foundation on which Godfrey de Lucy built when he extended the Cathedral
towards the east. To do this he had to build out over an area of peaty
and water-logged land, wherein to reach a solid foundation it was
necessary to go down through successive layers of marl and gravel and
peat, to a considerable depth, varying from 16 to 24 feet. As this
involved working under water, and as the task of dealing with water
under foundations was beyond the skill of builders of the time, de Lucy
made an artificial foundation of beech logs, or beech trunks rather,
laid horizontally one over the other and kept in place with piles, with
the result that a progressive subsidence has occurred, mainly, but not
entirely, at the east end, causing walls to bulge and crack, and
fissures to appear, until the present degree of insecurity has been
reached. Thus it has been not a question of restoration, but of
preservation, and the work has been taken in hand not a moment too
soon.
The present operations have consisted, in the main, of systematic
underpinning of the walls and buttresses, and as much of the work has
had to be carried out under 10 feet or so of water, a diver has been
employed to lay down concrete in section after section at the base of
the new foundations, the water being afterwards temporarily drawn off by
the help of powerful pumps, to enable the work of underpinning to go on.
The employment of divers to lay foundations for a building 800 years old
would appear a fantastic absurdity, transcending the wildest stretch of
imaginative invention. Winchester Cathedral has actually realised it.
Unfortunately, the securing of the southern aisle of the nave may demand
an addition,--not merely underpinning, but the construction of
buttresses. But these, although novel, will be no more foreign to the
general design than were the corresponding buttresses which Wykeham
added to the north aisle; and these, with the further addition of the
great tie-rods inserted at various spots in the transepts and
retro-choir, will, it is hoped, give the Cathedral a stability which
will ensure its preservation for centuries more. The operations, so
novel in character, so daring in conception, so extensive in scale, are
yet unfinished, and while some £90,000 has been already expended on the
work, something like another £12,000 is still needed for its
completion.
CHAPTER XVII
THE COLLEGE
Schoolmasters in any schoole
Writing with pen and ink.
CHILDE MAURICE.
“Manners makyth man”--‘manners’ in the old and wide sense of the word,
the equivalent of the Latin ‘mores,’ or of the word ‘conversation’ in
St. Paul’s epistles, _i.e._ moral worth and character as contrasted with
wealth, or the symbols of rank and power. This is the motto inseparably
connected with Wykeham’s foundations at Winchester and Oxford alike, and
who shall say how potent this motto has been in inspiring and moulding
the character of English manhood and English public schools during the
five centuries and more since their great founder was laid to rest?
Winchester College is no common place. If Winchester Cathedral, which
enshrines the bones of Egbert, should be the Mecca of all pious lovers
of the Empire, Winchester College should be the Mecca for all English
public school men. Not that Wykeham was the first to found an English
public school, whatever exactly the term ‘public school’ may mean.
Schools had existed in the land for six or seven hundred years before
Wykeham’s day. There were schools in Winchester itself, as, for
instance, the ancient Winchester Grammar School, seven of the poor
scholars of which received a meal daily in the Hundred Mennes Hall at
St. Cross. Wykeham did not invent schools as public schools, but what he
did was to give to public schools the special impetus and character
which they have borne ever since, and in this sense he is rightly named
and revered as the ‘Father of English public schools.’
Earlier schools had almost invariably been linked to collegiate
churches--the communities of secular canons--and had occupied always a
subordinate position. Wykeham gave an independent position to his
school, strengthening it indeed by making it part of a collegiate body,
and linking it with the University, through the sister foundation of New
College--St. Marie College of Wynchester in Oxford, to give it its full
name--which Wykeham had completed in 1386.
Before the college could be commenced many preliminaries were
necessary,--bulls from the Pope, and other official sanctions, lawsuits
and agreements with all kinds of bodies which had an interest in the
site; but Wykeham began to organise his school before the permanent
buildings were ready, and for some years his scholars were lodged in
temporary quarters somewhere by St. Giles’s Hill. The site chosen for
the buildings was just outside the city walls to the south, and when at
last all was ready, on March 20, 1394, the opening ceremony was
solemnized. The aged bishop received the Warden and seventy scholars in
the presence chamber of his Episcopal palace of Wolvesey, and the whole
body left Wolvesey in solemn procession, and entered and took possession
of their new abode.
Wykeham’s immediate purpose in founding a school appears to have been to
help to provide a body of educated clergy. Successive visitations of the
‘Black Death’ had depleted the land of clergy, just as it had of
labourers, and there was pressing need for a supply of educated men to
recruit their ranks. It was to be part of the object of the college to
provide such recruits.
The scheme of the college and the statutes of the founders were
carefully thought out and elaborated. The college was part of a wide
educational scheme: a school and something more--a society, with roots
in Oxford as well as in Winchester. The society was to comprise a
school, a chantry, and a body of Fellows. The school was to consist of
seventy scholars, a number chosen very possibly in symbolical allusion
to the seventy ordained to teach and preach throughout the land of
Galilee, just as Dean Colet afterwards chose ‘a hundred and fifty and
three’ as the number of his scholars in the school he founded--St.
Paul’s School, London. Over these were a master or _Magister
informator_, and an usher or _hostiarius_: the chantry was equipped with
three chaplains, three chapel clerks, and
[Illustration: TOWER OF AMBULATORY, HOSPITAL OF ST. CROSS, WINCHESTER
A picturesque red-brick corner of the domestic buildings of St.
Cross Hospital, close to the magnificent grey-stone tower and
archway known as Beaufort’s Tower.
]
sixteen choristers: the number of Fellows or Socii was ten. The supreme
head over this varied community was the Warden.
This society, complete in itself and so far independent, was linked with
another--the sister foundation of New College, Oxford--in such a way as
to gain stability and dignity without subordination. Winchester was to
be independent of New, but the influence of New was to be a potent
factor in determining the policy of Winchester. The Warden of Winchester
was to be appointed by New College, and New College was also to have
extensive powers of visitation.
In Wykeham’s day any separation of the religious element from other
aspects of education would have been deemed impossible, and everything
was cast in a religious and even semi-monastic mould. Nevertheless the
organisations for the school and chantry were kept quite distinct, and
while divine service was celebrated practically continuously by the
chantry staff, the scholars were required to attend chapel services only
on Sundays, saints’ days, or other festivals. The Warden and Fellows
alike were to be in priests’ orders. The Fellows had duties to perform
connected with the chantry, but none connected with the school, except
that the Warden and Fellows were to elect the headmaster. The headmaster
was not necessarily to be in holy orders; he was to teach the scholars,
and to maintain discipline, and was to be assisted by the usher or
_hostiarius_. The ‘seventy’ were to be _pauperes et indigentes_, _i.e._
poor and in need of assistance, apt to study, and well versed in the
rudiments of Latin grammar, reading, and plain-song. They were to be
elected by a body of six, known afterwards as ‘the Chamber,’ from the
room overlooking Middle or Chamber Court, ‘Election Chamber,’ where
elections took place. The ‘Chamber’ was to consist of the Warden and two
Fellows from New (known as the senior and junior ‘posers’ respectively),
with the Warden, Subwarden, and Headmaster of Winchester. In election
preference was to be given to founder’s kin, and then to others in due
degrees of priority of claim. They were to remain until the age of
eighteen years, unless on the roll for New College; but founder’s kin
could remain till the age of twenty-five years.
The scholars were to be lodged, boarded, clothed, and taught entirely
free of expense: they were not to keep dogs, ferrets, or hawks: to carry
arms or frequent taverns: to empty water, etc., on the heads of their
companions from windows in the court--regulations which throw a curious
light on the manners of the time. The scholars were to be lodged and fed
under the charge of the _hostiarius_ or usher--an arrangement which
obtains even now, as the ‘seventy’ still reside in chambers in college,
under the charge of the second master.
We must not suppose that Wykeham’s scholars were to be boys either
destitute or in actual want. The term _pauperes et indigentes_ was
probably a formal expression, designed to exclude the actually wealthy
rather than anything else, like the term _in need of financial
assistance_ inserted in modern scholarship regulations.
In addition to the above, the statutes contemplated the admission of a
limited number of outsiders, known as _commensales_ or commoners, and
later on town boys or _oppidani_ were admitted as day boys. The
conditions under which the commoners resided varied greatly from time to
time. In 1727 Dr. Burton, then headmaster, made extensive additions to
the College buildings, practically converting his own house into a
boarding-house for them, and this building became known as ‘Old
Commoners.’ In 1838 Commoners was rebuilt, under the name of New
Commoners, but the result was not very satisfactory, and in 1860 the
present plan of boarding in tutors’ houses was commenced, when the Rev.
H. J. Wickham opened the first ‘House.’ In 1869, during Dr. Moberly’s
tenure as headmaster, the system was extended. ‘Commoners’ was done away
with, the commoners themselves lodged in tutors’ houses, and the
building in part transformed into ‘Moberly Library’--so termed in memory
of Dr. Moberly.
The College buildings and grounds are a charm and a delight. From the
outer front in College Street, little indeed can be seen. The
headmaster’s house, built on the site of the old Sustern Spital, is a
flat-fronted modern building faced with squared flints, and the old
Brewery presents little but a blank wall of ancient masonry. The one
external feature of interest is the delightful ‘Old Gateway’ surmounted
by a statue of the Virgin.
Passing under Old Gateway with College Brew House on the right, and then
under Middle Gate into Chamber Court, one is transported back
immediately into mediaevalism. There over Middle Gate is the figure of
‘Sainte Marie,’ and scholars, juniors, at least, if not always seniors,
as they cross the quad, doff their hats still in reverence to the Virgin
as they have done from the beginning. Immediately opposite you are
Chapel and Hall. Chapel, with Fromond’s chantry used by Lower-school
‘Men,’--for Winchester is remarkable among schools as having two
chapels--and the beautiful cloisters behind it, those cloisters which
the Founder himself seems almost to pervade and to spiritualize with his
presence, is a place to wander in and dream dreams of the past. Hall,
approached, as befits its dignity, up a grand old stairway, is
splendidly impressive, with its magnificent open timber roof and carved
wainscot, and the Founder’s portrait--a picture of real grace and
beauty--dominating the high table or dais at the other end. In the lobby
adjoining the kitchen they will show you the ‘Trusty Servant,’ the
quaint old painting emblematic of loyal and devoted service. The riddle
is explained in a copy of verses attached, and the absence of any
reference to expectation of reward on behalf of the ‘Trusty Sweater’ is
at least as suggestive as his loyalty and humble demeanour.
Most appealing, perhaps, after Hall, possibly more even than Cloisters,
is ‘Seventh Chamber,’ Wykeham’s original schoolroom, or part of it at
least, now used as a common study for senior College men, and a
veritable museum of interesting reminders of old Wykehamical life
mingled confusedly with aggressively incongruous and more modern
‘intrusive deposits,’--here perhaps a framed ‘Vanity Fair’ cartoon of
the headmaster; there possibly a couple of Teddy Bears serving as
mascots--for in college life the points of contrast between ancient and
modern are curious and startling, while not the least alluring of its
characteristic features is the rich flavour and vigour of college
nomenclature. ‘Moab,’ the boys’ washing-place in earlier and less
luxurious days--“Moab is my wash-pot”--is a delicious example of this.
College phraseology is a subject almost worthy of separate treatment by
itself.
‘Seventh Chamber Passage,’ itself originally part of Seventh Chamber,
leads you to ‘School,’ the seventeenth-century schoolroom built by
Warden Nicholas. Here you may see the ‘thrones’ or official seats in
earlier days of headmaster and usher, and the world-famous Winchester
emblem on the walls--
Aut disce
Aut discede
Manet tertia sors--caedi.
which may be freely rendered--
Learn, or depart, or stay and be beaten;
though it is more than doubtful whether, in the experience of earlier
Wykehamists at least, the first and the last-mentioned fates were at all
often found to be mutually exclusive.
Beyond is ‘Meads,’ where ‘Domum’ is yearly held, and beyond, again, ‘New
Meads,’ with its magnificent sward, its lofty trees, and its memories of
‘Eton Match’; and right away again, across the river, ‘Hills’ lies in
full view--St. Catherine’s Hill, where Winchester boys in earlier days
repaired for recreation on ‘remedies’ or holidays, the joys of which may
be followed out in full in Bompas’s delightful life of Frank Buckland.
“Manners makyth man”--one is tempted to wonder if more may not here be
meant than meets the ear, and whether ‘manners,’ in its Latin equivalent
_mores_ at least, does not wrap up a punning allusion, after the method
so dear to that age, to Warden Morys, to whose hands, on the erection of
the building, Wykeham first committed the future of his great college.
But be that as it may, the emblem seems to sum up the spirit of the
college with literal fidelity. Passing through its chambers, its chapel,
its courts, its cloisters, one is sadly tempted to linger to recall the
memory of this great headmaster, or recount the quaint stories told of
this famous warden or that, and the names of Ken, Arnold, Goddard,
Gabell, Huntingford, Barter, rise almost instinctively to one’s lips. We
shall find their memories all piously preserved and commemorated whether
in portrait, tablet, or building, as for instance the Memorial Gateway
erected as a memorial of the old Wykehamists who fell in the South
African War; but here we may not stop, and those who wish to do so can
follow out their story in Leach’s _Winchester College_ or Adams’s
delightful _Wykehamica_. But more striking than the past, the noble
traditions nobly preserved is the vitality in the present. ‘Sainte Marie
College’ has always known how to adapt herself successfully, as age
succeeded age, to the requirements of the day, and has paid the truest
respect to the Founder’s wishes in never allowing herself to grow old.
There is no frost, mingled with the kindliness of age, in Winchester
College.
CHAPTER XVIII
WOLVESEY--ST. CROSS--THE CASTLE HALL--THE ROUND TABLE
And for great Arthur’s seat ould Winchester preferres,
Whose ould Round Table yet she vaunteth to be hers.
DRAYTON’S _Polyolbion_.
From College one turns naturally to Wolvesey--Wolvesey with its
wonderful grey stone walls, its memories of Saxon and Norman,
Plantagenet and Stuart times. Here Alfred kept his Court, with all the
learned men of his time around him; here the _English Chronicle_ was
first compiled; and here, above that very Wolvesey wall, it may be, the
Danish pirates captured in the Solent were hanged--as has been already
related--in retributive justice. But the big blocks of ruin in Wolvesey
Mead are of later date; they recall to us the career of that notable
figure among the Bishops of Winchester, Henry of Blois, King Stephen’s
brother, bishop from 1129 to 1171--the masterful man, devoted churchman,
and scheming politician, whose story has been somewhat fully related in
Chapter VIII. To strengthen himself he fortified
[Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. LAWRENCE, WINCHESTER
A small but extremely interesting parish church in ‘The Square,’ of
which practically all the exterior, save the Western Doorway and
the Tower, is hidden from sight by the houses and shops hemming it
in on all sides. Every Bishop of Winchester on being installed
proceeds in solemn procession from the Cathedral to St. Lawrence
Church to ring the bell--a picturesque survival of feudal days.
‘The Square’ marks the site of a palace built for his own
occupation by William the Conqueror.
]
his dwelling at Wolvesey with an ‘adulterine’ castle--for he built here
without royal warrant, as he built his castles elsewhere at Bishop’s
Waltham and at Hursley,--and he sided alternately with Stephen and
Empress Matilda in the civil war, as circumstances dictated. And so it
befell that Winchester itself became divided into rival camps; Matilda’s
forces held the Royal Castle and the Bishop held Wolvesey, and, here
within his defences, now in ruins, the Bishop stood the siege valiantly.
Ultimately peace was made, and Winchester saw Prince Henry make joyful
entry into her ruined streets and ratify the compact. His later years
were passed in works of peace and beneficence, and for these he will
always be most gratefully remembered.
He built the Hospital of St. Cross, a permanent refuge for thirteen poor
brethren, and a house of daily entertainment for the poor and needy
outside its walls. He placed his foundation of St. Cross under the
protection of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, an Order specially
devoted to guarding the welfare of pilgrims and wayfarers. And so the
Brethren of St. Cross still wear to-day the eight-pointed cross of the
Order and the black gown which distinguished the Knights Hospitallers,
and the wayfarer’s dole of bread and beer may still be asked for and
obtained at its hospitable gates. Advancement, personal power, and
political ascendancy, all these Bishop Henry desired for himself, strove
for, won and lost in turn. St. Cross retains its vitality still,--such
is the perennial virtue of unselfish kindliness and beneficence.
Though its fortifications were dismantled, Wolvesey remained the
residence of the Bishops of Winchester for many centuries after Henry de
Blois. Here, on March 28, 1394, in the presence chamber of Wolvesey,
William of Wykeham received the warden, John Morys, and the seventy
scholars of his _Newe College of St. Marie_, and gave them his blessing
as they set out in solemn procession to enter into occupation of their
newly erected premises. In the Civil War, after Cromwell’s capture of
the city, the old Bishop’s Castle was finally dismantled.
Present-day Wolvesey Palace stands on your left as you enter from
College Street with the Norman ruins and the old Tilt yard in front of
it and on your right. Bishop Morley, the friend of Ken and Izaak Walton,
erected it. But Wolvesey and Farnham together proved too heavy an
episcopal burden, and later bishops have preferred to reside at Farnham.
So Wolvesey ceased to be the Bishop of Winchester’s official residence,
and the greater part of Morley’s building was pulled down by Bishop
North at the end of the eighteenth century. The growing need for the
division of the diocese makes it quite possible, however, that the
Bishops of Winchester may again be residing in Wolvesey Palace, as their
predecessors did for so many hundreds of years.
Wykeham’s College, ‘the Newe Saint Marie College of Wynchester,’ is but
a stone’s-throw from Wolvesey. The story of the College has been fully
dealt with in a former chapter, and so, now, as we pass along College
Street from Wolvesey, our thoughts may well turn to a house on the left
adjoining College, with memories of a different kind, those of Jane
Austen. A tablet over the door recalls the fact of Jane Austen’s death
within its walls in 1817. She had removed here from her home at Chawton,
near Alton, in hope of recovery under the medical treatment which
Winchester could afford her. But the hope was vain. She lies buried in
the north aisle of the Cathedral nave. We know her now as among the
rarest and most charming of women novelists. Of her we shall speak again
in the chapter on ‘Winchester in Literature.’
Some half mile or so south of College, beyond New Meads and the meadows
by the river--those meadows from which the tower and pinnacles of
College Chapel form so poetic a picture as they mingle with the trees
around, and the Cathedral behind--lies St. Cross, a foundation which has
undergone many vicissitudes and been at various times “much abused”
(_see pp._ 188, 189), but which has happily now for many years past been
rescued from the spoiler and restored to the full exercise of generous
beneficence. Of its foundation by Henry of Blois we have already spoken,
but in its associations another historic name figures, of equal
prominence with Bishop Henry’s--that of Beaufort, Bishop and Cardinal in
Henry VI.’s reign. Beaufort was a second founder, and the domestic
buildings and the fine gateway are his work. Along with the Brethren
with black gown and silver cross will be seen some wearing a mulberry
gown, with the Beaufort Rose as emblem; these are Brethren of the order
Beaufort founded--the Order of Noble Poverty. St. Cross is not a place
to describe at all in words; its traditions, its characteristic customs,
its general atmosphere belong to it and to it alone; to appreciate it it
must be felt. Peaceful and dignified, with the clear transparent waters
of Itchen flowing quietly by at its feet, there is no place in
Winchester, or indeed anywhere else, where the sense of hallowed charm,
of serenity, of contentment, and of rest seems quite so natural and so
pervading as here.
Wherever else we turn in Winchester we find some treasure or other over
which to linger. On the high ground forming the south-west angle of the
city there is the County Hall, last surviving relic of the great royal
castle, which William of Normandy first erected and which his successors
added to. For some six hundred years that great keep, with its heavy
battlements and frowning bastions, scowled down upon the city and
overawed its burghers. Yet, grim and all but impregnable as those ‘rude
ribs’ might seem to be, more than one assailant found means to penetrate
within. Here, in 1140, Matilda the Empress, besieged by Stephen’s Queen,
was forced by hunger to abandon resistance, and to seek safety by
stealth and stratagem in a hasty and disastrous flight--her power of
effective resistance broken finally and for ever. Here, in 1645, flushed
with victory from Naseby field, came Cromwell, and, after nine days of
hot cannonade, compelled the surrender of the citadel--a surrender which
he followed up by ordering the castle to be ‘slighted,’ _i.e._ razed to
the ground.
The present Castle Hall was erected by a Winchester monarch--Henry III.,
Henry of Winchester. Here again the sense of the historic past swells
and surges round you. It is almost a revelation in history to walk round
it and follow out in detail the memories of those whose history is
personally connected with it, their names and arms all emblazoned in the
stained glass which fills the lights on either side. Local feeling has
been just recently somewhat deeply stirred by the removal within the
Hall of Gilbert’s well-known bronze statue of Queen Victoria, formerly
placed in the Abbey grounds--a removal which has evoked a very
unfortunate controversy, and as to the wisdom of which considerable
cleavage of opinion exists. But whatever view be taken of this, as to
the impressiveness of the great Hall, within and without, or the story
it has to tell, no two opinions can be held. The grand interior with its
splendid columns speaks of great assemblies within its walls; of
Parliaments such as the one held here as early as 1265, within a year of
the death of the great De Montfort, the ‘inventor,’ so to speak, of the
representative assembly; of State ceremonial displays such as when Henry
V. received the French ambassadors here, a few days only before the
Agincourt expedition sailed--as when Henry VII. celebrated the birth of
his first-born, Arthur of Winchester, Prince of Wales, and as when Henry
VIII. received and fêted the great Emperor Charles V., the
Charlemagne of his day; of State Trials such as that which unjustly
condemned Sir Walter Raleigh; of the Bloody Assize and the horror of the
judicial murder of Dame Alicia Lisle; while the most characteristic
touch perhaps of all is given by the quaint relic hanging on the western
wall, the so-called King Arthur’s Round Table. A curious relic indeed
this latter, and an ancient one, possibly 700 years old. We shall hardly
accept it, as Henry VIII. and his royal Spanish guest did, as the actual
table at which King Arthur and his knights used to seat themselves, even
though we may read their names--Sir Launcelot, Sir Galahallt, Sir
Bedivere, Sir Kay--inscribed upon its margin. Rather does it recall to
us those quaintly attractive, uncritical mediaeval days, when historical
perspective was unknown, that glorious age when “Once upon a time”
almost satisfied the yearnings of the historical instinct. Yet one may
question whether we are really better off, because for us King Arthur’s
Round Table has no existence and Arthur himself is lost in the strange
background of
Moving faces and of waving hands,
that weird labyrinth where history and legend, myth and romance, are so
strangely and inextricably interwoven; and one turns away baffled and
reluctant from many and many an old-world story, and many and many an
old-world relic such as this, with the sense of something like a lost
inheritance.
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
There is, however, little real excuse for these unavailing regrets in
Winchester, for she above all places has store of real history--and such
history, too--enough and to spare.
Here, for instance, in the West Gate adjoining the Castle Hall, and in
the Obelisk just beyond the circuit of the old walls, this vividness of
history meets us again. Formerly the West Gate was a blockhouse as much
as a gate. You can still see where the portcullis worked up and down,
and look down from the battlements of the roof through the machicolated
openings which enabled defenders to meet assailants with molten lead and
kindred compliments. Later on it was a prison. On the walls of the
splendid old chamber above the gateway we can see elaborate designs
carved out by one poor prisoner after another, to while away the tedium
and to help him to forget the miseries of his imprisonment. Now the West
Gate is a museum with a collection of rare local interest: early weights
and measures of the days when Winchester could still impose its
standards upon others, weapons and armour, the gibbet of the
executioner, and the axe of the headsman. But strong for defence as the
West Gate and city wall were, the Obelisk beyond recalls to us one foe
whom no bar could exclude, no bolt restrain; for though in 1666
Winchester was straitly shut up like Jericho of old, and none went out
and none came in, that grim and relentless assailant, the Plague, passed
all barriers unchallenged, and Winchester became as a city of the dead.
Then--for none dared approach--the country people held their market
without and chaffered for their wares at safe distance with the men upon
the wall, and the Obelisk, erected in 1759, serves to commemorate the
spot where marketing was done for Winchester citizens under such tragic
conditions. Happily, plague has disappeared from our midst for some 250
years. In mediaeval days, right on indeed from 1348, the year of the
Black Death, plague was all too common a visitant. The sister societies
of Natives and Aliens still survive in Winchester, to carry on the work
of relieving widows and orphans, first begun when plague laid its hand
so heavily on the city in the ‘Annus Mirabilis’ and left so many widows
and orphans to relieve.
Full of interest as the West Gate is, it leaves a sense of regret behind
when we remember that it is the only one remaining of the four principal
gateways which the city once possessed. The artificial and curiously
warped ideas of taste and sentiment which characterised the mid-Georgian
period were responsible for a wholesale destruction of Old Winchester
architectural treasures. Three historic gateways, the ruins of Hyde
Abbey, the tomb of Alfred the Great, Bishop Morley’s Palace of Wolvesey,
all these and others suffered destruction, partial or complete. The City
Cross itself was condemned to removal, but popular indignation, ever
ready to express itself in Winchester as vigorously, even in modern
days, as it was in earlier days of Saxon and Dane, when popular clamour
round the hustings was the due and only expression of law,
[Illustration: HURSLEY VICARAGE
Hursley, five miles from Winchester, is the centre of ‘Kebleland.’
Here John Keble was parish priest for thirty-one years. Hursley
Church was practically rebuilt from the profits of the _Christian
Year_, and Keble and his wife lie buried in Hursley churchyard
close to the porch on the southern side.
The village has memories of Richard Cromwell, and there is a fine
historical monument to the Cromwell family in the tower of Hursley
Church.
]
could not be restrained, and the City Cross was left undisturbed. Nor
did the West Gate escape except by accident. The great room over the
gateway was at that time held as an annexe to a public-house adjoining,
and so the West Gate was spared merely in order that Winchester citizens
might the better enjoy their ‘cakes and ale.’ History teaches us to be
grateful at times to strange benefactors. To many, with the present
trend of social and political thought, the sentiment _Das Gasthaus als
Freund_ will come almost as a shock, yet here in Winchester we are
confronted by the curious paradox, that while water has sapped the
stability of the Cathedral, that of the West Gate has been secured by
beer.
Municipal life in Winchester forms another chapter full of interest. Of
her early ‘gilds,’ dating back perhaps to days before Alfred, of the
Chepemanesela, the Chenicteshalla, the Hantachenesla, and other vaguely
indicated centres of civic organisation, where, in Henry I.’s time, the
citizens in their various grades assembled to ‘drink their gild,’ we
have already spoken. Her roll of mayors claims to begin with Florence de
Lunn in 1184. Whatever antiquity the Mayoralty can justly claim--for
Florence de Lunn can hardly be treated quite seriously--her corporate
history is full and varied.
The new Guildhall in the Broadway, some thirty years old only, which has
replaced the old Guildhall in the High Street, possesses an interesting
collection of civic portraits, along with corporation plate, municipal
archives, and much wealth of historic raw material.
The finest of these pictures, King Charles II.’s portrait, painted by
Lely, and presented by the Merry Monarch himself to the city,
represents, perhaps, the only return with which the loyalty of the
citizens towards the house of Stuart was rewarded. They lent King
Charles I. £1000, they melted their private plate, valued at £300, and
their city plate, valued at £58 more, to help to fill his empty coffers
when the Civil War was raging. Old Bishop Morley, whose memories centre
closest round present-day Wolvesey and Farnham, and Bishop Hoadly of the
Queen Anne period, are among the more interesting of the personalities
whose effigies are here displayed.
Many, indeed, are the interesting memories which Winchester preserves of
the Merry Monarch and his Court; of Nell Gwynn and of the valiant stand
made against her by Prebendary Ken; of Sir Christopher Wren and the
palace he commenced to build for his royal master on the site of the
castle razed by Cromwell--a great and ambitious project never completed,
but which, under the name of the King’s House, served for many years as
the military headquarters of the city till a great fire swept it away in
1894, to make room for the present barracks, erected, soon afterwards,
on very nearly the same site.
Another interesting Guildhall portrait is that of Edward Cole, Mayor in
1597, a patriotic citizen who himself subscribed £50--a large sum for
one man in those days--towards the Queen’s war fund in days of the
Armada, and a ‘gubernator’ some years later of Christes Hospitall,
Winchester, founded, by Peter
Symonds, in 1607 alike for the maintenance of the aged and the education
of the young--a foundation possessing a delightful old Jacobean
building, just beyond the Close wall, out of which has grown, almost
within the last decade, on a wide and open site on the outskirts of the
city, a rapidly developing school of modern type, where the ‘children’
of Peter Symonds, in largely increased numbers, receive a far wider
education than was possible when he first called them into existence.
His will is a curious and characteristic document. It occupied an
enormous number of folios. Blue Coat schoolboys, practically until the
removal of the school to Horsham, showed respect to his memory by some
sixty of their number attending a special Good Friday Service at the
church of All Hallows, Lombard Street, at which sixpences and raisins
were distributed, in accordance with his will; and his Winchester
scholars and Brethren keep his memory by an annual procession to service
at the Cathedral on St. Peter’s Day, with a special sermon and quaint
ceremonial observance.
Such are some of the matters of interest, small and great, which meet
you wherever you turn in Winchester--everywhere there is some _genius
loci_, some cricket installed, and chirping on the hearth. Here it is a
quaint tavern-sign such as you can read on the outskirts. As you leave
the city you read the legend “Last Out,” as you approach from without
you read “First In.” Or it is a name of some street--Jewry Street, for
instance, recalling the times when, as already narrated, the Jews
formed a powerful element in the commercial prosperity of the city, and
had a Ghetto here--or Staple Garden, reminiscent of the great Wool Hall,
where the ‘Tron’ or weighing-machine of the Wool Staple was kept, when
Winchester was the mart where the wool trade of the south of England
centred. And here and there are darker and more sombre recollections,
such as the tablet outside the City Museum serves to remind us of the
moving tragedy of the execution of Dame Alicia Lisle in September 1685,
on a spot in the open roadway, in front of what then was the Market
House. Then, too, there are glorious old houses, Tudor and mediaeval,
like God Begot House and the so-called Cheesehill Old Rectory, and the
delightful houses erected by Sir Christopher Wren himself--those
inhabited now by Dr. England and Captain Crawford in Southgate Street
for instance, and the house in St. Peter’s Street erected for the
Duchess of Portsmouth, of unpleasant memory. These are merely random
examples of the kind of interest which Winchester presents to those who
wander through her streets with eyes to see and ears to hear. For the
casual visitor Winchester has much to offer; for the student of history
she has more; but her wealth of treasure can only be apprehended
adequately by those who are privileged to dwell within her charmed
circle, for her harvest of attraction is too wide to be garnered save by
those who bring extended opportunity as well as love and reverence to
the task.
CHAPTER XIX
WINCHESTER IN LITERATURE
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s eye
Clothes them with shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
It is always a pleasing occupation to follow out the associations of
human fancy which often invest persons and places with an interest, and
indeed a romantic charm, to which the cold-eyed historian or dryasdust
critic is entirely unresponsive, and if Winchester as it first appeared
to us, as we looked down from the brow of St. Giles’s Hill, seemed to
throb with the life and interest of a departed age, and of historical
personages long since passed away, so too we shall find that it
possesses associations of the purely literary type, not indeed fit to
challenge comparison with the glorious pageantry of its historic past
which we have attempted, all too inadequately, to present upon our
stage, but not unworthy to be chronicled and to be included in her
volume of romance and recollection. Her points of contact with
literature have been many, and yet it would be wrong to describe her as
a literary city. No poet of note, no great writer, has, in recent days
at all events, claimed her as parent; her acquaintance has been rather
with literary persons than with literature itself, for though she has
attracted many to make her in some form or other their theme, but little
of real weight in any but ancient literature has first seen the light
beneath her auspices. For all this she has, in literature as in life,
her story to tell, and that an ancient one.
The first literary associations of Winchester are, as is but natural,
historical ones, and the first mention of her in literature is found in
Bede, who records for us, among other scanty details, her name, ‘Venta,
quae a gente Saxonum Ventanceastir appellatur’; she next appears in a
full flood of glory, the seat of the learned and literary court of
Alfred, from which he gave the world the treasures of his literary
efforts--the _Consolations_ of Boëthius, Gregory’s _Pastoral Care_,
Orosius, and Bede’s _Ecclesiastical History_, all rendered into the
vernacular, and more important far than all of these, the great
thesaurus of early national history, the _English Chronicle_, the
history of which we have already related, and from which we have quoted
so constantly in our earlier chapters, to be followed by the equally
momentous Domesday Book--curious as it may seem to include this among
literary productions. Following from this we have a wide and almost
bewildering series of chroniclers, historians, and annalists, some of
whom, like William of Malmesbury, Henry Knighton, and Matthew Paris,
record details of her career incidentally as general items in the
history of the land, while others, like Precentor Wulfstan and the
annalists of Ealden Mynstre and Newan Mynstre, laboured at Winchester in
their respective scriptoria, producing not merely wonderful works like
the _Benedictional_ of St. Æthelwold and the _Golden Book_ of Edgar, but
local histories in goodly store, the Hyde _Liber Vitae_ and _Liber de
Hyda_, and the later monkish annals of Plantagenet days--Rudborne’s
_Major Historia Wintoniae_, the anonymously written _Annales de
Wintonia_, and others. Prominent among these various chroniclers was
Geoffrey of Monmouth, who, romancist and fabricator as he was, has yet
rendered valuable service by preserving the British legends as they
survived among the Brythonic folk, and has given us--and let us be duly
grateful--the Arthurian legend in all its suggestive elusiveness and
mystery, centring round Winchester and Silchester, with Arthur the
Christian King, Merlin the Mage, Dubric the High Saint, and many
another--a legend which passed through many languages and many lands,
gathering store of added marvels on the way, the customary guerdon of
such literary wanderings, to reappear in strange unwonted guises, as in
Layamond’s _Brut_ and the _Morte d’Arthur_ of Malorie. And the legendary
lore of Winchester is far from being her least attractive literary
asset: we have dealt with this subject fairly fully already--some may
perhaps deem too fully,--yet is not legend but the _alter ego_ of
history, and are not myth and legend, sober fact and imaginative
creation, after all merely the multicoloured strata in the complete
rainbow of presentment of vital truth, passing and repassing each into
other by nice gradation and imperceptible advance? But all these are but
prehistoric as it were, when English as a language was not, and monastic
Latin and Anglo-Saxon the muddy media of literary communication.
The Winchester stream in English literature begins to flow at first with
feeble current--a distich or so of uncouth verse, or a casual reference,
as in _Piers Plowman_, Leland, Camden, or elsewhere. Drayton, in his
_Polyolbion_, has some twenty lines or so on the Itchen, referring to
the Round Table of Arthur at Winchester, and the towns on her course,
speaking of
... that wondrous Pond whence she derives her head,
And places by the way, by which shee’s honoured,
(Old Winchester, that stands neere in her middle way,
And Hampton, at her fall, into the Solent Sea),
and Ken and Walton, in later Stuart days, come upon the scene. Ken is a
real Winchester possession--educated at Winchester College, and later
on, Prebendary of the Cathedral, he wrote his well-known and still
widely-used _Manual of Prayer_ for the use of the scholars of Winchester
College, and his _Morning and Evening Hymns_ breathe the same spirit of
the inner religious life afterwards so beautifully reflected in Keble’s
_Christian Year_. His preferment to the see of Bath and
[Illustration: WINCHESTER FROM ST. GILES’S HILL
From St. Giles’s Hill, where in mediaeval days the world-famous Fair of
St. Egidius or St. Giles was held, an unequalled view of Winchester city
can be obtained. The Cathedral, Wolvesey, the College, the Guildhall,
the High Street, the Alfred Statue, the Old Guildhall, the Westgate, can
all be seen. The dark clump of trees on the sky-line is the so-called
Oliver’s Battery.]
Wells arose too out of his sturdy refusal to countenance the Merry
Monarch’s irregular life, for he refused to let Mistress Eleanor Gwynne
have the use of his house to lodge in, a refusal which angered the king
at the time, but conciliated his respect, for on the bishopric falling
vacant he declared that none should have it but the “good little man who
refused his lodging to poor Nelly.” Izaak Walton, Ken’s relative, made
Winchester his residence during the closing years of his long life--a
man of culture and some literary pretension, apart altogether from his
immortal _Compleat Angler_, for his lives of Donne and Herbert attained
to some celebrity; tradition connects a certain summer-house by the
stream in the Deanery garden with him and his fishing, and in several
places in his _Compleat Angler_ he makes allusion to our Winchester
streams, showing that he had ofttimes baited his angle by one or other
of its waters. Peace to his soul--he rests in the Cathedral, in
Silkstede’s Chapel, and the verses over his tomb, though devoid of all
literary merit, are said to have been written by Ken his kinsman.
Our next possession is a greater name--and that, moreover, a Hampshire,
though not in any real sense a Winchester one--the Hampshire novelist,
the most charming and natural of women writers, Jane Austen. Here in the
early days of 1817, when a deadly and insidious malady had attacked her,
she came with her sister Cassandra to lodge in a house in College
Street, occupied then by a Mrs. David, in the vain hope that Winchester
medical skill might restore her strength.
The following letter from her pen,[3] written at this period, reveals
the characteristic _espièglerie_ of the writer, which not even advancing
weakness could disarm or subdue.
MRS. DAVID’S, COLLEGE STREET, WINTON,
_Tuesday, May 27th_.
There is no better way, my dearest E., of thanking you for your
affectionate concern for me during my illness than by telling you
myself, as soon as possible, that I continue to get better. I will
not boast of my handwriting--neither that nor my face have yet
recovered their proper beauty; but in other respects I gain
strength very fast; am now out of bed from 9 in the morning to 10
at night; upon the sofa, it is true, but I eat my meals with Aunt
Cassandra in a rational way, and can employ myself, and walk from
one room to another. Mr. Lyford says he will cure me, and if he
fails I shall draw up a memorial and lay it before the Dean and
Chapter, and have no doubt of redress from that pious, learned, and
disinterested body. Our lodgings are very comfortable. We have a
neat little drawing-room with a bow window, overlooking Dr.
Gabell’s garden.... On Thursday, which is a confirmation and a
holiday, we are to get Charles [_a relative--then a boy at the
College_] out to breakfast. We have had but one visit from him,
poor fellow, as he is in sick-room, but he hopes to be out
to-night.... God bless you, my dear E. If ever you are ill, may you
be as tenderly nursed as I have been. May the same blessed
alleviations of anxious, sympathising friends be yours; and may you
possess, as I dare say you will, the greatest blessing of all, in
the consciousness of not being unworthy of their love. _I_ could
not feel this.--Your very affectionate aunt,
J. A.
Poor Jane Austen, the rally was but a momentary one, and an untimely
death cut short her career just as she was developing to her best work.
She is buried in the Cathedral, where, curiously, the flat stone slab
over her body speaks eloquently of her benevolence of heart, sweetness
of temper, and Christian patience and hope, but not one word of her
literary skill or claims as an authoress--the only reference to these is
in the indirect phrase “the extraordinary endowments of her mind.” So
little was her right place in literature then realized, that some among
her friends saw her appearance as a novelist rather with concern than
with approval, and her literary ventures were even referred to
apologetically. Posterity has amply atoned for this neglect: the
Cathedral possesses two memorials of her--a brass and a stained-glass
window; and she has long since been admitted to the high measure of
appreciation to which her naturalness and sincerity justly entitle her.
The Dr. Gabell referred to in the letter was, of course, the well-known
Dr. Gabell, headmaster of the College, mentioned in the previous
chapter, a characteristic figure famous in his day, a picture of whom,
had she been spared, she might perhaps have left us, limned in her own
nervous and inimitable manner; but, alas! it was not to be. Fortunately
the house she occupied is known, and a commemorative tablet, placed over
the door, records appropriately her sojourn there and her untimely
death.
Following close upon Jane Austen came another, with a name ever to be
honoured in song--a summer migrant merely, it is true, or rather an
autumn one,--whose light was destined to be shortly afterwards suddenly
extinguished also. John Keats, the poet, who came here in August 1819
from Shanklin, where “Keats’s Green” preserves his memory, for a visit
of some two months’ duration--“the last good days of his life.” Several
considerations dictated his visit to Winchester, among others, the
desire to have access to a good library, a desire destined, quite
unaccountably, to disappointment. His letters written from Winchester
are full and charming literary productions: he describes the
‘maiden-ladylike gentility’ of her streets; the door-steps always ‘fresh
from the flannel’--the knockers with a staid, serious, and almost awful
quietness about them; the High Street as quiet as a lamb, the
door-knockers ‘dieted to three raps per diem’;--in such happy, delicate
phrases he hits off the Winchester of the day. Of the place itself he
gives us interesting touches: the air on one of its downs is ‘worth
sixpence a pint’; the beautiful streams full of trout delight him; the
Cathedral, fourteen centuries old, enchants his imagination; while the
foundation of St. Cross he finds to be greatly abused.
Where he lodged we know not, dearly as we should like to--we can only
form such conclusions as the following clues[4] point to:
I take a walk every day for an hour before dinner, and this is
generally my walk. I go out the back gate across one street into
the Cathedral yard, which is always interesting; there I pass under
the trees along a paved path, pass the beautiful front of the
Cathedral, turn to the left under a stone doorway--then I am on the
other side of the building, which leaving behind me, I pass on
through two College-like squares, seemingly built for the
dwelling-place of Deacons and Prebendaries, furnished with grass
and shaded with trees; then I pass through one of the old city
gates and then you are in one College Street, through which I pass,
and at the end thereof crossing some meadows, and at last a country
alley of gardens, I arrive at the foundation of St. Cross, which is
a very interesting old place, both for its Gothic tower and Alms
square and also for the appropriation of its rich rents to a
relation of the Bishop of Winchester. Then I pass over St. Cross
meadows till you come to the most beautifully clear river. Now this
is only one mile of my walk.[5]
Another clue, which locates the house very close to the High Street, if
not in it, is given by the following:
We heard distinctly a noise patting down the High Street as of a
walking cane of the good old Dowager breed, and a little minute
after we heard a less voice observe, “What a noise the ferril
made--it must be loose.”[6]
Winchester streets are less staid and genteel now, and the High Street
would hardly echo responsive to such repressed sounds to-day.
Two months only the visit lasted, months of tense compression and rich
utterance of song. _Hyperion_ (which he never finished), _Lamia_, _The
Eve of St. Agnes_, _La Belle Dame sans Merci_--all these in one form or
other came under his pen for completion or revision, while his _Ode to
Autumn_, the most perfect of all his odes, was wholly a Winchester
production inspired by his circumstances and surroundings. The German
poet might almost have had Keats prophetically before him when he sang:
Singst du nicht dein ganzes Leben,
Sing doch in der Jugend Drang!
Nur im Blüthenmond erheben
Nachtigallen ihren Sang.
E’en though after years be silent,
Sing while youthful passions throng,
Only in the fervid spring-time
Nightingales pour forth their song.
But no after years, alas! were to succeed, and Keats’s fervid
‘Blüthenmond’ was all his allotted span. Winchester is happy in the
memory of his eventful connection with her, brief in time though it was.
Our next name is Thackeray, who seems to have loved to locate his scenes
in our city and neighbourhood, though in general his references have too
little local colour to permit of identification--assuming, that is, that
any such local image was really intended.
_Vanity Fair_ and _Esmond_ are full of local allusions; Sir Pitt
Crawley, for instance, would appear to derive his names from Pitt and
Crawley, two villages close to Winchester; and in _Esmond_, Hampshire
allusions, tantalisingly veiled, it is true, seem to meet and to baffle
you everywhere. It seems impossible to avoid identifying Castlewood,
with its ruined house battered down by Cromwell, and the Bell Inn with
Basing House and Basingstoke; and while Alton, Alresford, and Crawley
are all mentioned, it is round Winchester that interest centres and
perplexes most. Where else in literature is a scene so inimitably
conjured up and told so charmingly and with such restraint, where else
is the real Thackeray so fully revealed, as when Esmond rides on from
Walcote to the ‘George’ at Winchester on the fateful 29th December, and
walked straight to the Cathedral. The organ was playing, the
winter’s day was already growing grey, as he passed under the
street arch into the Cathedral yard and made his way into the
ancient solemn edifice.
Wonderful is the chapter that follows--when Esmond and his ‘mistress,’
reconciled once more, first become mutually conscious of their love, and
the words of the anthem, “He that goeth forth and weepeth shall
doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him,”
find their joyous refrain in the loving words they exchange.
But where is Walcote? Conjecture would almost naturally settle on
Lainston House, some three miles away, the memories of which, in the
person of the notorious Duchess of Kingston, doubtless suggested the
character of Beatrix the incomparable, the breaker of hearts, the wilful
and selfish beauty, did not distance put this out of question. Prior’s
Barton House, at St. Cross, would fit us better. But the problem is a
baffling one, if indeed it has any solution at all.
Of a different kind are the memories which linger round the immediate
neighbourhood--the villages of Twyford, Otterbourne, Hursley. At Twyford
the poet Pope was sent to school, and in a house close by the great Dr.
Benjamin Franklin composed his autobiography; Otterbourne was the
birthplace and lifelong home of Charlotte Yonge, the high-minded and
accomplished, whose books will always be a standard for what is highest
and most womanly in fiction--who loved to weave the details of local
association with the stories she told so skilfully and well; and on a
higher level still we have at Hursley the memories of Keble and the
_Christian Year_,--not that Keble wrote the _Christian Year_ at Hursley,
though his connection with the place as curate commenced before it was
completed, but his life-work was in reality here. Hursley Church,
practically rebuilt by him from the profits of the sale of his
_Christian Year_, is his truest memorial, and the beautiful church and
peaceful churchyard, where he sleeps his last earthly sleep, will be
ever a spot of hallowed association and pilgrimage. Winchester may be
proud of its hymn-writers: Ken and Keble were two, and a third less well
known, but certainly deserving to be honoured, was William Whiting,
master of the College Choir School some two generations or so back,
whose beautiful hymn, “Eternal Father, strong to save,” will ever hold a
high place in the affections of church-going people.
Following on these memories we have a host of references in modern
fiction which centre more or less definitely round the neighbourhood.
Trollope’s _Barchester_ has been conjecturally identified with
Winchester, and there is a wonderfully minute and circumstantial
correspondence in _The Warden_ between the details of _Hiram’s Hospital_
and St. Cross. Miss Braddon takes us to Winchester indeed, but gives us
little, if any, actual picture of the city. The immortal Sherlock Holmes
honoured it also with a visit in the _Adventure of the Copper Beeches_,
keeping an appointment at the ‘Black Swan,’ “an inn of repute in the
High Street,” and the Cathedral and Close seem to be suggested in the
_Silence of Dean Maitland_. Allusions direct, and what seem allusions
barely veiled, are frequent, but none can vie in tragic interest and
solemn faithfulness with the last awful scene in Hardy’s _Tess of the
D’Urbervilles_--when Angel Clare and Liza, her husband and sister, are
awaiting the moment of poor Tess’s execution:--
When they had reached the top of the West Hill the clocks in the
town struck eight. Each gave a start at the notes, and walking
onwards yet a few steps they reached the first milestone ... and
waited in paralysed suspense beside the stone.
The prospect from the summit was almost unlimited. In the valley
beneath, the city they had just left, its more prominent buildings
showing as in an isometric drawing--among them the broad Cathedral
tower, with its Norman windows and immense length of aisle and
nave; the spires of St. Thomas’s; the pinnacled tower of the
College; and more to the right the tower and gables of the ancient
hospice, where to this day the pilgrim may receive his dole of
bread and ale....
Against these far stretches of country rose, in front of the other
city edifices, a large red brick building with level grey roof, and
rows of short barred windows speaking captivity, the whole
contrasting greatly by its formalism with the quaint irregularities
of the Gothic erections.... From the middle of the building an ugly
flat-topped octagonal tower ascended against the east horizon, and
viewed from this spot, on its shady side and against the light,
seemed the one blot on the city’s beauty. Yet it was with this blot
and not with the beauty that the two gazers were concerned. Upon
the cornice of the tower a tall staff was fixed. Their eyes were
riveted on it. A few minutes after the hour had struck, something
moved slowly up the staff and extended itself upon the breeze. It
was a black flag.[7]
Poor Tess! was it necessary for the author to mete out measure thus
cruelly upon the children of his imagination--was it kind to Winchester
to burden her memories with one so appallingly harrowing, so much in
contrast with her quiet peace?
And yet, after all, is it anything more than retributive justice? Have
not her citizens--those of a generation or so back, at least--been
responsible for permitting the one really commanding elevation and
landmark she possesses to be marred and dishonoured by this same ‘blot,’
these obtrusive prison-walls, capped by this self-same ‘ugly flat-topped
octagonal tower’? Is not rather the creator of _Tess_ displaying a fine
and just critical perception in thus exacting from them the full
literary penalty for so unpardonable an outrage on the outward
attractiveness of their own fair city?
Such are some of the phantoms which pursue or elude us as we pass to
and fro through the circle of Winchester and its surroundings--yet are
they actual phantoms? Have not these seemingly impalpable nothings as
complete an identity as the memories and records of the actual
happenings of the past? The writer well recollects, after hunting
through Salisbury and exploring its treasures of architecture and
interest, the delight with which he came upon the old Cathedral organ,
now for some years past removed from the Cathedral to one of the city
churches, and recognized in it a real bond of relationship--not because
it was originally the gift of George III., though that indeed was the
case, but because it was the organ on which Dickens’s Tom Pinch had
played when the Cathedral service was over, and his friend the
organist’s assistant had permitted him to touch the keys. Not a great
circumstance, nor a great character--far from it,--but sufficient to
supply the one touch of human sympathy by which soul recognizes soul,
and which binds all--past and present, student and subject, reader and
author--alike in one. And even as these phantoms, whether of history or
legend, of actual existence or fancy, have been conjured up before us
for some brief spell, let us, now our task has drawn to a close, bid
them adieu with what kindliness of recollection we may:
Come like shadows, so depart.
Index
_The titles in black type refer to illustrations._
Adam of Gurdon, 123
Ælfeah, 58
Æthelbert, 32
Æthelred the Redeless, 61, 85
Æthelwold, Bishop, 20, 30, 49, 54, 58, 78, 85, 147, 153, 154
Æthelwulf, 30, 32, 85, 153
Alfred, King, 5, 32, 34, 91, 143, 152, 153
Alfred, a refugee, 38
Alfred, statue of, 42
Alresford, 111, 184
Alswitha, 41, 91, 145
Alton, Pass of, 123
Alwarenestret, 94
Alwine, 71
Anderida, 15
Anselm, Archbishop, 87, 96
Antonine, Itineraries, 15
Arthur, King, 15, 168, 183
Arthur, Prince, 151, 173
Arthur, Round Table, 21, 168, 174, 184
Asser, Bishop, 36, 40
Assize, Bloody, 7, 175
Athelstan, King, 43
Augustine, 21
Aulus Plautius, 15
Austen, Jane, 7, 154, 171, 185
Avington Park, 22
Barons’ war, 113
Beaufort, Cardinal, 147, 151, 171
Bede (Venerable), 22
Benedictines, 131
Birinus, 23, 24, 153, 154
Bishop’s Waltham, 162, 169
Black Death, 139, 160
Bredenestret, 94
Broadway, 177
Browne, Harold, Bishop, 154
Bucchestret, 93, 94
Burton, Dr., 163
Buttercross, 80, 118, 177
Cædmon, 36
Cær Gwent, 14
Calais, 121
Calpestret, 94
Camden, 143
Castle, Norman, at Winchester, 86, 94, 172
Castle, Brabantine merchants in Winchester, 115
Cathedral, 8, 29
Cathedral of Æthelwold, 56, 77
Cathedral, bedesmen, 4
Cathedral, pilgrims at, 128
Cathedral, preservation of, 77, 155
Cathedral, transformation by Wykeham, 149
Cathedral (Winchester), 23, 146
Celts, 12
Charlemagne, 27
Charles II., 6, 178
Charles V. (Emperor), 6, 174
Chenictes, 96
Chenichetehalla, 96, 177
Chepemanesela, 96, 177
Cheyney Court, 155
Cheyney Court and Close Gate, 112
Chilcombe, 47
Christes Hospitall, 5, 179
_Christian Year_ (Keble), 192
Christianity in Hampshire, 21
Clausentum (Southampton), 15, 18
Close, the, 125
Cnut, 5, 65, 85, 91, 144, 153
Colbrand, 44, 91
Cole, Edward, Mayor, 178
Colet, Dean, 160
College, Brew House, 164
College, Winchester, 145, 158
Commoners, 163
County Hall, 172
Cromwell, Oliver, 172
Cromwell, Thomas, 142
Curfew, 80
Curle, Bishop, 145
Danemark Mead, 47, 91
Danes, 28, 36, 60, 85, 153
Danihel (Bishop), 25
David, King of Scotland, 105
Dean and Chapter of Winchester, 144
Deanery, 145, 155
Deanery, The, 105
De Montfort, Simon, 113, 173
Domesday Book, 72, 80, 92, 182
Domesday (Winchester), 92
Domum, 166
Dorchester, 23
Drayton’s _Polyolbion_, 184
Dunstan (Archbishop), 30, 50, 56
Ealden Mynstre, 41, 44, 51, 183
East Gate, 94, 95
Easton, 96
Edgar, 30, 48, 49, 59, 85
Edmund, King, 48
Edred, King, 48
Edward the Confessor, 66
Edward III., King, 120
Edward, Prince, 114
Edward the Elder, King, 43, 91
Edwy, King, 49
Edyngton, Bishop, 147, 151
Egbert, 27, 85, 153
Election chamber, 162
Emma (Ælfgyfu), Queen, 62, 65, 85, 91, 153
_English Chronicle_, 22, 34, 39, 40, 50, 61, 69, 82, 101, 168, 182
Escheopes, 95
Esmond, 190
Estals, 95
Ethelmar, Bishop, 154
Eton College, 152
Evesham, battle, 114
Feudal system, 80
Flesmangere Stret, 94
Font (cathedral), 100
Fox, Bishop, 147, 151
Franklin, Benjamin, 192
Friars in Winchester, 139
Fromond’s Chantry, 167
Fyfhyde, Walter, Abbot, 139
Gabell, Dr., 166, 187
Gardiner, Bishop, 151
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 20, 183
George, 121, 191
George Hotel, 97
Gere (Gar) Stret, 93
Gewissas, 20, 22
Ghetto, 97, 180
Gild merchant, 46, 80, 121
Gilds, 95, 177
Godbegot House, 62
Godbiete, 62, 80, 120
Godfrey de Lucy, Bishop, 111, 147
Godwine, Earl, 65, 66, 85
Godwine, Earl, death of, 69, 153
Golde Stret, 94
Gospel Oak, 22
Grimbald, Abbot, 41
Guild Hall, 97
Guy of Warwick, 46, 91
Hædda, Bishop, 23
Hamble, 32
Hamble River, 40
Hampshire, Christianity in, 21
_Hampshire, Victoria History of_, 72
Hantachenesle, 94, 96, 177
Hardy, Thomas, 193
Harold, King, 65
Harold II., King, 71
Harthacnut, 65, 85, 153
Hempage Wood, 77
Henry I., 6, 80, 88, 98
Henry II., King, 105, 110
Henry III., King, 6, 111, 154, 173
Henry IV., King, 151
Henry V., 173
Henry VIII., 6, 91, 140, 173
Henry of Blois (Bishop), 22, 64, 92, 100, 154, 168, 171
Henry of Blois, Papal Legate, 102
Heptarchy, 26
_Hereward the Wake_, 48, 85
High Street, 48
Hoadley (Bishop), 154, 178
Horne (Bishop), 144
Hours, services of, 133
Hursley, 192
Hursley Vicarage, 176
_Hyda, Liber de_, 45, 50, 54, 183
Hyde, Abbey, 41, 90, 105, 115, 127, 133, 145
Hyde Abbey, dissolved, 143
Hyde, _Liber Vitæ_ of, 64, 183
Itchen Abbas, 41
Itchen Stoke, Watersplash at, 89
James I., 6
Jewry Street, 97
Jews, 97
Joan of Navarre, 151
John, King, 6, 111
Julius Cæsar, 15
Judith, Countess, 83
Judith, Queen, 36
Keats, John, 3, 188
Keble, John, 153, 192
Ken (Bishop), 153, 166, 170, 178, 188
Kenulphus (Kenwalh), 23, 85, 147, 153
King’s Gate, 95, 98, 114, 123, 130
King’s Gate, 73
Kingsmill, William (Prior), 144
Kitchin, Dean, 136
Knighton, Henry, 47, 105, 183
Knights of St. John (Hospitallers), 107, 169
Kynegils, 22, 24, 32, 147, 153
Lachenictahalla, 96
Lainston House, 191
Langton’s Chapel, 150
Lanfranc, Archbishop, 77, 88
Leach’s _Winchester College_, 167
Leland, 143
Lely, 178
Leofric, Earl, 66
Liberty of Godbiete, 62
Liberty of the Soke, 119
Lisle, Dame Alice, 7, 174
London, 74
Magdalen College, Oxford, 152
Magdalen Hill, 10
Manners makyth man, 6, 158, 166
Martyr Worthy, 80
Mary, Queen, 151
Mary, Queen, 5
Mathew of Paris, 115, 183
Matilda, Empress, 5, 102, 169, 172
Mayor, 119
Meads, 140, 166
Menstre Stret, 94
Middle gate, College, 164
Mirabel Close, 132, 155
Moab, 165
Moberley (Doctor), 163
Monastic life, 130
Morley (Bishop), 154, 170, 178
Mortuary chests, 24, 28, 32, 64, 153
Morys, John, 166, 170
Naseby, 172
Natives and Aliens, 176
Nell Gwynne, 178, 185
New College, Oxford, 159
New Forest, 80, 88
Newan Mynstre, 34, 41, 43, 51, 69, 71, 90
Norman Conquest, 73
Novices, Master of, 135
Nunna Mynstre (St. Mary’s Abbey), 41, 54, 98, 104, 109, 118, 145, 183
Obedientiarii, 133
Obelisk, 175
Old Minster, 63, 64, 66, 69
Oliver’s Battery, 8
Order of Noble Poverty, 172
Osberga, 36
Otterbourne, 192
Oxford, 152
Palm Hall, 126
Parliament at Winchester, 114
Pass of Alton, 123
_Pavilionis Aula_, 122, 126
Peter de Rupibus (Bishop), 112, 154
Peter Symonds, 179
Pevensey, 15
Philip of Spain, 151
Piepowder Court, 126
Piers Plowman, 125
Pilgrims, 126
Pilgrims’ Hall, 128, 155
Pilgrims’ Way, 129
Plague in Winchester, 175
Plantagenets, 109
Plegmund, 43
_Polyolbion_, Drayton’s, 184
Portchester, 10
_Portus Magnus_ (Portchester), 15, 18
Raleigh, 6, 174
Richard of Devizes, 97
Richard I., King, 97, 110, 151
Robert, Earl of Gloucester, 104
Roger Bacon, 113
Rome, Alfred at, 32
Roman roads, 17, 19
Roman occupation, 15
Roman walls, 16
Round table, 21, 168, 174, 184
Rudborne (_Major Historia_), 46, 55, 63, 71, 80, 183
Rufus, 5, 65, 79, 87, 88, 108, 153
St. Æthelwold (_Benedictional_ of), 57, 183
St. Alphege, 58
St. Bartholomew, Hyde, church of, 138
St. Brice’s Day, 61
St. Catherine’s Hill, 9
St. Catherine’s Hill, 10, 64, 166
St. Cross, 64
St. Cross, 5, 100, 107, 108, 127, 145, 169, 171
St. Cross, Tower of Ambulatory, 160
St. Elizabeth’s College, 140, 145
St. Giles’s Fair, 79, 95, 117, 121
St. Giles’s Hill, 7, 10, 159, 180
St. John’s Hospital, 145
St. Josse, 44, 127
St. Lawrence, 169
St. Mary’s Abbey (Nunna Mynstre), 41, 54, 109, 118
St. Peter’s, Cheesehill, 57
St. Swithun’s Church, 114
St. Swithun’s Monastery, 24, 32, 51, 91, 98, 110, 113, 115, 118, 130, 133, 144
Sarum, 10
Saxon Winchester, 20
Scowertenestret, 94, 97
Seculars, 52
Senlac, 72
Seventh Chamber, 164
Shawford Mill, 16
Sherlock Holmes, 193
Silchester, 10, 18, 20
Sildwortenstret, 93, 94
Silence of Dean Maitland, 193
Siward (Earl), 66
Slype, the, 145
Snidelingestret, 94
Soke, Liberty of, 119
Southampton, 15
Southgate, 123
Staple towns, 120
Stephen, 6, 100
Stigand (Bishop), 76, 144
Stret bidel, 95
Sustern Spital, 140, 163
Swithun, Bishop, 29, 32, 54, 127, 147, 153, 154
Tannerestret, 94
_Tess of the D’Urbervilles_, 193
Thackeray, 190
Trollope, Anthony, 192
Tron, 120, 180
Trusty servant, 164
Twyford, 192
Venta, 25
Venta Belgarum, 14, 15
Vespasian, 15
Victoria, Queen, 153, 173
Vikings, 28
Vintan-ceastir, 25, 182
Walcote, 191
Walkelyn (Bishop), 77, 147, 154
Waltheof (Earl), 83
Walton, Izaak, 153, 154, 170, 184
Wantage, 35
Warton, Doctor, 154
Wayneflete (Bishop), 151
Weald Forest, 12
Weirs, The, 25
Wenegerestret, 94
Wessex (capital of), 20, 153
Westgate, 94, 123, 175, 177
Westminster Abbey, 147
White Ship, 90, 98, 101
Whiting, William, 192
Wilberforce, Samuel (Bishop), 154
William of Malmesbury, 183
William I., 5, 71, 74, 87, 172
William II. (Rufus), 5, 65, 79, 87, 88, 108
William of Wykeham, 6, 107, 139, 147, 148, 151, 158
Winchester Domesday, 92
Winchester, Alfred’s death and after, 43
Arthurian legend, 20
Bishop Æthelwold, 49
Capital of Danish Empire, 59
Capital of England, 26
Cathedral, 23, 29, 100, 146, 186, 189
Civil War in, 104
Conversion of Kynegils, 23
Dean and Chapter, 144
Early days, 10
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, 117
In Literature, 171
Later Norman, 87
Massacre at, 61
Monastic life, 130
Norman, 73
Winchester, Norman castle, 86
Plague in, 175
Roman city, 16
Roman occupation, 15
Saxon, 20
That Joly Citè, 1
Westgate, 40
Winton Survey, 92
Wolvesey, 168
Winchester from St. Giles’s Hill, 184
Winchester College Brewhouse, 121
Cloisters and Fromond’s Chantry, 137
Memorial Gateway, 144
Middle Gate, 128
Second Master’s House, 153
Tower of the Chapel, _Frontispiece_
_Wintonia, Annales de_, 77, 183
Wolsey, 142, 153, 168
Wolvesey, 8, 39, 59, 85, 98, 100, 102, 104, 118, 126, 170
Wool trade, 120, 180
Wren, Sir Christopher, 178, 180
Wrothesley, Thomas, 142
Wulfstan (Precentor), 53, 55, 77, 118
Wye, Faire, 125
Wykehamica, Adams’s, 167
Yonge, Charlotte, 192
THE END
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] Or _Hantachevesle_ (the spelling is obscure).
[2] Knighton’s _De eventibus Angliae_.
[3] _Memoir of Jane Austen_, by Austen Leigh, pp. 163 and 164, inserted
here by kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan and Co.
[4] This and the following extracts are inserted here by kind
permission of Messrs. Macmillan and Co.
[5] Letter to George and Georgina Keats, September 21. From _Letters of
John Keats_: Sidney Colvin: p. 310.
[6] _Letter to G. and G. Keats_, September 20.
[7] Inserted by kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan and Co.