we have now reached. We have now done with the age of building
up, and we have come to the age of pulling down. At the end of the
fifteenth century the church of Wells had reached its highest degree of
perfection. The church was complete; its appurtenances were complete.
Of the fabric itself it is enough to say that our great Beckington,
so bountiful a benefactor to the city and diocese in every other way,
did nothing to the actual fabric of the cathedral, because there was
really nothing for him to do. My subject, you will remember, is the
cathedral church, alike in its fabric and in its constitution. Had my
subject been the city generally, I should have found something to say
about the parish church, about the hospitals, about the Guild-hall,
about Beckington's houses in the marketplace. But I keep myself to
the cathedral and its immediate belongings. The destruction spoken
of in the extract which I just before made from Godwin carries us on
to the reign of Edward the Sixth. But I must first say a few words
about the reign of Henry the Eighth. I must now once more call on you
carefully to bear in mind the distinction between the regular and
secular clergy, and between the cathedral churches served by each of
them severally. In the course of the reign of Henry the Eighth all the
monastic foundations in England were destroyed. Everybody knows this
fact, but everybody does not put the fact in its right place. People
talk of an event called the Reformation, as if it were a single event
which happened in some one particular year, like the passing of the
Reform Bill or the cutting off of Charles the First's head. No such
event ever happened. A great many ecclesiastical changes took place
in the course of the sixteenth century, but those changes did not
happen all at once, and many of them had no immediate connexion with
one another. Above all, do not fancy that an old Church was destroyed
and a new Church founded; do not fancy that property was taken from
one set of clergy and given to another set of clergy. Nothing of
the sort ever happened. Great changes were made _in_ the Church of
England, changes which, as some people at the time thought, went too
far, and which, as other people thought, did not go far enough. But
these changes in no way touched what we may call the personal identity
of the Church before and after them. Remember that I am not talking
theology but history. No one here will suppose that I, of all men, deny
the power of Parliament to disestablish and disendow a Church, if it
sees good reason to do so; I only say that, as a matter of fact, that
power was not exercised by Parliament in the sixteenth century. Certain
ecclesiastical changes were made; certain ecclesiastical foundations
were suppressed; but the Church itself went on. The throwing off of the
authority of the Bishop of Rome, the suppression of the monasteries,
the introduction of the English Prayer-Book and Articles, were three
different events, which happened at three different times, and which
had nothing directly to do with one another. The monastic foundations
accepted the King's supremacy just as fully as the secular foundations
did, and, after the monasteries were suppressed, mass went on being
said in the cathedral, collegiate, and parochial churches, just as
it had been before. And let no one fancy that the two suppressions
familiar to us in the reign of Henry the Eighth, the suppression of
the lesser and of the greater monasteries, were the first cases of the
suppression of ecclesiastical foundations known in England. The supreme
power of the state in England has in all ages, as it has done in our
own day, exercised that authority over the temporalities of the Church,
which, in its own nature, it must exercise over everything. Cardinal
Wolsey suppressed a number of small monasteries in order to transfer
their endowments to his colleges at Ipswich and Oxford.[37] Before
that, in the reign of Henry the Fifth, the Alien Priories, that is the
monasteries which were dependent on monasteries in foreign countries,
were suppressed by Act of Parliament.[38] The main difference is that
in these cases monasteries were suppressed for good political reasons,
and their revenues were applied to useful public purposes, while in the
suppression under Henry and Cromwell all that was thought of was the
scramble of the King and his courtiers for their own private pelf.[39]
The most sickening havoc and sacrilege ran wild among the noblest and
holiest fabrics of the land. We have but to go as far as Glastonbury,
to see the desolation of the most venerable spot in Britain, to ask in
vain for the burying-places of our Kings and heroes, and to look up to
the height where the last Abbot of that great house won the martyr's
crown rather than betray his trust and provide for his own enrichment
and promotion by wilfully surrendering his church to the illegal
bidding of the spoiler.[40]
But we have now chiefly to see how these various changes affected
the constitution and position of our church of Wells. As Wells was
a secular foundation, the suppression of the monasteries did not
touch it at all; Glastonbury and Bath fell, but Wells went on just
as it had done before. If anything, the church of Wells gained by
the suppression, as it was thereby restored to the rank which it
held before the days of John de Villulâ. As I have already said, the
church of Bath was suppressed along with the other monasteries, and
the Chapter of Wells was once more made, by an Act of Parliament
in 1543, the sole Chapter of the Somersetshire Bishoprick.[41] It
is undoubtedly true that, for three years, from 1537 to 1540, the
Deanery was irregularly held by the King's favourite, Lord Cromwell,
who, of course, as a layman, could not perform its duties.[42] This
was a great abuse, but it was not altogether a new abuse. To search
no further, earlier in Henry's reign the two Deaneries of Exeter and
Wimborne had been held at once by the King's cousin, Reginald Pole,
who was afterwards Cardinal and Archbishop, but who had not then taken
holy orders. Reginald Pole was, to be sure, a theological student, a
description which would hardly apply to Thomas Cromwell; still Pole
could as little discharge the duties of Dean of Exeter as Cromwell
could discharge those of Dean of Wells.[43] It was not till the reign
of Edward the Sixth that the systematic picking and stealing from
ecclesiastical bodies, as distinguished from their regular suppression,
set in like a flood. The first instalment of destruction was indeed
done in a regular and legal way. In his first year (1547), all
chantries and colleges were suppressed, the cathedral chapters, the
colleges in the Universities, and a few others only being spared.[44]
The suppression of the chantries, where masses were said for the souls
of particular persons, necessarily followed on the change of doctrine;
but the general suppression of Colleges, which had the effect of
destroying the capitular bodies at Beverley, Wimborne, and a crowd of
other places, was sheer destruction, and not reformation. Then came the
general plunder of Bishopricks, Chapters, and ecclesiastical bodies
generally, which began under Edward, and went on again in a form one
degree less shameless under Elizabeth. A Bishop was commonly bullied
into exchanging the estates of his see for some pretended equivalent,
commonly in the shape of impropriate tithes. No church suffered in this
way more than that of Wells. William Barlow, who became Bishop in 1547,
the first year of Edward the Sixth, was driven in the course of that
year and the next to give up to Edward Duke of Somerset pretty well
everything belonging to the see, including the palace of Wells itself,
in exchange for a few rectories.[45] A large part of this property was
lost for ever; but a good deal was recovered by Barlow himself after
the Duke's execution, and by his successor Gilbert Bourne in the days
of Queen Mary.[46] It is not easy for us to conceive that there was
a time when the palace had ceased to be the house of the Bishop, and
had become the dwelling of a lay nobleman. And when we remember that
that lay nobleman, besides receiving endless estates elsewhere, was
also the grantee and the destroyer of the Abbey of Glastonbury, we
get a good specimen of the way in which the property of the Church
was squandered away, not for the public good in any shape, but for
the private enrichment of greedy courtiers. Of the other foundations
in Wells, the Priory of Saint John had fallen in 1541. This, I should
explain, though its chief officer bore the title of Prior, was not a
monastery, but a hospital.[47] The college of Chantry-priests fell by
the Act of 1547;[48] the plunderers then fell upon the property of
the Chapter and of its individual members. The estates of the Deanery
were swallowed up, and, in order to patch up a new endowment for the
Dean, an Act was passed for the suppression of the offices of Provost
and Sub-Chanter, the estates of which formed a new corps for the
Deanery.[49] But as with the lands of the Bishoprick, so with those of
the Deanery, a great part was recovered in the days of Queen Mary; so
that, as the provostship and sub-chantership were never restored, I
suspect that the Deans in the end gained by their spoliation. Some of
the common possessions of the Chapter were also lost, and were partly
recovered by Bishop Bourne, as also were the lands of the Archdeaconry;
but the Archdeacon's house of which I have already spoken has remained
alienated to this day.[50]
These are specimens of the spoliations, many of them positively
illegal, all of them wrought, not for the public good but for private
enrichment, which our Bishopricks, Chapters, and other ecclesiastical
foundations underwent in the course of the sixteenth century. But at
Wells these spoliations had an important effect on the constitution
of the church. Legal cavils were raised as to the right both of the
Chapter and the Vicars to their possessions. It was affirmed that
the reconstitution of the Deanery had somehow involved the complete
suppression of the Chapter. Both the Chapter and the College of Vicars
therefore found it expedient to procure charters from Queen Elizabeth
confirming them in their rights and properties. The charter granted
to the Chapter is a most curious document, because it is evident that
the Residentiaries took this opportunity to procure something like a
legal confirmation of the usurpations by which the non-residentiary
Canons were gradually cheated out of their rights and powers. The
Queen refounds all the dignities and prebends, and endows them afresh
with their old possessions. Then, as if the holders of these dignities
and prebends did not form the Chapter, the Charter goes on to found
the Chapter, as a body consisting of Residentiaries only, and to
grant to them the cathedral church and other property. The deed winds
up by saying that the non-residentiary Canons are to have votes in
Chapter, but only for the purpose of electing a Bishop.[51] I do
not profess to know what may be the legal force of such a document,
though it certainly seems to me that nothing short of an Act of
Parliament can take away from any man or any corporation any rights
which they already legally enjoy. But whatever it may be worth, this
charter is the authority for the practice by which at Wells the
non-residentiary Canons are summoned to the election of a Bishop and
not to other meetings of the Chapter, while at York they are still
summoned to every meeting. I am not a lawyer and I do not speak as
one. But historically the thing is a cheat and an usurpation. The
Elizabethan charter carries its own contradiction with it; and, as an
ecclesiastical reformer, I say once more that the point to be most
strongly insisted on, if our cathedral bodies are ever again to fulfil
their ancient uses, is to make both classes of Canons realities. The
Residentiaries must be Residentiaries, living on the spot, not making
the cathedral a place of holiday retirement from duties elsewhere. And
lest the smaller body of Residentiaries should again sink into a narrow
oligarchy, the whole body of Canons must be again restored to their
ancient rights, not only in the formal election of a Bishop, but in all
those matters of election, patronage, discipline, and business of every
kind, which are expressed in the ancient formula of "a stall in the
choir and a voice in the chapter-house."[52]
On the two following centuries I need not dwell. I will rather hasten
on to our own times. The last great changes in the church of Wells come
within our own memory. Those changes say a great deal for the zeal
and energy of those who carried them out, but they say very little
for their taste and knowledge. The pity is that they were done at
the particular time when they were done, when it was quite possible
to get detail well executed--and the detail certainly is very well
executed--but when ecclesiastical arrangement was not understood. It
would have been far better to have let the church remain in its old
state, wretched as that state was, for twenty or thirty years longer.
As it was, the change was made in one sense so badly as to make the
whole thing a by-word, in another sense so well that I fear there is
little chance of undoing it for a good while to come. Some things were
done which were deeds of sheer havoc, deeds worthy of no one but of
Protector Somerset himself. What had those Bishops done whose figures
may be seen in the undercroft of the Chapter-house, that they should
be torn away from their places and shut up as it were in a posthumous
dungeon? What had our famous Beckington done that his canopy should
be carried away, and set up where, as covering nothing, it is simply
ridiculous and unmeaning? To be sure even that was not the lowest depth
in store for the great benefactor. His canopy had yet to be mutilated
and moved backwards and forwards in order the better to display the
most hideous stoves with which human perversity ever disfigured an
ancient building.[53] When we think of the havoc of last year, one
is half inclined to forgive the havoc of twenty years back. Yet one
cannot help asking why the long continuous ranges of stalls which give
such dignity to the choirs of Winchester, Ely, and Manchester, were
forsaken for the absurd arrangement which sticks the stalls piecemeal
between the pillars, and which so lessens their numbers that, if the
whole Chapter were ever to assemble, some less lucky Canons must sit
on the laps of others?[54] Why was all this done? I know the answer
well. It was to provide room for the congregation; it was thought a
great feat to give a little more width to the choir, and so to gain a
few more sittings, by putting the stalls between the pillars instead
of in their proper place in front of them. Now to provide for the
congregation is an excellent object, but the wisdom of our forefathers
had already found ample room for the congregation in quite another
way. Did those who planned the last arrangements of Wells Cathedral
know that there was a nave, and, if they did know it, for what end
did they suppose that that nave was built? A Bishop, coming in by the
cloister door, might possibly never find out that there was a nave at
all; but a Dean, coming in at the west end, must have seen that there
was a good deal of building between that door and his own stall, and
one would have thought that he must sometimes have stopped to think
for what end that building was set up. Was that long array of arches,
that soaring vault, made simply as a place for rubbing shoes before
the service begins or for chattering after the service is ended? I
think that Robert and Jocelin had better notions of the adaptation of
means to ends than to rear so great a work for such small purposes.
When the last changes were made at Wells, these elementary questions
seem not to have presented themselves to men's minds. Had the work
waited till now, Wells might not have been, as it now is, a reproach
and a proverb among the minsters of England, but we might have held
our place alongside of our fellows at Chichester and Hereford and
Lichfield and Llandaff. The truth, simple as it is, though it seems so
strange to many minds, is that the nave of a cathedral, no less than
of any other church, is nothing in the world but the place for the
congregation. There is something wonderful in the kind of difficulty
which some people seem to have in taking in so plain a fact. It is a
thing which I have said over and over again, and people stare and seem
not to know what I mean. Yet I am not putting forth any dream of my
own; I am saying what is a sober fact in many other places, and what
might easily be made a sober fact at Wells also. I do not ask you to go
to the ends of the earth; I do not ask you even to go to places like
Ely and Durham in distant parts of our island. A short trip will take
you to Llandaff, and a trip a little longer will take you to Hereford,
and there you will see English cathedral churches as they ought to be,
but as the church of Wells is not. Enter the church of Wells, you find
yourself in a vast empty space; a solid wall in front of you, with
an organ on the top of it, blocks off the small part of the church
which alone is used for divine worship. Into that small part, designed
originally for the clergy and choir only, the whole congregation
is rammed, jammed, crammed without distinction; or rather there is
distinction, and too much distinction, but it is distinction wholly
of the wrong kind. Can the small space in which we find ourselves be
the common church of the diocese, the church of the Bishop, the church
of his flock? Alas! it looks far too much like the private chapel of
some half-dozen clergymen and their private friends. Think too of the
burning shame of appropriated seats in a cathedral choir. The gold
ring and the goodly apparel soon find their way to the chief seats of
the synagogue, while the poor man in vile raiment is bidden by an
unconscious irony to go and further crowd up the space which should be
left void to give dignity to the approach to God's altar. Is this the
way to make the whole people of the diocese feel at home in the temple
which was built for them? Is this the way to strengthen a Church which
seems to shrink from proclaiming itself as the Church of the People,
and which seems to clutch at the shadowy dignity of being the Church of
the exclusive few? Ten arches of nave stand empty, and the worshipper
seeking a place has to ask, "Is this or the other person likely to come
to-day?" before the spot sacred to exclusiveness may be safely intruded
on. Cross the Channel, and you will see another sight. Enter by the
western door of the church of Llandaff, and right before your eyes
stands the altar, raised aloft in fitting majesty. Below it, open to
all eyes, is the Bishop on his throne, the clergy and singers in their
stalls. The long nave is filled with the people, the faithful of the
city and diocese. Nothing distinguishes worshippers of higher worldly
position; nothing distinguishes the households of the dignitaries of
the cathedral from their fellow Christians of lower degree. There is
the church as it should be;[55] can we apply that name to our own
church as it is? Here is the great reform; here is the one great work
to be done. Make the church once more a church, before we trouble
ourselves with the enrichments of the building. Make clean the inside
of the cup and the platter, and the adornment of the outside may come
afterwards.[56] Do not misunderstand me; do not think I am asking for
the wretched half-and-half mockery which is called "service in the
nave." We know what that means; we see it once or twice in the year;
it means a return to chaos. It means a sham altar, sham stalls, sham
everything. At the very times when an unusual number of the cathedral
clergy are present, it is impossible for them to take their proper
places, and they are driven higgledy-piggledy into the places of the
congregation. What I want is service in the nave and in the choir at
once. Then comes the answer, "Oh, but it is impossible; the screen is
in the way." The remedy is easy; pull the screen down.[57] There are
churches where so simple a remedy could not be so easily applied. In
churches of the vast size of Canterbury, York, and Winchester, where
also the screen is often a work of great antiquity and architectural
beauty, there are no doubt real difficulties in the way of carrying
out the scheme for which I am fighting. The close screen, shutting off
the choir from the nave, was in its right place in a monastery, where
the church really belonged to the monks, where the people were present
only by sufferance, and where the monks needed some such shelter during
their midnight worship. But in a cathedral church, which exists for
the sake of the whole diocese, such screens were an abuse from the
beginning, which ought never to have been brought in. Still we should
think twice before we pulled down the ancient and splendid screens
which divide the naves and choirs of some of our greater minsters.
But at Wells there is no difficulty at all. The size of the church is
moderate, and the screen is of no architectural value. Cut it down;
why cumbereth it the ground? Break down the middle wall of partition
that is against us, and let the people of the diocese of Wells again
have their own church for their own. Did you not feel the lack at the
last great ceremony held in this place, when our new Bishop came to
take possession of his seat and to show himself as a father among his
children? That ceremony, which in its very nature ought to have been
done in the sight of the whole people of the diocese, could be done
only in the sight of a favoured few. It was a very different sight
which I saw two years back in the cathedral church of Bayeux. There
I saw the installation of a new Bishop of that see,--a Bishop, I may
add, who is at this moment bravely defending Gallican liberties against
Roman usurpations. The rite was done in the face of the world, and the
whole of that noble minster was thronged with clergy and laity from the
west door to the high altar. Tell me not of impossibilities; what has
been done at Lichfield and Hereford and Llandaff may be done at Wells
also. I remember Llandaff a ruin; go and see for yourselves what it now
is. I remember the choir of Lichfield in a far worse case than ever the
choir of Wells was. I remember it blocked off from the nave, glazed and
plastered, and room for the congregation found by throwing the Lady
chapel into it. Go and see what the model church of England is now.
"Oh, but, if we are in the nave, and if the altar is raised as it is at
Llandaff, we shall not be able to see into the Lady chapel." Certainly
you will not; but, of all the possible lawful and unlawful uses of a
Lady chapel, that of acting as a peep-show to the choir certainly never
came into the heads of its founders. But if you are not able to see
the Lady chapel, you will be able to see something much better: you
will be able to see what you never have seen; you will see the inside
of the cathedral church itself. You will see the mighty whole, from
west door to high altar, each part performing its proper function,
and, as a mere view, affording a far nobler sight than the pretty peep
into the eastern chapels which would be lost. And then comes another
objection. "Oh, but if we are in the nave, we shall never be able to
hear." _Solvitur audiendo._ If the officiating minister spouts or
mumbles, of course you will not hear; if he chants as there is at
least one among us who can chant, you might hear to the end of Saint
Alban's Abbey. The light open screen, such as you see at Lichfield and
Hereford, in no way hinders sight and hearing; and for those parts
of the service for which chanting is unfit, for the sermon and the
lessons, the preacher or reader would of course come out into the
nave. The pulpit is ready for him, the lectern is ready for him, and
the new device of a pulpit stuck so grotesquely opposite the Bishop's
throne might, I should think, be swept away without anybody weeping for
it. But from the elder pulpit, the quaint design of the seventeenth
century, I will draw a lesson. It bears the legend, "Be instant in
season, out of season," and instant in season, out of season, I will
be, and let every one who thinks with me be also, till we have broken
down the dull mass of prejudice and ignorance which stands in our way.
We must work till we have given new life to what is not dead but only
sleeping--till we have reformed our ancient institutions on their
ancient principles--till we have swept away all traces of the days
of greediness and ignorance--till pluralist Deans and non-resident
Residentiaries have become things of the past--till the mother-church
of the diocese has again become the church of the Bishop and the church
of his flock, open to all, free to all, whose doors are never shut
against any, and where every inch from western door to rood-screen
stands ready for men not only to admire but to worship. Thus let us
reform, lest others destroy. The true conservative is ever the true
reformer, and the true reformer is ever the true conservative. If we
would preserve the essence of our institutions, we must sweep away
their abuses. And none of our institutions are nobler in their theory,
none have more sadly fallen away in their practice, than our ancient
cathedral churches. The Church of England is at this moment on her
trial, and, above all her institutions, her cathedral foundations are
pre-eminently on their trial. There never was a moment when a little
more sleep and a little more slumber was less fitted to be the order of
the day. Those who, with me, love and venerate those ancient fabrics
and foundations, those who, by seeking their reformation, are thereby
seeking their preservation, are bound to be up and doing. The work
has begun; wherever there is a will, there is a way; many an ancient
minster has put on a new garb, alike in its material fabric and in the
worship carried on within it. Why should we lag behind our neighbours?
Why should the mistakes of twenty years past be hung like a clog around
our necks? Some needful reforms indeed could not be done without the
legislative help, but it needs no Act of Parliament to make the nave
of Wells Cathedral as truly a living thing, as truly a place of real
and living worship, as the naves of Llandaff and Lichfield. A zeal not
according to knowledge condemned us to the mischiefs of a restoration
which was done too soon. Whenever zeal accompanied by knowledge appears
in authority among us, as it has already appeared among others, the
work will be done.
NOTES.
LECTURE I.
[1] "Domus eleemosynaria nobilis paupertatis" is the style of
the Hospital of Saint Cross near Winchester, as enlarged by Cardinal
Beaufort. See the Licence of Incorporation in the Monasticon, vii. 724.
[2] I refer to the debate in the House of Commons on the
Scotch Reform Bill of 1868, when it was discussed whether Wells or
Evesham should be disfranchised.