TEDIOUS BRIEF TALES OF GRANTA
AND GRAMARYE.
[Illustration:
E. Joyce Shillington Scales
1919.
_Entrance Gateway, Jesus College._]
TEDIOUS BRIEF TALES OF
GRANTA AND GRAMARYE
BY
“INGULPHUS”
(ARTHUR GRAY, Master of Jesus College)
_With illustrations by_
E. JOYCE SHILLINGTON SCALES
“Merry and tragical, tedious and brief:
That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow.”
_A Midsummer Night’s Dream._
CAMBRIDGE:
W. HEFFER & SONS LTD.
LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO. LTD.
FIRST PUBLISHED, DECEMBER, 1919.
For permission to reprint these tales, which originally appeared in
_The Cambridge Review_, _The Gownsman_ and _Chanticlere_ (the Jesus
College Magazine), the writer thanks the editors and proprietors of
those papers.
Contents
PAGE
I. TO TWO CAMBRIDGE MAGICIANS viii
II. THE EVERLASTING CLUB 1
III. THE TREASURE OF JOHN BADCOKE 9
IV. THE TRUE HISTORY OF ANTHONY FFRYAR 19
V. THE NECROMANCER 28
VI. BROTHER JOHN’S BEQUEST 37
VII. THE BURDEN OF DEAD BOOKS 48
VIII. THANKFULL THOMAS 67
IX. THE PALLADIUM 76
X. THE SACRIST OF SAINT RADEGUND 84
List of Illustrations
I. ENTRANCE GATEWAY, JESUS COLLEGE _Frontispiece_
II. DOORWAY, COW LANE 5
III. ORIEL WINDOW OF HALL AND ENTRANCE TO “K” STAIRCASE 11
IV. OLD HALL, MASTER’S LODGE 17
V. NORTH-WEST CORNER OF CLOISTERS 20
VI. THE MASTER’S STALL 23
VII. MAIN GATEWAY AND PORTER’S LODGE 31
VIII. ON “A” STAIRCASE 33
IX. FIREPLACE IN MASTER’S LODGE 41
X. A CORNER OF THE LIBRARY 51
XI. CHAPEL DOORWAY IN MASTER’S GARDEN 57
XII. NORMAN GALLERY, NORTH TRANSEPT 71
XIII. SOUTH-WEST PIER OF TOWER 74
XIV. IN THE FENS 83
XV. ENTRANCE TO CHAPTER HOUSE 87
XVI. THE CHANCEL SQUINT 90
To Two Cambridge Magicians
In London lanes, uncanonized, untold
By letter’d brass or stone, apart they lie,
Dead and unreck’d of by the passer-by.
Here still they seem together, as of old,
To breathe our air, to walk our Cambridge ground,
Here still to after learners to impart
Hints of the magic that gave Faustus art
To make blind Homer sing “with ravishing sound
To his melodious harp” of Oenon, dead
For Alexander’s love; that framed the spell
Of him who, in the Friar’s “secret cell,”
Made the great marvel of the Brazen Head.
Marlowe and Greene, on you a Cambridge hand
Sprinkles these pious particles of sand.
The Everlasting Club
There is a chamber in Jesus College the existence of which is probably
known to few who are now resident, and fewer still have penetrated into
it or even seen its interior. It is on the right hand of the landing on
the top floor of the precipitous staircase in the angle of the cloister
next the Hall--a staircase which for some forgotten story connected
with it is traditionally called “Cow Lane.” The padlock which secures
its massive oaken door is very rarely unfastened, for the room is bare
and unfurnished. Once it served as a place of deposit for superfluous
kitchen ware, but even that ignominious use has passed from it, and it
is now left to undisturbed solitude and darkness. For I should say that
it is entirely cut off from the light of the outer day by the walling
up, some time in the eighteenth century, of its single window, and such
light as ever reaches it comes from the door, when rare occasion causes
it to be opened.
Yet at no extraordinarily remote day this chamber has evidently been
tenanted, and, before it was given up to darkness, was comfortably
fitted, according to the standard of comfort which was known in college
in the days of George II. There is still a roomy fireplace before which
legs have been stretched and wine and gossip have circulated in the
days of wigs and brocade. For the room is spacious and, when it was
lighted by the window looking eastward over the fields and common, it
must have been a cheerful place for a sociable don.
Let me state in brief, prosaic outline the circumstances which account
for the gloom and solitude in which this room has remained now for
nearly a century and a half.
In the second quarter of the eighteenth century the University
possessed a great variety of clubs of a social kind. There were
clubs in college parlours and clubs in private rooms, or in inns
and coffee-houses: clubs flavoured with politics, clubs clerical,
clubs purporting to be learned and literary. Whatever their professed
particularity, the aim of each was convivial. Some of them, which
included undergraduates as well as seniors, were dissipated enough, and
in their limited provincial way aped the profligacy of such clubs as
the Hell Fire Club of London notoriety.
Among these last was one which was at once more select and of more evil
fame than any of its fellows. By a singular accident, presently to be
explained, the Minute Book of this Club, including the years from 1738
to 1766, came into the hands of a Master of Jesus College, and though,
so far as I am aware, it is no longer extant, I have before me a
transcript of it which, though it is in a recent handwriting, presents
in a bald shape such a singular array of facts that I must ask you to
accept them as veracious. The original book is described as a stout
duodecimo volume bound in red leather and fastened with red silken
strings. The writing in it occupied some 40 pages, and ended with the
date November 2, 1766.
The Club in question was called the Everlasting Club--a name
sufficiently explained by its rules, set forth in the pocket-book. Its
number was limited to seven, and it would seem that its members were
all young men, between 22 and 30. One of them was a Fellow-Commoner of
Trinity: three of them were Fellows of Colleges, among whom I should
specially mention a Fellow of Jesus, named Charles Bellasis: another
was a landed proprietor in the county, and the sixth was a young
Cambridge physician. The Founder and President of the Club was the
Honourable Alan Dermot, who, as the son of an Irish peer, had obtained
a nobleman’s degree in the University, and lived in idleness in the
town. Very little is known of his life and character, but that little
is highly in his disfavour. He was killed in a duel at Paris in the
year 1743, under circumstances which I need not particularise, but
which point to an exceptional degree of cruelty and wickedness in the
slain man.
I will quote from the first pages of the Minute Book some of the laws
of the Club, which will explain its constitution:--
“1. This Society consisteth of seven Everlastings, who may be Corporeal
or Incorporeal, as Destiny shall determine.
2. The rules of the Society, as herein written, are immutable and
Everlasting.
3. None shall hereafter be chosen into the Society and none shall cease
to be members.
4. The Honourable Alan Dermot is the Everlasting President of the
Society.
5. The Senior Corporeal Everlasting, not being the President, shall be
the Secretary of the Society, and in this Book of Minutes shall record
its transactions, the date at which any Everlasting shall cease to
be Corporeal, and all fines due to the Society. And when such Senior
Everlasting shall cease to be Corporeal he shall, either in person or
by some sure hand, deliver this Book of Minutes to him who shall be
next Senior and at the time Corporeal, and he shall in like manner
record the transactions therein and transmit it to the next Senior. The
neglect of these provisions shall be visited by the President with fine
or punishment according to his discretion.
6. On the second day of November in every year, being the Feast of All
Souls, at ten o’clock _post meridiem_, the Everlastings shall meet
at supper in the place of residence of that Corporeal member of the
Society to whom it shall fall in order of rotation to entertain them,
and they shall all subscribe in this Book of Minutes their names and
present place of abode.
7. It shall be the obligation of every Everlasting to be present at the
yearly entertainment of the Society, and none shall allege for excuse
that he has not been invited thereto. If any Everlasting shall fail
to attend the yearly meeting, or in his turn shall fail to provide
entertainment for the Society, he shall be mulcted at the discretion of
the President.
8. Nevertheless, if in any year, in the month of October and not less
than seven days before the Feast of All Souls, the major part of the
Society, that is to say, four at the least, shall meet and record in
writing in these Minutes that it is their desire that no entertainment
be given in that year, then, notwithstanding the two rules last
rehearsed, there shall be no entertainment in that year, and no
Everlasting shall be mulcted on the ground of his absence.”
The rest of the rules are either too profane or too puerile to be
quoted here. They indicate the extraordinary levity with which the
members entered on their preposterous obligations. In particular, to
the omission of any regulation as to the transmission of the Minute
Book after the last Everlasting ceased to be “Corporeal,” we owe the
accident that it fell into the hands of one who was not a member of the
society, and the consequent preservation of its contents to the present
day.
Low as was the standard of morals in all classes of the University in
the first half of the eighteenth century, the flagrant defiance of
public decorum by the members of the Everlasting Society brought upon
it the stern censure of the authorities, and after a few years it was
practically dissolved and its members banished from the University.
Charles Bellasis, for instance, was obliged to leave the college,
and, though he retained his fellowship, he remained absent from it
for nearly twenty years. But the minutes of the society reveal a more
terrible reason for its virtual extinction.
Between the years 1738 and 1743 the minutes record many meetings of
the Club, for it met on other occasions besides that of All Souls
Day. Apart from a great deal of impious jocularity on the part of the
writers, they are limited to the formal record of the attendance of
the members, fines inflicted, and so forth. The meeting on November
2nd in the latter year is the first about which there is any departure
from the stereotyped forms. The supper was given in the house of the
physician. One member, Henry Davenport, the former Fellow-Commoner of
Trinity, was absent from the entertainment, as he was then serving
in Germany, in the Dettingen campaign. The minutes contain an entry,
“Mulctatus propter absentiam per Presidentem, Hen. Davenport.” An entry
on the next page of the book runs, “Henry Davenport by a Cannon-shot
became an Incorporeal Member, November 3, 1743.”
[Illustration: _Doorway, Cow Lane._]
The minutes give in their own handwriting, under date November 2, the
names and addresses of the six other members. First in the list, in
a large bold hand, is the autograph of “Alan Dermot, President, at
the Court of His Royal Highness.” Now in October Dermot had certainly
been in attendance on the Young Pretender at Paris, and doubtless
the address which he gave was understood at the time by the other
Everlastings to refer to the fact. But on October 28, five days
_before_ the meeting of the Club, he was killed, as I have already
mentioned, in a duel. The news of his death cannot have reached
Cambridge on November 2, for the Secretary’s record of it is placed
below that of Davenport, and with the date November 10: “this day was
reported that the President was become an Incorporeal by the hands of
a french chevalier.” And in a sudden ebullition, which is in glaring
contrast with his previous profanities, he has dashed down “The Good
God shield us from ill.”
The tidings of the President’s death scattered the Everlastings like
a thunderbolt. They left Cambridge and buried themselves in widely
parted regions. But the Club did not cease to exist. The Secretary
was still bound to his hateful records: the five survivors did not
dare to neglect their fatal obligations. Horror of the presence of the
President made the November gathering once and for ever impossible:
but horror, too, forbade them to neglect the precaution of meeting
in October of every year to put in writing their objection to the
celebration. For five years five names are appended to that entry in
the minutes, and that is all the business of the Club. Then another
member died, who was not the Secretary.
For eighteen more years four miserable men met once each year to
deliver the same formal protest. During those years we gather from
the signatures that Charles Bellasis returned to Cambridge, now, to
appearance, chastened and decorous. He occupied the rooms which I have
described on the staircase in the corner of the cloister.
Then in 1766 comes a new handwriting and an altered minute: “Jan. 27,
on this day Francis Witherington, Secretary, became an Incorporeal
Member. The same day this Book was delivered to me, James Harvey.”
Harvey lived only a month, and a similar entry on March 7 states that
the book has descended, with the same mysterious celerity, to William
Catherston. Then, on May 18, Charles Bellasis writes that on that day,
being the date of Catherston’s decease, the Minute Book has come to
him as the last surviving Corporeal of the Club.
As it is my purpose to record fact only I shall not attempt to describe
the feelings of the unhappy Secretary when he penned that fatal
record. When Witherington died it must have come home to the three
survivors that after twenty-three years’ intermission the ghastly
entertainment must be annually renewed, with the addition of fresh
incorporeal guests, or that they must undergo the pitiless censure of
the President. I think it likely that the terror of the alternative,
coupled with the mysterious delivery of the Minute Book, was
answerable for the speedy decease of the two first successors to the
Secretaryship. Now that the alternative was offered to Bellasis alone,
he was firmly resolved to bear the consequences, whatever they might
be, of an infringement of the Club rules.
The graceless days of George II. had passed away from the University.
They were succeeded by times of outward respectability, when religion
and morals were no longer publicly challenged. With Bellasis, too, the
petulance of youth had passed: he was discreet, perhaps exemplary. The
scandal of his early conduct was unknown to most of the new generation,
condoned by the few survivors who had witnessed it.
On the night of November 2nd, 1766, a terrible event revived in the
older inhabitants of the College the memory of those evil days. From
ten o’clock to midnight a hideous uproar went on in the chamber of
Bellasis. Who were his companions none knew. Blasphemous outcries and
ribald songs, such as had not been heard for twenty years past, aroused
from sleep or study the occupants of the court; but among the voices
was not that of Bellasis. At twelve a sudden silence fell upon the
cloisters. But the Master lay awake all night, troubled at the relapse
of a respected colleague and the horrible example of libertinism set to
his pupils.
In the morning all remained quiet about Bellasis’ chamber. When his
door was opened, soon after daybreak, the early light creeping through
the drawn curtains revealed a strange scene. About the table were drawn
seven chairs, but some of them had been overthrown, and the furniture
was in chaotic disorder, as after some wild orgy. In the chair at the
foot of the table sat the lifeless figure of the Secretary, his head
bent over his folded arms, as though he would shield his eyes from
some horrible sight. Before him on the table lay pen, ink and the red
Minute Book. On the last inscribed page, under the date of November
2nd, were written, for the first time since 1742, the autographs of
the seven members of the Everlasting Club, but without address. In the
same strong hand in which the President’s name was written there was
appended below the signatures the note, “Mulctatus per Presidentem
propter neglectum obsonii, Car. Bellasis.”
The Minute Book was secured by the Master of the College, and I believe
that he alone was acquainted with the nature of its contents. The
scandal reflected on the College by the circumstances revealed in it
caused him to keep the knowledge rigidly to himself. But some suspicion
of the nature of the occurrences must have percolated to students and
servants, for there was a long-abiding belief in the College that
annually on the night of November 2 sounds of unholy revelry were
heard to issue from the chamber of Bellasis. I cannot learn that the
occupants of the adjoining rooms have ever been disturbed by them.
Indeed, it is plain from the minutes that owing to their improvident
drafting no provision was made for the perpetuation of the All Souls
entertainment after the last Everlasting ceased to be Corporeal. Such
superstitious belief must be treated with contemptuous incredulity.
But whether for that cause or another the rooms were shut up, and have
remained tenantless from that day to this.
[Illustration]
The Treasure of John Badcoke
As this narrative of an occurrence in the history of Jesus College
may appear to verge on the domain of romance, I think it proper to
state by way of preface, that for some of its details I am indebted to
documentary evidence which is accessible and veracious. Other portions
of the story are supplied from sources the credibility of which my
readers will be able to estimate.
On the 8th of November, 1538, the Priory of St. Giles and St. Andrew,
Barnwell, was surrendered to King Henry VIII. by John Badcoke, the
Prior, and the convent of that house. The surrender was sealed with the
common seal, subscribed by the Prior and six canons, and acknowledged
on the same day in the Chapter House of the Priory, before Thomas Legh,
Doctor of Laws.[1]
Dr. Legh and his fellows, who had been deputed by Cromwell to visit the
monasteries, had too frequent occasion to deplore the frowardness of
religious households in opposing the King’s will in the matter of their
dissolution. Among many such reports I need only cite the case of the
Prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, mentioned in a letter to Cromwell
from one of his agents, Christopher Leyghton.[2] He tells Cromwell
that in an inventory exhibited by the Prior to Dr. Leyghton, the
King’s visitor, the Prior had “wilfullye left owte a remembraunce of
certayne parcells of silver, gold and stone to the value of thowsandys
of poundys”; that it was not to be doubted that he would “eloyne owt
of the same howse into the handys of his secret fryndys thowsandes of
poundes, which is well knowne he hathe, to hys comfort hereafter”; and
that it was common report in the monastery that any monk who should
open the matter to the King’s advisers “shalbe poysenyde or murtheryde,
as he hath murthredde diverse others.”
Far different from the truculent attitude of this murderous Prior
was the conduct on the like occasion of Prior John Badcoke. Dr. Legh
reported him to be “honest and conformable.” He furnished an exact
inventory of the possessions of his house, and quietly retired on the
pittance allowed to him by the King. He prevailed upon the other canons
to shew the same submission to the royal will, and they peaceably
dispersed, some to country incumbencies, others to resume in the
Colleges the studies commenced in earlier life.
John Badcoke settled in Jesus College. The Bursar’s Rental of 1538-39
shows that his residence there began in the autumn of the earlier year,
immediately after the surrender of the monastery. Divorced from the
Priory he was still attached to Barnwell, and took up the duties of
Vicar of the small parish church of St. Andrew, which stood close to
the Priory gate. So long as Henry VIII. lived, and the rites of the old
religion were tolerated, he seems to have ministered faithfully to the
spiritual needs of his parishioners, unsuspected and unmolested.
More than twelve months elapsed before the demolition of the canons’
house was taken in hand, and, for so long, in the empty church the
Prior still offered mass on ceremonial days for the repose of the souls
of the Peverels and Peches who had built and endowed the house in long
bygone days, and were buried beside the High Altar. In the porter’s
lodge remained the only occupant of the monastery--a former servant of
the house, who, from the circumstance that in his secular profession he
was a mason, had the name of Adam Waller. Occasional intruders on the
solitude of the cloister or the monastic garden sometimes lighted on
the ex-Prior pacing the grass-grown walks, as of old, and generally in
company with a younger priest.
[Illustration: Oriel Window of Hall & Entrance to ‘K’ Staircase]
This companion was named Richard Harrison. He was not one of the
dispossessed canons, but came from the Priory of Christ Church,
Canterbury, of which mention has been made. He was the youngest and
latest professed of the monks there, a nephew of the Prior, as also of
John Badcoke. He had not been present at the time of Dr. Leyghton’s
visitation, as he happened then to be visiting his uncle at Barnwell.
As the Canterbury monks were ejected in his absence he had remained
at Barnwell, and there he shared his uncle’s parochial duties. He,
too, became a resident at Jesus, and he occupied rooms in the College
immediately beneath those of Badcoke.
Late in the year 1539 the demolition of Barnwell Priory was begun. Adam
Waller was engaged in the work. One incident, which apparently passed
almost unnoticed at the time, may be mentioned in connection with this
business. The keys of the church were in the keeping of Waller, who
had been in the habit of surrendering them to the two ecclesiastics
whenever they performed the divine offices there. On the morning when
the demolition was to begin, it was found that the stone covering
the altar-tomb of Pain Peverel, crusader and founder of the Priory,
had been dislodged, and that the earth within it had been recently
disturbed. Waller professed to know nothing of the matter.
The account rolls of the College Bursars in the reigns of Henry
VIII. and Edward VI. fortunately tell us exactly the situation of
the rooms occupied by Badcoke and Harrison, and as, for the proper
understanding of subsequent events, it is necessary that we should
realise their condition and relation to the rest of the College, I
shall not scruple to be particular. They were on the left-hand side of
the staircase now called K, in the eastern range of the College, and
at the northern end of what had once been the dormitory of the Nuns of
St. Radegund. Badcoke’s chamber, which was on the highest floor, was
one of the largest in the College, and for that reason the Statutes
prescribed that it should be reserved “for more venerable persons
resorting to the College”; and Badcoke, being neither a Fellow nor a
graduate, was regarded as belonging to this class. Below his chamber
was that of Harrison, and on the ground-floor was the “cool-house,”
where the College fuel was kept. Between this ground-floor room and L
staircase--which did not then exist--there is seen at the present day a
rarely opened door. Inside the door a flight of some half-dozen steps
descends to a narrow space, which might be deemed a passage, save that
it has no outlet at the farther end. On either side it is flanked, to
the height of two floors of K staircase, by walls of ancient monastic
masonry; the third and highest floor is carried over it. Here, in the
times of Henry VIII. and the Nunnery days before them, ran or stagnated
a Stygian stream, known as “the kytchynge sinke ditch,” foul with scum
from the College offices. Northward from Badcoke’s staircase was “the
wood-yard,” on the site of the present L staircase. It communicated by
a door in its outward, eastern wall with a green close which in the old
days had been the Nunnery graveyard. In Badcoke’s times it was still
uneven with the hillocks which marked the resting-places of nameless,
unrecorded Nuns. The old graveyard was intersected by a cart-track
leading from Jesus Lane to the wood-yard door. The Bursar’s books show
that Badcoke controlled the wood-yard and coal-house, perhaps in the
capacity of Promus, or Steward.
Now when Badcoke and Harrison came to occupy their chambers on K
staircase, Jesus, like other Colleges in those troublous times, had
fallen on evil days. Its occupants comprised only the Master, some
eight Fellows, a few servants, and about half-a-dozen “disciples.”
Nearly half the rooms in College were empty, and the records show
that many were tenantless, _propter defectum reparacionis_; that is,
because walls, roofs and floors were decayed and ruinous. Badcoke,
being a man of means, paid a handsome rent for his chambers, not less
than ten shillings by the year, in consideration of which the College
put it in tenantable repair; and, as a circumstance which has some
significance in relation to this narrative, it is to be noted that the
Bursar--the accounts of the year are no longer extant--recorded that
in 1539 he paid a sum of three shillings and fourpence “to Adam Waller
for layyinge of new brick in yᵉ cupboard of Mr. Badcoke’s chamber.”
The cupboard in question was seemingly a small recessed space, still
recognisable in a gyp-room belonging to the chambers which were
Badcoke’s. The rooms on the side of the staircase opposite to those of
Badcoke and Harrison were evidently unoccupied; the Bursar took no
rent from them. The other inmates of the College dwelt in the cloister
court.
In this comparative isolation Badcoke and Harrison lived until the
death of Henry VIII. in 1546. In course of time Harrison became a
Fellow of the College; but Badcoke preferred to retain the exceptional
status of its honoured guest. To the Master, Dr. Reston, and the
Fellows, whose religious sympathies were with the old order of things,
their company was inoffensive and even welcome. But trouble came upon
the College in 1549, when it was visited by King Edward’s Protestant
Commissioners. It stands on record, that on May 26th “they commanded
six altars to be pulled down in the church,” and in a chamber, which
may have been Badcoke’s, “caused certayn images to be broken.” Mr.
Badcoke “had an excommunicacion sette uppe for him,” and was dismissed
from the office, whatever it was, that he held in the College. Worse
still for his happiness, his companion of many years, Richard Harrison,
was “expulsed his felowshippe” on some supposition of trafficking with
the court of Rome.[3] He went overseas, as it was understood, to the
Catholic University of Louvain in Flanders.
In 1549 Badcoke must have been, as age went in the sixteenth century,
an old man. His deprivation of office, the loss of his friend, and
the abandonment of long treasured hopes for the restitution of the
religious system to which his life had been devoted, plunged him in
a settled despondency. The Fellows, who showed for him such sympathy
as they dared, understood that between him and Harrison there passed
a secret correspondence. But in course of years this source of
consolation dried up. Harrison was dead, or he had travelled away
from Louvain. With the other members of the College Badcoke wholly
parted company, and lived a recluse in his unneighboured room. By the
wood-yard gate, of which he still had a key, he could let himself
out beyond the College walls, and sometimes by day, oftener after
nightfall, he was to be seen wandering beneath his window in the Nuns’
graveyard, his old feet, like Friar Laurence’s, “stumbling at graves.”
An occasional visitor, who was known to be his pensioner, was Adam
Waller. But, though Waller was still at times employed in the service
of the College, his character and condition had deteriorated with
years. He was a sturdy beggar, a drunkard, sullen and dangerous in his
cups, and Badcoke was heard to hint some terror of his presence. At
last the Master learnt from the ex-Prior that he was about to quit the
College, and none doubted that he would follow Harrison to Louvain.
Shortly after this became known, Badcoke disappeared from College. He
had lived in such seclusion that for a day or two it was not noticed
that his door remained closed, and that he had not been seen in his
customary walks. When the door was at last forced it was discovered
that he had indeed gone, but, strangely, he had left behind him the
whole of his effects. Adam Waller was the last person who was known to
have entered his chamber, and, being questioned, he said that Badcoke
had informed him of his intention to depart three days previously,
but, for some unexplained reason, had desired him to keep his purpose
secret, and had not imparted his destination. Badcoke’s life of
seclusion, and his known connection with English Catholics beyond sea,
gave colour to Waller’s story, and, so far as I am aware, no enquiries
were made as to the subsequent fate of the ex-Prior. But a strange fact
was commented on--that the floor of the so-called cupboard was strewn
with bricks, and that in the place from which they had been dislodged
was an arched recess of considerable size, which must have been made
during Badcoke’s tenancy of the room. There was nothing in the recess.
Another circumstance there was which called for no notice in the then
dilapidated state of half the College rooms. Two boards were loose in
the floor of the larger chamber. Thirty feet below the gap which their
removal exposed, lay the dark impurities of the “kytchynge sinke ditch.”
Adam Waller died a beggar as he had lived.
A century after these occurrences--in the year 1642--the attention of
the College was drawn by a severe visitation of plague to a much-needed
sanitary reform. The black ditch which ran under K staircase was
“cast,” that is, its bed was effectually cleaned out, and its channel
was stopped; and so it came about that from that day to this it has
presented a clean and dry floor of gravel. Beneath the settled slime of
centuries was discovered a complete skeleton. How it came there nobody
knew, and nobody enquired. Probably it was guessed to be a relic of
some dim and grim monastic mystery.
Now whether Adam Waller knew or suspected the existence of a treasure
hidden in the wall-recess of Badcoke’s chamber, and murdered the
ex-Prior when he was about to remove it to Louvain, I cannot say.
One thing is certain--that he did not find the treasure there. When
Badcoke disappeared he left his will, with his other belongings, in
his chamber. After a decent interval, when it seemed improbable that
he would return, probate was obtained by the Master and Fellows, to
whom he had bequeathed the chief part of his effects. In 1858 the wills
proved in the University court were removed to Peterborough, and there,
for aught I know, his will may yet be seen. The property bequeathed
consisted principally of books of theology. Among them was Stephanus’
Latin Vulgate Bible of 1528 in two volumes folio. This he devised “of
my heartie good wylle to my trustie felow and frynde, Richard Harrison,
if he shal returne to Cambrege aftyr the tyme of my decesse.” Richard
Harrison never returned to Cambridge, and the Bible, with the other
books, found its way to the College Library.
Now there are still in the Library two volumes of this Vulgate Bible.
There is nothing in either of them to identify them with the books
mentioned in Badcoke’s will, for they have lost the fly-leaves which
might have revealed the owner’s autograph. Here and there in the
margins are annotations in a sixteenth-century handwriting; and in the
same handwriting on one of the lost leaves was a curious inscription,
which suggests that the writer’s mind was running on some treasure
which was not spiritual. First at the top of the page, in clear
and large letters, was copied a passage from Psalm 55: “Cor meum
conturbatum est in me: et formido mortis cecidit super me. Et dixi,
Quis dabit pennas mihi sicut columbae, et volabo et requiescam.” (My
heart is disquieted within me: and the fear of death is fallen upon
me. And I said, O that I had wings like a dove: for then would I fly
away, and be at rest.) Then, in lettering of the same kind, came a
portion of Deuteronomy xxviii. 12: “Aperiet dominus thesaurum suum,
benedicetque cunctis operibus tuis.” (The Lord will disclose his
treasure, and will bless all the works of thy hands.) Under this, in
smaller letters, were the words, “Vide super hoc Ezechielis cap. xl.”
[Illustration: Old Hall, Master’s Lodge.]
If in the same volume the chapter in question is referred to, a
singular fact discloses itself. Certain words in the text are
underscored in red pencil, and fingers, inked in the margin, are
directed to the lines in which they occur. Taken in their consecutive
order these words run: “Ecce murus forinsecus ... ad portam quae
respiciebat viam orientalem ... mensus est a facie portae extrinsecus
ad orientem et aquilonem quinque cubitorum ... hoc est gazophylacium.”
This may be taken to mean, “Look at the outside wall ... at the gate
facing towards the eastern road ... he measured from the gate outwards
five cubits (7¹⁄₂ feet) towards the north-east ... there is the
treasure.”
The outer wall of the College, the wood-yard gate and the road through
the Nuns’ cemetery must at once have suggested themselves to Richard
Harrison, had he lived to see his friend’s bequest, and he must have
taken it as an instruction from the testator that a treasure known
to both parties was hidden in the spot indicated, close to Badcoke’s
chamber. And the first text cited must have conveyed to him that his
friend, in some deadly terror, had transferred the treasure thither
from the place where the two friends had originally laid it. But
the message never reached Harrison, and it is quite certain that no
treasure has been sought or found in that spot. If the Canterbury or
any other treasure was deposited there by Badcoke it rests there still.
To those who are curious to know more of this matter I would say:
first, ascertain minutely from Loggan’s seventeenth-century plan of the
College the position of the wood-yard gate; and, secondly, which indeed
should be firstly, make absolutely certain that John Badcoke was not
mystifying posterity by an elaborate jest.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Cooper, _Annals_, I., p. 393.
[2] _The Suppression of the Monasteries_ (Camden Society’s
Publications), p. 90.
[3] Cooper, _Annals_, II. p. 29.
The True History of Anthony Ffryar
The world, it is said, knows nothing of its greatest men. In our
Cambridge microcosm it may be doubted whether we are better informed
concerning some of the departed great ones who once walked the confines
of our Colleges. Which of us has heard of Anthony Ffryar of Jesus?
History is dumb respecting him. Yet but for the unhappy event recorded
in this unadorned chronicle his fame might have stood with that of
Bacon of Trinity, or Harvey of Caius. _They_ lived to be old men:
Ffryar died before he was thirty--his work unfinished, his fame unknown
even to his contemporaries.
So meagre is the record of his life’s work that it is contained in a
few bare notices in the College Bursar’s Books, in the Grace Books
which date his matriculation and degrees, and in the entry of his
burial in the register of All Saints’ Parish. These simple annals I
have ventured to supplement with details of a more or less hypothetical
character which will serve to show what humanity lost by his early
death. Readers will be able to judge for themselves the degree of care
which I have taken not to import into the story anything which may
savour of the improbable or romantic.
Anthony Ffryar matriculated in the year 1541-2, his age being then
probably 15 or 16. He took his B.A. degree in 1545, his M.A. in 1548.
He became a Fellow about the end of 1547, and died in the summer of
1551. Such are the documentary facts relating to him. Dr. Reston was
Master of the College during the whole of his tenure of a Fellowship
and died in the same year as Ffryar. The chamber which Ffryar occupied
as a Fellow was on the first floor of the staircase at the west end
of the Chapel. The staircase has since been absorbed in the Master’s
Lodge, but the doorway through which it was approached from the
cloister may still be seen. At the time when Ffryar lived there the
nave of the Chapel was used as a parish church, and his windows
overlooked the graveyard, then called “Jesus churchyard,” which is now
a part of the Master’s garden.
[Illustration: _North West Corner of Cloisters._]
Ffryar was of course a priest, as were nearly all the Fellows in his
day. But I do not gather that he was a theologian, or complied more
than formally with the obligation of his orders. He came to Cambridge
when the Six Articles and the suppression of the monasteries were of
fresh and burning import: he became a Fellow in the harsh Protestant
days of Protector Somerset: and in all his time the Master and the
Fellows were in scarcely disavowed sympathy with the rites and beliefs
of the Old Religion. Yet in the battle of creeds I imagine that he
took no part and no interest. I should suppose that he was a somewhat
solitary man, an insatiable student of Nature, and that his sympathies
with humanity were starved by his absorption in the New Science which
dawned on Cambridge at the Reformation.
When I say that he was an alchemist do not suppose that in the middle
of the sixteenth century the name of alchemy carried with it any
associations with credulity or imposture. It was a real science and
a subject of University study then, as its god-children, Physics and
Chemistry, are now. If the aims of its professors were transcendental
its methods were genuinely based on research. Ffryar was no visionary,
but a man of sense, hard and practical. To the study of alchemy he was
drawn by no hopes of gain, not even of fame, and still less by any
desire to benefit mankind. He was actuated solely by an unquenchable
passion for enquiry, a passion sterilizing to all other feeling. To
the somnambulisms of the less scientific disciples of his school, such
as the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life, he showed himself a
chill agnostic. All his thought and energies were concentrated on the
discovery of the _magisterium_, the master-cure of all human ailments.
For four years in his laboratory in the cloister he had toiled at
this pursuit. More than once, when it had seemed most near, it had
eluded his grasp; more than once he had been tempted to abandon it as
a mystery insoluble. In the summer of 1551 the discovery waited at his
door. He was sure, certain of success, which only experiment could
prove. And with the certainty arose a new passion in his heart--to make
the name of Ffryar glorious in the healing profession as that of Galen
or Hippocrates. In a few days, even within a few hours, the fame of his
discovery would go out into all the world.
The summer of 1551 was a sad time in Cambridge. It was marked by a more
than usually fatal outbreak of the epidemic called “the sweat,” when,
as Fuller says, “patients ended or mended in twenty-four hours.” It
had smouldered some time in the town before it appeared with sudden
and dreadful violence in Jesus College. The first to go was little
Gregory Graunge, schoolboy and chorister, who was lodged in the College
school in the outer court. He was barely thirteen years old, and known
by sight to Anthony Ffryar. He died on July 31, and was buried the
same day in Jesus churchyard. The service for his burial was held in
the Chapel and at night, as was customary in those days. Funerals in
College were no uncommon events in the sixteenth century. But in the
death of the poor child, among strangers, there was something to move
even the cold heart of Ffryar. And not the pity of it only impressed
him. The dim Chapel, the Master and Fellows obscurely ranged in their
stalls and shrouded in their hoods, the long-drawn miserable chanting
and the childish trebles of the boys who had been Gregory’s fellows
struck a chill into him which was not to be shaken off.
Three days passed and another chorister died. The College gates were
barred and guarded, and, except by a selected messenger, communication
with the town was cut off. The precaution was unavailing, and the boys’
usher, Mr. Stevenson, died on August 5. One of the junior Fellows,
sir Stayner--“sir” being the equivalent of B.A.--followed on August
7. The Master, Dr. Reston, died the next day. A gaunt, severe man was
Dr. Reston, whom his Fellows feared. The death of a Master of Arts on
August 9 for a time completed the melancholy list.
Before this the frightened Fellows had taken action. The scholars were
dismissed to their homes on August 6. Some of the Fellows abandoned the
College at the same time. The rest--a terrified conclave--met on August
8 and decreed that the College should be closed until the pestilence
should have abated. Until that time it was to be occupied by a certain
Robert Laycock, who was a College servant, and his only communication
with the outside world was to be through his son, who lived in Jesus
Lane. The decree was perhaps the result of the Master’s death, for he
was not present at the meeting.
Goodman Laycock, as he was commonly called, might have been the sole
tenant of the College but for the unalterable decision of Ffryar
to remain there. At all hazards his research, now on the eve of
realisation, must proceed; without the aid of his laboratory in College
it would miserably hang fire. Besides, he had an absolute assurance of
his own immunity if the experiment answered his confident expectations,
and his fancy was elated with the thought of standing, like another
Aaron, between the living and the dead, and staying the pestilence with
the potent _magisterium_. Until then he would bar his door even against
Laycock, and his supplies of food should be left on the staircase
landing. Solitude for him was neither unfamiliar nor terrible.
[Illustration: _The Master’s Stall._]
So for three days Ffryar and Laycock inhabited the cloister, solitary
and separate. For three days, in the absorption of his research,
Ffryar forgot fear, forgot the pestilence-stricken world beyond the
gate, almost forgot to consume the daily dole of food laid outside his
door. August 12 was the day, so fateful to humanity, when his labours
were to be crowned with victory: before midnight the secret of the
_magisterium_ would be solved.
Evening began to close in before he could begin the experiment which
was to be his last. It must of necessity be a labour of some hours,
and, before it began, he bethought him that he had not tasted food
since early morning. He unbarred his door and looked for the expected
portion. It was not there. Vexed at the remissness of Laycock he waited
for a while and listened for his approaching footsteps. At last he took
courage and descended to the cloister. He called for Laycock, but heard
no response. He resolved to go as far as the Buttery door and knock.
Laycock lived and slept in the Buttery.
At the Buttery door he beat and cried on Laycock; but in answer he
heard only the sound of scurrying rats. He went to the window, by the
hatch, where he knew that the old man’s bed lay, and called to him
again. Still there was silence. At last he resolved to force himself
through the unglazed window and take what food he could find. In the
deep gloom within he stumbled and almost fell over a low object, which
he made out to be a truckle-bed. There was light enough from the window
to distinguish, stretched upon it, the form of Goodman Laycock, stark
and dead.
Sickened and alarmed Ffryar hurried back to his chamber. More than ever
he must hasten the great experiment. When it was ended his danger would
be past, and he could go out into the town to call the buryers for the
old man. With trembling hands he lit the brazier which he used for his
experiments, laid it on his hearth and placed thereon the alembic which
was to distil the _magisterium_.
Then he sat down to wait. Gradually the darkness thickened and the
sole illuminant of the chamber was the wavering flame of the brazier.
He felt feverish and possessed with a nameless uneasiness which, for
all his assurance, he was glad to construe as fear: better that than
sickness. In the college and the town without was a deathly silence,
stirred only by the sweltering of the distilment, and, as the hours
struck, by the beating of the Chapel clock, last wound by Laycock. It
was as though the dead man spoke. But the repetition of the hours told
him that the time of his emancipation was drawing close.
Whether he slept I do not know. He was aroused to vivid consciousness
by the clock sounding _one_. The time when his experiment should have
ended was ten, and he started up with a horrible fear that it had been
ruined by his neglect. But it was not so. The fire burnt, the liquid
simmered quietly, and so far all was well.
Again the College bell boomed a solitary stroke: then a pause and
another. He opened, or seemed to open, his door and listened. Again
the knell was repeated. His mind went back to the night when he had
attended the obsequies of the boy-chorister. This must be a funeral
tolling. For whom? He thought with a shudder of the dead man in the
Buttery.
He groped his way cautiously down the stairs. It was a still, windless
night, and the cloister was dark as death. Arrived at the further side
of the court he turned towards the Chapel. Its panes were faintly
lighted from within. The door stood open and he entered.
In the place familiar to him at the chancel door one candle flickered
on a bracket. Close to it--his face cast in deep shade by the light
from behind--stood the ringer, in a gown of black, silent and absorbed
in his melancholy task. Fear had almost given way to wonder in the
heart of Ffryar, and, as he passed the sombre figure on his way to the
chancel door, he looked him resolutely in the face. The ringer was
Goodman Laycock.
Ffryar passed into the choir and quietly made his way to his accustomed
stall. Four candles burnt in the central walk about a figure laid on
trestles and draped in a pall of black. Two choristers--one on either
side--stood by it. In the dimness he could distinguish four figures,
erect in the stalls on either side of the Chapel. Their faces were
concealed by their hoods, but in the tall form which occupied the
Master’s seat it was not difficult to recognise Dr. Reston.
The bell ceased and the service began. With some faint wonder Ffryar
noted that it was the proscribed Roman Mass for the Dead. The solemn
introit was uttered in the tones of Reston, and in the deep responses
of the nearest cowled figure he recognised the voice of Stevenson, the
usher. None of the mourners seemed to notice Ffryar’s presence.
The dreary ceremony drew to a close. The four occupants of the
stalls descended and gathered round the palled figure in the aisle.
With a mechanical impulse, devoid of fear or curiosity, and with a
half-prescience of what he should see, Anthony Ffryar drew near and
uncovered the dead man’s face. He saw--himself.
At the same moment the last wailing notes of the office for the dead
broke from the band of mourners, and, one by one, the choristers
extinguished the four tapers.
“Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine,” chanted the hooded four: and one
candle went out.
“Et lux perpetua luceat ei,” was the shrill response of the two
choristers: and a second was extinguished.
“Cum sanctis tuis in aeternum,” answered the four: and one taper only
remained.
The Master threw back his hood, and turned his dreadful eyes straight
upon the living Anthony Ffryar: he threw his hand across the bier
and held him tight. “Cras tu eris mecum,”[4] he muttered, as if in
antiphonal reply to the dirge-chanters.
With a hiss and a sputter the last candle expired.
* * * * *
The hiss and the sputter and a sudden sense of gloom recalled Ffryar
to the waking world. Alas for labouring science, alas for the fame
of Ffryar, alas for humanity, dying and doomed to die! The vessel
containing the wonderful brew which should have redeemed the world had
fallen over and dislodged its contents on the fire below. An accident
reparable, surely, within a few hours; but not by Anthony Ffryar.
How the night passed with him no mortal can tell. All that is known
further of him is written in the register of All Saints’ parish. If
you can discover the ancient volume containing the records of the
year 1551--and I am not positive that it now exists--you will find it
written:
“Die Augusti xiii
Buryalls in Jhesus churchyarde
Goodman Laycock }
Anthony Ffryar } of yᵉ sicknesse”