ENGLAND'S SHRINES
Those places in England which are notable by their association with some
great event of human history are very many in number. Knowledge of them is
more complete with visitors to the land than with residents. The
Englishman, for all his reverent love of the medieval life and customs of
his country, has not the habit of cataloguing historic places, nor of
visiting them of set purpose. Of late, because of the new interest in
history given by the pageant movement, because of the work of various
historical and archaeological societies, because also of the care which some
public bodies are giving to the identification and plain marking of famous
birthplaces and residences, the Englishman has become something of a
tourist in his own country. He even shows a disposition to add to his
treasures of history--as in the tentative movement now afoot to ask from
France the ashes of the Plantagenet kings buried there (a movement, by the
way, accompanied by an honest give-and-take spirit; a famous Russian bell
taken from a Baltic monastery during the Crimean War has just been
restored). But still the famous places of England are mostly for the
visitor, and that visitor can often take the Englishman to many places of
note, before unknown to him, in his own land.
But not the most business-like and industrious of visitors could hope to
compass within a life-time a pilgrimage to all the shrines of England. He
would be wise, therefore, to determine at the outset what is the side of
human activity which most appeals to him--the struggle for religious
liberty and tolerance, the fight for the freedom of the Press, the upgrowth
of the greatest literature in any modern tongue, the development of the
parliamentary and representative system of government, the shaping of the
material power of a great Imperial race. Of any one of these he will find
countless monuments in England. The whole country is a sepulchre of great
men and a memorial of great deeds.
If that most strange, and in some of its aspects rather sordid, miracle of
modern civilisation, the Newspaper Press, interests the pilgrim to England,
let him betake himself to London, where in Fleet Street practically all the
history of the beginnings of journalism has centred. All the world has
newspapers nowadays--one of my own earliest memories of adult life was an
invitation to edit a paper at Bangkok in Siam. There are mighty organs of
public opinion at Fiji, Honolulu; and, though I have not yet heard of a
paper published in Thibet, there must surely be one in print by now. But
England saw the birth of journalism in its modern sense, saw the first
beginnings of that eager hound which dogs the footsteps of civilisation day
by day and night by night, rending aside every veil, "making" news for
itself when the supply of murders and wars and scandals runs short,
devouring whole forests day by day in its appetite for paper. Those old
Pressmen of Fleet Street had probably no prophetic vision of the
present-day newspaper when they were seized with the idea that the gossipy
news-letters with which town mice amused country mice should be combined
with the thundering pamphlets which used the printing-press to campaign
against tyrants of State, of Church, of privilege. If they had had, would
they have fought their hard fight for the freedom of the Press? I often
wonder, holding as I do that there is a good deal of truth in what Balzac
wrote of the modern Press in _Un Grand Homme de Province a Paris_:--
Journalism comes first to be a party weapon, and then a
commercial speculation, carried on without conscience
or scruple, like other commercial speculations.... A
newspaper is not supposed to enlighten its readers, but
to supply them with congenial opinions.... Napoleon's
sublime aphorism, suggested by his study of the
Convention, "No one individual is responsible for a
crime committed collectively," sums up the whole
significance of a phenomenon, moral or immoral,
whichever you please. However shamefully a newspaper
may behave, the disgrace attaches to no one person....
We shall see newspapers, started in the first instance
by men of honour, falling sooner or later into the
hands of men of abilities even lower than the average,
but endowed with the resistance and flexibility of
indiarubber, qualities denied to noble genius; nay,
perhaps the future newspaper proprietor will be the
tradesman with the capital sufficient to buy venal
pens.
[Illustration: GLASTONBURY ABBEY, SOMERSETSHIRE]
But that is away from the question. In itself the fight for the freedom of
the Press was a good fight, and London was its campaign ground, and within
the precincts of Fleet Street are all its memorials.
If religious progress and development is of special interest to him the
student of England will first visit Canterbury, because of its association
with St. Augustine, Lanfranc, and Saint Thomas a Becket. It is still the
seat of the Primate of the Church of England. From Canterbury he might well
follow the old "Pilgrims' Way," which runs through Kent, Surrey, and
Hampshire towards Southampton, a much-favoured ancient port of
communication with the Continent. At Southampton landed many a company of
holy palmers from Europe to walk their devout way to the tomb of A Becket.
On the way from Canterbury, through Kent, near Shoreham (the inland
village, not the seaside Shoreham), will be found the ruins of two castles
connected with the story of his sad murder. Then a student of Church
history might go to Worcester, the scene of the first Church Congress in
England, that which attempted to settle the differences between the Church
in England and the Church in Wales. At Worcester, too, died Prince Arthur,
a death of great moment in Church history. If he had lived (a pious young
man he was, and much beloved of the monks), then a certain Henry, who
afterwards became Henry VIII., would never have been King of England, never
have married his deceased brother's widow, never have had an uneasy
conscience as that lady's charms were supplanted in his impressionable
heart by a younger damosel, never have had his quarrel with the Pope; and
the whole course of history would have been, perhaps, different. But Prince
Arthur died at Worcester, and events moved to their appointed end.
Then a visit to Glastonbury in Somersetshire must be made, site of the
famous old abbey now being excavated and in a measure restored. There lived
St. Dunstan of august memory. So much is certain; but legend would bring to
Glastonbury even greater claims to reverence if legend had its way. There,
tradition says, King Arthur was buried. To probe the truth of this
tradition excavations were made in the reign of Henry II., and beneath the
old foundations and seven feet beneath the surface, according to Giraldus
Cambrensis, was found a broad stone bearing the name of Arthur; yet nine
feet lower was found the body of Arthur, enclosed in the trunk of a tree,
and beside him the body of Guinevere, The King's skeleton, says the
chronicler, was of extraordinary size, and the skull was covered with
wounds; the body of Guinevere was well preserved, and the colour of her
hair was of that burnished gold which ensnared more than one devout knight
to be her lover.
Yet with all that honour Glastonbury is not content, and will have it that
on its soil was erected the oldest Christian Church in England, by no less
renowned a man than St. Joseph of Arimathea, who brought to his Glastonbury
Church the Holy Grail, the cup from which the Divine Redeemer drank at the
Last Supper.
Canterbury, Worcester, Glastonbury and York (of which something was said in
a previous chapter) visited, the lover of Church history will then turn to
London to do reverence to Westminster Abbey, one of the most sacred fanes
of Christendom. There is a legend of the Abbey having been consecrated by
St. Peter himself, a legend which Matthew Arnold incorporates in one of his
poems. Some Thames fishermen are making for home on a winter's eve; one
lags behind--
His mates are gone, and he
For mist can scarcely see
A strange wayfarer coming to his side--
Who bade him loose his boat, and fix his oar,
And row him straightway to the further shore,
And wait while he did there a space abide.
The fisher awed obeys,
That voice had note so clear of sweet command;
Through pouring tide he pulls, and drizzling haze,
And sets his freight ashore on Thorney strand.
The Minster's outlined mass
Rose dim from the morass,
And thitherward the stranger took his way.
Lo, on a sudden all the pile is bright!
Nave, choir, and transept glorified with light,
While tongues of fire on coign and carving play!
And heavenly odours fair
Come streaming with the floods of glory in,
And carols float along the happy air,
As if the reign of joy did now begin.
Then all again is dark;
And by the fisher's bark
The unknown passenger returning stands.
"O Saxon fisher! thou hast had with thee
The fisher from the lake of Galilee--"
So saith he, blessing him with outspread hands;
Then fades, but speaks the while;
"At dawn thou to King Serbert shalt relate
How his St. Peter's Church in Thorney Isle
Peter, his friend, with light did consecrate."
That is legend. Keeping strictly within the limits of ascertained history,
the story of Westminster Abbey and its monuments is a brief epitome of the
records of England and of the British Empire. It is the burial-place of the
mighty dead of the nation, and has been associated in some particular way
with almost every great event since the Norman invasion. I shall not
attempt here any description of the Abbey or any detailed discussion of its
monuments. Many books have been written about this building, and the
subject does not seem yet to have been exhausted. One monument, and one
alone, I shall mention. In the summer of 1296 King Edward seized the
regalia of Scotland, and offered them the following year to the shrine of
St. Edward at Westminster. The objects which are known to have been offered
by him are the golden sceptre, the golden crown with the apple or orb of
silver gilt, and the golden rose, all of which were affixed to the shrine,
and a "pallium" (probably the royal mantle of the King of Scotland), which
was hung somewhere in the Abbey.
At or near the same time the "Coronation Stone," which also had been
ravished from Scotland, found a home in the Abbey, and is still cherished
as indispensable for the coronation of monarchs of the United Kingdom. In
Celtic days a stone seemed essential for a king's coronation (the
"Coronation Stone" at Kingston-on-Thames is supposed to mark the site of an
old place of investiture of British kings). This coronation stone taken
from Scotland is said to carry with it the governance of that country; and
legend has invested it with a mythical sanctity. According to some tales
the stone was the pillow on which the patriarch Jacob rested his head at
Bethel. Gathelus, who married Scota, the daughter of Pharaoh, brought it to
Spain, where it became the stone on which the kings of Spain "of Scottish
race" were wont to sit. Simon Breck, a descendant of Gathelus, brought it
from Spain to Ireland, and was crowned upon it as king of that country at
Tara, where it became known as the Lia Fail, or Stone of Destiny.
Afterwards the stone was removed to Dunstaffnage, where twenty-eight of the
"forty kings" of Scotland were crowned. From Dunstaffnage it was taken to
Scone. There it remained, and on it every Scottish monarch was inaugurated
till the year 1296. Then it came to England to be used at the coronation of
British monarchs to the latest, George V.
It is not necessary to invest the stone with the reverence that a belief in
all these wonders would call for; but it is undoubtedly a monument of
Celtic faiths and ceremonies, even if its biblical origin must be granted
the Scottish verdict of "not proven."
To pass from Westminster Abbey to St. Paul's would be to enter upon a path
leading away from the purpose of this chapter, which cannot attempt to be
comprehensive. Let us suppose the Churchman pilgrim satisfied with
pilgrimages to Glastonbury, Canterbury, Worcester, and Westminster. The
political pilgrim has next to be considered. He will find hardly a part of
England without its close association with the struggles for parliamentary
freedom. But Buckinghamshire, which seemed always to be a county with a
sturdy "no" in its composition, will give enough monuments of the great
"Parliamentarians" of the Revolution--Hampden, Cromwell, Milton and the
rest. It has also a modern association with a prominent man of modern
times, who was very much on "the other side" in politics, Disraeli, the
apostle of the new Conservatism. From Buckinghamshire the man who would
wish to follow in memory the great contest between King and Parliament
which made the British Constitution would probably best go on to
Worcestershire, which put up some stout battles for the King. And, of
course, London cannot be neglected. Indeed, in all great English movements
London had a leading part, for it was always in a very true sense the
capital of the kingdom; and not a narrow and exclusive capital at that, but
regularly sending out its "cits" to spy out the joys of the country, and
just as regularly attracting to itself in season the rustics to taste the
life of the town.
For literary monuments and associations London, of course, is the one great
centre, though there should be reverent excursions to Oxford and Cambridge,
and Bath, and then to Worcester, where the first of Anglo-Saxon poets
wrote, and to the Lakes, which had their school of poets. But the student
of England's monuments and shrines who has but a little time to give up to
the study had best content himself with London. Within a full year he
cannot exhaust its treasures.
[Illustration: WARWICKSHIRE COTTAGES AND GARDEN]