this mere striving after enormous height. The uppermost stage, where
the square building takes an octagonal form, is an addition of nearly
two hundred years later, when the nice perceptions and exquisite taste
of an earlier period were lost, and size was the goal of effort, rather
than beauty. Those who built at that later time would have gone higher
had they dared, but if they lacked something as artists, they must at
least be credited with engineering knowledge. They knew that the mere
crushing weight of stone upon stone would, if further added to, grind
the lower stages into powder and so wreck the whole fabric. So, at a
height of two hundred and fifteen feet, they stayed their hands; but,
in earnest of what they would have done, had not prudence forbade, they
crowned the topmost battlements with a tall light wooden spire, removed
a century ago in one of the restorations. It was from the roof of this
tower, in 1845, that Basevi, an architect interested in a restoration
then in progress, fell and was killed.
The octagonal upper stage of this great western tower was added in
the Decorated period, about 1350, when the great central octagon, the
most outstanding and peculiar feature of the Cathedral, was built.
Any distant view of this vast building that commands its full length
shows, in addition to the western tower, a light and fairylike lantern,
like some graceful coronet, midway of the long roof-ridge, where choir
and nave meet. This was built to replace the tall central tower that
suddenly fell in ruins in 1332 and destroyed much of the choir. To an
architect inspired far above his fellows fell the task of rebuilding.
There are two works among the whole range of ancient Gothic art in
these islands that stand out above and beyond the rest and proclaim
the hand and brain of genius. They are the west front of Peterborough
Cathedral and the octagonal lantern of Ely. We do not know who designed
Peterborough's daring arcaded front, but the name of that resourceful
man who built _the_ great feature of Ely has been preserved. He was
Alan of Walsingham, the sacrist and sub-prior of the monastery. He
did not build it in that conventional and deceitful sense we are
accustomed to when we read that this or that mediæval Abbot or Bishop
built one thing or another, the real meaning of the phrase being that
they provided the money and were anything and everything but the
architects. No: he imagined it; the idea sprang from his brain, his
hands drew the plans, he made it grow and watched it to its completion.
No man dared rebuild the tower that had fallen; not even Alan, or
perhaps he did not want to, being possessed, as we may well believe, by
this Idea. What it was you shall hear, although, to be sure, no words
have any power to picture to those who have not seen it what this great
and original work is like. The fallen tower had been reared, as is
the manner of such central towers, upon four great pillars where nave
and choir and transepts met. Alan cleared the ruins of them away, and
built in their stead a circle of eight stone columns that not only took
in the width of nave and the central alleys and transepts and choir
that had been enclosed by the fallen pillars, but spread out beyond
it to the whole width of nave aisles and the side aisles of choir and
transepts. This group of columns carries arches and a masonry wall
rising in octagonal form above the roofs, and crowned by the timber
structure of the lantern itself. The interior view of this lantern
shows a number of vaulting ribs of timber spreading inwards from these
columns, and supporting a whole maze of open timber-work pierced with
great traceried windows and fretted and carved to wonderment. The
effect is as that of a dome, "the only Gothic dome in the world" as
it has been said. How truly it is a "lantern" may be seen when the
sun shines through the windows and lights up the central space in the
great church below. Puritan fury did much to injure this beautiful
work, and its niches and tabernacles, once filled with Gothic statuary,
are now supplied with modern sculptures, good in intention but a poor
substitute. The modern stained-glass, too, is atrocious.
To fully describe Ely Cathedral in any but an architectural work would
be alike impossible and unprofitable, and it shall not be attempted
here: this giant among English minsters is not easily disposed of. For
it _is_ a giant. Winchester, the longest, measuring from west front to
east wall of its Lady Chapel five hundred and fifty-five feet, is but
eighteen feet longer. Even in that particular, Ely would have excelled
but for the Lady Chapel here being built to one side, instead of at the
end, owing to the necessity that existed for keeping a road open at the
east end of the building.
Like the greater number of English minsters, Ely stands in a grassy
space. A triangular green spreads out in front, with the inevitable
captured Russian gun in the foreground, and the Bishop's Palace on the
right. By turning to the south and passing through an ancient gateway,
once the entrance to the monastery, the so-called "Park" is entered,
the hilly and magnificently wooded southern side of what would in other
cathedral cities be named the "Close," here technically "the College,"
and preserving in that title the memory of the ancient College of
Secular Clergy which ruled sometime in that hundred years between A.D.
870 and 970.
It was from this point of view, near the ancient mound of "Cherry
Hill," the site of William the Conquerors Castle, that Turner painted
his picture. Many remains of the monastic establishment are to be seen,
built into charming and comfortable old houses, residences of the
Cathedral dignitaries. Here are the time-worn Norman pillars and arches
of the Infirmary, and close by is the Deanery, fashioned out of the
ancient thirteenth-century Guesten Hall. Quiet dignity and repose mark
the place; every house has its old garden, and everyone is very well
satisfied with himself. It is a pleasant world for sleepy shepherds, if
a sorry one for the sheep.
XLI
LET them sleep, for their activity, on any lines that may be predicated
from past conduct, bodes no one good. Times have been when these
shepherds themselves masqueraded as wolves, acting the part with every
convincing circumstance of ferocity. The last of these occasions was in
1816. I will set forth in detail the doings of that time, because they
are intimately bound up with the story of this road between Ely and
Downham Market.
[Illustration: ELY CATHEDRAL.
[_After J. M. W. Turner, R.A._]]
It was not until after Waterloo had been fought and Bonaparte at
last imprisoned, like some bottle-imp, at St. Helena, that the
full strain of the past years of war began to be felt in its full
severity. It is true that for years past the distress had been great,
and that to relieve it, and to pay for Imperial needs, the rates and
taxes levied on property had in many places risen to forty and even
forty-eight shillings in the pound, but when military glory had faded
and peace reigned, internal affairs grew more threatening. Trade was
bad, harvests were bad, wheat rose to the unexampled figure of one
hundred and three shillings a quarter, and any save paper money was
scarce. A golden guinea was handled by many with that curiosity with
which one regards some rare and strange object. Everywhere was the
one-pound note, issued for the purposes of restricting cash payments
and restoring credit; but so many banks issuing one-pound notes failed
to meet their obligations that this medium of exchange was regarded
with a very just suspicion, still echoed in the old song that says--
"I'd rather have a guinea than a one-pound note."
Everyone at this period of national exhaustion was "hard up," but worse
off than any were the unfortunate rural folk--the farm-labourers and
their like.
The agricultural labourer is now an object of solicitude, especially
at election times. There are, in these happy days, always elections;
elections to Parliament, elections to parish and other councils,
always someone to be elected to something, and as our friend Hodge has
oftentimes a vote to give his best friend, his welfare is greatly
desired. But at this unhappy time of which we have been speaking, Hodge
had no vote and, by consequence, no friends. His wages, when he could
get any work, ranged from seven to nine shillings a week, and the
quartern loaf cost one shilling and sixpence. Tea was eight shillings
a pound, sugar one shilling, and other necessaries at famine prices.
How, then, did Hodge live? It is a difficult question to answer. In
many cases the parish made him an allowance in augmentation of wages,
but it need scarce be added that this extraordinary system did not
help him much. Indeed, the odd idea of financially relieving a man
in work tended directly to injure him, for it induced the farmers to
screw him down by a corresponding number of shillings. This difficulty
of answering the question of how Hodge managed to exist was felt by
himself, in the words of a doleful ballad then current--
"Eighteen pence for a quartern loaf,
And a poor man works for a shilling:
'Tis not enough to find him bread,
How can they call it living?"
Observe: Hodge did not ask for anything more than to be allowed to
live. It is not a great thing to ask. His demand was for his pay to be
raised to the equivalent of a stone of flour a day; eleven shillings
a week. He desired nothing to put by; only enough to fill the hungry
belly. No one paid the least heed to his modest wants. Rather did
events grind him and his kind deeper into the dust. Many rustics in
those days, when half the land was common fields, kept geese. Some,
a little better off, had a cow. Fine pasturage was found on these
commons. But towards the end of the eighteenth century, and well on
into the nineteenth, there began, and grew to enormous proportions, a
movement for enclosing the commons. Most of them are gone now. Very
early in this movement Hodge began to feel the pinch, and, when his
free grazing was ended, was provided with a grievance the more bitter
because entirely new and unusual.
All over the country there were ugly disturbances, and at last the
stolid rustics of the Fens began to seethe and ferment. Still no one
cared. If Hodge threatened, why, a troop or so of Yeomanry could
overawe him, and were generally glad of the opportunity, for those
yeomen were drawn from the squirearchy and the farming classes, who
regarded him as their natural slave and chattel. To no one occurred the
idea of relieving or removing these grievances.
At last the starving peasantry of these districts broke into revolt.
The village of Southery seems to have been the origin of the particular
disturbance with which we are concerned. One May day the farm-labourers
assembled there to the number of some eight hundred, and marched to
Downham Market, nearly seven miles distant, calling at the farms on the
way and bringing out the men engaged on them. Arrived at Downham, they
numbered fifteen hundred; a very turbulent and unruly mob, ready for
any mischief. The first to feel their resentment were the millers and
the bakers, who had put up the price of flour and bread. Their mills
and shops were sacked and the contents flung into the roadway, so that
the streets of the little town were ankle-deep in flour, and loaves
were kicked about like footballs. The butchers suffered next, and by
degrees the whole shopkeeping fraternity. It is not to be supposed
that the inns were let alone. Determined men stormed them and brought
out the beer in pails. At one inn--the Crown--the local magistrates
were holding their weekly sitting, and with some difficulty escaped
from an attack made upon them. Their escape enraged the rioters, who
redoubled their energies in wrecking the shops, and were still engaged
upon this pastime when the magistrates returned, either at the head, or
perhaps (counsels of prudence prevailing) in the rear, of a troop of
Yeomanry. The Riot Act was read while the air was thick with stones and
brickbats, and then the Yeomanry fell upon the crowds and belaboured
them with the flat of their swords. The net results of the day were
streets of pillaged shops, and ten men and four women arrested by the
special constables who had hastily been sworn in. A renewal of the riot
was threatened the next morning, and only stopped by the release of
these prisoners and an agreement among employers to advance the rate of
wages.
[Illustration: ELY, FROM THE OUSE.]
This first outbreak was no sooner suppressed than another and much
more serious one took place at Littleport. Gathering at the Globe Inn
one morning to the number of a hundred and fifty, armed with cleavers,
pitchforks, and clubs, the desperate labourers set out to plunder
the village. At their head marched a man bearing a pole with a printed
statement of their grievances flying from it. The first object to feel
their rage was a shop kept by one Martin, shopkeeper and farmer. Martin
attempted to buy them off with the offer of a five-pound note, but they
took that and burst into the shop as well, smashing everything and
carrying off tea and sugar. An amusing side to these incidents is seen
in an account telling how one plunderer staggered away with a whole
sugarloaf, and how a dozen of Martin's shirts, "worth a guinea apiece,"
as he dolefully said afterwards, disappeared in the twinkling of an eye.
Then they visited a retired farmer and demolished his furniture. He had
a snug hoard of a hundred guineas tucked away in an old bureau. Alas!
when these men of wrath had gone, the guineas were found to have gone
with them. And so forth, throughout the long day.
XLII
NIGHT at last shuts down on Littleport. The village is in deshabille:
furniture lying broken in the streets, the household gods defiled,
the beer-barrels of all the public-houses run dry. Every oppressor of
the poor has been handsomely served out, and, incidentally, a good
many unoffending people too: for a mob maddened with the sense of
wrongs long endured is not discriminating. One there is, however,
not yet punished. This is the vicar, conspicuous earlier in the
day, alternately threatening and cajoling, but, many hours since,
prudently retired to his vicarage. With a savage growl, they invest
the house and batter at the door, demanding money. The vicar offers
two one-pound notes; scornfully rejected, and ten pounds at the very
least is demanded. He refuses, and to his refusal he adds the folly
of presenting a pistol at the heads of these furious men; a pistol
instantly snatched from his hands and like to be used against him.
From this very patent danger and the sudden dread of murder he runs;
runs upstairs to his wife and daughters, and presently they are out
somewhere at the back door, all flying together,--the women, as I
gather, in their nightgowns,--making for Ely, where they arrive at
midnight.
Meanwhile, all this night, Littleport is trembling: the shopkeepers,
the farmers, anyone who has anything to lose, with fear: those who
have nothing to lose, something even to gain, with certain wild hopes
and exaltations. Not without fear, they, either; for it is a brutal
Government with which, in the end, they must reckon. So far, these
wild despairing folk have had no leader, but now they turn to one
well-known to sympathise with them: one John Dennis, an innkeeper and
small farmer, and by consequence of the hated class of oppressors.
By conviction, however, he sides with them: a very Saul among the
prophets. To him, late at night, they come. He is abed and asleep, but
they rouse him. Will he lead them to Ely on the morrow, to urge their
needs and their desperate case upon the authorities?
He will not: it is useless, he says. Nay, but you must, you shall, say
they, else we will shoot you, as one forsworn.
So poor Dennis, whose fate is sealed from this hour, leaves his bed and
dresses himself, while the excited peasantry loot all Littleport of its
gunpowder, bullets, and small shot, used in wild-fowling. Some sixty
muskets and fowling-pieces they have found, and eight of those curious
engines of destruction called "punt-guns" or "duck-guns." A gun of this
kind is still used in duck-shooting. It has a barrel eight feet long,
with two inches bore, and is loaded with three-quarters of a pound
of shot and about an ounce of gunpowder. It is mounted on a swivel,
generally at the end of a punt.
Guns of this calibre they have mounted in a farm-waggon, drawn by two
horses, and at the back of the waggon they have placed a number of
women and children: with some idea of moving hearts, if not by fear of
their quaint artillery, at least in pity for their starving families.
It is daybreak when at last they set out on the five miles to Ely,
a band of two hundred, armed with muskets, fowling-pieces, scythes,
pitchforks, clubs, and reaping-hooks. Ely has heard something of this
projected advance, and sends forth three clerical magistrates and
the chief constable to parley and ask the meaning of this unlawful
assembly. The meaning, it seems, is to demand wages to be fixed at not
less than two shillings a day, and that flour shall be sold at not
more than two shillings and sixpence a stone. Meanwhile, the duck-guns
look these envoys in the eyes perhaps a little more sternly than we
are disposed nowadays to credit. At anyrate, the magistrates temporise
and promise to inquire into these things. They retire to the Cathedral
precincts to consult, and--ah! yes, will these demonstrators please go
home?
No; they will not do anything of the kind. Instead, they advance
into the Market Square, where their battery is wheeled, pointing up
the High Street, much to the consternation of the citizens, firmly
persuaded that this is the end of all things and now busily engaged in
secreting their little hoards, their silver spoons and precious things,
in unlikely places. The rioters, conscious of having easily overawed
the place, now determine to put it under contribution, beginning with
those who have ground the faces of the poor--the millers and their
kind. Dennis, armed with a gun, and at the head of a threatening crowd,
appears before the house of one Rickwood, miller. "They must have fifty
pounds," he says, "or down come house and mill." Little doubt that they
mean it: in earnest thereof, observe, windows are already smashed.
Bring out those fifty sovereigns, miserable ones, before we pull the
house about your ears!
They send off to the bank accordingly; Mrs. Rickwood going in haste.
On the way she meets the Bank Manager, a person who combines that
post with the civil overlordship of Ely. He is, in point of fact, the
chief constable. Something grotesquely appropriate, if you think of
it, in these two posts being in the hands of one man. "They shall not
have a penny," he stoutly declares, assisting Mrs. Rickwood from the
crowds that beset her; but certain blows upon head and body determine
him to be more diplomatic, and after some parley he agrees to pay
the fifty pounds in cash to those who constitute themselves leaders
of three divisions of rioters. These three men alone, representing
Ely, Littleport, and Downham, shall be admitted to the bank, and each
shall--and does actually--receive one-third of that sum, signing
for it. Resourceful manager! They are paid the coin, and sign: they
might as well have signed their death-warrants, for those signatures
are evidence of the very best against them when proceedings shall
subsequently be taken.
Other houses are visited and people terrified, and then they are at
a loss for what next. You cannot make a revolution out of your head
as you go on: what is needed is a programme, some definite scheme,
and of such a thing these poor wretches have no idea. So, gradually,
as afternoon comes on, they disperse and fall back upon discontented
Littleport, just before the arrival of a troop of the 18th Dragoons and
a detachment of the Royston Volunteer Cavalry, sent for to Bury St.
Edmunds and Royston by the magistrates who had in the early morning
parleyed with the rioters. Ely is saved!
We--we the authorities--have now the upper hand, and mean to be
revenged. On the morrow, then, behold the military, with the
Prebendary of Ely, Sir Bate Dudley, and many gentlemen and persons of
consideration, invading Littleport and wilfully stirring up again the
excitement that had spent itself. Rumours of this advance have been
spread, and on entering the village they find the men of the place
hidden behind doors and windows, whence they fire with some effect,
wounding a few. The soldiers return the fire, and one man is killed
and another pitifully mangled. The rest flee, soldiers and magistracy
after them, hunting for some days in fen and dyke, and taking at last
seventy-three; all marched into Ely and clapped in gaol, there to await
the coming of the Judge presiding over the Special Assize appointed to
try them.
The proceedings lasted six days, opened in state by a service in the
Cathedral: an exultant service of thanksgiving to God for this sorry
triumph. To it the Judge and his javelin-men went in procession, behind
the Bishop, and escorted by fifty of the principal inhabitants carrying
white wands. The Bishop himself, the last to wield the old dual
palatine authority of Church and State, was preceded by his butler,
bearing the Sword of State that symbolised the temporal power; and as
he entered the Cathedral the organ burst forth in the joyful strains of
Handel's anthem: "Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain
thing?" with its triumphant chorus, "Let us break their bands asunder!"
Nothing else so well portrays the unchristian savagery of the time
as the doings of this prelate--let us record his name, Bishop
Bowyer Edward Sparke, that it may he execrated--a veritable
Hew-Agag-in-pieces-before-the-Lord, who preached earthly vengeance and
spiritual damnation to the three-score and thirteen in prison close by.
Truly, a wolf sent to shepherd the flock.
Those were times when to steal to the value of forty shillings, and
to steal to the value of a shilling, accompanied by violence, were
capital offences. Five of the prisoners, convicted on these counts,
were sentenced to be hanged, and five were transported for life. To the
others were dealt out various terms of imprisonment. Chief among the
ill-fated five was John Dennis, the leader, somewhat against his own
judgment, of the outbreak. His, we must allow, is a figure tragical
above the rest, touched with something like the dignity of martyrdom.
They hanged him and the four others, in due course, on Ely Common, on
a day of high holiday, when three hundred wand-bearers and bodies of
troops assembled to protect the authorities and to see execution done.
It may be read, in old records, how the whole of the city was searched
for a cart to take the condemned men to the scaffold, and how at last
five pounds was paid for the use of one; so there was evidently a
public opinion opposed to this policy of bloodshed. Let us not seek
to discover who was that man who took those five pounds, and with the
taking of them sold his immortal soul.
The victims of the combined fear and rage of the authorities were
buried in one common grave in the churchyard of St. Mary's, hard by the
great Cathedral's western front, and on the wall of that church-tower
was placed the tablet that may still be seen, recording that--
"Here lye in one grave the bodies of William Beamiss, George Crow,
John Dennis, Isaac Harley, and Thomas South, who were all executed at
Ely on the 28th day of June 1816, having been convicted at the Special
Assizes holden there of divers robberies during the riots at Ely and
Littleport in the month of May in that year. May their awful fate be a
warning to others!"
There is no place more sacred to me in the whole of Ely than this
humble and neglected spot, where these men, victims of this pitiful
tragedy in corduroy and hobnailed boots, martyrs to affrighted and
revengeful authority, lie. It is a spot made additionally sad because
the sacrifice was sterile. Nothing resulted from it, so far as our
human vision can reach. Bishop Sparke and Prebendary Sir Bate Dudley
and the host of Cathedral dignitaries continued to feast royally, to
clothe themselves in fine raiment, and to drink that old port always
so specially comforting to the denizens of cathedral precincts; and
every night the watchman went his rounds, as even now, in our time, he
continues to do, calling the hours with their attendant weather, and
ending his cry with the conventional "All's Well!"