[Illustration: WELLS CATHEDRAL, FROM THE BISHOP'S GARDEN.]
[Illustration: WELLS CATHEDRAL, FROM THE SWAN POOL.]
Proceeding southward into Somersetshire, we arrive at the cathedral city
of Wells, which is united with Bath in the well-known bishopric of Bath
and Wells, and is considered the most completely representative
ecclesiastical city in England. It gets its name from its numerous
springs, taking their rise from the wells in the Bishop's Garden, where
they form a lake of great beauty, while bright, clear water runs through
various streets of the town. After leaving the edge of the Bristol
Channel the plain of the Somersetshire lowlands is bordered by rocky
uplands, of which the most important is the elevated plateau known as
the Mendip Hills, carved on the outside with winding valleys having
precipitous sides. Wells nestles in a wide grassy basin at the foot of
the Mendips, its entire history being ecclesiastical, and that not very
eventful. It never had a castle, and no defensive works beyond the wall
and moat enclosing the bishop's palace. It seems to have had its origin
from the Romans, who worked lead-mines among the Mendips, but the first
fact actually known about it is that the Saxon king Ina established here
a house of secular canons "near a spring dedicated to St. Andrew." It
grew in importance and privileges until it became a bishopric, there
having been fifteen bishops prior to the Norman Conquest. The double
title of Bishop of Bath and Wells was first assumed in the days of King
Stephen. In looking at the town from a distance two buildings rise
conspicuously--the belfry of St. Cuthbert's Church and the group of
triple towers crowning the cathedral. There are few aggregations of
ecclesiastical buildings in England that surpass those of Wells, with
the attractive gateways and antique houses of the close, the grand
facade of the cathedral, and the episcopal palace with its ruined
banquet-hall and surrounding moat. From the ancient market-square of the
city, stone gateways surmounted by gray towers give access, one to the
close and the other to the enclosure of the palace. Entering the close,
the western front of the cathedral is seen, the most beautiful facade of
its kind in Britain--an exquisite piece of Early English architecture,
with Perpendicular towers and unrivalled sculptures rising tier upon
tier, with architectural accompaniments such as are only to be found at
Chartres or Rheims. The old Saxon cathedral lasted until Bishop
Jocelyn's time in the thirteenth century, when he began a systematic
rebuilding, which was not finished until the days of Bishop Beckington
in the fifteenth century, who completed the gateways and cloisters.
Entering the cathedral, the strange spectacle is at once seen of
singular inverted arches under the central tower, forming a cross of
St. Andrew, to whom the building is dedicated. These arches were
inserted subsequently to the erection of the tower to strengthen its
supports--an ingenious contrivance not without a certain beauty. The
choir is peculiar and beautiful, and produces a wonderful effect, due to
its groups of arches, the Lady Chapel and retro-choir, and the rich
splendors of the stained glass. The chapter-house, north-east of the
northern transept, is built over a crypt, and is octagonal in plan, the
roof supported by a central column, while the crypt beneath has an
additional ring of columns. The cloisters are south of the cathedral,
having three walks, with galleries above the eastern and western walks,
the former being the library. Through the eastern wall of the cloisters
a door leads to a private garden, in which and in the Bishop's Garden
adjoining are the wells that name the city. The most important of these
is St. Andrew's Well, whence a spring issues into a large pool. The
water from the wells falls by two cascades into the surrounding moat,
and a conduit also takes away some of it to supply the town. From the
edge of the pool is the most striking view of the cathedral.
[Illustration: VIEW UNDER CENTRAL TOWER, WELLS CATHEDRAL.]
[Illustration: RUINS OF THE OLD BANQUET-HALL.]
The close is surrounded by various ancient houses, and the embattled
wall with its bastioned towers and moat encloses about fifteen acres.
Here is the gateway known as the "Bishop's Eye," and another called the
"Dean's Eye," the deanery where Henry VII. was entertained in 1497, the
archdeanery, coming down from the thirteenth century, and the beautiful
Chain Gate in the north-east corner that connects the cathedral with the
Vicar's Close. The latter, one of the most peculiar features of Wells,
is a long and narrow court entered through an archway, and having
ancient houses with modernized fittings on either hand. Bishop Ralph of
Shrewsbury erected this close in the fourteenth century, and his
monumental inscription in the cathedral tells us he was a great
sportsman, who "destroyed by hunting all the wild beasts of the great
forest of Cheddar." The moat and wall completely surround the bishop's
palace, and its northern front overhangs the moat, where an oriel
window is pointed out as the room where Bishop Kidder and his wife were
killed by the falling of a stack of chimneys upon their bed, blown down
by the terrible gale of 1703 that swept away the Eddystone Lighthouse.
It was Bishop Ralph who made the walls and moat as a defence against the
monks of Bath, who had threatened to kill him; Bishop Jocelyn built the
palace. Adjoining it is the great banquet-hall, of which only the
northern and western walls remain, in ruins. It was a magnificent hall,
destroyed from mere greed. After the alienation of the monasteries it
fell into the hands of Sir John Gates, who tore it partly down to sell
the materials; but happily, as the antiquarian relates, Gates was
beheaded in 1553 for complicity in Lady Jane Grey's attempt to reach the
throne, and the desecration was stopped. Afterwards, Parliament sold
Wells for a nominal price to Dr. Burgess, and he renewed the spoliation,
but, fortunately again, the Restoration came; he had to give up his
spoils, and died in jail. Thus was the remnant of the ruin saved. It was
in this hall that Whiting, the last abbot of Glastonbury, was condemned,
and hanged on Tor Hill above his own abbey. The great bishops of Wells
were the episcopal Nimrod Ralph, and Beckington, who left his mark so
strongly on the cathedral and town. He was a weaver's son, born at the
village of Beckington, near the town of Frome, and from it got his name.
Hadrian de Castello, who had a romantic history, became Bishop of Wells
in 1504. Pope Alexander VI. made him a cardinal, and afterwards tried to
poison him with some others at a banquet; by mistake the pope himself
drank of the poisoned wine, and died. The bishop afterwards entered
into a conspiracy against Leo X., but, being detected, escaped from Rome
in disguise and disappeared. Wolsey was Bishop of Wells at one time, but
the most illustrious prelate who held the see after the Reformation was
Thomas Ken. He was educated at Winchester, and afterwards became a
prebend of the cathedral there. Charles II. paid a visit to Winchester,
and, bringing Nell Gwynne with him, Ken was asked to allow her to occupy
his house. He flatly refused, which had just the opposite effect upon
the king to that which would be supposed, for he actually respected Ken
for it, and when the see of Wells became vacant he offered it to "the
little fellow who would not give poor Nelly a lodging." Ken attended the
king's deathbed shortly afterwards. He was very popular in the diocese,
and after the Sedgemoor battle he succored the fugitives, and with the
Bishop of Ely gave spiritual consolation to the unfortunate Duke of
Monmouth on the scaffold. Ken was one of the six bishops committed by
James II. to the Tower, but, strangely enough, he declined to take the
oaths of allegiance to William III., and, being deprived of preferment,
retired to the home of his nephew, Izaak Walton. All reverence his
sanctity and courage, and admire his morning and evening hymns, written
in a summer-house in the Bishop's Garden.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE CHEDDAR CLIFFS.]
[Illustration: HIGH ROCKS AT CHEDDAR.]
The Mendip Hills, with their picturesque gorges and winding valleys,
were formerly a royal forest. It was here that King Edmund was hunting
the red deer when his horse took fright and galloped towards the brow of
the highest part of the Cheddar Cliffs. Shortly before, the king had
quarrelled with Dunstan, and expelled the holy man from his court. As
the horse galloped with him to destruction, he vowed if preserved to
make amends. The horse halted on the brink as if checked by an unseen
hand, and the king immediately sought Dunstan and made him abbot of
Glastonbury. These hills were the haunt of the fiercest wild beasts in
England, and their caves still furnish relics of lions to a larger
extent than any other part of the kingdom. The most remarkable deposit
of these bones is in the Wookey Hole, on the southern edge of the
Mendips, about two miles from Wells. At the head of a short and
picturesque glen, beneath an ivy-festooned cliff, is a cavern whence the
river Axe issues and flows down the glen. The cave that disclosed the
animal bones is on the left bank of the glen, and was but recently
discovered in making a mill-race. It also contained about three hundred
old Roman coins, rude flint implements, and skeletons of a mammoth and
woolly rhinoceros. The larger cave, which is hung with fine stalactites,
can be explored for some distance. Near the entrance is a mass of rock
known as the Witch of Wookey, who was turned into stone there by a
timely prayer from a monk who opportunely arrived from Glastonbury. The
underground course of the Axe in and beyond this cave is traced for at
least two miles. The Mendips contain other pretty glens and gorges, and
from the summit of their cliffs can be seen the valley of the Axe
winding away southward, while to the westward the scene broadens into
the level plains that border the Bristol Channel, guarded on either side
by the hills of Exmoor and of Wales. Little villages cluster around the
bases of the hills, the most noted being Cheddar, famous for its cheese,
straggling about the entrance to a gorge in which caves are numerous,
each closed by a door, where an admission-fee is charged. Some of them
are lighted with gas and entered upon paved paths. Lead-and zinc-mines
are worked in the glens, and above Cheddar rises the Black Down to a
height of eleven hundred feet, the most elevated summit of the Mendips.