hand-books. There is yet another and a much more important and
interesting Foundation which, I believe, is not recommended by any
guide-book to the visitor. Yet Waltham Abbey Church is a place of the
greatest interest. It may almost be ranked with Winchester, Westminster,
Canterbury, Caen, and Fontevrault as regards historic interest.
Moreover, it is at this day a place of singular beauty, and is
approached, by one who is well advised and can give up to the visit a
whole afternoon and evening, by a most beautiful walk. The name Waltham
has been explained as the place of the wall. In that case, here was a
"waste chester," a fortified enclosure found by the East Saxons when
they overran the country, and left by them, as they left so many other
places, to fall into decay. It seems most likely, however, that the name
is Wealdham, the place of the forest.
The history of Waltham begins with a famous wedding feast. It is that of
Tofig, the Royal Standard-bearer, and it caused the death of a king,
because Hardeknut at this feast drank himself to death. The great Danish
Thane built here a hunting lodge, the place being built in the midst of
a mighty forest, of which vestiges remain to this day at Hampstead,
Hornsey, and Epping. Now, Tofig held lands in Somersetshire as well as
in Middlesex. And at a place called Lutgarsbury, which is now Montacute
(_mons acutus_), a singular peaked hill, there lived a smith, who was
moved in a dream to dig for a certain cross which, it was revealed to
him, lay buried underground. He did so, and was rewarded by finding a
splendid cross of black marble covered with silver and set with precious
stones. When he had found it, he naturally thought it his duty to convey
it to the nearest great monastery. In these days quite another course
would suggest itself to the fortunate rustic. This smith of Lutgarsbury,
therefore, placed the cross on the cart, and informed the oxen that he
was going to drive them to Glastonbury, that holy House sacred to the
memory of Joseph of Arimathea himself, and illustrious for its thorn
flowering in midwinter. Miracle! The oxen refused to move. The parish
priest, called in to advise, suggested Canterbury, only second to
Glastonbury in sanctity. Still these inspired animals refused to move.
Perhaps Winchester might be tried. There they had the bones of St.
Swithin. No, not even to Winchester would they carry the cross. "Then,"
said the priest, "let them carry the cross to your master, Tofig, at
Waltham." Strange to say, though Waltham had no special sanctity, the
intelligent creatures immediately set off with the greatest alacrity in
the direction of Waltham, a hundred and fifty miles away, and reached
it after a ten days' journey, bearing the cross safely.
[Illustration: BOW CHURCH, MILE END ROAD]
The story is preserved in a tract, _De Inventione Sanctæ Crucis
Walthamensis_, and must be believed by all the faithful. Thane Tofig
showed his sense of what was due to a miracle by building a church for
the reception of the cross, and appointing two canons to serve the
church. It is also said that at least sixty persons were cured by means
of this miraculous cross, and that many of them continued to live near
the church in order to testify to its powers. When, a few years later,
Harold obtained possession of the estate, he built a larger and more
splendid church on the site, and placed twelve instead of two canons in
it, with a dean and school-master. The church was consecrated in the
year 1060, in the presence of King Edward and Edith his Queen. On his
way south to meet William, Harold stopped to pray before the cross.
While he prayed, the head on the cross, which had before looked upward,
bent forward, and so remained downcast. On the field of Senlac, Harold's
cry was "The Holy Cross."
The body of the dead King was brought to the church and buried in the
chancel. Only the nave remains, but there still stretches to the east a
green space which was once the chancel, and somewhere under this green
lawn lies the body of the last Saxon king.
William the Conqueror spared the Foundation. Henry II. replaced Harold's
canons by monks of Rule. He is said to have rebuilt the church, but this
is doubted. Probably some of the existing part, the nave, contains
Harold's work, which was already Norman in character. When, in 1307, the
body of Edward I. was brought from the north to be buried in
Westminster, it lay for seventeen days in the Abbey Church of Waltham.
And the place is full of historical memories, not only of kings, but of
worthies. Cranmer here advised Henry VIII. concerning his divorce.
Thomas Fuller here wrote his _Church History_. Foxe here wrote his _Book
of the Martyrs_. The church now stands on the north side of a small and
rather mean town; it is in the midst of a large church-yard planted with
yew-trees, and set with benches for the old to sit among the tombs. The
grave of King Harold, somewhere under the turf, has over it the circled
firmament instead of the lofty arch; instead of the monkish litanies it
hears the song of the lark and thrush; instead of the whisper and the
hushed footfall of the priests there is the voice of the children
playing in the town and the multitudinous sound of work in the streets
hard by. A happy exchange!
In the Old Jewry there was established by Henry III.--a Jewish synagogue
being their first house--a branch of a very singular order--the _Fratres
de Penitentiâ Jesu_ or _Fratres de Saccâ_. They were mendicants of the
Franciscan Rule, and were dressed in sackcloth to denote their poverty
and their penitence. It was another and one of the last endeavors after
a return to the early zeal and the first poverty of the Order. For a
time the new brotherhood enjoyed considerable popularity; Queen Eleanor,
wife of Edward I., took them under her protection and endowed the
synagogue, which was all they had, with lands and houses. Unhappily the
Council of Lyons, 1274, ordered that there should be recognized no other
mendicant friars except the Dominicans, the Minorites, the Carmelites,
and the Augustines. So one supposes that these Brothers, just as they
were getting comfortable in their synagogue, and beginning to reap the
fruits of their austerities, had to turn out again, because no one was
allowed to give them anything, and so went back to the common Orders,
who would not allow even the wearing of the sackcloth. One is sorry for
the poor men so proud of their sackcloth and with such encouraging
recognition already won.
[Illustration: NORTH-EAST VIEW OF WALTHAM ABBEY CHURCH, ESSEX]
Again, there is not much in the modern Church of St. Giles in the Fields
to suggest the past--a large stone church with a church-yard, standing
in a miserable district, which for two hundred years has been the haunt
of criminals and vagabonds. Yet here was one of the very earliest
Houses of piety and charity. Here was perhaps the earliest hospital
founded in this land of Britain. It was instituted by Queen Maud, wife
of Henry I., as a lazar-house for lepers and other poor sick men. What
became of the lepers when there was no house for them? They crept into
empty hovels; they perished miserably, outcast, neglected. So long as
they were strong enough to creep out they begged their bread; when they
could no longer crawl, they lay down and died. Thanks to the good Queen,
some of them, at least, were cared for in their last days. A sweet
fragrance of thanksgiving lingers still about the slums of St. Giles.
The poor lepers who lie buried in that squalid church-yard still uplift
a voice of praise for those who remember the sick and all that are
desolate and sore oppressed.
Nor is there at Charing Cross much to remind the visitor of the past.
Yet here was a Foundation somewhat unusual of its kind. It was an
"alien" House. The Chapel, Hospital, or House of St. Mary Rounceval was
founded by William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, who gave certain
tenements to the Prior of Rounceval, or _de Roscida Valle_, in the
Diocese of Pampeluna, Navarre. It was a House for eleven brethren. Henry
IV. suppressed all alien priories, this among the rest, but it was
restored by Edward IV. as a Fraternity. After the Dissolution the site
of the House was used by the Earl of Northampton for the palace which,
under the name of Northumberland House, stood until the other day, the
last of the river-side palaces.
Other great Houses are sometimes reckoned as London Houses, such as
those of Barking, Wimbledon, Merton, and Chertsey; but these are outside
our limits. Nor can I touch here upon any of the religious Foundations
of Westminster.
We have seen that when we lay down the monastic establishments upon the
map, they occupy a very considerable part of the area within the walls.
But when we consider, in addition, the great number of smaller
Foundations, the colleges, hospitals, and fraternities with Houses, the
parish churches and the church-yards, we shall begin to understand that
the space required for ecclesiastical buildings alone in the confined
area of a mediæval town gives a very fair idea of the power and
authority of the Church.
After the Monasteries come the Colleges, so called, by which we must not
understand seats of learning, but colleges of priests. There were
several of these:
First, that of St. Thomas of Acon. The college was founded by Agnes,
sister of Thomas à Becket. She endowed it with her father's property in
London. It stood on the site of the present Mercers' Chapel, and was
built on the spot where the new saint was born. The Mercers' Chapel,
however, occupies only a portion of the splendid church which was
destroyed in the Great Fire. The Foundation received many endowments,
and at the Dissolution its income was nearly £300 a year, equal to
twenty times as much of modern money. The City, naturally proud of its
saint, observed a curious annual function in connection with this
college. On the afternoon of the day when he was sworn at the Exchequer,
the new Lord Mayor, with the Aldermen, met at this chapel and thence
proceeded to St. Paul's, where first they prayed for the soul of Bishop
William--who had been Bishop of London in the time of William the
Conqueror. This done, they repaired to the tomb of Gilbert à Becket, in
Pardon Church-yard, and there prayed for all faithful souls departed.
Then they returned to St. Thomas Acon and made an offering. Nothing is
said about the evening, but one hopes that the day was concluded in the
cheerful manner common at all times with London citizens.
Next, the College of Whittington.
This noble and wealthy merchant rebuilt the Church of St. Michael,
called Paternoster in the Royal, and attached to it a College of St.
Spirit and St. Mary for a master, from fellows, clerks, conducts, and
choristers, together with an almshouse for thirteen poor men. They were
all bound to pray for the soul of Sir Richard Whittington and his wife,
Dame Alice; also for those of Sir William Whittington and Dame Joan, his
wife, the parents of the founder. The college was swept away at the
Dissolution; the almshouse remained and was rebuilt after the Fire. They
are now removed to Highgate, but a conventual feeling still lingers
about the buildings at the back of the church.
Then follows St. Michael's College, Crooked Lane.
Sir William Walworth, the valiant Mayor who killed Wat Tyler, founded a
college of one master and nine chaplains to say mass in St. Michael's
Church, the choir and the aisles of which he rebuilt.
And there was also Jesus Commons.
This Foundation seems to have resembled that of All-Souls, Oxford, in
that its fellows had no duties to perform except the services of their
chapel. It is described as a fair house in Dowgate (no doubt built round
a small quadrangle), well furnished with everything and containing a
good library, all for the use of those who lived there--a peaceful,
quiet place, without any history. One thinks of the day when it had to
be dissolved, and the poor old priests, who had lived so long in the
house, were driven forth into the streets. Not even submission to the
king's supremacy could save the tenants of Jesus Commons. The house
itself was pulled down and tenements built in its place.
A somewhat similar House was a small and very interesting Foundation
called the Papey. It was a college for poor and aged priests. In any old
map the church called St. Augustine Papey may be seen at the north end
of St. Mary Axe nestled under the wall, with a piece of ground
adjoining, which may have been a garden and may have been a
burial-ground. We find the poor old priests taking part in funerals,
and, I daresay, in any other function by which their slender provision
might be augmented.
Next to the Colleges come the Hospitals. St. Bartholomew's, most ancient
and richest, belongs to Norman London.
One who walks along the street called London Wall will chance upon a
church-yard, on the north side of which still stands a fragment of the
old wall. This church-yard, narrow and small, is surrounded on three
sides by warehouses; on the fourth side it looks upon the street. On the
other side of the street is a large block of warehouses, the monument of
a most disgraceful and shameful act of vandalism. On this spot stood
Elsing Spital. It was founded in the year 1329 as a priory and hospital
for the maintenance of a hundred blind men by one William Elsing, its
first Prior. On the dissolution of the religious houses, Elsing's
Spital surrendered with the rest, and was dissolved. What became of the
blind men is not known. Then they took the fine Priory Church, and
having pulled down the north aisle--on the site of which houses were
built--they converted the rest of the church into the parish church of
St. Alphege, which had previously stood in Cripplegate. The site of the
old church was turned into a carpenter's yard. The porch of St. Alphege
remains of the ancient buildings. Of Sion College, which in course of
time succeeded Elsing's Spital, we will speak in another place.
[Illustration: WALTHAM ABBEY CHURCH, ESSEX, BEFORE RESTORATION]
That splendid Foundation which rears its wards on the south of the
Thames, over against the Houses of Parliament, St. Thomas's Hospital,
was founded in 1313 as an almery, or house of alms for converts and poor
children; but two years later the House was refounded on a much larger
scale. After the Dissolution, its site, then in Southwark, was purchased
by the citizens of London. To sum up, London was as well provided with
hospitals in the fourteenth century as it was with convents and
religious houses. They were St. Bartholomew's, Elsing Spital, St. Giles
Cripplegate, St. Mary Spital, St. Mary of Bethlehem, St. Thomas
Southwark, and the Lazar House of Southwark.
These hospitals, it must be borne in mind, were all religious
Foundations governed by brethren of some Order. Religion ruled all. From
the birth of the child to the death of the man religion, the forms,
duties, and obedience due to religion, attended every one. No one
thought it possible that it could be otherwise. The emancipation of
mankind from the thrall of the Church, incomplete to the present day,
had then hardly yet begun. All learning, all science, all the arts, all
the professions, were in the hands of the Church. It is very easy to
congratulate ourselves upon the removal of these chains. Yet they were
certainly a necessary part of human development. Order, love of law,
respect for human life, education in the power of self-government, such
material advance as prepared the way--all these things had to be
taught. No one could teach them or enforce them but the priest, by the
authority and in the wisdom of the Church. On the whole, he did his
best. At the darkest time the Church was always a little in advance of
the people; the Church at the lowest preserved some standard of morals,
and of conduct; and even if the standard was low, why, it was higher
than that of the laity.
When we see the Franciscans preaching to the people; the Carthusians
cowering silent and gloomy in their cells; the Dominicans insisting on
the letter of the Faith; kings and queens and great lords trying to get
buried in the holy soil of a monastery church--let us recognize that,
out of this discipline emerged the Londoner of Queen Bess, eager for
adventure and for enterprise; the Londoner who was so stout for liberty
that he drove out one king and then another king, and set aside a
dynasty for the sacred cause; the Londoner of our own time, who is no
whit inferior to his forefathers.
One other form of religious society must be mentioned--that of the
Fraternity. There were Fraternities attached to every church. Those of
the same trade in a parish--those of the same trade in many
parishes--united together in a Fraternity--of the Blessed Virgin, of the
Holy Trinity, of the Corpus Christi, of Saint this or that. All the
Danes in London joined together to make a Fraternity--or all the Dutch.
All the fish-mongers, or all the pepperers; they formed
Fraternities--not yet trades-unions or companies--which had masses sung
for the souls of their brethren; met in the churches on their Saint's
Day; had solemn service and a procession and a feast. It is only by
such a bond as this that any calling or trade can become dignified,
self-respecting, and independent. The Fraternities were founded, for the
most part, before the Companies. These could not have existed at all but
for the impetus to union given by the Fraternities. Common action--the
most important discovery ever made for the common welfare--was made
possible, among those who would otherwise have been torn asunder by
rivalries and trade jealousies, by the Fraternities.
[Illustration: PORCH OF ST. SEPULCHRE'S CHURCH]
Among the thirty-one who formed the goodly company which pilgrimized to
Canterbury with Chaucer, twelve belonged to the Church. Was this
proportion accidental? I think not. Chaucer placed in his company such a
proportion of ecclesiastics as would be expected on such an occasion.
The portraits of Chaucer are taken from the life: he saw them in the
streets of London; in the houses; in the churches. It helps us to
understand the City, only to read those portraits over again. Are they
so well known that it is superfluous to do more than refer to them?
Perhaps not. Let us take them briefly. There is the Prioress, who has
with her a nun for chaplain and three priests. She is a gentlewoman,
smiling, coy, dainty in her habits and in her dress; she is
tender-hearted and fond of pets; the nun's wimple is plaited; on her arm
she wears beads with a gold brooch--
On whiche was first y-written a crowned A,
And after Amor vincit omnia.
She is lively, affectionate, and amiable, but she affects dignity as a
Prioress should. Clearly the superior of an Order whose vows are not too
strict, and whose austerities respect the weakness of the sex. Who does
not know, at the present day, hundreds of gentle maiden ladies who might
sit for the portrait of the Prioress?
Then comes the Limitour, one who held the Bishop's license to hear
confessions, and to officiate within a certain district. This fellow is
everybody's friend so long as he gets paid: the country gentlemen like
him, and the good wives like him, because he hears confessions sweetly,
and enjoins easy penance; he could sing and play; he could drink; he
knew all the taverns; he was to appearance a merry, careless toper; in
reality, he was courteous only to the rich, and thought continually
about his gains. He kept his district to himself, buying off those who
tried to practise within his limits. A natural product, the Limitour, of
a time when outward forms make up all the religion that is demanded.
The Oxford Clerk has no benefice because he has no interest. All the
money that he got he spent in books; his horse was lean; he himself was
lean and hollow. He travels to foreign universities in order to converse
with scholars.
The Monk was a big, brawny man, bald-headed, and his robe was trimmed
with fur; a great hunter who kept greyhounds and had many horses. He was
fat and in good point; he loved a fat swan best of any roast; he wore a
gold pin with a love knot. Obedience to the Rules of his Order is not,
it seems, ever expected of such a man.
The Town Parson, of low origin, a learned man who loved his people, and
was content with poverty, and gave all to the poor, and was ever at
their service in all weathers. The picture of the good clergyman might
serve for to-day. His parish was wide, but he went about
Upon his feet, and in his hand a staf.
This noble ensaumple unto his scheep he yaf,
That first he wrought, and after that he taughte
Out of the gospel he the wordes caughte,
And this figùre he added yet thereto,
That if gold rustë, what scholde yren do?
[Illustration: SOUTH VIEW OF THE PALACE OF THE BISHOPS OF WINCHESTER,
NEAR ST. SAVIOUR'S]
The Sompnour, or Summoner, an officer of the Ecclesiastical courts,
is only half an ecclesiastic. His portrait is pure farce.
Lastly, there is the Pardoner. He is the hypocrite. He carried sham
relics about with him, and sold pigs' bones for precious and holy
remains warranted to heal sheep and cattle, to bring good harvests, to
prolong life, to bring increase of sowing.
Of avarice and of swiche cursednesse
Is al my preching, for to make hem free
To yeve hir pense, and namely unto me.
. . . . . . . .
I wol non of the Apostles counterfete,
I wol have money, wollë, chese, and whete.
Al were it yeven of the pourest page,
Or of the pourest widewe in a village,
Al schulde hire children sterven for famine.
If such pictures as these could be drawn and freely circulated, the
first step was taken towards the Reformation. Only the first step.
Before Reformation comes there must be more than the clear eyes of the
prophets able to see and to proclaim the truth. The eyes of the people
must be washed so that they, too, can discern the truth behind these
splendid vestments and this gorgeous structure of authority.
Such, so great, was the power and the wealth of the Church from the
twelfth to the sixteenth century. Every street had its parish church
with charities and Fraternities and endowments; colleges, Houses for
priests, almeries, hospitals, were scattered all about the City; within
and without the wall there were fifteen great Houses, whose splendor can
only be understood by the ruins of Tintern, Glastonbury, Fountains, or
Whitby. Every House was possessed of rich manors and broad lands; every
House had its treasury filled with title-deeds as well as with heaps of
gold and silver plate; every House had its church crowded with marble
monuments, adorned with rich shrines and blazing altars and painted
glass, such as we can no longer make. Outside, the humblest parish
church showed on its frescoed walls the warnings of Death and Judgment,
the certainty of Heaven and Hell. And they thought--priest and people
alike--that it was all going to last forever. Humanity had no other
earthly hope than a continuance of the bells of _l'Ile Sonnante_.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] A kind of woollen shirt.
[9] The concluding psalms of the matin service.
[10] The Horæ, or canonical services, were matins, primes, tierce,
sexts, nones, vespers, and complines.
[11] The Ambrosian ritual prevailed pretty generally till the time of
Charlemagne, who adopted the Gregorian.
IV
PLANTAGENET--_continued_
II. PRINCE AND MERCHANT
It is never safe to adopt in blind confidence the conclusions of the
antiquary. He works with fragments; here it is a passage in an old deed;
here a few lines of poetry; here a broken vase; here the capital of a
column; here a drawing, cramped, and out of proportion, and dwarfed,
from an illuminated manuscript. This kind of work tends to belittle
everything; the splendid city becomes a mean, small town; King Solomon's
Temple, glorious and vast, shrinks to the dimensions of a village
conventicle; Behemoth himself becomes an alligator; Leviathan, a
porpoise; history, read by this reducing lens, becomes a series of
patriotic exaggerations. For instance, the late Dr. Brewer, a true
antiquary, if ever there was one, could see in mediæval London nothing
but a collection of mean and low tenements standing among squalid
streets and filthy lanes. That this estimate of the City is wholly
incorrect we shall now proceed to show. Any city, ancient or modern,
might be described as consisting of mean and squalid houses, because in
every city the poor outnumber the rich, and the small houses of the
poor are more frequent than the mansions of the wealthy.
[Illustration: CHARING CROSS
_Erected by Edward I. in memory of Queen Eleanor of Castile_]