of Wells from the earliest days. We have seen its small beginnings, a
colony of priests planted in a newly-conquered land, with their home
fixed on a small oasis between the wild hill-country on the one side
and the never-ending fen on the other. There their church had risen,
and settlers had gathered round it; it had grown into the seat of
a Bishop, the spiritual centre of the surrounding country, a rival
in fame and reverence of that great island church which stood as a
memorial of the past days of the conquered, while Wells rose as a
witness of the presence of the conquerors. We have seen one Prelate of
foreign birth at once vastly increase the power and revenues of his see
and try to subject his clergy to the yoke of a foreign rule against
which the instincts of Englishmen revolted. We have seen another
foreigner undo the work of his predecessor alike for good and for evil;
we have seen him forsake church and city altogether, and remove his
episcopal chair to a statelier and safer dwelling-place. We have seen
the local foundation again brought back to a state lower than the poor
and feeble condition out of which Gisa had raised it. We now come to
the great benefactor whom we may fairly look upon as the founder of
Wells as it is, the man who put the Bishoprick and Chapter into the
shape with which we are all familiar, and who moreover gave to the city
its first municipal being.
On this last head I shall not enlarge. The subject is so completely the
property of others both present and absent that I should feel myself
the merest intruder if I attempted to dwell upon it. I will rather
go on with those parts of Bishop Robert's career which more directly
concern my subject, and look at him in three lights, as his actions
concern respectively the Bishoprick, the Chapter, and the fabric of the
church.
After the death of John of Tours the see was held by one Godfrey,
a countryman of Gisa's from Lower Lorraine, and therefore somewhat
nearer to an Englishman than a mere Frenchman like John. His promotion
was owing to his being a chaplain of the Queen, Henry the First's
second wife, Adeliza of Löwen, with whom he had doubtless come into
England.[1] He is described as being of noble birth, mild, and pious,
but perhaps mere mildness was not the virtue which was most needed in
those days. All that we hear of him is that he tried to get back the
Canons' lands from John the Archdeacon, but that King Henry and Roger
Bishop of Salisbury, who was a mighty man in those days, hindered him.
He died in 1135. Then came Robert. He was a rare case of a Bishoprick
in those times being held by a man who could be called in any sense
an Englishman. As a rule, the great ecclesiastical offices were now
given to men who were not only not of Old-English descent, but who
were not even the sons of Normans or other strangers settled in
England. Utter foreigners, men born on the Continent, were commonly
preferred to either. But Robert was a Fleming by descent and born in
England. As a native of the land, and sprung from one of those foreign
nations whose blood and speech is most closely akin to our own, we may
welcome him a countryman, in days when the most part of the land was
parcelled out among men who did not even speak our tongue. He had been
a monk at Lewes at Sussex, and was promoted by the favour of Henry
of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, the famous brother of King Stephen.
Henry had been Abbot of Glastonbury before he became Bishop, and,
what is more, he kept the Abbey along with his Bishoprick. He is said
to have sent for Robert to look after the affairs of the monastery;
that is, I suppose, to act as his deputy after he became Bishop.[2]
Thus we see that the comfortable practice of pluralities, and what
somebody calls the "sacred principle of delegation,"--that is to say,
the holding two or more incompatible offices and leaving their duties
to be done by others or not to be done at all,--are inventions in
which the nineteenth century was forestalled by the twelfth. Robert
next from deputy Abbot of Glastonbury became Bishop of Bath, and he
seems to have set himself manfully to work to bring his diocese and
its two head churches out of the state of confusion into which the
changes of John of Tours had brought them. First of all with regard to
the Bishoprick. You understand of course that the removal of the see
from Wells to Bath had been made without the consent of the Canons of
Wells, who had an undoubted right to be consulted about the matter.
In ecclesiastical theory a Bishop and his Chapter are very much like
a King and his Parliament; neither of them can do any important act
without the consent of the other. And here a thing had been done for
which of all others the consent of the Wells Chapter ought to have been
had, as their most precious rights had been taken away from them. All
this time they had never formally submitted to the change, and they
had been always complaining of the wrongful removal of the see, and
asserting their own rights against the usurpations of the monks of
Bath. And it is to be noticed that the change had never been approved
or recognized by any Pope. The Bishops of Somersetshire were still
known in official language at Rome as _Episcopi Fontanenses_ or Bishops
of Wells, not as _Episcopi Bathonienses_ or Bishops of Bath. Robert now
procured that the episcopal position of Bath should be recognized, and
from this time for some while after our Bishops are commonly called
Bishops of Bath.[3] But it would seem that this is merely a contracted
form, for the style of Bishop of Bath and Wells, with which we are all
so familiar, is found before very long. And there can be no doubt that
the controversy was now settled by Robert on these terms, that Bath
should take precedence of Wells, but that the Bishop should have his
throne in both churches, that he should be chosen by the monks of Bath
and the Canons of Wells conjointly, or by deputies appointed by the two
Chapters, and that those episcopal acts which needed the confirmation
of the Chapter should be confirmed both by the Convent of Bath and by
the Chapter of Wells.[4] There are deeds hanging up in this very room
to which you will see the confirmation of both those bodies. The Bishop
of Somersetshire thus had two cathedral churches, as was also the case
with the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, and as has been the case
with the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol since those sees were joined
within our own memory. This arrangement lasted till the cathedral
church of Bath was suppressed under Henry the Eighth, after which, by
an Act of Parliament passed in 1542, the Chapter of Wells was made the
sole Chapter for the Bishop.[5] Things thus came back, as far as Wells
was concerned, to much the same state as they had been in before the
changes of John of Tours, except that Bath still forms a part of the
Bishop's style. But since the Act of Henry the Eighth it has been a
mere title, as the Bishop is Bishop of Bath in no sense except that in
which he is Bishop of Taunton or of any other place in the diocese. He
is elected by the Chapter of Wells only; he is enthroned in the church
of Wells only; and when Saint Peter's church at Bath was set up again
in the reign of James the First, it was not as a cathedral, but as a
simple parish church.
Bishop Robert, having thus settled himself as Bishop of Bath _and_
Wells, with two churches under his special care, began to set to work
to put in order whatever needed reform in both of them. He enlarged
and finished the church of Bath, if he did not actually rebuild it
from the ground. I speak thus doubtingly, because our accounts do
not exactly agree. The little book called "Historiola de Primordiis
Episcopatûs Somersetensis" says that "he himself caused the church of
the Blessed Peter the Apostle at Bath to be built at a great cost."[6]
But the history commonly quoted as the Canon of Wells says only that
"he finished the fabric of the church of Bath which had been begun
by John of Tours."[7] Now the "Historiola" is the earlier authority,
and that which we should generally believe rather than the other,
whenever there is any difference between the two. But, on the other
hand, stories generally grow greater and not smaller; a man's exploits
are much more likely to be made too much of by those who repeat the
tale than to be made too little of. When therefore the later writer
attributes to Robert less than the earlier one does, one is tempted to
think that the earlier writer exaggerated or spoke in a loose way, and
that the Canon of Wells had some good reason for his correction. And
this is the more to be noticed, because we shall find exactly the same
difference when we come to the accounts which the two writers give of
what Robert did at Wells. It is indeed said that the church and city of
Bath were again destroyed by fire in 1135, and that this made Robert's
rebuilding necessary. But the phrase of being destroyed by fire is
often used very laxly of cases where a building, like York Minster
within the memory of some people, was simply a good deal damaged, and
had to be repaired, but did not need to be wholly rebuilt. At any rate,
whether Robert altogether rebuilt or only finished, the great church of
Saint Peter at Bath was now brought to perfection. Do not for a moment
think that this is the Abbey Church of Bath which is now standing,
and which I do not doubt that a great many of you know very well. The
church of John and Robert was of course built in the Romanesque style
with round arches, and in that particular variety of Romanesque which
had been imported by Eadward the Confessor from Normandy into England,
and which we therefore call the Norman style. But the present church of
Bath is one of the latest examples of our latest English Gothic, and of
that special variety of it which forms the local Perpendicular style of
Somersetshire. Moreover the Romanesque church was very much larger than
the present one, which covers the site of its nave only. One little
bit of the Romanesque building, the arch between the south aisle and
the south transept, is still to be seen at the present east end. The
fact is that the later Bishops of Bath and Wells were not at all of the
same mind as John of Tours. They lived much more at Wells than at Bath,
and took much more care of the church of Wells. Bath indeed was quite
neglected, and by the end of the fifteenth century the church was in a
great state of decay. It was then, in the year 1500, that Bishop Oliver
King and Prior Bird began to build the present church on a smaller
scale and in a widely different style of architecture. Besides what he
did to the church, Bishop Robert built or rebuilt all the conventual
buildings of his Abbey of Bath, the cloister, refectory, dormitory, and
the rest, all which were necessary for the monks of Bath, though the
secular priests of Wells could do without them.[8]
It is to be noticed that Bishop Robert, himself a monk, when he began
to reconstitute the Church of Wells in the way of which I now have to
speak, made no attempt to bring in monks instead of secular canons,
or even to subject the Canons to the same half-monastic discipline
which had been brought in by Gisa. All his changes in fact tended in
an exactly opposite direction. Hitherto the Canons had been altogether
dependent on the Bishop. They do not seem to have formed a distinct
corporation, and the lands which they held, when they were not taken
away from them altogether were held by them as the Bishop's tenants.
All Robert's changes tended to give them greater distinctness and
independence. The first business was to get back the lands which had
been alienated by the connivance of Bishop John, and which Bishop
Godfrey had in vain tried to get back. John the Archdeacon, we are
told, repented on his death-bed, and straitly charged his brother
Reginald to restore the lands. This he now did; he came to Bath and
surrendered everything to the Bishop, but we shall presently see that
his vested interest was thought worthy of some respect. It is now
that we are told that, instead of the sixty shillings which John had
paid each Canon yearly, the Bishop was able to pay them a hundred
shillings.[9] And now, to hinder anything of the kind happening
again, Robert put the constitution and revenues of his Chapter on
altogether a new footing. The Canons became a separate corporation,
distinct from the Bishop; and, besides this, each Canon became for
some purposes a separate corporation sole, distinct alike from the
Bishop and from his brother Canons. For Robert first founded the
dignities and prebends of the Church of Wells. The dignities are the
chief offices of the Chapter, those of the Dean, the Precentor, the
Chancellor, the Treasurer, and the Sub-Dean, all which offices still
remain, to which we may add the Provostship, which still went on, and
the Subchantership; these two no longer exist. Of these the Deanery
and the Precentorship were certainly founded by Robert. Of the others
I do not feel quite certain whether they were founded by Robert or by
Jocelin.[10] But in any case all that Jocelin did in this matter was to
carry out the plans of Robert somewhat more fully, and we may fairly
discuss the whole constitution as one work at this point. We need not
suppose that all these offices were absolutely new; for instance,
there must always have been a Precentor, or some one discharging the
Precentor's duties in the immediate government of the choir. But at
all events these offices were not till now distinct and permanent
foundations, with a special _status_ and distinct revenues of their
own, which they now became. In the Dean especially the Canons now
got for the first time a head of their own body distinct from the
Bishop. Now as to the prebends. There is a corrupt way of speaking
in use now of calling some few members of the Chapter _Canons_, as
if the name belonged to them only, and calling the rest of the body
_Prebendaries_, as if they were something different and, I suppose,
something inferior. That this is a mere corruption is well known to
every one who knows anything of the history of these foundations. But
it is also made very plain by the language of official documents to
this day. Whenever a new Prebendary is installed, he is still installed
into "the Canonry or Prebend" of so and so; and when the whole Chapter
is summoned for the election of a Bishop, all its members without
distinction are still summoned by the title of Canons. The truth is
that every member of the cathedral body is at once a Canon and a
Prebendary. Canon and Prebendary are two different names for the same
man looked at in two different characters. He is a Canon as one of
the capitular body, a member of the corporation called the Dean and
Chapter; he is also a Prebendary as holding--or of later years not
holding--a certain prebend, _præbenda_, or separate estate, in regard
to which he himself forms a corporation sole. The priests of Saint
Andrew's had been Canons all along, but they first became Prebendaries
under Bishop Robert. For it was he who first founded the prebends
or separate estates. He divided the property of the Canons into two
parts. Certain estates were to be held by the whole body in common as a
corporation aggregate. Certain other estates were cut up into smaller
portions or _prebends_, of which each Canon held one as a corporation
sole. Such and such lands or tithes were attached as a prebend to the
Deanery, to the Precentorship, and so on through the whole body; those
Canons who did not hold any dignity, such as Dean or Precentor, being
called Prebendaries of the place where their estates or _corpses_ lay,
Wormestor, Buckland, or any other. Some estates, as those of Combe and
Wedmore, were so large as to form several prebends; thus we get the
titles which sound so odd, Wedmore the first, Combe the twelfth, and
the like. Thus each Canon came to have as it were two beings. As a
Canon, he was one of a body, enjoying rights and discharging duties in
common with his brethren. As a Prebendary he was independent, holding
his own prebendal estate like any other holder of a benefice. But mark
that the title of Canon, a title of office and duty, is clearly a
more honourable title than that of Prebendary, which is a mere title
of property. And mark again that, now that all the prebendal estates
are transferred to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, it may fairly
be doubted whether there are any Prebendaries left, save the few who
were appointed before those changes began. But there is nothing in
the Act of Parliament which brought about those changes which at all
touches the _status_ of a non-residentiary Canon in any point except
that of his property. What I want you to bear in mind is that, when a
non-residentiary Canon becomes a Residentiary, he is not, as people
commonly talk, changed from a Prebendary into a Canon. He was a Canon
before, and, saving my own objection which I have just started,
he remains a Prebendary afterwards. How the distinction between
residentiary and non-residentiary Canons came about I shall explain
presently.
The Church of Wells thus received a new constitution at the hands of
Bishop Robert, who was helped in his undertaking by King Stephen and by
his former patron, the King's brother Henry, Bishop of Winchester.[11]
This constitution is essentially the same as that which, in theory at
least, exists still, and it is one which, in all its main features,
is shared by Wells with all the other cathedral churches of the
Old Foundation. The cathedral churches of the Old Foundation are
those which have always had secular canons, which therefore were
not suppressed at the dissolution of monasteries, but have gone on
uninterruptedly with essentially the same constitution down to our
own time. Such, besides our own church, are the neighbouring churches
of Salisbury and Exeter. Such, in other parts of England, are York,
London, Lincoln, Lichfield, Hereford, Chichester, and the four
cathedrals of Wales. The churches of the New Foundation are those
which in the time of Henry the Eighth were served by monks, which
were therefore dissolved along with the other monasteries, and all of
which, except Bath and Coventry, were refounded by him as Chapters of
secular canons. Such was our old mother church of Winchester; such was
the common mother church at Canterbury; such were Rochester, Norwich,
Worcester, Durham, and the newer sees of Ely and Carlisle. With these
are also reckoned the churches which became cathedral by Henry planting
Bishops in them for the first time, Oxford, Peterborough, Saint
Werburgh's at Chester, our own neighbours of Gloucester and Bristol,
and Westminster, which lost its Bishop in the next reign, and is now
only a collegiate church. And to these I suppose we must again add the
churches of Ripon and Manchester, which have become cathedral in our
own time. In all these the constitution is very different from that of
the churches of the Old Foundation; among other things, they have not
that variety of officers, each with his separate duties and revenues,
which are to be found in the Old Foundations. And the influence of
the Crown is much greater in the New Foundations than in the Old.
Their Deans have always been appointed by the Crown, and in several of
them the Canons also are appointed either by the Crown or by the Lord
Chancellor. In the Old Foundations the Dignitaries and other Canons,
except the Dean, have always been appointed by the Bishop. In the Welsh
churches the Deans also have always been, and still are, appointed by
the Bishops.[12] In the others the Canons elected their own Dean, but a
custom gradually came in by which the Crown recommended a person, who
was always chosen. But within the reign of the present Queen, there
chanced to be some legal objection to the person recommended by the
Crown to the Chapter of Exeter, so that the Canons freely elected their
own Dean, who held his place till his death; only meanwhile an Act of
Parliament was passed, vesting in the Crown the appointment to the
Old Deaneries as well as to the New. You will see easily that, though
the connexion between the Bishop and his Chapter is everywhere much
weakened from what it once was and from what it ought to be, it still
is much closer in the churches of the Old Foundation than in those of
the New.