The first chronicle in our vernacular prose, designed for the English
people, was the earnest labour of one of themselves, a citizen and
alderman, and sometime sheriff of London, ROBERT FABYAN. Here, for the
first time, the spectacle of English affairs, accompanied by what he has
called "A Concordance of Stories," which included separate notices of
French history contemporaneous with the periods he records, was opened
for "the unlettered who understand no Laten." Our chronicler, in the
accustomed mode, fixes the periods of history by dates from Adam or from
Brute. He opens with a superfluous abridgment of Geoffry of
Monmouth--the "Polychronicon" is one of his favourite sources, but his
authorities are multifarious. His French history is a small stream from
"La Mere des Chroniques," and other chronicles of his contemporary
Gaguin, a royal historiographer who wandered in the same taste, but who,
Fabyan had the sagacity to discover, carefully darkened all matters
unpleasant to Frenchmen, but never "leaving anything out of his book
that may sound to the advancement of the French nacyon."
It was a rare occurrence in a layman, and moreover a merchant, to have
cultivated the French and the Latin languages. Fabyan was not a learned
man, for the age of men of learning had not yet arrived, though it was
soon to come. At that early day of our typography, when our native
annalists lay scattered in their manuscript seclusion, it was no
ordinary delving which struck into the dispersed veins of the dim and
dark mine of our history. So little in that day was the critical
knowledge of our writers, that Fabyan has "quoted the same work under
different appellations," and some of our historical writers he seems not
to have met with in his researches, for the chronicles of Robert of
Gloucester and of Peter Langtoft, though but verse, would have
contributed some freshness to his own. In seven unequal divisions, the
chronicle closes with the days of the seventh Henry. These seven
divisions were probably more fantastical than critical; the number was
adopted to cheer the good man with "the seven joys of the Virgin," which
he sings forth in unmetrical metre, evidently participating in the
rapturous termination of each of his own "seven joys."
Our grave chronicler, arrayed in his civic dignities, seems to have
provoked the sensitiveness of the poetical critic in Warton, and the
caustic wit in Horace Walpole. "No sheriff," exclaims Walpole, "was ever
less qualified to write a history of England. He mentions the deaths of
princes and revolutions of government with the same phlegm and brevity
as he would speak of the appointment of churchwardens."
We may suspect that our citizen and chronicler, however he might be
familiar with the public acts of royalty, had no precise notions of the
principles of their government. We cannot otherwise deem of an
historical recorder whose political sagacity, in that famous interview
between our Edward the Fourth and Louis the Eleventh, of which Comines
has left us a lively scene, could not penetrate further than to the
fashion of the French monarch's dress. He tells us of "the nice and
wanton disguised apparel that the King Louys wore upon him at the time
of this meeting, _I might make a long rehearsal_, apparalled more like a
minstrel than a prince." Fabyan shared too in the hearty "John Bullism"
of that day in a mortal jealousy of the Gaul, and even of his _Sainte
Ampoule_. Though no man had a greater capacity of faith for miracles and
saints on English ground, yet for those of his neighbours he had found
authority that it was not necessary for his salvation to believe them,
and has ventured to decide on one, that "they must be folys (fools) who
believe it." Had the _Sainte Ampoule_, however, been deposited in
Westminster Abbey for our own coronations, instead of the Cathedral at
Rheims for a French king, Fabyan had not doubted of the efficacy of
every drop of the holy oil.
But the dotage of FABYAN did not particularly attach to him; and though
his intellectual comprehension was restricted to the experience of an
alderman, he might have been the little Machiavel of his wardmote--for
he has thrown out a shrewd observation, which no doubt we owe to his
own sagacity. In noticing the neglect of a mayor in repairing the walls
which had been begun by his predecessor, he observes that this generally
happens, for "one mayor will not finish that thing which another
beginneth, for then they think, be the deed ever so good and profitable,
that the honour thereof shall be ascribed to the beginner, and not to
the finisher, which lack of charity and desire of vainglory causeth many
good acts and deeds to die, and grow out of mind, to the great decay of
the commonwealth of the city." A profound observation, which might be
extended to monarchs as well as mayors.
Indulging too often the civic curiosity of "a citizen and alderman,"
FABYAN has been taunted for troubling posterity. "FABYAN," says Warton,
"is equally attentive to the succession of the mayors of London and the
monarchs of England. He seems to have thought the dinners at Guildhall
and the pageantries of the city companies more interesting transactions
than our victories in France and our struggles for public liberty at
home."
This seems to be a random stricture. The alderman, indeed, has carefully
registered the mayors and the sheriffs of London; and the scientific in
"high and low prices" perhaps may be grateful that our pristine
chronicler has also furnished the prices of wheat, oxen, sheep, and
poultry--but we cannot find that he has commemorated the diversified
forms these took on the solemn tables of the Guildhall, nor can we meet
with the pasteboard pomps of city pageants, one only being recorded, on
the return of Henry the Sixth from France.
Our modern critic, composing in the spirit of our day, alludes to "the
struggle for public liberty"; but "public liberty" must have been a very
ambiguous point with the honest citizen who had been a sad witness to
the contests of two murderous families, who had long sought their mutual
destruction, and long convulsed the whole land. We may account for the
tempered indifference, and "the brief recitals" for which this simple
citizen is reproached, who had lived through such changeful and
ensanguined scenes, which had left their bleeding memories among the
families of his contemporaries.
The faculties of Fabyan were more level with their objects when he had
to chronicle the "tempestuous weathering of thunder and lightning," with
the ominous fall of a steeple, or "the image of our Lady" dashed down
from its roof; or when he describes the two castles in the air, whence
issued two armies, black and white, combating in the skies till the
white vanished! Such portents lasted much later than the days of Fabyan,
for honest Stowe records what had once ushered in St. James's night,
when the lightning and thunder coming in at the south window and
bursting on the north, the bells of St. Michael were listened to with
horror, ringing of themselves, while ugly shapes were dancing on the
steeple. Their natural philosophy and their piety were long stationary,
yet even then some were critical in their remarks; for when Fabyan
recorded "flying dragons and fiery spirits in the air," this was
corrected by omitting "the fiery spirits," but agreeing to "the flying
dragons." Fabyan, however, has preserved more picturesque and ingenious
visions in some legends of saints or apparitions--still delightsome.
These legends formed their "Works of Fiction," and were more affecting
than ours, for they were supernatural, and no one doubted their verity.
Our pristine chronicler, as we have seen, has received hard measure from
the two eminent critics of the eighteenth century, who have censured as
a history that which is none. Chronicles were written when the science
of true history had yet no existence; a chronicle then in reality is but
a part of history. Every fact dispersed in its insulated state refuses
all combination; cause and effect lie remote and obscured from each
other; disguised by their ostensible pretexts, the true motives of
actions in the great actors of the drama of history cannot be found in
the chronological chronicler. The real value of his diligence consists
in copiousness and discrimination; qualities rather adverse to each
other. FABYAN betrays the infirmities of the early chronicler, not yet
practised even in the art of simple detail, without distinction of the
importance or the insignificance of the matters he records: his eager
pen reckoned the number without knowing to test the weight; to him all
facts appeared of equal worth, for all alike had cost him the same toil;
and thus he yields an abundance without copiousness. In raising the
curiosity which he has not satisfied for us, his mighty tome shrinks
into a narrow scope, and his imperfect narratives, brief and dry, offer
only the skeletons of history. The mere antiquarian indeed prefers the
chronicle to the history; the acquisition of a fact with him is the
limit of his knowledge, and he is apt to dream that he possesses the
superstructure when he is only at work on the foundations.
The Chronicle of FABYAN attracts our notice for a remarkable incident
attending its publication. The Chronicle was finished in 1504, and
remained in manuscript during the author's life, who died in 1512. The
first edition did not appear till 1516. The cause which delayed the
printing of an important work, for such it was in that day, has not been
disclosed; yet perhaps we might have been interested to have learned
whether this protracted publication arose out of neglect difficult to
comprehend, or from the printer, reluctant to risk the cost, or from any
impediment from a higher quarter.
Be this as it may, we possess the writer's genuine work, for the
printer, Pynson, was faithful to his author. The rarity of this first
edition Bale, on a loose rumour which no other literary historian has
sanctioned, ascribes to its suppression by Cardinal Wolsey, who is
represented in his fury to have condemned the volume to a public
ignition, which no one appears to have witnessed, for its "dangerous
exposition of the revenues of the clergy," which is not found in the
volume. FABYAN truly was _ter Catholicus_; he was of the old religion,
dying in the odour of sanctity, and was spared the trial of the new. The
alderman's voluminous will is now for us at least as curious as anything
in his chronicle.[1] We here behold the play of the whole machinery of
superstition, when men imagined that they secured the repose of their
souls by feeing priests and bribing saints by countless masses. This
funereal rite was then called "the month's mind," and which, at least
for that short period, prolonged the memory of the departed. For this
lugubrious performance were provided ponderous torches for the bearers,
tapers for shrines, and huge candlesticks to be kept lighted at the
altar. Three trentballs--that is, thirty masses thrice told--were to be
chorused by the Grey Friars; six priests were to perform the high mass,
chant the requiem, and recite the _De Profundis_ and the _Dirige_; and
for nine years, on his mortuary day, he charges his "tenement in
Cornhill" to pay for an _Obite_! But not only friars and priests were to
pray or to sing for the repose of the soul of Alderman Fabyan, all
comers were invited to kneel around the tomb; and at times children were
to be called in, who if they could not read a _De Profundis_ from the
Psalter, the innocents were to cry forth a _Pater-Noster_ or an _Ave_!
There was a purveyance of ribs of beef and mutton and ale, "stock-fish,
if Lent," and other recommendations for "the comers to the _Dirige_ at
night." The Alderman, however, seems to have planned a kind of economy
in his "month's mind," for not only was the repose of his soul in
question, but also "the souls of all above written"--and these were a
bead-roll of all the branches of Fabyan's family.
The Chronicle of FABYAN was not long given to the world when it
encountered the doom of a system at its termination, just before the
beginnings of a coming one; that fatal period of a change in human
affairs and human opinions, usually described as a state of transition.
But in this particular instance, the change occurred preceded by no
transitional approach; for within the small circuit of thirty years it
seemed as if the events of whole centuries had been more miraculously
compressed, than any in those "lives of the saints" whose legendary
lore, provided the saints were English, Master FABYAN had loved to
perpend. It was Henry the Eighth who turned all the sense of our
chronicler into nonsense, all his honest faith into lying absurdities,
all his exhortations to maintain "religious houses" into treasonable
matters.
Successive editors of the editions of 1533, 43, and 55, surpassed each
other in watchfulness, to rid themselves of the old song. Never was
author so mutilated in parts, nor so wholly changed from himself; and
when, as it sometimes happened, neither purgation nor castration availed
the reforming critics, the author's sides bore their marginal
flagellations. The corrections or alterations were, however, dexterously
performed, for the texture of the work betrayed no trace of the rents.
The omission of a phrase saved a whole sentence, and the change of an
adjective or two set right a whole character. It is true they swept away
all his delightful legends, without sparing his woful metres of "the
seven joys of the Blessed Virgin," and his appreciation of some
favourite relics. They disbanded all the saints, or treated them as they
did "the holy virgin Edith," of whom Fabyan has recorded that "many
_virtues_ be rehearsed," which they delicately reduced to _verses_. His
Holiness the Pope is simply "the Bishop of Rome;" and on one memorable
occasion--the Papal interdiction of John--this "Bishop" is designated in
the margin by the reformer as "that monstrous and wicked Beast." The
narrative of Becket cost our compurgators, as it has many others, much
shifting, and more omissions. In the tale of the hardy and ambitious
Archbishop murdered by knightly assassins, Fabyan said, "They _martyred_
the blessed Archbishop;" our corrector of the press simply reads, "They
slew the traitorous Bishop." The _omissions_ and the commissions in the
Chronicle of FABYAN are often amusing and always instructive; but these
could not have been detected but by a severe collation, which has been
happily performed. When the antiquary Brand discovered that FABYAN had
been "_modernized_" in later editions, his observation would seem to
have extended no further than to the style: but the style of FABYAN is
simple and clear even to modern readers: modernized truly it was, not
however for phrases, but for notions--not for statements, but for
omissions--not for words, but for things.