Some four or five miles away are the imposing ruins of a great abbey
of the Franciscans. It had once been of so great importance in the land
that when the archabbey wrecker decreed that it should be demolished,
he sent his most trustworthy housebreaker to carry out his orders. Now
everybody of education in Mallingham can tell you all that is known
about the venerable ruin, and it is the pride of the town that it should
be so closely connected with the history of the Abbey; but I have never
yet met with any layman in the neighbourhood who was not under the
impression that the crime of its destruction should be added to the
pretty long account of that Cromwell who was called Oliver, and I should
not like to be the person who would suggest that there was another
Cromwell--one who did not decapitate his king, but whom his king
decapitated.
For that matter, however, it must be acknowledged that the people of
Mallingham do not stand alone in mixing up those iconoclasts. I have
found that in many parts of England as well as Ireland every deficiency
in the features of a church figure or a church ornament is attributed to
the later Cromwell. In Ireland I have had pointed out to me by clergymen
of both churches the headless saints and the broken carvings caused by
the fury of “Cromwell,” though I knew perfectly well that the work of
sacrilege could not have been done by him, for two reasons, the first
being that in his devastating progress through Ireland he had never
approached the places in question, and the second being that the sacred
buildings in which the damage was done had not been built until long
after Cromwell had sailed for England, after being soundly-beaten at
Clonmel.
Of course in Ireland there was only one “curse of Cromwell”; but
in England I soon found that there were two, and so the progress of
confusion began, until at the present time, when you are visiting any
old church and see in a niche an adult saint with a broken nose, or a
carved rood screen deficient about the rood, the verger--sometimes the
rector himself--is quite fluent in explaining that the heavy hand of
Cromwell must be held accountable for the spoliation. If you ask which
of the two, the answer will most certainly be, “Why, Cromwell to be
sure--Cromwell--Oliver Cromwell.”
An outsider should not interfere. The shade of Oliver would not shudder,
even if such an expression of emotion were permitted the shadiest of
shades, at the accusation being directed against him instead of the
older Cromwell. He would probably say, if speech were allowed to him,
“I have the greatest possible satisfaction in allowing my name to be
associated with any act of iconoclasm of the nature of those acts so
conscientiously perpetrated by my distinguished countryman.”
He would feel that, could he have had any hand in smashing in the roofs
of monasteries and despoiling rich abbeys, it would be accounted to him
for righteousness. After such splendid acts of spoliation, knocking the
nose off a poorly carved saint could not but seem a paltry thing, quite
unworthy of any man with a reputation for a heavy hand to maintain.
But Mallingham, for all its literary and historical ignorance, has its
heart in the right place; and it is staunch to Church and State--staunch
to the core. Every Fifth of November it has its procession emblematic
of these principles, and it must be confessed that the symbolism of
the movement is not exclusive. To express adequately the loyalty of
Mallingham, it is found necessary to set forth in marching order Turks,
male and female, Negroes, Zulus, Toreadors, Pierrots, Harlequins,
the Archbishop of Canterbury, Pirates, Mary Queen of Scots, Firemen,
Dragoons, William Shakespeare, a Sailor, and many other characters, all
of whom, it must be taken for granted, typify the triumph of Loyalty.
Should any question a-rise--for captious inquirers may always be
reckoned on in these days of high educational achievement--as to the
identity of the leading typical figure in this pageant and the reason
of the obloquy that is heaped upon him, culminating in the stake, with
foul-mouthed explosives, the answer is that he is one Guy Fox, and
that he is paying the penalty of having failed to blow up the Houses
of Parliament. After that explanation no one can doubt that, whoever he
was, he richly deserves his fate--or should it be spelt _fête?_
Occasionally co-opted with him is an unpopular person of distinction in
the neighbourhood--a clergyman who lies under the stigma of preaching
toleration, a police superintendent with a constitutional distaste for
bonfires and low-flash explosives in the public streets, or perhaps a
District Visitor suspected of “leanings.” But usually by midnight the
worst is over, and good nature without intoxicants prevails throughout
the motley crowd; the Archbishop of Canterbury lights his cigarette--one
of the packet with the pictures--from that of the Pirate King; Mary
Queen of Scots hurries to the house where she discharges the duties of
parlour-maid, complaining to a sympathetic Shakespeare that she has to
be up at six in the morning to let in the sweep, and so home to bed.
The only literary fact which is impressed upon all the townspeople is
that by some way never made quite clear, the singeing effigy, whose
obsequies have been so imposing, was responsible for a _Book of
Martyrs._ The general idea is that he was responsible for the martyrs
themselves, and that Foxes _Book of Martyrs_ is a sort of catalogue with
descriptive text of his victims.
So, as has been stated, the two Cromwells have but a single identity in
the minds of Mallingham.