man was sung to his grave by the dead, who were his sole companions
in Jesus College, on the night of August 12, 1551, is as certain and
indisputable as any other of the facts which are here set forth in the
history of Anthony Ffryar.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Samuel xxvii. 19.
The Necromancer
This is a story of Jesus College, and it relates to the year 1643. In
that year Cambridge town was garrisoned for the Parliament by Colonel
Cromwell and the troops of the Eastern Counties’ Association. Soldiers
were billeted in all the colleges, and contemporary records testify
to their violent behaviour and the damage which they committed in
the chambers which they occupied. In the previous year the Master of
Jesus College, Doctor Sterne, was arrested by Cromwell when he was
leaving the chapel, conveyed to London, and there imprisoned in the
Tower. Before the summer of 1643 fourteen of the sixteen Fellows were
expelled, and during the whole of that year there were, besides the
soldiers, only some ten or twelve occupants of the college. The names
of the two Fellows who were not ejected were John Boyleston and Thomas
Allen.
With Mr. Boyleston this history is only concerned for the part which
he took on the occasion of the visit to the college of the notorious
fanatic, William Dowsing. Dowsing came to Cambridge in December, 1642,
armed with powers to put in execution the ordinance of Parliament
for the reformation of churches and chapels. Among the devastations
committed by this ignorant clown, and faithfully recorded by him in his
diary, it stands on record that on December 28, in the presence and
perhaps with the approval of John Boyleston, he “digg’d up the steps
(_i.e._ of the altar) and brake down Superstitions and Angels, 120
at the least.” Dowsing’s account of his proceedings is supplemented
by the Latin History of the college, written in the reign of Charles
II. by one of the Fellows, a certain Doctor John Sherman. Sherman
records, but Dowsing does not, that there was a second witness of
the desecration--Thomas Allen. Of the two he somewhat enigmatically
remarks: “The one (_i.e._ Boyleston) stood behind a curtain to witness
the evil work: the other, afflicted to behold the exequies of his Alma
Mater, made his life a filial offering at her grave, and, to escape the
hands of wicked rebels, laid violent hands on himself.”
That Thomas Allen committed suicide seems a fairly certain fact:
and that remorse for the part which he had unwillingly taken in
the sacrilege of December 28 prompted his act we may accept on the
testimony of Sherman. But there is something more to tell which Sherman
either did not know or did not think fit to record. His book deals
only with the college and its society. He had no occasion to remember
Adoniram Byfield.
Byfield was a chaplain attached to the Parliamentary forces in
Cambridge, and quarters were assigned to him in Jesus College, in the
first floor room above the gate of entrance. Below his chamber was
the Porter’s lodge, which at that time served as the armoury of the
troopers who occupied the college. Above it, on the highest floor of
the gate-tower “kept” Thomas Allen. These were the only rooms on the
staircase. At the beginning of the Long Vacation of 1643 Allen was the
only member of the college who continued to reside.
Some light is thrown on the character of Byfield and his connection
with this story by a pudgy volume of old sermons of the Commonwealth
period which is contained in the library of the college. Among the
sermons which are bound up in it is one which bears the date 1643 and
is designated on the title page:
A FAITHFUL ADMONICION of the Baalite sin of _Enchanters & Stargazers_,
preacht to the Colonel Cromwell’s Souldiers in Saint Pulcher’s
(_i.e._ Saint Sepulchre’s) church, in Cambridge, by the fruitfull
Minister, _Adoniram Byfield_, late departed unto God, in the yeare
1643, touching that of _Acts_ the seventh, verse 43, _Ye took up the
Tabernacle of Moloch, the Star of your god Remphan, figures which ye
made to worship them; & I will carrie you away beyond Babylon_.
The discourse, in its title as in its contents, reveals its author
as one of the fanatics who wrought on the ignorance and prejudice
against “carnal” learning which actuated the Cromwellian soldiers in
their brutal usage of the University “scholars” in 1643. All Byfield’s
learning was contained in one book--_the_ Book. For him the revelation
which gave it sufficed for its interpretation. What needed Greek to the
man who spoke mysteries in unknown tongues, or the light of comment to
him who was carried in the spirit into the radiance of the third heaven?
Now Allen, too, was an enthusiast, lost in mystic speculation. His
speculation was in the then novel science of mathematics and astronomy.
Even to minds not darkened by the religious mania that possessed
Byfield that science was clouded with suspicion in the middle of the
seventeenth century. Anglican, Puritan, and Catholic were agreed in
regarding its great exponent, Descartes, as an atheist. Mathematicians
were looked upon as necromancers, and Thomas Hobbes says that in his
days at Oxford the study was considered to be “smutched with the black
art,” and fathers, from an apprehension of its malign influence,
refrained from sending their sons to that University. How deep the
prejudice had sunk into the soul of Adoniram his sermon shows.
The occasion which suggested it was this. A pious cornet, leaving
a prayer-meeting at night, fell down one of the steep, unlighted
staircases of the college and broke his neck. Two or three of the
troopers were taken with a dangerous attack of dysentery. There was
talk of these misadventures among the soldiers, who somehow connected
them with Allen and his studies. The floating gossip gathered into a
settled conviction in the mind of Adoniram.
For Allen was a mysterious person. Whether it was because he was
engrossed in his studies, or that he shrank from exposing himself
to the insults of the soldiers, he seldom showed himself outside
his chamber. Perhaps he was tied to it by the melancholy to which
Sherman ascribed his violent end. In his three months’ sojourn on
Allen’s staircase Byfield had not seen him a dozen times, and the
mystery of his closed door awakened the most fantastic speculations
in the chaplain’s mind. For hours together, in the room above, he
could hear the mumbled tones of Allen’s voice, rising and falling in
ceaseless flow. No answer came, and no word that the listener could
catch conveyed to his mind any intelligible sense. Once the voice
was raised in a high key and Byfield distinctly heard the ominous
ejaculation, “Avaunt, Sathanas, avaunt!” Once through his partly open
door he had caught sight of him standing before a board chalked with
figures and symbols which the imagination of Byfield interpreted
as magical. At night, from the court below, he would watch the
astrologer’s lighted window, and when Allen turned his perspective
glass upon the stars the conviction became rooted in his watcher’s mind
that he was living in perilous neighbourhood to one of the peeping and
muttering wizards of whom the Holy Book spoke.
[Illustration: _Main Gateway & Porter’s Lodge._]
An unusual occurrence strengthened the suspicions of Byfield. One
night he heard Allen creep softly down the staircase past his room;
and, opening his door, he saw him disappear round the staircase foot,
candle in hand. Silently, in the dark, Byfield followed him and saw
him pass into the Porter’s lodge. The soldiers were in bed and the
armoury was unguarded. Through the lighted pane he saw Allen take down
a horse-pistol from a rack on the wall. He examined it closely, tried
the lock, poised it as if to take aim, then replaced it and, leaving
the lodge, disappeared up the staircase with his candle. A world of
suspicions rushed on Byfield’s mind, and they were not allayed when the
soldiers reported in the morning that the pistols were intact. But one
of the sick soldiers died that week.
Brooding on this incident Adoniram became more than ever convinced of
the Satanic purposes and powers of his neighbour, and his suspicions
were confirmed by another mysterious circumstance. As the weeks passed
he became aware that at a late hour of night Allen’s door was quietly
opened. There followed a patter of scampering feet down the staircase,
succeeded by silence. In an hour or two the sound came back. The
patter went up the stairs to Allen’s chamber, and then the door was
closed. To lie awake waiting for this ghostly sound became a horror to
Byfield’s diseased imagination. In his bed he prayed and sang psalms to
be relieved of it. Then he abandoned thoughts of sleep and would sit
up waiting if he might surprise and detect this walking terror of the
night. At first in the darkness of the stairs it eluded him. One night,
light in hand, he managed to get a glimpse of it as it disappeared at
the foot of the stairs. It was shaped like a large black cat.
Far from allaying his terrors, the discovery awakened new questionings
in the heart of Byfield. Quietly he made his way up to Allen’s door.
It stood open and a candle burnt within. From where he stood he could
see each corner of the room. There was the board scribbled with
hieroglyphs: there were the magical books open on the table: there were
the necromancer’s instruments of unknown purpose. But there was no live
thing in the room, and no sound save the rustling of papers disturbed
by the night air from the open window.
A horrible certitude seized on the chaplain’s mind. This Thing that he
had caught sight of was no cat. It was the Evil One himself, or it was
the wizard translated into animal shape. On what foul errand was he
bent? Who was to be his new victim? With a flash there came upon his
mind the story how Phinehas had executed judgment on the men that were
joined to Baal-peor, and had stayed the plague from the congregation of
Israel. He would be the minister of the Lord’s vengeance on the wicked
one, and it should be counted unto him for righteousness unto all
generations for evermore.
He went down to the armoury in the Porter’s lodge. Six pistols, he
knew, were in the rack on the wall. Strange that to-night there were
only five--a fresh proof of the justice of his fears. One of the five
he selected, primed, loaded and cocked it in readiness for the wizard’s
return. He took his stand in the shadow of the wall, at the entrance of
the staircase. That his aim might be surer he left his candle burning
at the stair-foot.
[Illustration: _On ‘A’ Staircase._]
In solemn stillness the minutes drew themselves out into hours while
Adoniram waited and prayed to himself. Then in the poring darkness he
became sensible of a moving presence, noiseless and unseen. For a
moment it appeared in the light of the candle, not two paces distant.
It was the returning cat. A triumphant exclamation sprang to Byfield’s
lips, “God shall shoot at them, suddenly shall they be wounded”--and he
fired.
With the report of the pistol there rang through the court a dismal
outcry, not human nor animal, but resembling, as it seemed to the
excited imagination of the chaplain, that of a lost soul in torment.
With a scurry the creature disappeared in the darkness of the court,
and Byfield did not pursue it. The deed was done--that he felt sure
of--and as he replaced the pistol in the rack a gush of religious
exaltation filled his heart. That night there was no return of the
pattering steps outside his door, and he slept well.
* * * * *
Next day the body of Thomas Allen was discovered in the grove which
girds the college--his breast pierced by a bullet. It was surmised
that he had dragged himself thither from the court. There were tracks
of blood from the staircase foot, where it was conjectured that he had
shot himself, and a pistol was missing from the armoury. Some of the
inmates of the court had been aroused by the discharge of the weapon.
The general conclusion was that recorded by Sherman--that the fatal act
was prompted by brooding melancholy.
Of his part in the night’s transactions Byfield said nothing. The grim
intelligence, succeeding the religious excitation of the night, brought
to him questioning, dread, horror. Whatever others might surmise, he
was fatally convinced that it was by his hand that Allen had died. Pity
for the dead man had no place in the dark cabin of his soul. But how
was it with himself? How should his action be weighed before the awful
Throne? His lurid thought pictured the Great Judgment as already begun,
the Book opened, the Accuser of the Brethren standing to resist him,
and the dreadful sentence of Cain pronounced upon him, “Now art thou
cursed from the earth.”
In the evening he heard them bring the dead man to the chamber above
his own. They laid him on his bed, and, closing the door, left him and
descended the stairs. The sound of their footsteps died away and left
a dreadful silence. As the darkness grew the horror of the stillness
became insupportable. How he yearned that he might hear again the
familiar muffled voice in the room above! And in an access of fervour
he prayed aloud that the terrible present might pass from him, that
the hours might go back, as on the dial of Ahaz, and all might be as
yesterday.
Suddenly, as the prayer died on his lips, the silence was broken. He
could not be mistaken. Very quietly he heard Allen’s door open, and
the old, pattering steps crept softly down the stairs. They passed his
door. They were gone before he could rise from his knees to open it. A
momentary flash lighted the gloom in Byfield’s soul. What if his prayer
was heard, if Allen was not dead, if the events of the past twenty-four
hours were only a dream and a delusion of the Wicked One? Then the
horror returned intensified. Allen was assuredly dead. This creeping
Thing--what might it be?
For an hour in his room Byfield sat in agonised dread. Most the thought
of the open door possessed him like a nightmare. Somehow it must be
closed before the foul Thing returned. Somehow the mangled shape within
must be barred up from the wicked powers that might possess it. The
fancy gripped and stuck to his delirious mind. It was horrible, but it
must be done. In a cold terror he opened his door and looked out.
A flickering light played on the landing above. Byfield hesitated.
But the thought that the cat might return at any moment gave him a
desperate courage. He mounted the stairs to Allen’s door. Precisely
as yesternight it stood wide open. Inside the room the books, the
instruments, the magical figures were unchanged, and a candle, exposed
to the night wind from the casement, threw wavering shadows on the
walls and floor. At a glance he saw it all, and he saw the bed where,
a few hours ago, the poor remains of Allen had been laid. The coverlet
lay smooth upon it. The dead necromancer was not there.
Then as he stood, footbound, at the door a wandering breath from the
window caught the taper, and with a gasp the flame went out. In the
black silence he became conscious of a moving sound. Nearer, up the
stairs, they drew--the soft creeping steps--and in panic he shrank
backwards into Allen’s room before their advance. Already they were
on the last flight of the stairs; and then in the doorway the darkness
parted and Byfield saw. In a ring of pallid light that seemed to
emanate from its body he beheld the cat--horrible, gory, its foreparts
hanging in ragged collops from its neck. Slowly it crept into the room,
and its eyes, smoking with dull malevolence, were fastened on Byfield.
Further he backed into the room, to the corner where the bed was laid.
The creature followed. It crouched to spring upon him. He dropped
in a sitting posture on the bed and as he saw it launch itself upon
him, he closed his eyes and found speech in a gush of prayer, “O my
God, make haste for my help.” In an agony he collapsed upon the couch
and clutched its covering with both hands. Beneath it he gripped the
stiffened limbs of the dead necromancer, and, when he opened his eyes,
the darkness had returned and the spectral cat was gone.
Brother John’s Bequest
On a certain morning in the summer of the year 1510 John Eccleston,
Doctor in Divinity and Master of Jesus College in Cambridge, stood
at the door of his lodge looking into the cloister court. There
was a faint odour of extinguished candles in the air, and a bell
automatically clanked in unison with its bearer’s step. It was
carried by a young acolyte, who lagged in the rear of a small band
of white-robed figures who were just disappearing from sight at the
corner of the passage leading to the entrance court. They were the five
Fellows of the newly-constituted College.
As they disappeared, the Master, with much deliberation, spat into the
cloister walk.
To spit behind a man’s back might be accounted a mark of disgust,
contempt, malice--at least of disapproval. Such were not the feelings
of Dr. Eccleston.
It is a fact known all over the world, Christian and heathen, that
visitants from the unseen realm cannot endure to be spat at. The
Master’s action was prophylactic. For supernatural visitings of the
transitory, curable kind the rites of the Church are, no doubt,
efficacious. In inveterate cases it is well to leave no remedy untried.
With bell, book and candle the Master and Fellows had just completed
a lustration of the lodge. The bell had clanked in the Founder’s
Chamber and in the Master’s oratory. The Master’s bedchamber had been
well soused with holy water. The candle had explored dark places in
cupboards and under the stairs. If It was there before it was almost
inconceivable that It remained there now. But one cannot be too careful.
Two days previously a funeral had taken place in the College. It
was a shabby affair. The deceased, John Baldwin, late a brother of
the dissolved Hospital of Saint John, was put away in an obscure
part of the College churchyard--now the Master’s garden--behind some
elder bushes which grew in the corner bounded by the street and the
“chimney.” The mourners were the grave-digger, the sexton and the
parson of All Saints’ Church. Though brother John had died in a college
chamber the society of Jesus marked its reprobation of his manner of
living by absenting themselves from his obsequies.
Brother John had been a disappointment: uncharitable persons might say
he was a fraud. He had got into the College by false pretences. In life
he had disgraced it by his excesses, and, when he was dead, he had
perpetrated a mean practical joke on the society. It is not well for a
man in religious orders to joke when he is dead.
How did it come that brother John Baldwin, late Granger of the
Augustinian Hospital of Saint John, died in Jesus College?
The Hospital of Saint John was dissolved in the year 1510, to make
room for the new college designed by the Lady Margaret. Bishops of
Ely for three centuries and more had been its patrons and visitors,
and dissolute James Stanley, bishop in 1510, fought stoutly for its
maintenance. But circumstances were too strong for the bishop. The
ancient Hospital was hopelessly bankrupt. The buildings were ruinous:
there was not a doit in the treasury chest: the household goods were
pawned to creditors in the town. The Master, William Tomlyn, had
disappeared, none knew whither, and only two brethren were left in the
place. One of them was John Baldwin: the other was the Infirmarer, a
certain Bartholomew Aspelon.
On the eve of the dissolution, bishop Stanley wrote a letter to the
Master and Fellows of the other Cambridge society of which he was
visitor, namely, Jesus College. He commended to their charitable
care brother John Baldwin, an aged man of godly conversation who was
disposed to bestow his worldly goods for the comfort and sustenance of
the Master and Fellows in consideration of their maintenance of him in
College during the remaining years of his earthly pilgrimage. It was
a not uncommon practice in those days for monasteries and colleges to
accept as inmates persons, clerical or lay, who wished to withdraw
from the world and were willing, either during life or by testamentary
arrangements, to guarantee their hosts against pecuniary loss.
Report said that, though the Hospital was penniless, brother John in
his private circumstances was well-to-do and even affluent. It did not
befit the Master and Fellows to enquire how he had come by his wealth.
They were wretchedly poor, and the bishop’s certificate of character
was all that could be desired. They thanked the bishop for his
prudent care for their interests and covenanted to give the religious
man a domicile in the College with allowance for victuals, barber,
laundress, wine, wax and all other things necessary for celebrating
Divine service, as to any Fellow of the College. Brother John promptly
transferred himself to his new quarters, which were in a room called
“the loft,” on the top floor above the Founder’s Chamber in the
Master’s lodge.
The Master and Fellows were disappointed in brother John’s luggage. It
consisted simply of two brass-bound boxes, heavy but unquestionably
small, even for a man of religion. An encouraging feature about them
was that they bore the monogram of Saint John’s Hospital. Brother John
and his former co-mate of the Hospital, Bartholomew Aspelon, constantly
affirmed that the missing Master, William Tomlyn, had decamped with
the contents of the Hospital treasury. But the society of Jesus hoped
that they were not telling the truth. Brother John kept the two boxes
under his bed. They were always carefully locked, but brother John
threw out vague hints that their contents were destined for a princely
benefaction to his hospitable entertainers.
In other respects brother John’s equipment was not such as would
betoken a man of wealth. Rather it savoured of monastical austerity.
His only suit of clothing was ancient, and even greasy. It was never
changed, night or day. Brother John was apparently under a religious
obligation to abstain from washing.
As a man of godly conversation brother John was unfortunate in his
personal appearance. It was presumably a stroke of paralysis which had
drawn up one side of his face and correspondingly depressed the other.
His mouth was a diagonal compromise with the rest of his features. One
eye was closed, and the other was bleared and watery. His nose was red,
but the rest of his face was of a parchment colour.
Brother John was an elderly person, and continued ill health
unfortunately confined him to his chamber, above the Master’s. He
expressed a deep regret that he could not share the society of the
Fellows in the Hall at their meals of oatmeal porridge, salt fish, and
thin ale. His distressing ailments necessitated a sustaining diet of
capons and oysters, supplied to him in his chamber by the College. He
was equally debarred from attending services in the Chapel, but the
wine with which the society had covenanted to supply him was punctually
consumed at the private offices which he performed in his chamber. A
suitable pecuniary compensation was made to him on the ground that his
domestic arrangements rendered the services of the College laundress
unnecessary.
Bartholomew Aspelon, who lodged in an alehouse in the town, was the
constant and affectionate attendant at brother John’s sick bed: for,
indeed, he seldom got out of it. From a neighbouring tavern he brought
to him abundant supplies of the ypocras and malmsey wine which were
requisite for the maintenance of the invalid’s failing strength.
Brother Bartholomew was an individual of a merry countenance and gifted
with cheerful song. In the sick room the Fellows would often hear him
trolling a drinking catch, to which the invalid joined a quavering
note. So constant and familiar was the lay that John Bale, one of the
Fellows, remembered it thirty years afterwards, and put it in the mouth
of a roystering monk whom he introduced as one of the characters in his
play, _King Johan_. The words ran thus:
Wassayle, wassayle, out of the mylke payle,
Wassayle, wassayle, as whyte as my nayle,
Wassayle, wassayle, in snow, frost and hayle,
Wassayle, wassayle, with partriche and rayle,
Wassayle, wassayle, that much doth avayle,
Wassayle, wassayle, that never wyll fayle.