[Illustration: SOUTHWELL MINSTER AND RUINS OF THE ARCHBISHOP'S PALACE.]
[Illustration: THE NAVE, SOUTHWELL MINSTER.]
We will now go down the valley of the Trent below Nottingham, and,
mounting the gentle hills that border Sherwood Forest, come to the
Roman station, Ad Pontem, of which the Venerable Bede was the
historian. Here Paulinus was baptized, and it was early made the site of
an episcopal see. The name was Sudwell at the Norman Conquest, and then
it became Southwell, and the noted minster was one of the favorite
residences of the Archbishop of York. It is a quiet, old-fashioned
place, with plenty of comfortable residences, and in a large churchyard
on ground sloping away from the main street, with the ruins of the
archbishop's palace near by, is Southwell Minster. There are few finer
examples of a Norman building remaining in England, the three towers,
nave, transepts, and chapter-house forming a majestic group. An enormous
western window has been inserted by later architects, rather to the
detriment of the gable, and this produces a singular effect. The
interior of the minster is magnificent. The Norman nave is of eight bays
with semicircular arches, surmounted by a triforium of rows of arches
almost equal to those below, and rising from piers with clustered
side-columns. It is nearly three-fourths the height of the lower stage,
and this produces a grand effect. The flat roof is modern, it and the
bells having been replaced after the church was burned in the last
century. The ruins of the archiepiscopal palace, erected six hundred
years ago, have been availed of in one portion for a dwelling-house.
Wolsey built part of it, and beneath the battlemented wall enclosing the
garden there was not long ago found the skeleton of a soldier in armor,
a relic of the Civil Wars. The name of the town is derived from its
wells. The South Well is a short distance outside the limits in a little
park. The Holy Well, which was inside the minster, is now covered up.
Lady Well was just outside the church-walls, but a clergyman fell into
it one dark night and was drowned, and it too has been closed. St.
Catherine's Well was surmounted by a chapel, and is in repute as a cure
for rheumatism. The ancient inn of the Saracen's Head in Southwell, not
far from the minster on the main street, witnessed the closing scene of
the Civil War. After the battle of Naseby the Scotch had reached
Southwell, and Montreville, an agent of Cardinal Mazarin, came there to
negotiate on behalf of King Charles in 1646. The Scotch commissioners
had rooms in the archiepiscopal palace, and Montreville lodged at the
Saracen's Head. After the negotiations had proceeded for some time, the
king in disguise quitted Oxford in April, and after a devious journey by
way of Newark appeared at Montreville's lodgings on May 6th. On the
south side of the inn was an apartment divided into a dining-room and
bedroom, which the king occupied, and in the afternoon, after dining
with the Scotch commissioners, he placed himself in their hands, and was
sent a prisoner to their head-quarters. The canny Scots before leaving
stripped the lead from the roof of the palace, and it afterwards fell
into ruin, so that Cromwell, who arrived subsequently, found it
uninhabitable, and then occupied the king's room at the Saracen's Head,
his horses being stabled in Southwell Minster. Southwell since has had
an uneventful history.