by the Fellows with growing disapproval: and they were not comforted
when they discovered that the new robe which they had contracted to
supply to their guest had been pledged to the host of the Sarazin’s
Head in part payment of an account rendered. But they possessed their
souls in patience as they noted that the health of their venerable
guest was declining with obvious rapidity. With some insistence they
pointed out to the Master the desirability of having a prompt and clear
understanding about brother John’s testamentary dispositions. Dr.
Eccleston was entirely of the Fellows’ mind in the matter.
[Illustration: _Fireplace in Master’s Lodge._]
One evening in June, some three months after brother John had begun
his residence in the College, it seemed to Dr. Eccleston that the time
had come to sound him about his intentions. The patient was very low,
and brother Bartholomew was much depressed. With inkhorn and pen the
Master went upstairs to the sick man’s chamber. Nuncupatory wills were
in those days accepted as legal obligations, and the Master was minded
that he would not leave brother John until he had obtained, from his
dictation, a statement of his intentions as to the disposal of his
goods.
Obviously brother John’s mind was wandering when the Master entered the
room, for he greeted his arrival with a snatch of the old scurvy tune,
Wassayle, wassayle, that never wyll fayle,
and feebly added “Art there, bully Bartholomew? Bear me thy hand to the
bottle, for I am dry.”
“Brother John, brother John,” said the Master, “bestir thee, and think
of thy state. It is time for thee to consider of thy world’s gear and
how thou wilt bestow it according to thy promise to our poor company,
for their tendance of thee.” Brother John raised himself in his bed
and opened his serviceable eye. Something like a grin puckered up his
sloping mouth. “Art thou of that counsel, goodman Doctor?” said he:
“then have with thee. I were a knave if I did not thank you for your
kindness, and, trust me, ye shall not be the losers for your pains.
Take quill and write. I will dictate my will in two fillings of thy
pen. Write”: and the Master wrote.
“To the Master and Fellows of Jesus College I give and bequeath that
chest that lieth beneath my bed and is marked with a great letter A,
and all that is in it. To brother Bartholomew Aspelon, late of the
Hospital of Saint John, in like manner I bequeath that other chest that
is marked B.”
“Is that all?” asked the Master. “Gogswouns, it is all I have,” said
brother John. “Yet stay, good Master. Nothing for nothing is a safe
text. Thou shalt write it as a condition, on pain of forfeiting my
bequest, that ye shall bury me in the aisle of your church, immediately
before the High Altar: that ye shall keep my obit, or anniversary,
with _placebo_ and _dirige_ and mass of requiem; and that once each
week a Fellow that is a priest shall pray and sing for the soul of
John Baldwin, the benefactor of the College. Is it rehearsed, master
doctor?” “It is written,” said the Master. “_Ite, missa est_,” said
the invalid, “and fetch me a stoup of small ale, good Master.”
* * * * *
A few days later John Baldwin made his unimproving, unregretted end.
Brother Bartholomew carried off his portion of the legacy. The other
chest was deposited on the table in the Founder’s Chamber and opened by
the Master before the assembled Fellows.
It contained half a dozen bricks, a fair quantity of straw and
shavings, and nothing else--nothing except a small scrap of torn and
dirty paper at the bottom of the box. With one voice the Master and
Fellows decreed that their unworthy guest should be buried in the least
respectable portion of the churchyard. Which thing was done, as I have
already mentioned.
Of course the dirty paper under the straw was scrutinized by the
Master and Fellows. But it was of no importance. It looked like a deed
or a will, in which the deceased, in return for nursing in sickness,
proposed to give some unspecified property to his disreputable
friend, Aspelon, and apparently stipulated that he should be buried
in the choir of the Hospital chapel. But it was not witnessed: it had
obviously been torn up, and all that was left of it was the part on the
scribe’s right hand. It ran thus:
ego Johannes Baldewyn nuper frat
rigiam do lego et confirmo domino
u pro mea in egritudine relevaci
domino Bartolomeo Aspelon confrat
ne quod habeat uter prior invener
am in tumulo sepultus subter quen
parte chori in sacello Hospitalis
theshede
The last word, if rightly read, was unintelligible.
But the College had by no means done with brother John. On the evening
after his burial, as the Master and Fellows were leaving the Chapel,
their steps were suddenly arrested as they heard the familiar Wassail
stave raised in a thin and tuneless voice. It came from the open
window of the deceased brother, and unquestionably the voice was not
Aspelon’s. In consternation they listened till it died ineffectually
away in an attempted chorus strain. After brief deliberation they
resolved to visit the “loft” in a body--Master, Fellows, “disciples”
and servants--and see what this thing might mean. They found the place
as blank and silent as it remained when the deceased had been taken out
to his burial. But before they reached the stair-foot in their descent
the thin piping strain fell on their ears again, and this time none
were bold enough to go back. After that, at all times of night and
day, the interminable ditty was fitfully renewed, and panic held the
College. At night the “disciples” huddled in one room, and the Fellows
lay two in a bed.
Unfortunately for Dr. Eccleston, he was condemned to the solitude of
the lodge, deserted even by his _famulus_, the sizar who attended
him. He sat up all night and studied works of divinity, in the hope
that theology, if it did not put the songster to rout, would at least
distract his own thoughts from the devilish roundelay in the garret
above his head. On the second night he began to congratulate himself on
the success of his experiment, for the singer relapsed into silence. In
his exhaustion he might even have slept, but that the door of his study
had a gusty habit of flying open unexpectedly and closing with a bang.
He had actually begun to drowse over his folio when a sharp pressure
on his right shoulder aroused him. Hastily turning his head he saw
the papery countenance of the dead brother gazing on him with all the
affection that one eye could testify, the chin planted on the Master’s
shoulder, and the mouth slewed into a simulation of innocent mirth. Dr.
Eccleston read no more divinity that night.
Early next morning a College meeting was summoned by the Master. It
was resolved by the unanimous voice of the society that brother John’s
remains should be exhumed and re-interred in the middle of the chancel
aisle, in accordance with the stipulation of the deceased: and there
was no delay in carrying the resolution into effect. The Master also
insisted that the whole society should help in the purgation of his
lodge and the loft above it, in accordance with the ritual of the
Church in that case applying: and this too was incontinently done, as
I have already described. The consideration of the performance of the
rest of the contract entered into by the Master with the late brother
was deferred until it should be ascertained how far the deceased was
satisfied with the measures already adopted.
Whether John Baldwin acquiesced in this somewhat lame execution of
his wishes, or whether his perturbed spirit was laid to rest by the
rites of exorcism it is impossible to say. It is quite certain that he
troubled the College no more.
But in the afternoon following his re-interment an incident happened
which possibly had some connection with the placation of his shade.
Bartholomew Aspelon had not attended brother John’s funeral in the
churchyard. In truth, he was filled with a moral resentment at his late
friend’s lack of feeling and good taste which was only equalled by
that of the society of Jesus: and the motive was the same. On opening
the treasure chest bequeathed to him he had found it filled with
bricks and straw, just like the other. If the Fellows were indignant
Bartholomew was more so: for, from private sources of information which
he possessed as a member of the dissolved Hospital, he was assured
that brother John had prospered in its service to the extent of £200,
at the least, and he was profoundly convinced that the whole sum had
gone into the treasury of Jesus College. Under the straw he had found
a morsel of paper, which was, indeed, too fragmentary to give any
connected clue to its drift, but which, nevertheless, rather plainly
indicated on the part of the deceased an intention of bequeathing to
the College a certain treasure, the whereabouts of which, owing to the
imperfection of the document, were not stated. He was confirmed in his
interpretation of the manuscript by the honourable interment given to
brother John’s remains in the Chapel.
Filled with resentment at the ingratitude of the patient whom he had so
tenderly nursed and at the duplicity of the “dons” who had robbed him
of the reward of his devoted service, Bartholomew sought the Master’s
lodge. He used no language of studied courtesy in representing to Dr.
Eccleston the nature of his grievance: and the Master, whose temper
was severely tried by want of sleep and the disagreeable nature of
the interment ceremony in which he had just unwillingly participated,
replied with equal vehemence.
“Ye are robbers all,” cried Bartholomew: “you cheated him in his
weakness into signing his property away from the friend who smoothed
his pillow in his dying hours.”
“Thou naughty knave,” retorted the Master, “talk not to me of bricks
and straw. It was gold that was contained in thy box, and the devil
knows by what scurvy arts thou didst cozen us of our promised reward.
His own paper convicts thee of the fraudulent attempt to get him to
will his goods to thee. See what he left in the bottom of our box.” And
the Master threw the scrap above-transcribed upon the table. “Take it
and never let me see thy rogue’s face again.”
Brother Bartholomew leaped in his skin as he grabbed the document. He
made no ceremony of leave-taking, but bolted down the stairs. When he
got into the cloister outside he took from his pouch a dingy scrap of
paper, which was the fellow of that which the Master had thrown to him.
What he read on it was this:
Sciant omnes presentes et futuri quod
er Hospitalis Divi Johannis apud Canteb
doctori Ecclyston et sociis Collegii Jes
one equaliter inter se dividendum aut
ri meo in antedicto Hospitali ea racio
it totum thesaurum meum ita ut extat cl
dam lapidem iacentem in septentrionali
eiusdem cuius istud signum extat a dea
Then brother Bartholomew put the two pieces together, and it was thus
that he translated the continuous lines:
Know all men present and to come that | I, John Baldwin, late a broth
er of the Hospital of Saint John at Camb | ridge, give, grant and bequeath to master
doctor Eccleston and the fellows of the College of Jes | u for my relief during sick
ness, equally to be divided among them, or | to master Bartholomew Aspelon, a brother
of mine in the aforesaid Hospital, provid | ed that he shall have it who is first fin
der, all my treasure as it now lies pri | vily buried in a tomb under a cert
ain stone lying on the northern | side of the choir in the chapel of the Hospital
aforesaid, of which this is the sign, a dea | th’s head.
Of what further pertains to brother John Baldwin and his bequest I
have no more to say than that his name is not included in the Form
for the Commemoration of Benefactors of Jesus College. Also that for
twenty years after the events here recorded a cheerful individual, in
a lay habit, might be seen, seated of custom on the ale-bench at the
Sarazin’s Head. He drank of the best, paid in cash and never lacked for
money. He could tell a good tale and he sang a good song. His Wassail
song was always in request at the Sarazin’s Head.
The Burden of Dead Books
By its air of reverend quiet, its redolence of dusty death, in the
marshalled lines of its sleeping occupants, and in the labels that
briefly name the dead author and his work, an ancient repository of
books, such as a college library, suggests the, perhaps, hackneyed
similitude of a great cemetery. Here and there, among the vast
majority of the undistinguished dead, we detect names that are still
familiar. Here and there are the monuments of men who have at least
been the ancestors of a surviving family of scholars and scientists.
Some names will awake memories, not for the individual achievement of
their bearers, but for the cause in which they worked. Royalist and
Republican, Anglican, Romanist and Puritan here have laid down the
arms which they bore against each other, and together sleep the sleep
from which there is no rising. Though the issues for which these men
fought are dead things now, their spirit is with us and their works
follow them. But with the majority it is not so. Outnumbering all
others are the hand-labourers of whose names the catalogue has no
record. Their daywork, paid or unpaid, was commanded by more ambitious
masters, who absorbed whatever temporary measure of credit attended
the collaboration. Over the ashes of these unnamed toilers we waste
no regrets: they sleep well. It is the fallen ambitions, the wasted
energies, the mistaken aims of the master-craftsmen in letters that are
food for ironical contemplation.
I do not know that in such a cemetery of small and great, the servant
and his master, a more dismal corner exists than that which is reserved
for the stillborn. They are a great host, and they are mostly of the
family of Theology. Of one such product of fruitless travail I have
to speak. It has rested undisturbed in the library of Jesus College
for over 300 years, and in all that time, perhaps, no human being,
except the official who transcribed its title in the catalogue, has
ever had occasion to recall its existence. Its author was one Matthew
Makepeace, S.T.P., a Fellow of the College in the last quarter of the
sixteenth century. Its elaborate title is: “Speculum Archimagiae, sive
Straguli Babyloniaci Direptio, necnon Offuciarum et Praestigiarum
Romano-papisticarum Apocalypsis liberrima”: from which I conclude that
the Pope received some hard knocks in it, and that the Babylonian
lady of the Book of Revelation was left in pitiful disarray by the
learned doctor’s assault. The title-page informs us that the book was
printed at London by Melchisedeck Bradwell, for John Bill, in the year
1604: furthermore, that it had been “perused and approved by publike
authoritie.” That it was ever perused I do not believe. Only in the
most cursory way I have perused it myself, and I do not think that
any other man has done as much. To our patient ancestors a book was
a book, let it be ever so dull. They glossed it, annotated it, added
their approving or inimical comments. But nobody has been at the pains
to add his marginal notes to the text of Matthew Makepeace. Its cover
is unworn, its pages as clean as on the day when it first saw light.
This only: on a loose scrap of paper, contained between its pages, I
have discovered a name written in Greek characters and a short Greek
quotation.
Let me get done with this dull book as fast as I can. It is, of course,
written in Latin, and its style does not suggest that the author had
a facile Latinity. The extensive list of authors cited indicates that
he had read widely, but digested little of what he read, in Patristic
and Rabbinical literature. The purpose of the book is to discredit the
claim of the Roman Church to the possession of supernatural gifts. The
subjects dealt with are naturally the Roman sacraments and hagiology.
The learned author arrives at the conclusion, on grounds which I
have not had the patience to investigate, that the human exercise of
miraculous powers ceased at the precise date, A.D. 430.
Of the writer, Doctor Makepeace, I can find little more information
than is supplied in the History of Jesus College, written by John
Sherman in the reign of Charles II. This work, composed in the fulsome
Latin which was esteemed elegant in the seventeenth century, gives
brief biographical notes of each of the Fellows from the date of the
foundation of the College. There are various manuscript versions of the
History, some ampler than others, and if you wish to read the original
Latin, of which I subjoin a translation, you must search out the single
copy which contains the full note of his life and work. It may be
rendered:
“Matthew Makepeace, S.T.P., of the county of Northumberland, succeeded
to a fellowship in 1565: a most learned investigator of theological
matters (_rei theologicae indagator_), especially of the writings of
the Fathers: a chastiser of the Pope (_Papomastix_): he illuminated by
his knowledge the College and the University, most fearlessly attacking
the unclean practices of the Babylonian harlot. He had one much-loved
pupil, Marmaduke Dacre, first-born son of the lord baron Dacre, of the
county of Cumberland. The same having disappeared from the College in
a fashion as yet unknown (_modo adhuc inscibili_) the old man, seized
with a phrenetic malady, gradually declined (_contabuit_), often
asserting that he was that same pupil whom he had lost. Dying at the
age of sixty years, he was buried in the chapel, September 8th, 1604.”
To the information given by Sherman I can only add the evidence of a
blue flagstone--unhappily removed in the course of chapel restoration,
in 1863--which lay in the floor of the south transept. Its simple
inscription was: “_Matthaeus Makepeace, S.T.P., decessit, 1604_.”
With the evidence as to the date of the death of Dr. Makepeace,
furnished by Sherman and the old gravestone, it is difficult to
reconcile a curious entry in the register of burials in All Saints’
Parish Churchyard. The entry is dated April 13, 1654, and it runs:--
“Matthew Makepeace, an oldman yᵗ lodged with yᵉ widow Pearson in Jesus
Lane, of yᵉ age of about three score years and ten. He was burried in
Poorman’s Corner, by yᵉ parish.”
The date, the age of the deceased, the place of burial, the fact that
this Makepeace was evidently a pauper and a stranger to Cambridge, all
would seem to make it certain that he could not be the same man who is
mentioned by Sherman. Nevertheless, I have my doubts, and the story
which I have to unfold will explain the reason.
[Illustration: _A Corner of the Library._]
The story begins on August 16th, 1604, the very day on which the
learned _Speculum_ made its first appearance, bound and complete, on
the table of Matthew Makepeace. The doctor’s chamber was on an upper
floor of the staircase at the western end of the chapel nave, and it
overlooked what was then called Fair Yard, a plot of ground since
annexed to the Master’s garden. August 16th happened to be the last of
the three days of Garlick Fair, the ancient fair which, since the days
of King Stephen, had been associated with the Church of Saint Radegund,
and took place under the chapel walls.
Matthew Makepeace was alone. It was Long Vacation, and his sole pupil,
Marmaduke Dacre, who shared his chamber, had been allowed a day’s
outing. Heavy books of divinity lined the walls of the chamber, which
had little of comfort about it and no elegance. The doctor’s high bed,
with curtains of faded say, the pupil’s truckle-bed, a hanging cupboard
for clothes, a rough deal stand on which was set an ewer and basin of
coarse earthenware, a chair, two stools and a large oaken table in
the middle of the room--these were the doctor’s principal household
effects. There was but one window, of bottle-green glass, and its
lattice was open to admit the air and sunlight of the August afternoon.
On the table lay the doctor’s new book, brave in its stamped leather
and gilded label: but it was unopened. It was the outcome of five and
twenty years of incessant study, and the single offspring of Matthew’s
lucubration. And now that it was brought to birth he was in a mood to
stifle it. It had been begun in the white heat of the controversies
with Rome and Spain, and it lingered in parturition until the fire
had burnt low, and the readers who should have applauded it were in
their graves. Its author was not very sure that its contentions were
true, and he was very sure that they were addressed to deaf ears.
Had he gone out into the world he might have learnt what the world
was interested in--what battles remained to fight, what causes were
already finished. But Matthew’s world consisted of books, and his books
were out of date. Of recent political developments, of the growth of
scientific knowledge, of the blossoming of a native literature he had
no more knowledge than a child. The work which had been begun with
enthusiasm had been completed in mechanical drudgery, and too late he
was conscious of the fact.
How well he recollected the enthusiasms of 1579! How ardent his friends
were that his immense learning should signalise itself in the great
national strife with the powers of darkness! If he could only live his
life again with the old enthusiasm and the added knowledge of a life
that should combine learning and action! The boy, Dacre, blessed with
genius, wealth, high birth and noble aspirations--how wide the horizon
that opened before him! For Matthew Makepeace it rested only to be
forgotten before he died.
It was a strange bird of passage that had dropped the seed from which
Matthew’s book grew. Alessandro Galiani was a medical doctor of Padua
University when he came to Cambridge, and for a few months resided in
Jesus College. Why he came nobody precisely knew; but he claimed to be
a Protestant refugee, and he was certainly profoundly learned in many
languages, as well as in medicine. He brought letters of introduction
from the Chancellor, Lord Burleigh, and it was surmised that he was an
agent of the Government, engaged to report on the University. But his
talk and conduct were so equivocal that the suspicion presently arose
that his Protestantism was simulated, and that he was a papal spy. The
sentiments to which he gave expression were certainly Macchiavellian in
the highest degree--intolerable to English ears. Wherefore his sojourn
at Cambridge ended abruptly after a few months, and he passed away into
the same mysterious spaces from which he had come. He was a man of
extraordinary powers of observation and suggestion, and from a chance
hint that he once let fall Makepeace got the idea of writing his book.
It was Galiani who directed his attention to the Jewish and Arabic
authors whom he consulted. But how little of the force and insight of
the Italian entered into the completed book, Makepeace knew only too
well.
So the book lay on the table and Matthew had no heart to open it.
Through the window came sounds of merriment from the Fair Yard without.
Regularly as August came round Makepeace had heard those sounds for
forty years past, but until to-day he had regarded them only as a
troublesome distraction, and closed his casement against them. To-day
a profound lassitude made him draw his stool from the table, where lay
the slighted volume, to the open window. His attention was especially
drawn by a strident voice which came from near his chamber. Looking out
on the Fair Yard he saw a platform of a few planks, mounted on casks,
immediately beneath his window. On it a vagabond charlatan was loudly
advertising to a group of gaping rustics the merits of a wonderful
heal-all.
“Come buy, my masters, come buy,” he cried. “Buy the infallible salve
of the famous doctor Pinchbeck, the ointment that heals the ague, the
rheum, the palsy, the serpigo. Let him that goes on one leg but buy,
and with thrice laying on he shall go on two. Let him that goes with
crutches buy, and he shall dance home in a coranto. One groat only for
the learned doctor’s ointment that shall quit you of the cramp, the
gout, the quotidian and the tertian. An it rid you not in two days come
again and Pinchbeck shall restore you fourfold.”