[Illustration]
HISTORY OF
THE
CATHEDRAL CHURCH
Of Wells
AS
ILLUSTRATING THE HISTORY OF
THE CATHEDRAL CHURCHES
OF THE
OLD FOUNDATION.
BY
EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M.A.
FORMERLY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD.
London:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1870.
LONDON:
R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,
BREAD STREET HILL.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
LECTURE I. 1
LECTURE II. 42
LECTURE III. 105
NOTES 163
INDEX 191
PREFACE.
This small volume is a reprint, with hardly any change, of three
lectures which were given to a local society in Wells in the months of
December 1869 and January 1870, and which were printed at the time in a
local paper. I have added some notes and references, but the substance
is essentially the same. The subject seemed to deserve more than local
attention on more grounds than one. I wished to point out the way in
which local and general history may and ought to be brought together.
As a general rule, local historians make hardly any attempt to connect
the history of the particular church or city or district of which they
are writing with the general history of the country, or even with the
general history of its own class of institutions. On the other hand,
more general students of history are apt to pay too little heed to the
history of particular places. I have here tried to treat the history
of the Church of Wells as a contribution to the general history of the
Church and Kingdom of England, and specially to the history of the
Cathedral Churches of the Old Foundation. I have also a special object
in calling attention to the origin and history of those foundations,
to their original objects and their modern corruptions. It is quite
impossible that our Cathedral institutions can stay much longer in the
state in which they now are, a state which satisfies no party. If they
are not reformed by their friends, they can hardly fail to be destroyed
by their enemies. The awkward attempt at reform which was made thirty
years back was made in utter ignorance of the history and nature of
the institutions. Instead of reforming them, it has merely crippled
them. Our Cathedral Churches have indeed vastly improved during those
thirty years; but it has been almost wholly because they have shared
in a general improvement, hardly at all by virtue of the changes which
were specially meant to improve them. I wish to point out the general
principles of the original founders as the model to which the Old
Foundations should be brought back, and the New Foundations reformed
after their pattern.
What I have now written is of course a mere sketch, which does not at
all pretend to be a complete history of the Church of Wells, either
architectural or documentary. I had hoped that Professor Willis would
have allowed me the use of the materials of both kinds on which he
grounded his lectures in 1851 and 1863. But it seems that he reserves
them for the general work for which architectural students have been
waiting so long. I have therefore been left to my own resources,
that is, as far as documents are concerned, to the ordinary printed
authorities in _Anglia Sacra_, the _Monasticon_, and elsewhere. But it
is to be hoped that some day or other the documents that are locked up
in manuscript at Wells and at other places may be made available for
historical purposes. Some of our capitular records would be excellently
suited for a place in the series issued by the Master of the Rolls.
I have given an historical ground-plan, but the scale of the book
forbade any strictly architectural illustrations, while it seemed
needless to give any mere picturesque views of a building of which
engravings and photographs are so common.
SOMERLEAZE, WELLS,
_May 18th, 1870_.
LIST OF BISHOPS.
BISHOPS OF SOMERSETSHIRE OR WELLS.
Consecration. Death or
Translation.
Æthelhelm 909 914[1]
Wulfhelm 914 923[1]
Ælfheah 923 937?
Wulfhelm 938 955?
Brihthelm 956 973
Cyneward 973 975
Sigar 975 997
Ælfwine 997 998?
Lyfing 999 1012[1]
Æthelwine }[2] 1013 1023?
Brihtwine } 1013 1023?
Merewith 1027 1033
Duduc 1033 1060
Gisa 1061 1088
BISHOPS OF BATH.
Consecration or Death or
Translation. Translation.
John de Villulâ 1088 1122
Godfrey 1123 1135
Robert 1136 1166
Reginald 1174 1191[3]
[1] Translated to Canterbury.
[2] This seems to have been a case of disputed election.
[3] Translated to Canterbury.
BISHOP OF BATH AND GLASTONBURY.
Consecration or Death or
Translation. Translation.
Savaric 1192 1205
BISHOPS OF BATH AND WELLS.
Jocelin of Wells 1206 1242
Roger 1244 1247
William Button 1248 1264
Walter Giffard 1265 1266[1]
William Button 1267 1274
Robert Burnell 1275 1292
William of March 1293 1302
Walter Hasleshaw 1302 1308
John Drokensford 1309 1329
Ralph of Shrewsbury 1329 1363
John Barnet 1363[2] 1366[3]
John Harewell 1367 1386
Walter Skirlaw 1386[4] 1388[5]
Ralph Erghum 1388[6] 1400
Henry Bowett 1401 1407[7]
Nicholas Bubwith 1407[8] 1424
John Stafford 1425 1443[9]
Thomas Beckington 1443 1465
Robert Stillington 1466 1491
Richard Fox 1492[10] 1494[11]
Oliver King 1495[12] 1503
Hadrian de Castello 1504[13] 1518[14]
Thomas Wolsey 1518[15] 1523[16]
John Clark 1523 1541
William Knight 1541 1547
William Barlow 1549[17] 1554[18]
Gilbert Bourne 1554 1559[19]
Gilbert Berkeley 1560 1581
Thomas Godwin 1584 1590[20]
John Still 1593 1608
James Montague 1608 1616[21]
Arthur Lake 1616 1626
William Laud 1626[22] 1628[23]
Leonard Mawe 1628 1629
Walter Curll 1629[24] 1632[25]
William Piers 1632[26] 1670
Robert Creighton 1670 1672
Peter Mews 1673 1684[27]
Thomas Ken 1685 1690[28]
Richard Kidder 1691 1703
George Hooper 1704[29] 1727
John Wynne 1727[29] 1743
Edward Willis 1743[30] 1773
Charles Moss 1774[30] 1802
Richard Beadon 1802[31] 1824
George Henry Law 1824[32] 1845
Hon. Richard Bagot 1845[33] 1854
Robert John Lord Auckland 1854[34] 1869[35]
Lord Arthur Charles Hervey 1869
[1] Translated to York.
[2] Translated from Worcester.
[3] Translated to Ely.
[4] Translated from Coventry and Lichfield.
[5] Translated to Durham.
[6] Translated from Salisbury.
[7] Translated to York.
[8] Translated from London to Salisbury, and thence to Bath
and Wells.
[9] Translated to Canterbury.
[10] Translated from Exeter.
[11] Translated to Durham, thence to Winchester.
[12] Translated from Exeter.
[13] Translated from Hereford.
[14] Deprived for a conspiracy against Pope Leo the Tenth.
[15] Held in plurality with York.
[16] Exchanged for Durham.
[17] Translated from Saint David's.
[18] Deprived on the accession of Queen Mary and reappointed
to Chichester under Queen Elizabeth.
[19] Deprived on the accession of Elizabeth.
[20] Father of Francis Godwin the historian, Canon of Wells
and afterwards Bishop of Llandaff.
[21] Translated to Winchester.
[22] Translated from Saint David's.
[23] Translated to London and thence to Canterbury.
[24] Translated from Rochester.
[25] Translated to Winchester.
[26] Translated from Peterborough.
[27] Translated to Winchester.
[28] Deprived for refusing the oaths to William and Mary.
[29] Translated from Saint Asaph.
[30] Translated from Saint David's.
[31] Translated from Gloucester.
[32] Translated from Carlisle.
[33] Translated from Oxford.
[34] Translated from Sodor and Man.
[35] Resigned. Died 1870.
HISTORY OF THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF WELLS.
LECTURE I.
The subject which I have chosen for this course of lectures is one
which must always have an interest beyond all others for us who
live in this city and neighbourhood. In every place which boasts
of a cathedral church, that cathedral church is commonly the chief
object of interest, alike as its present ornament and as the chief
centre of its past history. But in Wells the cathedral church and its
appurtenances are yet more. Their interest is not only primary, but
absorbing. They are not only the chief ornament of the place; they are
the place itself. They are not only the centre of the past history
of the city; their history is the history of the city. Of our other
cities some can trace up a long history as cities independent of their
ecclesiastical foundations. Some were the dwelling-places of Kings
in days before England became one kingdom. Some have been for ages
seats of commerce or manufactures; their history is the history of
burghers striving for and obtaining their freedom, a history which
repeats in small that same tale of early struggles and later abuses
which forms the history of so many greater commonwealths. Others have
a long military history; their name at once suggests the memory of
battles and sieges, and they can still show walls and castles as the
living memorials of the stirring scenes of bygone times. In others
even the ecclesiastical pre-eminence of the cathedral church may be
disputed by some other ecclesiastical building. The bishoprick and
its church may be comparatively modern institutions, and they may be
altogether eclipsed by some other institution more ancient in date
of foundation, perhaps more ancient in its actual fabric. Thus at
Oxford the cathedral church is well-nigh lost among the buildings
of the University and its greatest college. At Chester its rank may
be disputed by the majestic fragments of the older minster of Saint
John. At Bristol the cathedral church, even when restored to its old
proportions, will still have at least an equal rival in the stateliest
parish church in England. In these cities the bishoprick, its church
and its chapter, are institutions of yesterday; the cities themselves
were great and famous for ages before they were founded. So at Exeter,
though the bishoprick is of far earlier date, yet Exeter was a famous
city, which had played its part in history, long before Bishops of
Exeter were heard of. Even at Winchester the overwhelming greatness of
the Old Minster has to compete with the earlier and later interests
of the royal palace, of the fallen Abbey, of the unique home of noble
poverty[1] and of the oldest of the great and still living schools
of England. Salisbury alone in our own part of England, and Durham in
the far north, have a history which in some measure resembles that of
Wells. Like Wells, Salisbury and Durham are cities which have grown up
around the cathedral church. But they have grown up--I presume it is no
offence to say so--into a greater measure of temporal importance than
our own city. To take a familiar standard, no one has ever proposed
to strike either of them out of the list of parliamentary boroughs.
Wells stands alone among the cities of England proper as a city which
exists only in and through its cathedral church, whose whole history
is that of its cathedral church. The Bishoprick has been to us what
the Abbey has been to our neighbours at Glastonbury, what the church
first of Abbots and then of Bishops has been elsewhere to Ely and
Peterborough. The whole history of Wells is, I say, the history of
the bishoprick and of its church. Of the origin and foundation of the
city, as distinguished from that of the church, nothing is known. The
name of Wells is first heard of as the place where the church of Saint
Andrew was standing, and its name seldom appears in later history
except in connexion with the affairs of its church. It was never a
royal dwelling-place; it was never a place of commercial importance; it
was never a place of military strength. Like other cities, it has its
municipal history, but its municipal history is simply an appendage to
its ecclesiastical history; the franchises of the borough were simply
held as grants from the Bishop. It has its parochial church, a church
standing as high among the buildings of its own class as the cathedral
church itself. This parochial church has a parochial constitution
which is in some points unique. But the parochial church is simply an
appendage to the cathedral church; it is the church of the burghers who
had come to dwell under the shadow of the minster and the protection
of its spiritual lord. And it has ever retained a close, sometimes
perhaps a too close, connexion with the cathedral and its Chapter. Thus
the history of the church is the history of the city; no battles, no
sieges, no parliaments, break the quiet tenor of its way; the name of
the city has hardly found its way into our civil and military history.
Its name does appear among the troubles of the seventeenth century, in
the pages of Clarendon and of Macaulay, but it appears in connexion
with events whose importance was mainly local. And even here the
ecclesiastical interest comes in; the most striking event connected
with Wells in the story of Monmouth's rebellion is the mischief done
to the cathedral, and the way in which further damage and desecration
was hindered by Lord Grey. And in our own times, when the parliamentary
existence of this city became the subject of an animated parliamentary
discussion, even then the ecclesiastical interest was still uppermost.
The old battle of the regulars and seculars was fought again over the
bodies of two small parliamentary boroughs. I need not remind you that
the claims of the old secular foundation were stoutly pressed by one
of our own members. But the monastic influence was too strong for us;
the mantle of Dunstan and Æthelwald had fallen on the shoulders of
Sir John Pakington, and the claims of the fallen Abbey of Evesham were
preferred to those of the existing Cathedral of Wells.[2]
[1] See notes at the end of the volume.
The whole interest, then, of this city is ecclesiastical; but its
ecclesiastical interest in one point of view surpasses that of every
church in England,--I am strongly tempted to say, every church in
Europe. The traveller who comes down the hill from Shepton Mallet
looks down, as he draws near the city, on a group of buildings which,
as far as I know, has no rival either in our own island or beyond the
sea. To most of these objects, taken singly, it would be easy to find
rivals which would equal or surpass them. The church itself, seen even
from that most favourable point of view, cannot, from mere lack of
bulk, hold its ground against the soaring apse of Amiens, or against
the windows ranging, tier above tier, in the mighty eastern gable of
Ely. The cloister cannot measure itself with Gloucester or Salisbury;
the chapter-house lacks the soaring roofs of York and Lincoln; the
palace itself finds its rival in the ruined pile of Saint David's. The
peculiar charm and glory of Wells lies in the union and harmonious
grouping of all. The church does not stand alone; it is neither crowded
by incongruous buildings, nor yet isolated from those buildings which
are its natural and necessary complement. Palace, cloister, Lady
chapel, choir, chapter-house, all join to form one indivisible whole.
The series goes on uninterruptedly along that unique bridge which by a
marvel of ingenuity connects the church itself with the most perfect
of buildings of its own class, the matchless Vicars' close. Scattered
around we see here and there an ancient house, its gable, its window,
or its turret falling in with the style and group of greater buildings,
and bearing its part in producing the general harmony of all. The
whole history of the place is legibly written on that matchless group
of buildings. If we could fancy an ecclesiastical historian to have
dropped from the clouds, the aspect of the place would at once tell
him that he was looking on an English cathedral church, on a cathedral
church which had always been served by secular canons, on a church
of secular canons which had preserved its ancient buildings and
ancient arrangements more perfectly than any other in the island. It
is to the history of that great institution, alike in its fabric and
its foundation, that I call your attention in the present course of
lectures. And, taking Wells as my text, I purpose to compare our own
church, alike in its fabric and its foundation, with other churches of
the same class. The subject naturally falls into three divisions. I
purpose to devote three discourses of moderate length to the early, the
mediæval, and the modern history of the Church of Wells.
For a subject like that which I have chosen is obviously one which may
be looked at from various points of view. A cathedral church like ours
is not only a material fabric, a work of architecture; it is also an
ecclesiastical institution, an establishment founded for the benefit
of our Church and nation, and which has played its part, whatever
that part may have been, in the general history of the country. I
purpose to look at it in both aspects, aspects either of which is
very imperfectly treated if it wholly shuts out the other. But I do
not purpose to treat either branch of the subject in any very minute
detail. A minute architectural or antiquarian memoir has its value, but
it is not at all suited to a popular lecture. A minute architectural
exposition, if it is to be intelligible, must be given on the spot. A
minute antiquarian memoir, crowded with names and dates, is often very
profitable when printed, but it is not at all suited to be read out to
a general audience. Moreover I should be very sorry to trespass on the
province of one to whose minute knowledge of local history I can make
no claim. My object is different. I wish to treat the history of Wells
Cathedral, both as a building and as an institution, in a more general,
in what I may call a comparative, way. I wish to dwell on the position
of our own church as one of a class, to point out how it stands among
other buildings and other institutions of its own class, and to trace
out its connexion with the general history of the Kingdom and Church of
England.
For my first portion then this evening, I purpose to take as my subject
the early days of the church of Saint Andrew, from the first time that
its name is heard of in history or record to the time when both the
material fabric and the ecclesiastical foundation assumed something
like their present form. And as this subject will lead us into somewhat
obscure times, and into many matters which people in general are far
from accurately understanding, I hope that those among my hearers to
whom all that I have to say is familiar will forgive me if I deal with
some matters in a somewhat elementary way. I have spoken of Saint
Andrew's church in Wells as a cathedral church, as a cathedral church
which has always been served by secular canons; I have spoken of an
opposition between the regular and the secular clergy. To some of my
hearers all these terms carry their meaning at once. To others I am
afraid that they may not suggest any very definite idea. But without a
definite idea of them neither the general history of England nor the
local history of Wells can be clearly understood. Let then my better
informed hearers bear with me if I go somewhat into the A B C of the
matter.
To begin then with the beginning, what do we mean when we call the
larger of the two ancient churches in this city, the _Cathedral_? What
is the meaning of the word? Some people seem to think it means simply
a bigger church than usual--I have heard a vast number of churches
in other places called _cathedrals_ which have no right to the name.
Sometimes people seem to think that it means a church which has a Dean
and Chapter or a special body of clergy of some kind, or a church where
there are prayers every day, or a church where the prayers are chanted
and not merely read. Nay, some people seem to think that a cathedral
is not a church at all; I have heard it said that a cathedral was not
a church, but that it had a church inside it. And I do not wonder at
people thinking so when they go into a cathedral church, and see the
greater part standing empty indeed and swept, but never garnished. I
was once in a large parish church, that of Grosmont in Monmouthshire,
where the man who let me in told me very proudly: "Our church is like
a cathedral." What he meant by the church being like a cathedral was
that the whole congregation was rammed, jammed, crammed into the choir,
while the nave stood empty and useless. Again it is not at all uncommon
to hear people talk of "cathedrals and churches," as if they were two
different sorts of things. And people seem also to think that some
particular sort of worship is right in a cathedral, which is not right
in other places. When there is a good deal of singing and organ-playing
in divine service, they call it "cathedral service," as if singing and
organ-playing were something specially belonging to a cathedral more
than to other places.
Now all these latter notions are simply mistakes. And those with
which I began are mistakes too, though in a somewhat different way.
A cathedral is simply a church, one particular sort of church, and,
instead of being a thing to be proud of, it is a thing to be ashamed
of if the nave of any church stands empty and useless. What is called
"cathedral service" is simply divine service done in the best and
most solemn way, a way which other churches may not always be able to
follow in everything, but which they should try to follow as nearly as
they can. On the other hand, it is very right that a cathedral church
should be larger and finer than other churches, that it should have a
larger body of clergy belonging to it, and that they should perform
divine service in such a way as to be a light and an example to other
churches. Still none of these things lies at the root of the matter; it
is none of these things which makes the difference between a cathedral
and another church. That difference is that it contains the throne or
official seat of the Bishop. In Greek and Latin that seat is called
_cathedra_,--a word which in English is cut short into _chair_--and
the church which contains it is called _ecclesia cathedralis_, the
_cathedral church_. _Cathedral_ in short is an adjective and not a
substantive, and its use as a substantive is always rather awkward and
slovenly. Certain churches, namely those which contain the throne of
a Bishop, are _cathedral_ churches, as churches which do not contain
the throne of a Bishop, but which have a Chapter or College of clergy,
are _collegiate_ churches, while the great mass of churches are simply
_parochial_ churches, churches designed for the use of a single parish,
and with only a single parish priest.
The essence then of the cathedral church is its being, beyond all other
churches, the church of the Bishop. It is the church which contains
his official seat, and it is by taking possession of that official
seat that the Bishop, as we shall presently see when our newly chosen
Bishop comes among us, takes possession of his Bishoprick.[3] From
that seat the church, and the city in which it stands, is called the
Bishop's _See_. And from that see the Bishop takes his title. Thus we
call this city of Wells the see of a Bishop, the Bishop of Bath and
Wells. The Bishop is called Bishop of Bath as well as of Wells, because
this diocese, unlike most others, contained two cathedral churches. The
Bishop had his throne in the church of Saint Peter at Bath as well as
in the church of Saint Andrew at Wells. But since the time of Henry
the Eighth the church of Bath has not been reckoned as a cathedral
church, and the Bishop has been enthroned in the church of Wells only.
Now you may ask how it is that, while, of all the churches of the
diocese, the cathedral church is pre-eminently the Bishop's church,
the church which is specially his own, and whence he takes his title,
it is precisely in the cathedral church that he has less authority
than in any other church, that the whole management of the cathedral
church seems to have passed away from the Bishop into the hands of the
Dean and Chapter. The independence of the Dean and Chapter, when it is
carried so far as it now is, is undoubtedly an abuse and an anomaly,
and how it came about I shall show as I go on. You may also ask how it
happened that the see of the Bishop of this diocese should have been
placed at Wells rather than anywhere else. For it was at Wells that it
was placed first of all, and it was not till nearly two hundred years
after the foundation of the Bishoprick that Bath became a cathedral
church.
To see how this happened we must go back to the days of the first
preaching of the Gospel to Englishmen. In those parts of Western Europe
which first became Christian, in Italy, for instance, and Gaul and
Spain, the cities were at that time almost everything the open country
was of very little account. The Gospel was therefore first preached
to the people of the cities, and the cities had become almost wholly
Christian at a time when the people of the country were still mainly
heathens. Hence the word _pagan_--in Latin _paganus_--which at first
meant only a countryman as opposed to a townsman, came to mean a
heathen or worshipper of false gods. Now in this state of things the
Bishop was pre-eminently the Bishop of the city; the city was his
home, and the home of his original flock; it was only gradually that
he came to have much to do with the people beyond the city, and, when
he did so, the limits of his diocese were fixed by the limits of the
civil jurisdiction of the city of which he was Bishop. In England, and
indeed in the British Islands generally, the state of things was very
different. The country was divided among many princes; there were but
few large towns, and those that there were exercised no authority over
the people of the country round them. In England therefore at first
there commonly was a Bishop in each Kingdom; he fixed his throne,
his _bishopstool_ as it was called, in some particular church in his
diocese, which thus became his special home and cathedral church; but
he was not Bishop of the city in the same special sense in which an
Italian or even a Gaulish Bishop was Bishop of the city. In fact in
many of the English dioceses the Bishop did not even take his title
from the city where his cathedral church stood, but was called from the
country at large, or rather from the tribe which inhabited it. Thus up
to the Norman Conquest the Bishop of this diocese was not called the
Bishop of Wells, but the Bishop of the Sumorsætas, the tribe from which
Somersetshire takes its name.
Now the Bishoprick of the Sumorsætas was not one of the oldest
Bishopricks, one of those which were founded at the first preaching of
the Gospel in England. When Augustine came to Britain in 597, only
a very small part of Somersetshire was English at all; the Welsh of
Cornwall still held all the land from the Land's End to the Axe. Thus
Wells, if Wells existed, was within the Welsh border, though Wookey was
within the English border. When the West-Saxons became Christians in
635, a Bishop was, as usual, appointed for the whole kingdom. He was
called Bishop of the West-Saxons, and his _bishopstool_ was placed,
after some changes, in the royal city of Winchester.[4] After a while,
as Christianity spread and as the West-Saxon Kingdom grew by conquests
from the Welsh, this great diocese was divided in the year 705.[5]
One Bishop remained at Winchester; the other had his _bishopstool_ at
Sherborne, and his diocese took in the shires of the Dorsætas, the
Wilsætas, and the Sumorsætas, and Berkshire, a shire which, unlike the
other three, was not called after a people. In the time of Eadward the
Elder, in 909, this diocese was divided again; the Sumorsætas now got a
Bishop to themselves, and his _bishopstool_ was placed where it still
is, in the church of Saint Andrew at Wells.[6]
Now we come at once to the question, why was Wells chosen to be the
seat of the Bishoprick? I think you will easily see that there is not
now, nor was there then, any diocese in England where the Bishop was
more thoroughly driven to be the Bishop of the whole diocese and not
merely the Bishop of one city. Somersetshire had not then, and it has
not now, any one town at once larger than any of its neighbours and
placed conveniently in the middle of the shire. Then, as now, the
two greatest towns in the shire must have been the old Roman city
of Bath at one end and the purely English town of Taunton at the
other. Taunton was founded by King Ine between 710 and 722 as a border
fortress against the Welsh, after he had carried the English frontier
as far west as the boundary of Somersetshire goes now.[7] Neither
of these places was well suited to be the centre of the diocese.
Bridgewater, which is more central, was not built till some ages later.
Glastonbury, which is more central still, could not well be made the
Bishoprick, because it was the seat of the greatest monastery of the
West. Also Glastonbury was in those days a singularly inaccessible
place. It stood on an island, and could be reached only by boats; so
that unless the Bishop was to be altogether a hermit, he would have
been a good deal out of place there. Some Bishops had fixed their sees
in places of this kind, but it is clear that such an arrangement was in
every way inconvenient, and so wise a King as Eadward the Elder was not
likely to sanction it. And we may be sure that the monks of Glastonbury
would be then, as they were long after, altogether set against having
the Bishop for their chief instead of an Abbot of their own. I conceive
that Wells was chosen, because at Wells there was already a body of
secular priests attached to the church of Saint Andrew.
The whole history of Wells before the time of Eadward the Elder is
excessively obscure, and much of it is undoubtedly fabulous. There is
a story about King Ine planting a Bishoprick at Congresbury, which was
presently moved to Wells, and a list of Bishops is given between Ine
and Eadward. There is also a document which professes to be a charter
of King Cynewulf in 766, which does not speak of any Bishop at Wells,
but which implies the existence of an ecclesiastical establishment
of some kind. But unluckily the Congresbury story rests on no good
authority, and the charter of Cynewulf is undoubtedly spurious. But
because a charter is spurious in form, it does not always follow that
its matter is unhistorical. And I am the more inclined to attach
some value to it, because, while implying the existence of some
ecclesiastical establishment, it does not imply the existence of a
Bishoprick. Putting all things together, and remembering the strong and
consistent tradition which connects the name of Ine with the church of
Wells, I am inclined to think that there must have been some body of
priests, probably of Ine's foundation, existing at Wells before the
foundation of the Bishoprick by Eadward.[8] If then Ine did, somewhere
about the year 705, found a church at Wells with a body of priests
attached to it, we can well understand why Wells should be chosen as
the seat of the new Bishoprick in 909. The secular canons of Ine's
foundation could receive the Bishop as their chief, and become his
_Chapter_, in a way in which the monks of Glastonbury could not so
well do. If this be so, then the Chapter of Wells is really an older
institution than the Bishoprick. The present form of the Chapter is,
as I shall presently show, comparatively modern; but if this be so,
the priests of Wells are, in one shape or another, two hundred years
older than the Bishop. On this view, Eadward the Elder did with the
church of Wells exactly what has been done with the churches of Ripon
and Manchester in our own time. Both these churches were _collegiate_;
Ripon had a Dean and Prebendaries; Manchester had a Warden and Fellows.
In our present Queen's reign Bishopricks were founded in these two
churches; from being only _collegiate_, they became _cathedral_, and
the collegiate bodies became the Chapters of the new Bishops. In the
like sort it seems probable that the church of Saint Andrew at Wells,
founded by King Ine as a collegiate church, was made into a cathedral
church by King Eadward the Elder. Saint Andrew's church therefore
may be said to have two founders; King Ine founded the Chapter, King
Eadward founded the Bishoprick. Now perhaps some of you read the notice
which was placed on the choir-door last week summoning all the members
of the Chapter to attend for the election of the new Bishop. You might
there have seen the Queen's _congé d'élire_, the writ giving leave to
the Chapter to elect a Bishop. In that _congé d'élire_, the Queen calls
her rights over the church of Wells her "fundatorial rights." That is
to say, they are the rights which she has inherited as the successor of
King Ine, as not only the successor but the direct descendant of King
Eadward the Elder.
Let us now try and picture to ourselves the state of things at Wells
and in its neighbourhood at either of these early times. In some
respects the aspect of the country has greatly changed; in others
closely connected with them the influence of the then state of things
abides to this day. The traveller who in Ine's day looked down from
the height of Mendip looked down on a land which had been but lately
wrested from its old British owners. By the hard fighting of about a
hundred and twenty years the English border had been carried from the
Axe to nearly the present limits of the shire.[9] Taunton was a border
fortress, newly raised against the gradually retreating but still often
threatening Welsh. If the eye caught the hills of Devon or perhaps
even those of Western Somerset, it looked, no less than when it looked
across the Channel to the hills of Gwent and Morganwg, upon a foreign
and hostile land.[10] The great natural features of the country were
of course the same as they are now. The rocks of Cheddar and of Ebber,
the bold headland of Brean, the island rock of the Steep Holm, the
little hills scattered here and there, and the knoll of Brent and the
Tor of the Archangel rising above their fellows, are objects which do
not change. But in the days of Ine we must remember that those hills
were truly islands. The low ground was one wide extent of marsh; the
dwelling-places of man were confined to those ridges and isolated
heights where the ground was high enough to be safe against accidents
of tide and flood. Mendip itself was a wild forest land, peopled only
by beasts of chase, and we must remember that the hunters of those
days had to struggle against really formidable foes. The cave-lion
had indeed long ago vanished, but we cannot doubt that the wolf still
preyed on the flocks, and that the wild boar still ravaged the fields,
of the men who were striving to bring the land into subjection. The
inhabitants were doubtless still mainly of the old British stock, no
longer dealt with as wild beasts or as irreclaimable enemies, but
allowed to sit down as subjects, though as subjects of an inferior
class, under the rule of the West-Saxon King.[11] But English influence
was fast spreading; between the days of Ine and the days of Eadward the
tongue and laws and manners of the conquerors had spread themselves,
and, by the time of the second foundation of Wells, Somersetshire must
have been mainly an English land. The evidence of nomenclature shows
us that most of the sites now occupied, most of the old towns and
villages, were occupied between these two dates, and the population
must have been, then as now, thickly scattered over the insular and
peninsular heights of the district. I need not tell you that it is
mainly along those old lines of habitation that men dwell still. Along
the hill-sides of Mendip and of the opposite ridges villages and houses
lie thick together, while the flat land below, though it has become
the wealth of the country, remains almost as little dwelled in by man
as in the days when it was one impassable swamp. And in the land which
was thus fast becoming part of the inheritance of Englishmen, the piety
and discernment of English Kings had planted two special centres of
religion and civilization, richly endowed of the wealth of the land
for the common benefit of all. In the isle of Avalon, the isle of
Glastonbury, the great Abbey still lived on, rich and favoured by the
conquerors as by the conquered, the one great institution which bore
up untouched through the storm of English Conquest, the one great tie
which binds our race to the race which went before us, and which binds
the Church of the last thirteen hundred years to the earlier days
of Christianity in Britain. There in their island monks and pilgrims
still worshipped in that primæval church of wood and wicker which
time and conquest had as yet agreed to spare.[12] To the north of the
old British monastery, not alone on an island, but nestling under the
shadow of the great hill range itself, the younger ecclesiastical
foundation, the foundation of the conquerors, was growing up. Of purely
English and Christian origin, claiming no Roman or British forerunner,
the church and town which were rising at the foot of Mendip drew their
name from no legend of old times, from no tradition of gods and heroes,
but from the most marked natural feature of the spot and from the
patron saint in whose name the young foundation was hallowed. While the
origin of the Abbey is lost in the gloom of hoariest antiquity, while
its name of Avalon has become a name of legend, a name rather of some
fancied fairy-land than of an actual spot of earth, no traditions, no
legends, have decorated the birth and early years of the church and
city which drew its name, as intelligible to English ears now as it was
then, from the holy wells of Saint Andrew.
Two ecclesiastical foundations, two centres of civilization, were thus
planted in each other's near neighbourhood; but it is the history of
one only of them with which we are now concerned. I have not to follow
out the tale of the monks of Glastonbury, but that of the secular
priests of Wells. And here perhaps it may be needful to set forth more
fully the exact meaning of those words, and to say something about
the two different classes of clergy in those days, the differences
between whom tore the whole country in pieces at a time a little later
than the foundation of our Bishoprick. Some people seem to fancy that
all the clergy in old times were monks. I have heard people talk of
monks even in our church of Wells, where there never was a monk. Indeed
they sometimes seem to fancy that not only all the clergy but all
mankind were monks; at least one hardly ever sees an old house, be it
parsonage or manor-house or any other, but some one is sure to tell us
that monks once lived in it. It is hard to make people understand that
there were clergymen in those days, just as there are now, parsons of
parishes and canons of cathedral or collegiate churches, living, as
they do now, in their own houses, and in early times not uncommonly
married. These were the _secular_ clergy, the clergy who live in the
world. The monks, on the other hand, the _regular_ clergy, those who
live according to rule, were originally men who, instead of living in
the world to look after the souls of others, went out of the world to
look after their own souls. There is no need that a monk should be
a priest, or that he should be in holy orders at all, and the first
monks were all laymen. Gradually however the monks took holy orders,
and they did much good in many places by teaching and civilizing the
people, by preaching and writing books, and, not least, by tilling the
ground. But in all this they were rather forsaking their own proper
duty as monks and taking on them the duty of secular priests. The main
difference between them came to be that the monks bound themselves
by three vows, those of poverty, chastity, and obedience, while the
secular clergy did not take vows, but were simply bound, as they are
now, to obey whatever might be the law of the Church at the time. Now
of these two classes of clergy some of our early Kings and Bishops
preferred one and some the other. But whenever a new diocese was
founded, the Bishop surrounded himself with a company of clergy of one
sort or the other. You will remember that when a bishoprick, say that
of the West-Saxons, was founded, the cathedral church was the first
church that was built and endowed. The Bishop of the West-Saxons had
his home at Winchester, along with a body of monks or clergy, who were
his special companions and advisers, his helpers in keeping up divine
worship in the cathedral church, and in spreading the Gospel in other
parts of the diocese. Gradually churches and monasteries were built
in other places, and monks and clergy were appointed to serve them,
but a special body of monks or clergy always remained at the cathedral
church, to be the Bishop's special companions, and to keep up the
cathedral church as the model and example for the whole diocese. This
is the origin of the Chapters of our cathedral churches. The clergy
of a cathedral were sometimes regulars and sometimes seculars; and
as men looked on the monks as holier than the seculars, the seculars
were turned out of several cathedral and other churches, and monks
were put in their place. Hence several of our cathedrals were served
by monks down to the time of Henry the Eighth, when all monasteries
were suppressed, and the cathedral monasteries, as at Canterbury,
Winchester, and elsewhere, were changed into chapters of secular
canons. But in other churches, as in our own church of Wells, and in
the neighbouring churches of Exeter and Salisbury, the secular canons
have always gone on to this day. And this makes a great difference
in the appearance of our buildings at Wells from those of many other
cities. We have here in Wells the finest collection of domestic
buildings surrounding a cathedral church to be seen anywhere. There
is no place where so many ancient houses are preserved and are mainly
applied to their original uses. The Bishop still lives in the Palace;
the Dean still lives in the Deanery; the Canons, Vicars, and other
officers still live very largely in the houses in which they were
meant to live. But this is because at Wells there always were secular
priests, each man living in his own house. In a monastery I need hardly
say it was quite different. The monks did not live each man in his own
house; they lived in common, with a common refectory to dine in and a
common dormitory to sleep in. Thus when, in Henry the Eighth's time,
the monks were put out and secular canons put in again, the monastic
buildings were no longer of any use, while there were no houses for the
new canons. They had therefore to make houses how they could out of the
common buildings of the monastery. But of course this could not be done
without greatly spoiling them as works of architecture. Thus while at
Ely, Peterborough, and other churches which were served by monks, there
are still very fine fragments of the monastic buildings, there is not
the same series of buildings each still applied to its original use
which we have at Wells. I wish that this wonderful series was better
understood and more valued than it is. I can remember, if nobody else
does, how a fine prebendal hall was wantonly pulled down in the North
Liberty not many years ago. Some of those whose duty it was to keep it
up said that they had never seen it. I had seen it, anybody who went
by could see it, and every man of taste knew and regretted it. Well,
that is gone, and I suppose the organist's house, so often threatened,
will soon be gone too. Thus it is that the historical monuments of
our country perish day by day. We must keep a sharp eye about us or
this city of ours may lose, almost without anybody knowing it, the
distinctive character which makes it unique among the cities of England.
It is then in this way that Wells became, what it still is, the seat
of the Somersetshire Bishoprick. The Bishop had his throne in the
church of Saint Andrew, and the clergy attached to that church were
his special companions and advisers, in a word his Chapter. We have
thus the church and its ministers, but the church had not yet assumed
its present form, and its ministers had not yet assumed their present
constitution. Of the fabric, as it stood in the tenth century, I
can tell you nothing. There is not a trace of building of anything
like such early date remaining: while in other places we have grand
buildings of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, at Wells we have
little or nothing earlier than the thirteenth. But it is quite a
mistake to fancy that our forefathers in the tenth century were wholly
incapable of building, or that their buildings were always of wood.
We have accounts of churches of that and of still earlier date which
show that we had then buildings of considerable size and elaboration
of plan.[13] And we know that in the course of the same century Saint
Dunstan built a stone church at Glastonbury to the east of the old
wooden church of British times.[14] The churches both of Wells and
Glastonbury must have been built in the old Romanesque style of England
which prevailed before the great improvements of Norman Romanesque
were brought in in the eleventh century. You must conceive this old
church of Saint Andrew as very much smaller, lower, and plainer than
the church which we now have, with massive round arches and small
round-headed windows, but with one or more tall, slender, unbuttressed
towers, imitating the bell-towers of Italy. I do not think that we have
a single tower of this kind in Somersetshire, but in other parts of
England there are a good many. There is a noble one at Earls Barton in
Northamptonshire, and more than one in the city of Lincoln.
Of the foundation attached to the church at this time there is but
little to say. The clergy of the cathedral did not as yet form a
corporation distinct from the Bishop, and the elaborate system of
officers which still exists had not yet begun. The number of canons
was probably not fixed; in the next century we incidentally hear that
there were only four or five. They had no common buildings besides the
church, and they lived no doubt each man in his own house.[15] The
revenues of the church seem not to have been large. The ceremony which
happened among us last week may make some of you ask whether the canons
of Saint Andrew had already the right of electing the Bishop. This is
a question which it would be hard to answer. I am not prepared with any
detailed account of the appointment of a Bishop of this particular see
in the tenth or eleventh century. But it is certain that the way of
appointing Bishops in those days was very uncertain.[16] It is clear
that no Bishop could be consecrated without the King's consent, and
that it was by a document under the King's writ and signature that the
Bishoprick was formally conferred. But the actual choice of the Bishop
seems to have been made in several ways. Sometimes we hear of the monks
or canons choosing whom they would, and then going to the King and his
Witan or Wise Men, the great assembly of the nation, to ask for the
confirmation of their choice. This confirmation was sometimes given
and sometimes refused. Sometimes we expressly read that the King gave
the monks or canons leave to elect freely. This is exactly what would
happen now, if the _letter missive_ should be lost on the road and
the _congé d'élire_ should come by itself.[17] At other times we read
of the King alone, or the King and his Witan, appointing, seemingly
without any reference to the monks or canons. The truth is that in
those days the Church and the nation were more truly two aspects of the
same body than they have ever been since, and that those questions as
to the exact limits of the civil and ecclesiastical powers, which have
gone on, in one shape or another, from the days of William Rufus till
now, had not yet arisen.