BRAY AND ITS FAMOUS VICAR—JESUS HOSPITAL
Beyond this astonishing achievement comes the delightful village of
Bray, whose name is thought to be a corruption of _Bibracte_, an obscure
Roman station. Bray is scenically associated with the eight—or are they
ten?—tall poplars that stand in a formal row, all of one size, and each
equidistant from the other, and form a prominent feature in the view
as you approach, upstream or down; and with the weird shapes of the
eel-bucks that occupy a position by the Berkshire bank. Composing a
pretty view with them comes the square, embattled church-tower, together
with some feathery waterside trees—and always those stark sentinel
poplars in the background. You see them from almost every quarter, a
long way off; and even from the railway, as the Great Western trains
sweep onwards, towards Maidenhead Bridge, they come rushing into sight,
and you say—and you observe that the glances of other passengers say
also—“There’s Bray!”
Bray is, of course traditionally, the home of that famous accommodating
vicar who, reproached with his readiness to change his principles,
replied: “Not so; my principle is unaltered: to live and die Vicar of
Bray.”
Every one knows the rollicking song that sets forth, with a musical
economy of some five notes, the determination of that notorious person,
despite all changes and chances, to keep his comfortable living, but not
every one knows the facts about him and that familiar ballad.
Fuller says: “He had seen some martyrs burnt (two miles off) at Windsor,
and found this fire too hot for his tender temper”; and further says,
respecting his guiding principle in life—to remain Vicar of Bray—“Such
are many nowadays, who, though they cannot turn the wind, will turn their
mills and set them so that wheresoever it bloweth, their grist shall
certainly be grinded.”
The reputation of being that vicar has been flung upon Simon Alleyn, or
Aleyn, which were, no doubt, the contemporary ways of trying to spell
“Allen,” who appears to have derived from a family settled at Stevenage,
Hertfordshire, and, graduating at Oxford in 1539, to have been instituted
to the living of Bray in 1551, upon the death of William Staverton, vicar
before him. Two years later he became also vicar of Cookham. In 1559 he
was made Canon of Windsor, and held all three offices until his death in
June 1565.
[Illustration: LYCHGATE, BRAY.]
If we inquire into the history of Church and State between 1551 and 1565,
we shall not find that the period covered by those fifteen years was
remarkable for so many great religious changes. The changes were great,
indeed, but not numerous. Edward the Sixth was living, and the Reformed
Church established, when Aleyn first became vicar, who, when the young
King died and the reactionary reign of Mary began, doubtless “became a
Roman”; but there is no doubt that many others did the like at that time.
When Queen Mary died, in 1558, Aleyn naturally conformed to the
Protestant religion, then re-established: and, as we see, died
comparatively early in the reign of Elizabeth, while that religion was
yet undisputed. There was thus, supposing him to have been originally
instituted as a Protestant, only one violation of conscience necessary to
his retaining his post: a small matter! As he could scarcely have been
more than about twenty years of age when he graduated, it is seen at once
that when he died, in 1565, he was comparatively young—some forty-six
years of age. By his will, he directed that he should be buried in St.
George’s Chapel, Windsor; and as there is no reason to suppose that his
wishes in that respect were wantonly disregarded, it follows that the
small monumental brass, now without an inscription, here, in the church
of Bray, cannot mark his resting-place. It has, indeed, been identified
as to the memory of Thomas Little, his successor, who died so soon
afterwards as 1567.
The injustice, therefore, done to Simon Aleyn by identifying him with
the song, the “Vicar of Bray,” is obvious; for there were very many men,
born at an earlier date than he, and living to a much greater age, who
certainly did change their official beliefs, for professional purposes,
several times, between 1534, when the Reformation was accomplished,
and the reign of Elizabeth. There would have been more scope for such
a tergiversating person in the reigns of Charles the Second, James the
Second, William the Third, Queen Anne, and George the First—in all of
which it would have been easily possible for a not very long-lived
clergyman to flourish—than in Aleyn’s time; and the ballad in its present
form distinctly specifies that period, long after Aleyn was dead. But
the ascription to Bray at all can clearly be proved a late one, for the
original words, traced back to 1712, when one Edward Ward published a
collection of miscellaneous works in prose and verse, make no mention of
any particular place. The verses, eighteen in number, are there entitled,
“The Religious Turncoat; or, the Trimming Parson.” Among them we find a
reference to the troubles under Charles the First, by which it appears
that the trimmer’s constitutional, as well as religious, opinions were
moderated according to circumstances:
“I lov’d no King in Forty-one,
When Prelacy went down,
A cloak and band I then put on
And preached against the Crown.
When Charles returned into the land,
The English Crown’s supporter,
I shifted off my cloak and band,
And then became a courtier.
When Royal James began his reign,
And Mass was used in common,
I shifted off my Faith again,
And then became a Roman.
…
To teach my flock I never missed,
Kings were by God appointed;
And they are damned who dare resist
Or touch the Lord’s anointed.”
The familiar refrain was, of course, added later:
“And this is law, I will maintain,
Until my dying day, sir,
That, whatsoever King shall reign,
I’ll be the Vicar of Bray, sir.”
The air to which the song is set is equally old, but originally belonged
to quite another set of verses, called “The Country Garden.” It was,
later, used with the words of a ballad known as “The Neglected Tar”; but
it certainly appeared set to the words of “The Vicar of Bray” in 1778,
when it was published in _The Vocal Magazine_.
Who, then, was he who first associated Bray with the song, and with what
warrant? and by what evidence did Fuller advance his statement that
Aleyn was the man? The question may well be asked, but no reply need be
expected.
It may be worth while in this place to give another, and perhaps an even
better, version of the famous ballad, which gives the Vicar a run from
the time of Charles the Second to that of George the First; thirty years,
at least:
“In good King Charles’s golden days,
When loyalty had no harm in’t,
A zealous High Churchman I was,
And so I got preferment.
To teach my flock I never miss’d,
Kings were by God appointed,
And they are damned who dare resist,
Or touch the Lord’s anointed.
When Royal James obtained the throne,
And Popery grew in fashion,
The penal laws I hooted down,
And read the Declaration.
The Church of Rome I found would fit
Full well my constitution,
And I had been a Jesuit,
But for the Revolution.
When William, our deliverer, came
To heal the nation’s grievance,
Then I turned cat-in-pan again,
And swore to him allegiance.
Old principles I did revoke,
Set conscience at a distance;
Passive resistance was a joke,
A jest was non-resistance.
When glorious Anne became our Queen,
The Church of England’s glory,
Another face of things was seen,
And I became a Tory;
Occasional conformists’ case—
I damned such moderation,
And thought the Church in danger was
By such prevarication.
When George in pudding-time came o’er,
And moderate men looked big, sir,
My principles I changed once more,
And so became a Whig, sir,
And thus preferment I procured
From our Faith’s great Defender,
And almost every day abjured
The Pope and the Pretender.
The illustrious House of Hanover,
And Protestant Succession,
By these I lustily will swear,
While they can keep possession,
For in my faith and loyalty
I never once will falter,
But George my King shall ever be—
Until the times do alter.”
Another vicar of Bray distinguished himself in rather a sorry fashion,
according to legend, in the time of James the First. He was dining
with his curate at the Greyhound, or, by another account, the Bear,
at Maidenhead, when there burst in upon them a hungry sportsman, who
expressed a wish to join them at table. The vicar agreed, but with a
bad grace, but the curate made him welcome, and entertained him well in
conversation. When the time came to pay, the vicar let it be seen that,
so far as he was concerned, the stranger should settle for his share,
but the curate declared he could permit no such thing, and paid the
sportsman’s score out of his own scanty pocket. Presently, as they stood
taking the air at the window, other sportsmen came cantering along the
street, and seeing the first, halted, and one, dismounting, dropped upon
one knee, and uncovered. It was the King.
The vicar, too late, apologised, but the King, turning to him, said:
“Have no fear. You shall always be vicar of Bray, but your curate I will
set over you, and make him Canon of Windsor.”
One of the queerest and quaintest of entrances conducts to the church,
beneath a picturesque old timbered house: charming on both fronts, each
greatly differing from the other. There are as many as eight brasses
in the church, a fine Early English and Decorated building, somewhat
overscraped and renewed in restoration. An early seventeenth-century
brass has some delightful lines:
“When Oxford gave thee two degrees in Art,
And Love possessed thee, Master of my Heart,
Thy Colledge Fellowshipp thow leftst for mine,
And novght but death covld seprate me frõ thine.”
This is without a name, but has been identified as to the memory of
Little, Aleyn’s successor.
Not so delightful are the self-sufficing lines upon William Goddard,
founder of the neighbouring almshouses. Let us hope that, although
couched in the first person, he did not write them himself:
“If what I was, thov seekst to knowe
Theis lynes my character shal showe,
These benifitts that God me lent
With thanks I tooke and freely spent.
I scorned what playnesse covld not gett,
And next to treason hated debt.
I lovd not those that stird vp strife
Trve to my freinde, and to my wife.[3]
The latter here by me I have.
We had one Bed and have one grave.
My honesty was such that I
When death came, feared not to dye.”
[Illustration: JESUS HOSPITAL, BRAY.]
In the churchyard lies John Payne Collier, the Shakespearean critic, who
died in 1883. His funeral was the occasion of a curious mistake in _The
Standard_, of September 21. The newspaper correspondent had written:
“The remains of the late Mr. John Payne Collier were interred yesterday
in Bray churchyard, near Maidenhead, in the presence of a large number of
spectators.”
This became, at the hands of the sub-editor, who had never heard of
Collier, “The Bray Colliery Disaster. The remains of the late John Payne,
collier,” etc.
Jesus Hospital, founded in the seventeenth century by William Goddard, of
the City of London, fishmonger, and Joyce, his wife, for the housing and
maintenance of forty poor persons, faces the road outside the village, on
the way to Windsor. Fred Walker, in his most famous picture, _The Harbour
of Refuge_, exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1872, took the beautiful
courtyard of the Hospital for his subject, but those who are familiar
with that lovely painting, now in the National Gallery, will feel a keen
disappointment when they find here the original, for the artist added a
noble group of statuary to the courtyard which does not, in fact, exist
here, and has generally added details which make an already beautiful
place still more lovely than it is.
The courtyard is, indeed, in summer a mass of beautiful homely flowers,
and all the year round the noble frontage that looks upon the dusty
highroad is inspiring. From an alcove over the entrance the statue of
William Goddard, in cloak and ruff, looks down gravely upon wayfarers.
[3] But that’s of course, surely.