writer is inveighing against Hugh, Bishop of Chester (or Lichfield),
who had removed the monks from the church of Coventry, and put in
secular canons. "Ædificaverant certatim etiam absentes canonici circa
ecclesiam ampla et excelsa diversoria, ad usus forte proprios, si
vel semel in vitâ locum visitandi caussam casus offerret. Nullus ibi
ex præbendariis, sicut nec alibi faciunt, religiose resedit, sed
pauperibus vicariis ad insultandum Deo modicâ mercede conductis,
pro foribus palatiorum facientes magnalia, sanctum eis chorum
victosque Penates et nudos ecclesiæ parietes crediderunt. Hæc est
vere vera religio, hanc omnis imitari et æmulari deberet ecclesia.
Canonico sæculari ab ecclesiâ suâ, quamdiu libuerit, licebit abesse,
et patrimonium Christi ubi, et quando, et in quascumque voluerit
voluptates absumere. Id tantum provideant, ut audiatur vociferatio
frequens in domo Domini. Si ad fores talium pulsaverit advena, si
pauper clamaverit, respondebit qui pro foribus habitat, (et ipse satis
pauper vicarius,) 'Transite, et alibi alimoniam quærite, quia dominus
domûs domi non est.' Hæc est illa gloriosa clericorum religio, cujus
gratiâ Cestrensis episcopus monachos suos de Coventreiâ expulit, primus
hominum tantum nefas ausus admittere. Caussâ clericorum irregulariter
regularium, scilicet canonicorum, ad placitum monachos eliminavit;
monachos, qui non vicario, sed ore proprio laudabant Dominum, qui
habitabant et ambulabant in domo Domini cum consensu omnibus diebus
vitæ suæ, qui præter victum et vestitum nihil terrenum noverant,
quorum panis semper præsto fuit pauperi, quorum porta cuilibet viatori
quolibet tempore patuit: nec tamen taliter placuerunt episcopo, qui
numquam dilexit monachos vel monachatum."
[43] The account is given by William Fitz-Stephen, Giles,
i. 257. The officiating priest is described as "quidam vicarius,
Vitalis nomine, homo timoratus et honestus sacerdos." Berengar,
the Archbishop's emissary, addresses him, "Non est his hujus sedis
Episcopus, sed neque Decanus: video te hic ministrum Jesu Christi."
[44] Angl. Sac. i. 564: "Vicarios in ecclesiâ singulis
Præbendariis ordinavit, tribus exceptis quibus non provisit morte
præventus."
Mr. Haddan, in the new collection of Councils and Ecclesiastical
Documents (i. 393), prints an account of the Church of Llandaff,
1193-1218. Bishop Henry of Abergavenny founded fourteen prebends, the
duties of eight of which were to be discharged ("defungi debent") by
Priest Vicars ("Vicarii Sacerdotes"), four by Deacons, and two by
Subdeacons. The fourteen Vicars have now dwindled to two.
[45] Ang. Sacr. i. 563. "Hic erexit ecclesias parochiales de
Ilmestre et Longe-Sutton in præbendas ecclesiæ Wellensis; quarum primam
Abbati de Muchelney, secundam Abbati de Athelney et eorum successoribus
contulit in perpetuam possidendas." These prebends no longer exist,
having vanished along with the monasteries by whose Abbots they were
held.
[46] This most important statute is printed in the Monasticon,
ii. pp. 291, 292. Its date is 1242, the thirty-seventh year of
Jocelin's episcopate. He records what he had done for the fabric of
the church, which he found dangerous by reason of age ("periculum
ruinæ patiebatur pro suâ vetustate." See above, p. 67). He had built,
enlarged, and consecrated it ("ædificare coepimus et ampliare, in
quâ ... adeo profecimus, quod ipsam ... consecravimus"). Then he goes
on to say that the common ("communa") revenues of the ministers of the
church had hitherto been scanty ("tenuis et insufficiens"), and that he
had done much to enlarge it. It would seem then that the greater part
of the estates of the church had been cut up into separate prebends,
and that, before Jocelin's gift, the Chapter as a body kept but little.
He then recites the consent of the Dean and Chapter to his ordinance
in words which mark a very different relation between the Bishop and
his Chapter from what had been in the days of Gisa and John of Tours.
The change is made "consensu Johannis Sarraceni, Decani, et Capituli
nostri Wellensis, qui pure et simpliciter et absolute, de merâ et
spontaneâ voluntate suâ, nostræ super hoc se supposuerunt ordinationi
et statuto." Then come the rules by which the Bishop, the Dean and
the other dignitaries, the other Canons, and the Vicars, were on each
day of residence to receive certain sums of money. They had hitherto
received their daily portion, partly in money, partly in bread. The
amount was now raised, and it was paid wholly in money. The Bishop
had thirteen pence, the Dean and other dignitaries twelve pence, each
simple Canon sixpence, each Vicar a penny, for each day of residence.
At the end of the year the overplus was to be divided among those
Canons who had kept the prescribed residence, which is thus defined:
"Residentes autem interpretamur quoad participationem residui in fine
anni omnes illos Canonicos qui _per medium annum_, sive continue sive
interpolatim, fecerint in villam [sic] residentiam, præter Decanum,
Præcentorem, Cancellarium, et Thesaurarium, quos interpretamur
residentes si _per duas partes anni_ fecerint residentiam sive continue
sive interpolatim."
Each Canon had thus three available sources of income, his own prebend,
the daily distribution, and the distribution at the end of the year.
The first was irrespective of residence, the latter two depended on
residence.
[47] I have to thank Mr. Serel for a manuscript extract
containing some details of this strange practice, as it stood at
Wells. In the fourteenth century the custom was that each Canon, at
the beginning of his residence, should feast the Bishop, Dean, Canons,
Vicars, and all other officers of the church ("quoscumque alios dictæ
ecclesiæ ministros"), at a cost which often reached two hundred marks
(133_l._ 6_s._ 8_d._), or even a hundred and fifty pounds; sums which,
at the then value of money, must have been enormous, and which contrast
strikingly with the pence and loaves of the older daily distribution.
In a bull of Pope Boniface the Ninth, in the year 1400, this custom is
condemned; it is pronounced to be "consuetudo quæ corruptela potius
est dicenda," and he speaks of the cost as "inutiles sumptus ac
expensæ." Instead of this waste upon eating and drinking, each simple
Canon, on his admission to residence, is to pay a hundred marks, and
each dignitary a hundred and fifty, to the maintenance of the fabric,
and the support of the other burthens of the church ("in subsidium
sustentationis fabricæ et relevamen supportationis aliorum onerum").
This was a very heavy tax, and might hinder many from residing;
still, at least, the money went to a good end. This was presently so
interpreted that the Dean and Residentiaries gave out of each sum so
paid ten marks to the fabric, ten to the Vicars, and divided the rest
among themselves. This practice was confirmed by a second bull of Pope
Nicolas the Fifth, in 1433; and these regulations were confirmed by
Henry the Eighth in 1539, at the advice of Lord Cromwell, who, it is
not to be forgotten, would, as Dean (see p. 148), receive a share of
the spoil.
Notwithstanding the commutation of the burthen from a feast to a fixed
sum of money, it appears that it again became usual, "not only to pay
these sums of money upon admission to a Canonry [that is, on admission
to residence], but also to make a prodigious entertainment for the
Bishop, Dean and Chapter [meaning the Dean and Residentiaries], the
Prebendaries in town, Vicars, Proctors of the Court, and Officers of
the church, _and their wives_, and also for the Mayor and Corporation,
and other principal inhabitants of the Liberty and City."
The Canons' and Vicars' wives were certainly not contemplated either by
Pope Boniface or by King Harry.
[48] This and all other points in the constitution of the
Chapter of Saint David's has been treated of by Archdeacon Jones,
in our History of Saint David's, p. 310, et seqq. The Saint David's
history is throughout worth comparing with the Wells' history.
[49] In the Charter of Elizabeth, of which I shall have to
speak again, each of eight Residentiaries is required to reside three
months in the year; and, if a Dignitary, four. This arrangement would
always give two Canons at least in residence at once.
[50] The round, rather than polygonal, chapter-house at
Worcester, where the style is still Romanesque, is probably the
earliest example, and that at Howden the latest. Lincoln, Westminster,
Salisbury, Lichfield, and Margam, are also examples. The earlier and
later chapter-houses, as at Canterbury, Durham, Bristol, and Exeter,
are oblong, sometimes with an apsidal end.
[51] The grandest example of these undercrofts that I know of
is under the dormitory of Battle Abbey. The arrangements of the church
were ruled by the position of the high altar, which marked the site
of the English standard. The result was that the dormitory was driven
over the side of the hill, and had therefore to be supported by an
undercroft, which at the extreme southern end rises to a prodigious
height.
The undercroft of the Wells chapter-house is no more a crypt than the
undercroft of the palace, or than the chapter-house at Llandaff, which
simply consists of four bays of vaulting, with a central pillar, just
like many undercrofts of this kind.
The undercroft of the palace at Wells has its parallel at an earlier
time in the magnificent example of Romanesque date in the Bishop's
palace at Angers.
[52] I must here quote Professor Willis, as reported in the
Bristol Volume, p. xxviii. "The first thing to be noticed is under
date 1286, when a Chapter was called together, and there was laid
before them the urgent necessity which appeared from the state of
the church, not only that the new structure, which had been a long
time begun, should be finished, but that the whole fabric might be
repaired and sustained, and such new constructions as were requisite
be carried out. In 1286, however, comparing the probable date of the
building which I suppose to be called the new structure, it can only
be the chapter-house; and the lower part of it, commonly called the
crypt, was, as I conclude, then completed.... The structure of the
chapter-house consists of two parts, and it is quite evident that
the crypt was separated from the upper part by a very considerable
interval. I conceive, therefore, that in 1286 the portion of the
chapter-house called the crypt was completed." In the Somersetshire
Transactions, xii. 19, the Professor adds that "it was agreed that each
Canon should pay a tenth of his prebend yearly for five years."
Bishop Godwin says (p. 300) of Bishop William of March, "In this mans
time [1293-1302] the chapter-house was built, by the contribution of
well-disposed people; a stately and sumptuous worke." Godwin wrote,
I suppose, from local tradition, as there is nothing like it in the
Canon's history in Anglia Sacra. His date quite falls in with the
Professor's extracts.
[53] The Early English fragments which have been built up in
the chapel in the Vicars' Close, as well as those which are lying about
in the undercroft of the chapter-house, can hardly fail to belong to
the destroyed east end. Yet the fragments in the Vicars' chapel agree
rather with the style of the west front than with that of the other
parts of the church; and they agree with the fragments built into the
rectory-house at Wookey (now called, without any reason, Mellifont
Abbey), which can hardly fail to have been parts of Jocelin's house
there. The fragments in the undercroft have the tooth-moulding, which,
I think, is not found anywhere else in the church, though it is in the
undercroft of the chapter-house.
As for the actual form of the east end, it is plain that it was not an
apse, nor yet a square east end of the full height, like York, Ely,
and Southwell. It will be seen on the ground-plan that the aisles of
Jocelin's work run a bay to the east of the site of his high altar.
This shows that there was a procession-path and most likely a chapel
beyond it on the site of the present presbytery, though it is possible
that it ended in a mere retrochoir, like that at Abbey Dore, or that
carried round the northern apse at Peterborough.
[54] The church of Glastonbury is, I need not say, of far more
ancient foundation than that of Wells; it was its junior simply as a
cathedral church. Bath is immeasurably older than Wells as a city,
and as a church also, if we accept the foundation of Osric in 676.
Even the foundation of Offa in 775 comes before Wells had gained any
importance. See Monasticon, ii. 256, though it is hard to understand
how a monastery could be destroyed by Danes before the time of Offa.
[55] Angl. Sacra, i. 564. "Hic sibi similem anteriorem non
habuit, nec hucusque visus est habere sequentem."
[56] Ib. "Tandem defunctus, in medio chori Welliæ honorifice
sepelitur." Godwin adds, "He was buried in the middle of the Quier
that he had built, under a Marble tombe of late yeeres monsterously
defaced."
LECTURE III.
[1] The story, as given by the Canon of Wells, may be read at
length in Anglia Sacra, i. 564, with Wharton's note, and more briefly
in Godwin's quaint English, p. 297. It is summed up in the Tewkesbury
Annals (Ann. Mon. i. 133): "Magister Rogerus Cantor Sarum eligitur
in Episcopum Bathoniæ. Confirmatur a Domino Papâ, non obstantibus
cavillationibus Canonicorum Wellensium. Consecratur, intronizatur, et
Dominus Rex reddidit ei omnia temporalia, in Junio." This annalist,
as a monk, looks on the complaints of the seculars of Wells as
"cavillationes."
[2] Anglia Sacra, i. 565. "Unde Episcopus Rogerus in tantum
ita instantius penes Papam procuravit, quod ipse pacem fecit inter
partes prædictas, et formam apposuit in eorum mutuis electionibus de
cætero faciendis, quæ usque hodie observatur."
[3] The chief of these were the _custodia_ or wardship of the
Deanery, _i.e._ the profits of the decanal estate during a vacancy,
which had no doubt hitherto gone to the Bishop as superior Lord, as
those of the Bishoprick itself went to the King. He also gave them
two-thirds of the profits of all the parish churches in the diocese
during their vacancies, which had hitherto gone to the Bishop; the
remaining third he gave to the Archdeacons.
[4] Godwin gives the list in p. 298. His burial in the Lady
chapel in the cloister has been already mentioned; see above, p. 17.
[5] Anglia Sacra, i. 566. "Ubi ad præsens multis fulget
miraculis."
[6] Ib., 567. "Ad cujus tumbam olim multa præclara fiebant
miracula." The wonders at the tomb of William of March seem to have
ceased when the Canon wrote, while those at the tomb of William
Button still went on. This agrees with what Godwin says, p. 299:
"Many superstitious people (especially such as were troubled with the
tooth-ake) were wont (even of late yeeres) to frequent much the place
of his buriall, being without the North side of the Quier, where we see
a Marble stone, having a pontificall image graven upon it."
[7] His building of the hall is mentioned in Anglia Sacra, i.
567, as also the advancement of his own family. So Godwin, 299, who
speaks of "That goodly hall of the pallace at Welles, pulled downe
some fifty yeeres since by a knight of the court, that for a just
reward of his sacrilege, soone after lost his head." This means Sir
John Gates, of whom more anon. Robert Burnell was first Treasurer
and then Chancellor of England, and in 1278 was elected Archbishop
of Canterbury, but the election was annulled by Pope Nicolas IV. In
Rymer's Foedera, vol. i. part ii. p. 559, will be found a letter of
Edward I. to the Pope on behalf of his Chancellor. He speaks of the
"fidelitatis suæ constantia quam ad recolendæ memoriæ dominum, Henricum
Regem Angliæ, illustrem genitorem nostrum, et nos ac totam ecclesiam
Anglicanam semper hactenus habuit incorruptam, et a quâ nullo umquam
tempore nubulo vel sereno flecti potuit seu etiam deviare." He also
calls him "vir tam in temporalibus quam in spiritualibus circumspectus,
vir mitis, affabilis, vir benignus, vir etiam misericordiæ,
mansuetudinis, caritatis, et pacis." Two of his brothers were drowned
in 1282, in the Welsh war; see Trivet, p. 305.
On the works of Gower at St. David's, see the History of St. David's,
pp. 190-194.
[8] I must again quote Professor Willis, in the Somersetshire
Proceedings, xii. 19. "In 1326 a grant of the land at the east end of
the Cathedral by the bishop to one of the canons, measures its length
of fifty feet eastward from the wall of the _newly-constructed chapel_
of the Blessed Mary." This plainly means the Lady chapel at the east
end, distinguished as a new building from the older Lady chapel in
the cloister. The Bishop is, of course, John Drokensford, Bishop from
1309-1329. In the Bristol report of Professor Willis (p. xxix.) he is
strangely called _Tokenfield_, which I am sure is not the Professor's
own description of him.
[9] Of the coved or waggon roofs of the West of England and
South Wales, which modern church-restorers generally think it such a
great feat to get rid of, I have written and spoken till I am nearly
tired of the subject. The arch employed is of all manner of forms, but
in a wooden construction the semicircular arch has the best effect. A
roof of this sort is the same thing in wood which a barrel-vault is in
stone, and the vault of the choir at Wells is a barrel-vault, modified
by the clerestory windows. Earlier barrel-vaults of Romanesque date,
identical in principle with the Somersetshire wooden roofs, may be
seen in Saint Sernin at Toulouse and the chapel in the White Tower of
London, and, to come nearer home, in the priory church of Ewenny in
Glamorganshire.
[10] Somersetshire Archæological Proceedings, xii. 19. "In
1325 the bishop gave half the proceeds of his visitation to the '_novum
opus_' of the church at Wells, and an order was made that, because the
stalls were ruinous and misshapen, every canon should pay for making
his own new stall, and the dean sent to Midelton for boards to make the
new stalls." Midelton is what we now call Milton. The Dean was John
Godele, Dean from 1308 to 1333. The Bishop was of course Ralph.
[11] Anglia Sacra, i. 569. "Sepultus in presbyterio ecclesiæ
Wellensis inter gradus chori et summum altare in tumbâ de alabastro,
cui imago supponitur valde conforma figuræ illius."
[12] Godwin, p. 302. "His body was buried before the high
altar under a goodly monument of Alabaster, compassed about with grates
of yron. About a 60 yeeres since (for what cause I know not) it was
remooved to the North side of the presbytery, but lost his grates by
the way."
[13] Somersetshire Archæological Proceedings, xii. 19. "In
1318 receivers were appointed for the tenths, given in aid of the _new
campanile_, and for the oblations to Saint William.... In 1321 we find
a grant from the clergy of the Deanery of Taunton in aid of the roofing
of the _new campanile_," meaning, not improbably, a wooden spire. By
Saint William is meant Bishop William of March; see p. 107.
[14] Ib., 21. "In 1337 a convocation was summoned to consider,
among other matters, the raising of money by the non-residents for
paying a debt of 200 li. incurred for the restoration of the greatest
part of the fabric. In 1338 another Convocation was summoned, because
the church of Wells is so enormously fractured and deformed ('enormiter
confracta ... totaliter confracte et enormiter deformate'), that its
structure can only be repaired, and with sufficient promptitude, by the
common counsel and assistance of its members." This evidently means,
as the Professor explains it, the damage done by the weight of the new
tower, and the props which we now see are evidently the result of the
repairs then ordered.
[15] The likeness had struck myself independently, but I see
that Professor Willis (p. 22) quotes the same name as applied by Leland
to the props of the same kind afterwards inserted under the central
tower at Glastonbury.
[16] Anglia Sacra, i. 570. "Iste ad constructionem
occidentalis turris in parte australi Wellensis ecclesiæ duas partes
expensarum apposuit; ac pro vitro occidentalis fenestræ ejusdem
ecclesiæ centum marcas persolvit; duasque magnas campanas in dictâ
turri australi pendentes fieri fecit propriis sumptibus." Godwin (302)
adds to the account of the bells, "The bigest of which being cast
fower times since I was of this church, now at last serveth for the
greatest of a ring, the goodliest for that number (being but five) (I
thinke) in England."
[17] Godwin, 304. "It is supposed he was a great benefactor
and contributor toward the building of the North-west tower at the West
ende of the Church, which his armes fixed upon divers places of the
same doo partly shew."
[18] "He built our Library over the Cloysters," says Godwin,
in his account of Bubwith, p. 304. But I do not see how this is to be
reconciled with what he says in the next page; "He [Beckington] built
(as to me at least wise seemeth) the East side of the cloyster."
[19] There are others of the kind, the west front of Exeter
for instance, where I suppose that most people would allow that the
shape is positively unsightly. The earliest English instance I know of
was the Romanesque west front of Malmesbury Abbey. It is now in ruins,
owing to the fall of the western tower which was afterwards added. But
it is easy to make out that the oldest front had a blank wall between
turrets, instead of either towers or the natural endings of the aisles
without towers.
[20] This arrangement gives the church of Wells and Rouen
a sort of western transept. There is also a western transept at
Lincoln and at Peterborough, but it is formed in a different way by a
projection beyond the towers.
There is something analogous to Wells and Rouen in the west front at
Ripon. The towers are now at the ends of the aisles, but, as they were
at first without aisles, they must have been built as a projecting
transept.
[21] This custom of a sham gable or other finish between the
towers, having no reference to the gable of the nave, is common both in
French and German churches. It is carried to its furthest extreme in
the churches of Brunswick, where any one coming from the due west would
take each church to be nearly double the height that it really is.
[22] I am here speaking of polygonal apses only. In our
large Romanesque churches the round apse was commonly used, but their
choirs have commonly been altered or destroyed, so that the only round
apses that we now have on a very large scale are those of Norwich and
Peterborough. In Normandy many more have been preserved, and they are
also much more common in smaller churches. Canterbury Cathedral has an
apse to the choir of intermediate date, besides the round chapel at
the extreme east end, answering in some measure to our polygonal Lady
chapel.
[23] The Wimborne arrangement of a central and western tower
was once much more common than it is now, but in many cases one of
the towers has either never been carried up or has been afterwards
destroyed, as at Hereford, Shrewsbury, Malmesbury, Bangor, and Christ
Church in Hampshire. The arrangement still remains on a vast scale at
Ely, and on a smaller at Purton in Wiltshire and in the two lesser
churches at Coutances.
[24] Anglia Sacra, p. 569. "Episcopale palatium apud Welliam
forti muro lapideo circumcinxit, et aquam undique circumduxit;"
and again, "Palatium episcopale Wellense muro lapideo batellato et
cornellato cum fossatis claudere fecit."
[25] Bishop Godwin tells the whole story in his quaint way (p.
301). "This man is famous for the first foundation of our Vicars close
in Wels. The memory of which benefit is to be seene expressed in a
picture upon the wal at the foot of the hall staires. In it the Vicars
kneeling, seeme to request the Bishop in these words
Per vicos positi villæ, pater alme rogamus,
Ut simul uniti, de [te?] dante domos maneamus.
_Disperst about the towne, we humbly pray,
Together, through thy bounty, dwell we may._
He answereth them thus:
Vestra petunt merita, quod sint concessa petita,
Ut maneatis ita, loca fecimus hic stabilita.
_For your demaund, deserts do plead, I will do that you crave,
To this purpose established, here dwellings shall you have._
This picture being now almost worne out; at what time of late yeeres
the Vicars by the gratious favour of her Maiesty had their revenues
confirmed to them, being in danger to be spoyled of them by certaine
sacrilegious cormorants; they likewise caused a picture of excellent
workmanship to be drawen, contayning a memoriall of both the one and
the other. These buildings being erected; toward the maintenance of
some hospitality in them, he gave unto that new Colledge, the mannor
of Welsleigh, and allotted them twenty nobles yerely to be paid out of
the vicarage of Chew. He built moreover a house for the Queristers and
their master."
[26] See above, p. 173.