "Matricula Pauperum," in which he
entered the names of his pensioners with notes of their circumstances.
He knew all the bits of family history--when Jemmy Corkell's wife was
down with lumbago, and when Robbie Quirk was to kill his little pig.
Billy the Gawk was not alone in thinking that he could outwit the
Bishop. When the Bishop wanted a new pair of boots or a new coat, the
tailor or shoemaker came to Bishop's Court, and was kept there until his
job of work was finished. The first winter after his arrival in his
Patmos, he wanted a cloak, and sent for Jabez Gawne, the sleek little
fox who had been spokesman for the conspirators against James Quirk, the
schoolmaster. Jabez had cut out the cloak, and was preparing it for a
truly gorgeous adornment, when the Bishop ordered him to put merely a
button and a loop on it to keep it together. Jabez thereupon dropped his
cloth and held up his hands where he sat cross-legged on the kitchen
dresser, and exclaimed, with every accent of aggrieved surprise:
"My Lord, what would become of the poor buttonmakers and their families
if every one ordered his tailor in that way?"
"How so, Jabez?"
"Why, they would be starved outright."
"Do you say so, Jabez?"
"Yes, my Lord, I do."
"Then button it all over, Jabez," said the Bishop.
The Deemster was present at that interview, and went away from it
tittering audibly.
"Give to the raven and he'll come again," he muttered.
"I forgot that poor Jabez would have his buttons in his
breeches-pocket," said the Bishop.
The Manxman had not yet made up his mind concerning the composite
character of Bishop Mylrea, his dignity and his humility, his reserve
and his simplicity, when a great event settled for the Manxman's heart
the problem that had been too much for his head. This was no less a
catastrophe than a general famine. It came upon the island in the second
year of the Bishop's residence, and was the cause of many changes. One
of the changes was that the Bishop came to be regarded by his people
with the reverence of Israel for Samuel, and by his brother, the
Deemster, with the distrust, envy, and, at length, mingled fear and
hatred of Saul for Israel's prophet.
The land of the island had been held under a tenure of straw, known as
the three-lives' tenure; the third life was everywhere running out, and
the farms were reverting to the Lord of the Isle. This disheartened the
farmers, who lost all interest in agriculture, let their lands lie
fallow, and turned to the only other industry in which they had an
interest, the herring fishing. The herrings failed this season, and
without fish, with empty barns, and a scant potato crop, caused by a
long summer of drought, the people were reduced to poverty.
Then the Bishop opened wider the gates of Bishop's Court, which since
his coming had never been closed. Heaven seemed to have given him a
special blessing. The drought had parched up the grass even of the damp
Curragh, and left bleached on the whitening mold the poor, thin, dwarfed
corn, that could never be reaped. But the glebe of Bishop's Court gave
fair crops, and when the people cried in the grip of their necessity the
Bishop sent round a pastoral letter to his clergy, saying that he had
eight hundred bushels of wheat, barley, and oats more than his household
required. Then there came from the north and the south, the east and the
west, long, straggling troops of buyers with little or no money to buy,
and Bishop's Court was turned into a public market. The Bishop sold to
those who had money at the price that corn fetched before the famine,
and in his barn behind the house he kept a chest for those who came in
at the back with nothing but a sack in their hands. Once a day he
inspected the chest, and when it was low, which was frequently, he
replenished it, and when it was high, which was rarely, he smiled, and
said that God was turning away his displeasure from his people.
The eight hundred bushels were at an end in a month, and still the
famine continued. Then the Bishop bought eight hundred other bushels:
wheat at ten shillings, barley at six shillings, and oats at four
shillings, and sold them at half these prices. He gave orders that the
bushel of the poor man was not to be stroked, but left in heaped-up
measure.
A second month went by; the second eight hundred bushels were consumed,
and the famine showed no abatement. The Bishop waited for vessels from
Liverpool, but no vessels came. He was a poor priest, with a great
title, and he had little money; but he wrote to England asking for a
thousand bushels of grain and five hundred kischen of potatoes, and
promised to pay at six days after the next annual revenue. A week of
weary waiting ensued, and every day the Bishop cheered the haggard folk
that came to Bishop's Court with accounts of the provisions that were
coming; and every day they went up on to the head of the hill, and
strained their bleared eyes seaward for the sails of an English ship.
When patience was worn to despair, the old "King Orry" brought the
Bishop a letter saying that the drought had been general, that the
famine was felt throughout the kingdom, and that an embargo had been put
on all food to forbid traders to send it from English shores. Then the
voice of the hungry multitudes went up in one deep cry of pain. "The
hunger is on us," they moaned. "Poor once, poor forever," they muttered;
and the voice of the Bishop was silent.
Just at that moment a further disaster threatened the people. Their
cattle, which they could not sell, they had grazed on the mountains, and
the milk of the cows had been the chief food of the children, and the
wool of the sheep the only clothing of their old men. With parched
meadows and Curraghs, where the turf was so dry that it would take fire
from the sun, the broad tops of the furze-covered hills were the sole
resource of the poor. At daybreak the shepherd with his six ewe lambs
and one goat, and the day laborer with his cow, would troop up to where
the grass looked greenest, and at dusk they would come down to shelter,
with weary limbs and heavy hearts. "What's it sayin'," they would
mutter, "a green hill when far from me; bare, bare, when it is near."
At this crisis it began to be whispered that the Deemster had made an
offer to the Lord to rent the whole stretch of mountain land from Ramsey
to Peeltown. The rumor created consternation, and was not at first
believed. But one day the Deemster, with the Governor of the Grand
Enquest, drove to the glen at Sulby and went up the hillside. Not long
after, a light cart was seen to follow the highroad to the glen beyond
Ballaugh, and then turn up toward the mountains by the cart track. The
people who were grazing their cattle on the hills came down and gathered
with the people of the valleys at the foot, and there were dark faces
and firm-set lips among them, and hot words and deep oaths were heard.
"Let's off to the Bishop," said one, and then went to Bishop's Court.
Half an hour later the Bishop came from Bishop's Court at the head of a
draggled company of men, and his face was white and hard. They overtook
the cart half-way up the side of the mountain, and the Bishop called on
the driver to stop, and asked what he carried, and where he was going.
The man answered that he had provisions for the Governor, the Deemster,
and the Grand Enquest, who were surveying the tops of the mountains.
The Bishop looked round, and his lip was set, and his nostrils quivered.
"Can any man lend me a knife?" he asked, with a strained quietness.
A huge knife was handed to him, such as shepherds carry in the long legs
of their boots. He stepped to the cart and ripped up the harness, which
was rope harness, the shafts fell and the horse was free. Then the
Bishop turned to the driver and said very quietly:
"Where do you live, my man?"
"At Sulby, my Lord," said the man, trembling with fear.
"You shall have leather harness to-morrow."
Then the Bishop went on, his soiled and draggled company following him,
the cart lying helpless in the cart track behind them.
When they got to the top of the mountain they could see the Governor and
the Deemster and their associates stretching the chain in the purple
distance. The Bishop made in their direction, and when he came up with
them, he said:
"Gentlemen, no food will reach you on the mountains to-day; the harness
of your cart has been cut, and cart and provisions are lying on the
hillside."
At this Thorkell turned white with wrath, and clenched his fists and
stamped his foot on the turf, and looked piercingly into the faces of
the Bishop's followers.
"As sure as I'm Deemster," he said, with an oath, "the man who has done
this shall suffer. Don't let him deceive himself--no one, not even the
Bishop himself, shall step in between that man and the punishment of the
law."
The Bishop listened with calmness, and then said, "Thorkell, the Bishop
will not intercede for him. Punish him if you can."
"And so, by God, I will," cried the Deemster, and his eye traversed the
men behind his brother.
The Bishop then took a step forward. "_I_ am that man," he said, and
then there was a great silence.
Thorkell's face flinched, his head fell between his shoulders, his
manner grew dogged, he said not a word, his braggadocio was gone.
The Bishop approached the Governor. "You have no more right to rent
these mountains than to rent yonder sea," he said, and he stretched his
arm toward the broad blue line to the west. "They belong to God and to
the poor. Let me warn you, sir, that as sure as you set up one stone to
enclose these true God's acres, I shall be the first to pull that stone
down."
The Grand Enquest broke up in confusion, and the mountains were saved to
the people.
It blew hard on the hilltop that day, and the next morning the news
spread through the island that a ship laden with barley had put in from
bad weather at Douglas Harbor. "And a terrible wonderful sight of corn,
plenty for all, plenty, plenty," was the word that went round. In three
hours' time hundreds of men and women trooped down to the quay with
money to buy. To all comers the master shook his head, and refused to
sell.
"Sell, man--sell, sell," they cried.
"I can't sell. The cargo is not mine. I'm a poor man myself," said the
master.
"Well, and what's that it's sayin', 'When one poor man helps another
poor man God laughs.'"
The Bishop came to the ship's side, and tried to treat for the cargo.
"I've given bond to land it all at Whitehaven," said the master.
Then the people's faces grew black, and deep oaths rose to their lips,
and they turned and looked into each other's eyes in their impotent
rage. "The hunger is on us--we can't starve--let every herring hang by
its own gill--let's board her," they muttered among themselves.
And the Bishop heard their threats. "My people," he said, "what will
become of this poor island unless God averts his awful judgments, only
God himself can know; but this good man has given his bond, and let us
not bring on our heads God's further displeasure."
There was a murmur of discontent, and then one long sigh of patient
endurance, and then the Bishop lifted his hands, and down on their knees
on the quay the people with famished faces fell around the tall,
drooping figure of the man of God, and from parched throats, and hearts
wellnigh as dry, sent up a great cry to heaven to grant them succor lest
they should die.
About a week afterward another ship put in by contrary winds at
Castletown. It had a cargo of Welsh oats bound to Dumfries, on the order
of the Provost. The contrary winds continued, and the corn began to heat
and spoil. The hungry populace, enraged by famine, called on the master
to sell. He was powerless. Then the Bishop walked over his "Pyrenees,"
and saw that the food for which his people hungered was perishing before
their eyes. When the master said "No" to him, as to others, he
remembered how in old time David, being an hungered, did that which was
not lawful in eating of the showbread, and straightway he went up to
Castle Rushen, got a company of musketeers, returned with them to the
ship's side, boarded the ship, put the master and crew in irons, and
took possession of the corn.
What wild joy among the people! What shouts were heard; what tears
rolled down the stony cheeks of stern men!
"Patience!" cried the Bishop. "Bring the market weights and scales."
The scales and weights were brought down to the quay and every bushel of
the cargo was exactly weighed, and paid for at the prime price according
to the master's report. Then the master and crew were liberated, and the
Bishop paid the ship's freight out of his own purse. When he passed
through the market-place on his way back to the Bishop's Court the
people followed with eyes that were almost too dim to see, and they
blessed in cheers that were sobs.
And then God remembered his people, and their troubles passed away. With
the opening spring the mackerel nets came back to the boats in shining
silver masses, and peace and plenty came again to the hearth of the
poorest.
The Manxman knew his Bishop now; he knew him for the strongest soul in
the dark hour, the serenest saint in the hour of light and peace. That
hoary old dog, Billy the Gawk, took his knife and scratched "B.M.," and
the year of the Lord on the inside of his cupboard door to record the
advent of Bishop Mylrea.
A mason from Ireland, a Catholic named Patrick Looney, was that day at
work building the square tower of the church of the market-place, and
when he saw the Bishop pass under him he went down on his knees on the
scaffold and dropped his head for the good man's blessing.
A little girl of seven, with sunny eyes and yellow hair, stood by at
that moment, and for love of the child's happy face the Bishop touched
her head and said, "God bless you, my sweet child."
The little one lifted her innocent eyes to his eyes, and answered with a
courtesy, "And God bless you, too, sir."
"Thank you, child, thank you," said the Bishop. "I do not doubt that
your blessing will be as good as mine."
Such was Gilcrist Mylrea, Bishop of Man. He needed all his strength and
all his tenderness for the trials that were to come.