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[Illustration: “WHAT HAVE WE HERE? S. JOSEPH HELP US!”
_Page 3._]
THE LAST ABBOT OF GLASTONBURY.
A Tale of the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
by the
REV. A. D. CRAKE, B.A.,
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; Vicar of Havenstreet, I.W.;
Author of
Fairleigh Hall, The Chronicles of Æscendune, The Camp on the
Severn, etc., etc.
Oxford and London:
A. R. Mowbray & Co.
HISTORICAL PREFACE.
The Author humbly ventures to offer the ninth of his series of original
tales, illustrating Church History, to the public; encouraged by the
favourable reception the previous volumes have found.
In the tales, “Æmilius,” “Evanus,” and “The Camp on the Severn,” he has
endeavoured to describe the epoch of the Pagan persecutions, under the
Roman Empire; in the “Three Chronicles of Æscendune,” successive epochs
of Early English history; in the “Andredsweald,” the Norman Conquest;
in “Fairleigh Hall,” the Great Rebellion; and in the _present_ volume,
one of the earliest of the series of events ordinarily grouped
under the general phrase “The Reformation,” the destruction of the
Monasteries.
It is many years since the writer was first attracted and yet saddened
by the tragical story of the fate of the last Abbot of Glastonbury, and
amongst the tales by which he was wont to enliven the Sunday evenings
in a large School, this narrative found a foremost place, and excited
very general interest.
A generation ago, few English Churchmen cared to say a good word for
the unhappy monks, who suffered so cruel a persecution at the hands of
Henry the Eighth and his vicar-general, Thomas Cromwell. Many, indeed,
confessed a sentimental regret when they visited the ruins of such
glorious fanes as Tintern, Reading, or Furness, and reflected that but
for the vandalism of the period, such buildings might yet vie with the
cathedrals, with which they were coeval, and if not retained for their
original uses, might yet be devoted to the service of religion and
humanity, in various ways; but the fear of being supposed to betray
a leaning to the doctrines once taught within these ruined walls, has
prevented many a writer from doing justice to the sufferers under
atrocious tyranny.
Yet did an act of parliament now pass the legislature giving the
various episcopal palaces, deaneries, rectories, and vicarages in
England, with all their furniture, to the Crown, and were the present
occupants ruthlessly ejected, and hung, drawn, and quartered in case of
resistance, active or passive, the injustice would not be greater, the
outrage on the rights of property more flagrant, than in the case of
the monasteries.
The late Rev. W. Gresley, in his tale, “The Forest of Arden,” was (so
far as the writer remembers) the first writer of historical fiction,
amongst modern Churchmen, who attempted to render justice to our
forefathers, who, born and bred under the papal supremacy, could not
disguise their convictions, or transfer their allegiance to a lustful
tyrant.
But even he spake with “bated breath” when compared with Dean Hook,
who, later on, thus writes in his lives of the Archbishops of
Canterbury:--
“To an Englishman, taught to regard his house as his castle,
these acts of invasion on property appear to be monstrous; our
blood boils within us when we learn that by blending the Acts
of Supremacy with the Treason Acts the Protestant enthusiasts
under Cromwell condemned to death not fewer than 59 persons,
who, however mistaken they were in their opinions, were as
honest as Latimer, and more firm than Cranmer.
“Of the murders of Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas Moore, the
former the greatest patron of learning, the latter ranking with
the most learned men the age produced, both of them men of
undoubted piety, the reader must not expect in these pages a
justification or even an attempt at palliation; we should be as
ready to accord the crown of martyrdom to the Abbots of Reading
and _Glastonbury_ and to the Prior of S. John’s, Colchester,
when rather than betray their trust they died, as we are to
place it on the heads of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer. Although
the latter had the better cause, yet we must all admit that
atrocious as were the proceedings under Mary and Bonner, the
persecutions under Henry and Cromwell fill the mind with
greater horror.”
But it may be asked, were not the atrocious crimes laid to the
charge of the monks in the celebrated “Black Book,” the “Compendium
compertorum,” a sufficient justification? Did not the very parliament
at the recital cry “Down with them.”
The opinion of such parliaments as those which passed the absurd and
bloody treason acts dictated by Henry, or which condemned so many
innocent victims by Acts of Attainder, or passed those most atrocious
acts, “the Vagrant Acts,” by which a cruel form of slavery was
established in England, only England would not put it in practice,--the
professed opinion of such parliaments will weigh little with modern
Englishmen.
But it appears that the very accusers themselves, or at least
the Government who employed them, could not have believed in the
accusations; for no less than eleven of the Abbots were made Bishops
to save the Government their pensions, and some of them men against
whom the worst charges had been made; others became deans, and others
were put into positions of trust, as parochial priests, under Cranmer
himself.
And who were the witnesses? Their leader, Dr. London, was put to
penance for the most grievous incontinency, and afterwards thrown into
prison _for perjury_, where he died miserably. Another, Layton, who
figures in the tale, becoming dean of York, pawned the cathedral plate.
Upon the testimony of such witnesses one would not hang a dog.
But this is not the place for an investigation of the subject, nor is
it one to be commended to the pure-minded reader, such garbage did
these venal and foul-mouthed spies invent to justify the rapacity of
their employers. Not that we would maintain the absolute purity of the
monasteries, or that there was no foundation whatsoever upon which
such a superstructure was reared: many of the brotherhoods had fallen
far below the high ideal of their profession, or even the spiritual
attainments of their brethren in earlier and better days; but there
is absolute proof that in many instances the reports of the visitors
were pure inventions. No just Lots were they, “vexed with the filthy
conversation of the wicked,” but men of evil imaginations, who were
paid to invent scandal if they could not find it.[1]
I have not, therefore, hesitated to make the sufferings of the last
Abbot of Glastonbury the theme of a story, but while I have adhered to
the main facts of the tragedy, I have availed myself somewhat of the
usual license accorded to all writers of historical fiction, justified
by the example of the great and revered founder of the school, Sir
Walter Scott.
In particular, the words put into the mouth of the Abbot, both in his
last sermon at Glastonbury and in the trial at Wells, were actually
used by his fellow-sufferer, the Prior of the Charterhouse, John
Houghton, under precisely similar circumstances: the reader will find
the whole of the touching story in the second volume of Froude’s
“History of England;” it is well worth perusal.
It may be objected that one so young as the hero of the latter portion
of the story, “Cuthbert the foundling,” could scarcely have been
exposed to the operation of the Treason Acts, or required to take the
oath of supremacy, in his twenty-first year; but there are examples
of sufferers under this _régime_ at a more tender age: a month or two,
more or less, made small difference in the Tudor period, especially
when the interests of the Crown were concerned, or the will of the
despot expressed. The concealment of the Abbey treasure, and the
sympathy of the Abbot with the Pilgrimage of Grace (how could he be
otherwise disposed) are matters of history.
An attempt has been made, within our memory, by a modern historian,
to whitewash the memory of the royal “Blue Beard,” under whom such
fearful atrocities were committed; we are asked to believe that the
Carthusians, dying dismembered and mutilated in so horrible a manner,
or in the filth of the fetid dungeons in which they were thrown, that
the aged Countess of Salisbury flying about the scaffold with her
gray hairs dabbled in blood, that the Protestants who were burnt, and
Catholics who were drawn and quartered, sometimes on the same day and
at the same place, that such victims as Fisher, More, and Surrey, were
all unwilling sacrifices to a high sense of duty on the part of the
king who slew them, who also was a right honourable husband, plagued by
unworthy wives, and hence deserving of the pity of married men.
But to the writer, the following paragraph from a deservedly popular
history, appears more nearly to represent the truth:--
“The temper of such a legislator as Henry the Eighth, and the
thorough subservience, the otherwise _incredible_ cowardice and
baseness of his parliaments, can only be fully exhibited by an
enumeration of their penal laws, which for number, variety,
severity, and inconsistency are perhaps unequalled in the
annals of jurisprudence.
“Instead of the calmness, the foresight, and the wisdom which
are looked for in a legislator, we find the wild fantasies and
ever-changing, though ever selfish caprices of a spoiled child,
joined to the blind fierce malignant passions of a brutal and
cruel savage. It would seem as if the disembodied demon of a
Caligula or a Nero, the evil spirit that once bore their human
form, had again become incarnate upon earth, let loose for some
wise (though to dull mortal eyes, dimly discerned) end, to
repeat in a distant age, and another clime that same strange,
wild, extravagant medley of buffoonery and horror, which is
fitted to move at once the laughter and execration of mankind.”
(_Knight’s Pictorial History_).
This is strong language, but when one rises from a perusal of the deeds
committed during this reign of terror, it seems justified.
The destruction also of the monastic libraries, and the decay of
solid learning (Latimer being witness), must ever be regretted by
the scholar. Fuller tells us that “the English monks were bookish of
themselves, and much inclined to hoard up monuments of learning.” But
all these treasures were ruthlessly destroyed or scattered, including
books and valuable MS., which would now be worth their weight in gold.
John Ball, by no means a _laudator temporis acti_, wrote to Edward
VI.:--
“A number of them which purchased these superstitious mansions
(the monasteries) reserved of their library books, some to
serve their jakes, some to scour their candlesticks, and some
to rub their boots, some they sold to the grocers and soap
sellers; and some they sent over sea to the bookbinders--not
in small number, but at times whole ships full. ... I know a
merchant man, which shall at this time be nameless, that bought
the contents of two noble libraries for forty shillings a
piece. A shame it is to be spoken. This stuff hath he occupied
instead of grey paper by the space of more than these ten
years, and yet he hath store enough for as many years to come.”
It is true the monks were accused of leading idle lives; but to the
unlearned, especially those who get their bread by physical labour, the
student poring over his books is always “a drone.”
It may be most true that the monastic system, so serviceable in
the middle ages, the only shelter for peaceful men in the midst of
bloodshed and strife, the only refuge for learning amongst the densely
ignorant, had had its day; that the hospitals, the almshouses, the
workhouses, the schools and colleges, do all the work they once did,
and do it better, that in the ages, then to come, they could have
filled no useful purpose had they survived.
Well! supposing this granted, does it in any way justify the cruelty
of the suppression? The judicious Hallam well observes, that “it is
impossible to feel too much indignation at the spirit in which these
proceedings were conducted.” Had vested and life interests been
respected, had the admission of further novices been prohibited, and
the buildings themselves, when no longer needed, utilized as hospitals
and colleges, and the like; whatever men might think of the change,
they would at least admit the moderation of the government; but what
consideration can justify the intolerable barbarity of the persecutions.
Two questions may be asked, first, what became of the monks, nearly
a hundred thousand, in a population of some three millions, who were
thus, with the most meagre of pensions, cruelly turned out of house and
home.
It must be replied that a large number, in fact all who could by any
contrivance be brought under the scope of either of the numerous laws
involving capital punishment, perished by the hand of the executioner.
For example, begging in the first instance was punished by whipping,
in the second by mutilation, and in the third the beggar was doomed
“to suffer pains and execution of death as a felon, and enemy of
the commonwealth.”[2] This cruel law, which was probably drawn up
by Henry himself, was doubtless aimed especially at the unfortunate
monks, who unfitted for labour by their sedentary lives, and unable
to obtain work, would often be forced to the dreadful alternative of
starvation or hanging. How many starving monks must have fallen into
this dreadful trap, for their pensions even if regularly paid were
miserably insufficient, and preferred to hang than to starve; doubtless
they formed a large proportion of the eighty thousand criminals, who
are said to have perished, by the hands of the executioner, in this
dreadful reign.
Secondly: what became of the monastic property amounting, it has been
said, to a sum equivalent to fifty millions sterling of our present
money, which was to have almost superseded taxation, and accomplished
other wonderful ends? It disappeared under Henry’s incomprehensible
extravagance, and at the hands of his greedy courtiers; and not only
was he forced in his latter days to debase the currency, but moreover
in the last November of his life, his venal parliament conferred upon
him the absolute disposal of all colleges, charities, and hospitals in
the kingdom, with all their manors, lands, and hereditaments, receiving
only in return his gracious promise that they should all be applied for
the public good. Had God not summoned the tyrant to give an account
of his stewardship, within two months of the act, we might not have
had a college, school, almshouse, or hospital left in England, any
more than a monastery; “had he survived a little while longer,” says
the impartial writer I have before quoted, “he would not have left an
hospital for the care of the sick, or a school for the instruction of
youth.”
But I have already taxed the patience of my readers; I have promised
them a tale and instead I am writing an essay.
A. D. C.
_December, 1883._
FOOTNOTES
[1] The reader will find this subject fully and fairly treated in the
sixth chapter of the Rev. J. H. Blunt’s “History of the Reformation”
and the first introductory chapter of the first volume of the new
series of Dean Hook’s “Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury,” from
which I have already quoted.
[2] 22 Henry VIII. Cap. 12, and 27 Henry VIII. Cap. 25.
INDEX.
CHAP. PAGE.
PART I.--The Last Abbot.
PROLOGUE 1
1.--ALL HALLOW EVEN 7
2.--RETROSPECT 16
3.--THE SECRET CHAMBER 27
4.--THE ARREST 33
5.--THE ROAD-SIDE INN 44
6.--THE TRIAL 55
7.--GLASTONBURY TOR 65
8.--ON THE TRACK 74
9.--IN THE RUINS OF THE ABBEY 91
PART II.--Cuthbert the Foundling.
1.--THE OLD MANOR HOUSE 101
2.--AN EVENTFUL RAMBLE 111
3.--AN ACT OF GRATITUDE 122
4.--EXETER GAOL 135
5.--PUT TO THE QUESTION 145
6.--AN UNEXPECTED DISCLOSURE 154
7.--CASTLE REDFYRNE 164
8.--LED FORTH TO DIE 177
9.--BREATHING TIME 187
10.--THE SHADOWS DARKEN 198
11.--AN ANCIENT INN 210
12.--THE HAND OF GOD 221
13.--THE TRUST FULFILLED 232
14.--SUUM CUIQUE TRIBUITUR 243
EPILOGUE 252
NOTES 257
_ERRATUM._
_Page 169, line 5, Read_ appetens _for_ appietens.
PART I.
_The Last Abbot._
They built in marble; built as they
Who hoped these stones should see the day
When Christ should come; and that these walls
Might stand o’er them till judgment calls.
THE LAST ABBOT OF GLASTONBURY,
_A TALE OF THE DAYS OF HENRY VIII_.
Prologue.
It is a cold wintry night in the year 1524, the fifteenth of the high
and mighty Lord, Henry, Eighth of that name, “by the grace of God King
of Great Britain, France, and Ireland,” as the heralds vainly style him.
All day long the clouds have been hanging over the forest of Avalon,
heavy and dull as lead, and now towards eventide they descend in snow,
an east wind arises, which blows the flakes before it, with such
frantic violence, that their direction seems almost parallel to the
earth, penetrating every nook of the forest, filling each hollow.
Darkness descends upon the earth, as the storm increases; it is dark
everywhere, but darkest in the depths of the sombre wood, amidst the
tangled copse, beneath the bare branches of the huge oaks, which wave
wildly as if in torture, and anon fall with a crash which startles the
boldest beasts of the forest.
A road leads through the heart of this mighty wood, leads towards
the famous Abbey-town of Glastonbury, where as folks say Joseph of
Arimathæa arrived long ago, and planting his staff, which grew like
Aaron’s rod, and put forth buds, determined the site of the future
Benedictine Monastery. Do they not yet show the strange foreign thorn
tree which grew from that holy staff?[3]
But we are in the wood, and happy were it for us, if we could but rest
before the huge fire which imagination pictures in that far off great
chamber of the Abbey.
Through the darkness comes a step softly falling on the snow; it draws
nearer, and dim outlines become distinct. It is a woman and she carries
an infant.
A woman and her child out to-night! the Saints preserve them,
especially S. Joseph of Glastonbury; with what a timid glance too she
looks behind her from time to time. Does she fear pursuit?
See how she clasps the child to her breast, how she wraps her robe
around it, regardless of the exposure of her own person: poor mother,
what has brought her out in this wild night? Alas, her strength seems
failing: see she stumbles, almost falls, the wind blows so fiercely
that she can hardly stand against it,--she stumbles again.
We, as invisible spectators, stand beneath the shade, or what would
be in summer the shade of a spreading beech; around its base there is
a mossy bank, gently rising, or rather _would_ be were it not covered
with snow.
She approaches the tree and falls on the slope as one who _can_ do no
more, who gives up the struggle.
Still she shelters the poor babe.
An hour passes away, she lies as if dead, only there is a ceaseless cry
from the child, and from time to time a faint moan from the mother.
Look, there is a light in the wood; it is moving, and now a heavy step,
crushing the frozen snow; it is a countryman, and he carries a horn
lantern.
A dog, a shepherd’s dog, runs by his side.
Will the man pass the tree?--yes _he_ may but the dog will not; see he
is “pointing,” and now he runs to his master, and takes hold of the
skirts of his smock.
“What have we here? S. Joseph help us! a woman! Why mistress what
doest thou here? Get up, or thou wilt be frozen stiff and stark before
morning.”
Only a moan in answer: he stoops down and gently, for a rustic, looks
at her face; he does not know her, but he sees by the dress and by
something indescribable in the face, that she is one of “gentle blood.”
“Canst thou not move?”
Another moan.
He strives to raise her, and the dog looks wistfully on, as if in full
sympathy. Thy canine heart, poor Tray, is softer than that of the men
who drove her forth to-night.
Ah, that is right; she takes courage, strives to rise,--no, she is down
again.
“I cannot,” she says, “my limbs are frozen; take the child, save my
Cuthbert.”
“I would fain save you both,” says the man, but he strives in vain to
do so, it is beyond his power to carry them, and _she_ can move no
further; she but rises to sink again on the bank, her limbs have lost
their power.
“Take my child,” she says once more, “and leave me to die; heaven is
kinder than man, and the good angels are very near.”
The yeoman, for such he is, hesitates, “No one shall say that Giles
Hodge forsook thee in thy strait, yet, there is the keeper’s cottage
within a mile, if I run and take the babe, I may come back and save
thee.”
“Go, go, for heaven’s sake, my boy _must_ live, his precious life
_must_ be saved, then come back for me; he is the heir of”--
Here her voice failed her.
“She speaks the words of wisdom,” says Giles, and he takes the babe,
leaving the shawl wrapped round the mother.
“Nay, the shawl, take the shawl for the babe.”
“I can carry it ’neath my smock, and ’twill come to no harm, thou
wouldst die without it.”
She starts up, imprints one fervent kiss upon the babe ere it leaves
her; alas, it is the last feeble outcome of strength.
Giles runs along the road, as fast as the ground, heavy with snow, and
the wind, will permit him; he reaches the house of Stephen Ringwood,
the deputy keeper; it is now Curfew time, and the honest woodman is
just putting out his fire to go to bed.
“Stephen, Stephen,” shouts Giles, as he knocks at the door.
A loud and heavy barking from the throats of deep-chested dogs.
“Who is there?”
“Thy old crony, Giles Hodge; open to me at once.”
The door opens. “What Saint has sent thee here! and a babe too?”
“Oh, Stephen, come directly, and help me bring the _mother_ in; she is
out in the snow, spent with toil, and if we arrive not soon she will be
_dead_.”
“I have some warm milk on the fire; here, Susan, give some to the babe
and give me the rest,” and putting it into a horn, the two started
back, leaving the infant with the keeper’s wife.
They reach the tree again.
How still she is.
Giles trembles, bless his tender heart. It is no discredit to thy
manhood, Giles.
“Yes, she is dead, she has given her last kiss to the babe.”
They put together some short poles and cord they have brought, which
make a sort of litter.
“Carry her gently, Stephen,” says Giles as he wipes his eyes with the
sleeves of his smock, “carry her gently, she said the good angels were
near her, and I believe they are watching us now, if they are not on
the road to paradise with her soul.”
FOOTNOTES
[3] See Note A., Antiquities of Glastonbury.
CHAPTER I.
_ALL-HALLOW EVEN._
It was the All-Hallow Even of the year 1538, and the first Evensong of
the festival of All Saints had been sung, in the noble Abbey Church
of Glastonbury, with all those solemn accessories, which gave such
dignity, yet such mystery, to the services of the mediæval Church of
England.
The air was yet redolent with the breath of incense, the solemn notes
of the Gregorian psalmody yet seemed to echo through the lofty aisles,
as the long procession of the Benedictine brethren left the choir, and
passed in procession down the church, the Abbot in his gorgeous robes
closing the procession.
A noble looking old man was he, that Richard Whiting,--last and not
least of the hundred mitred Abbots who had filled that seat of honour
and dignity since the first conversion of England. A face full of
sweet benignity--one which inspired reverence while it commanded love.
His life had been distinguished throughout by the virtues which had
ever found congenial home at Glastonbury--piety towards God, and love
towards man.
And now the lay congregation who filled the noble nave and aisles,
beyond the transept, were leaving the church; the lights were slowly
extinguished, and the gloom of the wintry evening was filling the
church, save where the one solitary light burnt all night before the
high altar.
In the porch, after the doors were closed, stood the sacristan and a
young acolyte--one of the choristers, for since a large school was
attached to the monastery, they had the assistance of a youthful choir.
It was a bright happy face, that of the boy, upon which the moon shone
brightly, as he bade “good night” to the sacristan--saying that he
had leave to spend the evening at home, and should not return till
morning--then passed with light footsteps through the Abbey precincts,
and then across a green, to some distant cottages which skirted the
common land. Let us describe him more fully. He was somewhat sunburnt
in complexion, with brown hair, and had those blue eyes, beneath long
dark eye-brows, which give a sort of dreamy expression to the face,
but the features were redeemed from the charge of effeminacy by the
bold open brow, the firm thin lips, and by the nose which was slightly
aquiline.
His dress was studiously simple, yet very unlike that of modern days,
but if my youthful readers have ever met a “blue coat boy” they will
have no difficulty in picturing the attire of the period. To sum up, he
was a lad whose appearance inspired interest, as we hope his fortunes,
to be herein depicted, will do, for they were passing strange.
It was a picturesque house before which he stopped--a cottage overgrown
with ivy, not unlike those cottages, now alas fast vanishing, which
may be met in many an Oxfordshire village--and which strolling artists
delight to paint, lovely to look at, but not so comfortable, it may be,
as the new style of brick and slate tenements, which painters would
disdain to transfer to canvas.
The fire within shone brightly through the windows, and the flickering
light made the heart of Cuthbert, for such was his name, leap with the
anticipation of the joys of the ingle-nook,--the endearments of home.
He lifted the latch without knocking, and entered; an aged man and
woman sat by the fire, a comely old couple, who were eager, in spite of
their infirmities, to greet the darling of their old age.
And was not there a meal spread on the table near the fire? It was not
“tea,” that beverage was yet unknown, but there was plenty to tempt a
boy’s appetite, and the frosty air had sharpened Cuthbert’s.
And when it was over, and the old man sat in his high-backed arm-chair,
the grandmother went out and the lad went into the “chimney corner” to
his favourite seat.
“Chimney corner!” what a nook of delight on the winter’s evening, when
the snow-flakes steal gently down the chimney and hiss as they meet the
blazing logs! Well does the writer remember filling such a seat many
winters ago.
“Grandfather, do you remember that this night is Hallow-e’en, when all
the ghosts are abroad? I want you to tell me something about them--the
old tales which used to make my flesh creep when I was younger.”
“Why, boy, it is thought to be a night when the dead can’t rest quiet
in their graves, though why they should not rest on a holy night like
this I can hardly tell.”
“Did you ever see a ghost? Oh, here is grandmother with nuts, apples,
and ale! Why do we always eat nuts and apples on Hallow-e’en?”
“They always have been eaten to-night, that is all I know; sometimes
they tie up an apple with a string to the beam, and when they have tied
the hands, set the young ones to eat it with the help of their teeth
only--catch who catch can.”
“And about the nuts?”
“Oh, lads and maidens who are in love with each other will take two
nuts, and call them _lad_ and _lass_: if they burn quietly together
they conclude that they will have a happy wedded life, but if _lad_ or
_lass_ bounce out of the fire, that there will be strife and quarrels
between them, in which case, dear boy, I think they had better not go
together to the altar; better live apart than have nought but strife
and quarrels.”[4]
“But I wanted to ask you about something more wonderful than this;
the boys were saying, when we were talking about Hallow-e’en in the
cloisters, that if you went into the church porch at midnight, you
would see the _fetches_[5] of all the folk who are to die this year
come and choose the place for their graves.”
“I have heard the tale, and don’t believe it; it is all nonsense, my
boy.”
“Anyhow I promised that I would go and see to-night.”
“Nay, my child, you must be in bed and asleep at midnight, and I do not
think you would _dare_ to try.”
“That is what they said, the other boys I mean, and they _dared_ me to
go.”
“I don’t think you would catch a ghost, but I think you would catch
your death of cold, it is freezing sharply to-night.”
Cuthbert thought it best to drop the subject, lest he should be
forbidden to make the adventure, upon which he had set his heart, not
without some trepidation, but still with the longing to be the hero of
the occasion, who should test the truth of the legend--for he had bound
himself to his schoolfellows to make the experiment, and there was much
speculation as to the probable results.
After a very pleasant evening the hour of bed-time approached. Our
ancestors thought Curfew (8 p.m.) the proper time for retiring, and
nine was looked upon as a very late hour.
So, soon after Curfew had rung from the tower of the Abbey, the embers
of the fire were “raked out,” and the old couple retired to their
rooms, after seeing Cuthbert safe in his little chamber, which opened
upon the roof.
The rudeness of the furniture in those days has been somewhat
exaggerated by modern writers; indeed we are apt to conclude, because
in this nineteenth century such progress has been made in the arts
of civilization as puts us quite upon a different footing from
our grandfathers, that a similar difference existed between those
grandfathers themselves and _their_ ancestors. But it was not so, there
was scant difference between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries in
this respect.
So in Cuthbert’s room there was a comfortable bed, on a carved wooden
bedstead, a chair, a table, a chest for clothes, and the like, much as
in the present day.[6]
The lad did not undress, but, after he had said his prayers, lay down
on the bed in his clothes, and did what he could to keep himself awake,
till the time came for his adventure.
He counted the hours as the Abbey clock struck, until _eleven_ boomed
forth, when he rose, put on his doublet, opened the door, and went very
softly down stairs.
He listened at his grandfather’s room as he went by--they were fast
asleep, he heard their breathing. He descended to the “living” room,
opened the outer door carefully, and stole forth.
Once on the green, the freshness of the air and the bright moonlight
revived him; he felt his spirits rise in spite of the involuntary chill
which now and then crept over him.
He reached the grave-yard of the parish church, for this had been
selected as the scene of the experiment, since the monks would be
singing the night office in the Abbey.
And as he went through the church-yard to the porch, he could not help
looking timorously from side to side, it seemed so strange to be alone
with the dead, when the living were asleep; he was glad to get inside,
the shadows of the yew trees looked so ghastly on the cold graves, and
the chill moon looked upon the last low resting places with such a
ghostly light.
He tried the door of the church; it was locked, as usual at that hour.
There was a broad bench on each side the porch; he sat and waited.
And I think he fell asleep and dreamt, but this was the story he told.
When the clock tolled the hour of midnight the last sound of the bell
was prolonged, as if the organ in its softest tones had taken up the
note; the music grew louder, until the introit of the Mass for the dead
pealed out distinctly.
“Requiem æternam dona eis Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.”
Then as he started up in amazement, the door swung open, and the
“fetches or doubles” of those who were to die that year, that is, their
ghostly likenesses, came out to seek their graves.
And there were many whom the boy knew, but last of all came out from
the church the form of his benefactor, Richard Whiting, Lord Abbot of
Glastonbury.
And around his neck there hung a ghastly cord, and close by his side
followed Prior and Sub-Prior, and cords were about their necks too.
Then the boy grew faint, and knew no more till he awoke, or recovered
from his faint, whichever it was, and returning home, undressed,
shivering as he did so, and went to bed.
When he afterwards told this tale, there were many who refused to
believe that he had ever left his bed, and always insisted that he had
_dreamt_ the scene in the porch.
But if it was a dream, it was not without inspiration.
Coming events cast their shadows before.
FOOTNOTES
[4] See Note B.
[5] See Note C.
[6] An ancient inventory of the furniture of such a house lies before
the writer as he pens these lines.
CHAPTER II.
_RETROSPECT._
Three centuries and more have rolled away since the dissolution of
the monasteries, which once rose in architectural beauty in each
district of mediæval England, gladdening the eye of the wayfarer with
the assurance of hospitality, and of the poor with that of help and
protection.
Their pious founders built in marble--
“Built as they
Who hoped those stones should see the day
When Christ should come; and that those walls
Might stand o’er them till judgment calls.”
Alas! for such hopes; the tyrant Tudor, taking advantage of the
palpable declension of the inmates from their first love, levelled them
with the ground, and left the country shorn of such glorious fanes as
arose over the conquerors at Battle, or the tombs of the mighty dead at
Glastonbury. Yet still they had welcomed the wayfarer and the stranger,
tended the sick, taught the young, found labour for the poor, were
good masters to their tenants, built bridges, made roads, and were the
centres of civilization in their several districts.
Two rebellions ruthlessly extinguished in blood--the pilgrimage of
grace, and the later rising in Devon and Cornwall--testified to the
popular sense of loss when the servile courtier, ever the tyrant at
home, had succeeded to the gentle old monks.
For all that is now done for the poor, and too often in a wooden kind
of way by workhouses, hospitals, and the like, was then done by the
monasteries, and their suppression was a cruel wrong to the poor.
Reformed, they needed to be, or they had never fallen, but that the
treasures given by their founders in trust for God and His poor should
pass into the hands of Henry’s fawning courtiers was too monstrous an
iniquity.
The legendary history of Glastonbury has been told by the author
before,[7] its supposed foundation by S. Joseph of Arimathæa, devoutly
believed in in that credulous age, and the holy thorn-tree which
blossomed from the staff which he there struck into the ground; _there_
King Arthur was buried, and his body found after the lapse of ages;
_there_, like a city set on a hill, the lamp of faith had been kept
burning for forty generations, if alas, tarnished (which we sadly own)
by superstition and credulity.
Amongst other good works, they educated the young of Christ’s flock,
for at Glastonbury there was a school of two or three hundred boys,
who were taught by the learned Benedictines of the Abbey; for the
Benedictines were the scholars of the day.
The discipline was somewhat severe, and the life hard, as modern boys
would think it.
The hour of rising, summer or winter, was four; they breakfasted at
five, after the service of Lauds in the chapel, upon beef and beer on
ordinary days, and on a dish of sprats or herrings instead of meat on
fast days.
Then to their lessons, and we shall grieve our younger readers when we
tell that Solomon was held in much respect, and therefore the rod was
freely used in case of idleness or insubordination; but of the latter
there was very little under monastic discipline.
There was a short space for recreation before the chapter Mass at nine
o’clock, which all attended, after which work was resumed until Sext,
which was followed by a simple but hearty dinner.
There was again another period of work in the afternoon, after Nones,
but as it was necessary that the boys should not be behind the world
in physical prowess, ample leisure was afforded for exercise and rough
sports.
Modern schoolboys complain of compulsory football; their remote
ancestors had little choice in such matters, whether schoolboys or
rustic lads on the village green. By Act of Parliament, tutors in the
one case, or magistrates in the other, were bound to see that the lads
under their jurisdiction, omitting idle sports, did exercise themselves
in archery, the broad-sword exercise, the tilt yard, and such-like
martial pastimes.
Fighting, or mock-fighting--and the imitation was not altogether unlike
the reality--was alike the amusement and the chief accomplishment
of life, especially in England, which had then, not without cause,
the reputation of being the “fiercest nation in Europe.” “English
wild beasts,” an Italian writer calls them, yet who would not prefer
the manly and honest Englishman to the Italian of the day, with his
poisoners and bravoes?
And our readers must imagine how the Glastonbury boys were excited
by such stories as that of the four hundred London apprentices, who
went out as volunteers to the garrison of Calais, and kept all the
neighbouring districts of France in terror, until they were overwhelmed
by _six_ times their number, and died fighting with careless
desperation to the last.
So, even in the calm atmosphere of a monastery school, the world
intruded.
As for their book-lore, they learned Latin practically, for they were
forced to use it during a great part of the day in conversation,
while they read daily in the Fathers and classical authors. Fabyan’s
Chronicles and other old English historians supplied their history, and
they were fairly instructed in the rudiments of mathematics. Altogether
it was a sound education which the monastic school supplied.
We will now proceed with our story, after a digression which may be
easily omitted by those who dislike to understand what they read.
* * * * *
The reader has, we doubt not, already identified the hero of the
midnight adventure in the church porch, with the babe of our prologue.
Honest old Giles Hodge had told the whole story to the Abbot, within
whose jurisdiction the babe was found, and with whom he sought an early
interview. Strict search had been made after the surviving parent, if
perchance there was one upon whom that epithet could be bestowed.
But no trace was found; only the delicate apparel of the lady, and
the fine linen in which the child was wrapped, led to the conclusion
that they were members of some “gentle house.” Upon the linen there
were marks: a crest which had been picked out, and two initials yet
remaining, “C. R.”
“The poor little foundling shall be our care,” said the good Abbot,
“but here alack, we have no nursery, and your good wife, who has
so recently lost her own babe, must be his foster mother if she be
willing. I will provide for his maintenance hereafter, whether in the
cloister or the world, unless his friends claim him.”
“And what name shall we give him, your reverence?”
“Let me see, C must be his Christian name; let us call him Cuthbert,
better patron than S. Cuthbert he could not have; the R must yet be a
mystery--he will not need two names yet.”
So the years rolled by; Cuthbert grew up strong and hearty, but no one
ever came to claim him. And he was still known only by _one_ name, a
peculiarity little commented upon where his story was so well known.
He grew up a general favourite, especially, it was supposed, with the
Abbot; and yet the self-restrained austere old man showed little traces
of such weakness, save to very observant eyes.
He loved the young, one and all, and often visited the school. He knew
every face there, and it was a great delight to him to watch them at
their sports, perhaps recalling his own younger days, when Henry the
Seventh was King.
In time little Cuthbert was chosen to be a chorister, and soon
afterwards, by the Abbot’s desire, he was made an “acolyte,”--one who
served at the altar,--and there his reverent and unassuming demeanour
won him yet further regard.
But my readers must not think him the least bit of a milksop; they
know, I trust, that the bravest lad is he who fears God, and fears
nought besides. Cuthbert was not one of those lads who _talked_ much
about religion, if there were such then, nor again one who courted
notice by obtrusive acts of devotion--his religion was of a manlier
type.
And meanwhile, as we shall show, he gained the respect of his
companions by his proficiency in manly sports and exercises; he was one
of the best archers, one of the best at fencing and sword play; in the
tilt yard he was always up to the mark. In the same way some of the
best boys I remember at a certain school were conspicuous at football
and cricket, the modern equivalents.
* * * * *
It was a fine evening in May, and all the lads of Glastonbury School
were in the archery ground. A silver arrow had to be contended for as a
prize--the prize of the year--and there were many competitors.
All Glastonbury looked on at the sport; many were there who had been
great archers themselves in their youth, and who, like Nestor of old,
were never tired of talking of the great things that had been done when
they were young.
For full two hundred years had gunpowder been in common use, yet all
that time the bow held its own; an arrow would fly much farther than
the bullets of that day, nay of much later days, for it was actually
ordered by Act of Parliament, in the directions to the villages, for
the maintenance of “buttes,” that no person of full age should shoot
with the light-flight arrow at a less distance than two hundred and
twenty yards, that is a whole furlong: under that distance the heavy
war arrow had to be used in all trials of skill.[8]
And now four lads of fourteen stand forth to contend for the prize; the
target is a furlong off, the arrows, light ones, in regard to the age
of the competitors.
We will introduce them to our readers in proper order.
There stands Gregory Bell, son of the squire of a neighbouring village,
tall and slim, but tough in muscle, and very sound in wind and limb;
his round face and laughing black eyes will be remembered many a day.
His long-bow is long indeed,--three fingers thick, and six feet long,
well got up, polished, and without knots; few English boys could bend
it now, it came of practice.
He draws the bow--the light arrow cleaves the air--he has struck the
first circle of blue, not the bull’s-eye itself--a cheer from his
schoolfellows.
“Well done, Gregory, well done, old fellow.”
“The lad will do well enough,” said an old bowman, “yet not like his
father; but where be the bowmen of Crecy now? At the last bout we had
with them, the French turned their backs upon us at long range, and bid
us shoot, whereas had we been the men our sires were, they would have
paid dearly for their fool-hardy challenge.”
Then stood up Adam Banister, a round thick-set youth, with brown hair
and rosy face.
“Good luck to thee, Banister,” was the cry.
How easily he drew his ponderous bow: the arrow whizzed--alas, only the
_second_ circle was attained.
And now the third champion.
It is Nicholas Grabber. Let our readers mark him, he will often figure
in these pages.
A lad of average height, with a head of very bright red hair,
which seems positively to shine; his face is deeply freckled, but
his appearance not altogether unprepossessing, save for a certain
expression of slyness which would indicate a mixture of the fox in
his character; those who believed in the transmigration of souls might
recognize the _retriever_ in Gregory, the _bull_ in Banister, the _fox_
in Grabber, and--well we will leave them to designate the fourth after
reading his history, for it was Cuthbert.
One after the other they discharge their arrows; the first shaft
strikes the bull’s-eye, but amid shouts of admiration, the second, that
of Cuthbert, pierces as near the centre.
“Hurrah!” “Grabber!” “Cuthbert!” and the names were repeated again and
again by the crowd.
“Move the target fifty yards further, and let them shoot yet again.”
They were rivals, these two boys, and not such good friends as they
should have been. Grabber envied Cuthbert his place in the Abbot’s
favour, which _he_ had utterly failed to attain; for had he not run
away, and had not his father sent him back to school, coupled between
two foxhounds, under the charge of the huntsman, a story never
forgotten by his schoolfellows.[9] However, he was a good shot, a
ringleader in boyish mischief, and not without his friends.
Again the arrows flew, but at this distance Grabber failed the
bull’s-eye, just alighting on the rim.
A few moments of breathless anticipation, and Cuthbert’s shaft, soaring
through the air, attains the very centre, amidst shouts of wonder and
admiration.[10]
Grabber turned away disgusted, as Cuthbert advanced to receive the
silver arrow from the chief forester, who superintended the “buttes.”
Then rang out the Abbey bell for Compline, and the field was deserted
to the townsfolk, who kept up the pastimes of archery, cudgel playing,
bowls, and the like, till darkness set in.
FOOTNOTES
[7] See “Edwy the Fair,” and “Alfgar the Dane,” by the same author.
[8] Froude, vol. I, p. 67. He well observes that he could hardly
believe the figures from his experience of modern archery, but such was
the Act 33, Henry VIII., cap. 9.
[9] See Note D.
[10] A far more remarkable instance of English archery is given in
Scott’s “Anne of Geirstein.”
CHAPTER III.
_THE SECRET CHAMBER._
The Compline service was over, and the lads, many of whom slept in the
abbey, while others lodged in the town, were retiring to their beds,
when a lay brother arrested Cuthbert’s progress, and said in a low
voice, “The Abbot requires thy presence.”
Somewhat startled,--for the summons was an unusual one at that hour,
although he often acted in turn with other lads as a page-in-waiting on
the Abbot, an office none would then despise,--Cuthbert followed the
laic.
Threading various passages, they reached the Abbot’s lodgings, and
there the messenger knocked and retired, leaving Cuthbert to obey the
summons, “_Enter_.”
Richard Whiting, the last of that long line of mitred Abbots, sat near
the window of his study, which was a plainly furnished room, simple as
the personal tastes of the Abbot.
He was now but a weak and infirm old man, yet of many good brethren
the best;--“small in stature, in figure venerable, in countenance
dignified, in manner most modest, in eloquence most sweet, in chastity
without stain; not without that austerity of expression which we often
notice in the portraits of these great mediæval ecclesiastics.”
“My son,” he said, “I have somewhat to say to thee ere perchance I be
taken from thee.”
“Taken from me, Father?”
“Yes, the clouds are gathering thick around our devoted house, and the
shelter thou hast long received may fail thee and all others here, ere
long.”
Cuthbert looked amazed.
“Tidings have reached me, my child, that I must be taken to London,
there to answer to certain treasons of which they falsely accuse me;
the bolt may fall at any moment, and I have to discharge two duties,
the first towards thee.”
The Abbot took up a little chest from the sideboard.
“Thou hast long been _my_ son, and hast not needed thy natural parents,
but dost thou not oftentimes wonder who they were?”
“They come to me in dreams.”
“And as yet _only_ in dreams, my child; perchance thou art an orphan,
but in that chest are the few relics of thy poor mother, which we
possess; these are the little clothes which swathed thee when thou
wast found in Avalon forest--there a ring which encircled thy mother’s
finger, and a full description of the circumstances of thy arrival
here.”
“But what use would they be to me didst thou leave me alone in the
world, Father?”
“Thou wilt never be alone, God will be ever with thee, He is the Father
of the fatherless; should aught happen to drive thee hence, thee and
others, take refuge with thy foster-parents until one seek thee,
bearing this ring which thou seest on my finger, to him thou mayest
safely commit thyself, and the secrets I am about to entrust thee for
him.”
Here the tapestry moved in the wind, and a knock was heard at the door,
which stood ajar; a fact the Abbot had not noticed.
To Cuthbert’s surprise there stood Nicholas Grabber.
“Quid vis fili?” was the Abbot’s interrogation.
“The lay brother Francis said that thou wantedst me.”
“It was an error, I sent for Cuthbert, and he is here. Pax tecum, go to
rest.”
“My son,” said the Abbot, when Grabber was gone, “I am about to reveal
to thee a mystery which thou alone mayest share, until the friend I
have mentioned seeks thee, and presents thee with this ring, which
thou now seest on my finger; it will not be till I am gone.”
Cuthbert felt his spirits sink within him at the sad words of his
protector, but he restrained himself, and listened reverently as to the
words of a saint.
“Shut the door carefully, and draw the bolt.”
Cuthbert did so.
“Now touch the rose which thou seest in the carving of the cornice
there, the fourth rose in order from the door, and the third from the
floor.”
The wainscotting of the room was divided into small squares; in each
one a rose--S. Joseph’s rose--formed the centre.
“The third and the fourth, canst thou remember?”
“Third from the floor, fourth from the door.”
“Now press the centre of the bud sharply with thy thumb.”
Cuthbert did so, and a bookcase, which seemed a fixture in the wall,
and which none could have suspected to have been aught _but_ a fixture,
flew open in the manner of a door, and revealed a flight of circular
steps, such steps as we see in old towers to this day.
“Follow me,” said the Abbot, as he took a lamp and descended the steps.
Thirty steps down, and as the Abbot’s room was on the ground-floor,
they must have been below the foundations of the Abbey when they came
upon a solid iron door; the Abbot touched a spring, bidding Cuthbert
observe the manner in which it worked, and entered.
“Fasten the door carefully back by this stay,” said the Abbot, “for
should it sway to, we are dead men; the lock is a spring lock, and
opens only from the outside, nor is there other exit save into the
vaults of the dead. Dost thou see this chest? Here is the key, open it.”
Cuthbert turned the lock, raised the ponderous lid, and let it rest
against the wall behind, then gazed upon the contents.
There were the most precious jewels of the Abbey, gemmed reliquaries,
golden and jewelled pixes, chalices of solid gold, coined money, and
the like, but beyond all this enormous wealth were rolls of parchment,
and bundles of letters.
“My son, I have marked in thee from childhood a nature free from guile,
and incapable of treachery, therefore do I place this confidence in
thee. Those golden and jewelled treasures are not the most important
things in the chest, but the _parchments_, the _letters_. They contain
secrets, which, if made known, might cost many lives--lives of some of
the truest patriots and most faithful sons of Holy Church.[11] I need
not detail their nature to thee, nor why I may not destroy them now.
The secret thou hast learned is not for thee, thou wilt keep it until
the arrival of the hour and the man.”
“His name?”
“I will but tell thee this much, he will be known to thee as the Father
Ambrose.”
“Have I never yet met him?”
“Never, he has lived abroad; and now, my child, I will tell thee why I
have chosen thee for the repository of this secret. He, who will be thy
guardian and guide, when I am no more, who has undertaken the care of
thy future, will also share alone with thee this knowledge. Ordinarily
it has been confined to the Abbot, Prior, and Sub-Prior of this Abbey,
and by them handed down to their successors. They share my danger,
and may not survive me; otherwise they may be taken when inquisition
is made for these papers, and put to torture to make them declare the
hiding-place, and the like danger would hang over all high in office,
but not, I trust, over one so young as thou art. Therefore thou must
live quietly at thy stepfather’s home, until the day come when thy
future guardian shall arrive, and may He, Who is the Father of the
orphan, ever guard thee, my Cuthbert. But let us hasten to leave these
vaults; I am old, and the damp air affects my aged breath.”
FOOTNOTES
[11] See Note E.
CHAPTER IV.
_THE ARREST._
No event of importance followed immediately upon the disclosure of the
secret chamber;--the summer passed swiftly and pleasantly away, the
orchards were already laden with the golden riches of autumn, ere the
bolt, so long foreseen, fell.
We can hardly, ourselves, enter into the difficulties and trials which
beset the Abbot of Glastonbury. We are accustomed to the spectacle of
a Church, divided, at least externally, but to men who had grown up
with the belief, that outward unity was essential to the preservation
of Christianity, the absolute command to abjure the Papal Supremacy,
to break off all relations with Rome, and acknowledge the King as the
“Head of the Church of England,” was a matter of life or death.
So Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher, not to mention hosts of others,
died sooner than comply, while the more timid, shocked at the scandal,
for such it was to them, gave outward obedience, and in their hearts
prayed fervently that “this tyranny might be over past.”
Let it not, however, be inferred that therefore they were right in
contending for the supremacy of Rome, only in the right, inasmuch as it
is far nobler to die, than to deny one’s belief, or to swear falsely to
what one does not believe in one’s heart.
And so while we reject their teaching on this point, we can feel the
deepest sympathy with the sufferings of these noble, yet mistaken souls.
On the first visitation of his monastery, three years previously, the
Abbot had taken the Oath of Supremacy, feeling that it was not a cause
for which a man was bound to die, but he had never been a happy man
since, he was too old to change his convictions. Therefore he absented
himself from the place in Parliament, which was his as a mitred
Abbot, who was ranked as the equal of a Bishop, and strove to hide
his sorrows in obscurity. No fault was then alleged against him, the
earlier visitors reported that his house was, and had long been, “full
honourable.”
But the eye of the “Malleus Monachorum,” the arch enemy of the monks,
Thomas Cromwell, was upon him, and at last this vigilant enemy, equally
cruel and unscrupulous, found the pretext he desired, for sending the
Abbot of Glastonbury, as also the Abbots of Reading and Colchester to
the gibbet and the quartering block. Most of the Abbots had been led to
save themselves by a voluntary surrender of their house and estates;
those who did not thus bend to the storm, had to be destroyed on one
pretence or another.
* * * * *
It was the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, in the year of grace 1539.
The day was a bright day of early autumn, one of those sweet balmy
days, when summer seems to put out all her parting beauties ere she
yields her dominion to winter,--the air was laden with fragrance, and
there was a dreamy haze upon the scenery around, which seemed typical
of heavenly peace.
But there was a sad despondent feeling, which weighed like lead, upon
the hearts of all the elders present at the High Mass on that day, in
the great Abbey Church, whose majestic ruins yet strike the beholder
with awe.
After the Creed, the Abbot ascended the pulpit and gazed round upon
the congregation, as upon those to whom he was about to preach for
the last time; he took for his text the parting words of S. Paul at
Miletus,--“And now behold, I know that ye all, among whom I have gone
preaching the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more.”
As he uttered the words there was an audible expression of feeling on
the part of the monks in the choir, the boys in the transepts, and the
citizens in the spacious nave: was the text prophetical? One or two
sobs might be heard.
Danger was at hand, and he knew it, and after a brief exordium he told
it out plainly: the Royal Commissioners, with charge to bring him
before the Council, were already on their way.
“Very sorry am I,” said he, “for you, my brethren, and especially my
younger friends, of whom I see so many around. They will destroy this
House of God, as they have so many others, they will spare you in the
flesh, but if you are taken hence, and sent into a cold-hearted and
wicked world, for which you are unfitted, having begun in the spirit,
ye may be consumed in the flesh, and what shall I say, or what shall I
do, if I cannot save those whom God has entrusted to my charge?”
Here a common utterance broke forth from the brethren which could not
be suppressed.
“Let us die together in our integrity, and heaven and earth shall
witness for us how unjustly we be cut off.”
“Would that it might be even so,” continued the preacher, “that so
dying we might pass in a body to our Father’s home above, but they
will not do us so great a kindness. Me and the elder brethren they may
indeed kill, but you who are younger will be sent back into the world
ye have once forsaken, where divers temptations assail you. Alas, who
is sufficient for these things?”
Here he paused, and then continued, “This may be the last time we meet
within these sacred walls: the last time that they re-echo the tone
of thanksgiving, which has arisen for nigh fifteen centuries on this
spot.[12] But it is meet that we prepare for the stroke, and that we
may do so the better, let us ask pardon for all the faults we may have
committed against each other, and let each forgive, that so we may say
the divine prayer, ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that
trespass against us.’”
A solemn pause followed, during which there came a strange
interruption, a sweet soft sound as of angels’ voices singing in
harmony: not from the organ came that strange music, nor from any
visible orchestra, but all felt it as it thrilled into their hearts.
The venerable preacher was so moved that he sank down in tears, and for
a long time could not resume his discourse, while all in the choir sat
as if astonished, yet rejoicing in the token, as they believed it was,
of God’s presence amongst them.
And the burden of the song seemed, “O rest in the Lord, wait patiently
on Him.”
That sermon ended in broken words of faith, love, and hope--words of
deep emotion never forgotten by any present--and then the Celebration
proceeded, with its stores of rich comfort and celestial joy.[13]
* * * * *
The following day the Abbot left early in the morning for a small
country house belonging to the Abbey about a mile-and-a-half away. This
he did that the scandal of an open arrest, and a probable conflict,
might be averted, for he felt that his people might not peacefully bear
the spectacle of their venerated Father led away like a criminal.
But he made no concealment of his retreat, so when the Commissioners
arrived, later in the morning, they had no difficulty in learning the
place, and they followed him to the country house.
In an old oak-panelled apartment sat the once powerful Abbot, writing
calmly a few parting directions, chiefly concerning the disposal of
such personal property as might serve as mementoes to those who loved
him, when they should see his face no more.
He was calm and resigned, although once, as he wrote, tears issued from
fountains which had been long dry, and rolled down his aged and worn
cheek,--he was but human.
In the window seat, his eyes fixed upon the road which led from the
Abbey, sat Cuthbert.
Suddenly he rose hastily.
“Father,” he said, “they are coming; a number of mounted men are in
sight, wilt thou not fly? We may yet hide thee, they will be ten
minutes ere they arrive; fly for _our_ sakes, for _my_ sake--thy
adopted child.”
“My son, I cannot; life has little yet to tempt me, and far better
for me that I should bear witness to my faith with my blood, and
receive the martyr’s palm which God hath already granted to many of
my brethren, than live a few more miserable years, and see the wild
boar rooting up the vineyard of the Lord, and the beasts of the field
devouring it.”
After a pause he continued,--
“Dost thou see them plainly? Who is their guide?”
“Shame upon him, it is Nicholas Grabber; rather should they have cut my
feet off than have forced me to do the like.”
“Nay, my child, I left word where I was, and strict directions that no
concealment should be attempted.”
“Yet some other guide were more fitting than one of thine own children,
shame upon him. Oh, my more than father, _do_ fly; they will drag
thee to a shameful death, like thy brethren of Reading and Abingdon.
Is it not written, ‘When they persecute you in one city flee ye into
another?’”
“Too late, my son, they are at the gate.”
“We will hide thee; there must be some place to hide in here, some
secret chamber.”
“They are on the stairs, my son; do not let them see thee weep, be
manly.”
Cuthbert strove to repress his emotion and to maintain outward
composure, when the door opened and three men entered, rude of aspect.
“My name is Layton,” said the foremost, “and these two worthy men be
Masters Pollard and Moyle; we be pursuivants of the King, and in his
name, and by virtue of his warrant, we have charge to arrest thee,
unless thou clear thyself by thy answers to certain questions.”
“What are they?” said the Abbot, calmly.
“Hast thou taken the Oath of Supremacy?”
“I have, to my great sorrow.”
“To his great sorrow, mark that, Master Pollard; and why to thy great
sorrow?”
“Because it was a treason to the Church.”
“Then thou wilt not renew it?”
“Never.”
“That is enough to hang thee, proud Abbot, but thy talk interests me,
and I would fain hear a little more from thee; what dost thou think of
the King’s divorce?”
“I am not fain to answer thee on that matter.”
“But the law enables us to _compel_ an answer from every man, and
construes silence as treason; loyal men need not conceal their
thoughts, and there is no room in England for disloyalty.”[14]
“Construe my silence as treason if thou wilt, I have naught to say on
the matter.”
“There is something more for _me_ to say. Dost thou love life, Master
Abbot? For if so, in spite of thy treasons just uttered, thou mayst
save it; we know full well that the names of the men who supplied money
and arms for the late most unnatural and parricidal rebellion in the
north, which men call the Pilgrimage of Grace, are known to thee, only
reveal the secret, and thou art safe.”
“Get thee behind me, Satan; dost thou think I would save my life at the
expense of others, and take reward to slay the innocent?”
The Abbot’s manner was so firm and decided, the answer so bravely
given, that the villain started. “I will patter with thee no more, thou
hoary sinner,” he said at last; “thou hast the papers concerning this
rebellion concealed somewhere, and we know it; we will pull thy Abbey
down, stone by stone, if we find them not: thy answers are cankered and
traitorous, and to the Tower thou shalt go, the Tower of London. Ah,
who is that boy?”
“Thou mayst take me too,” said Cuthbert, as he stood before them,
emerging from the curtained recess of the window with flashing eyes and
burning cheeks, “for all that the Lord Abbot hath said, _I_ say also.”
“Ah, thou young cockatrice, we see well what a dam hath hatched
thee--another treason to the account of the wily priest here.”
“Cuthbert,” said the Abbot, “thou art running into needless danger--God
calls thee not to suffer.”
“What is good for _thee_, Father, must be good for me also.”
“We may as well take him up to town too,” said Master Pollard.
“Nay, it is not our business,” said Layton; “if we arrested every young
fool this traitor hath taught, we should go up to town with three
hundred boys behind us, and should need their nurses to take care of
them; the ground-ash were fitter for this young master’s back, but we
have no time to waste on his folly, let us be moving, we have to search
the chambers at the Abbey, perchance we may come across these papers.”
Need we say they searched in vain.
FOOTNOTES
[12] The Abbot’s history is wrong, but he is under the belief that
Joseph of Arimathæa founded Glastonbury Abbey, or at least first
preached the Gospel on that spot.
[13] See Note F.
[14] This was actually the case. Henry would not allow his subjects
the privilege of concealing their thoughts. It is scarcely possible
now, to believe the fact that the treason statute touched the life and
enacted the fearful penalties of high treason against all who would
not admit and assent _in words_ to the royal supremacy; it made it
treason not only to _speak_ against the king’s prerogatives, but even
to “_imagine_” anything against them. “Malicious silence,” which was
assumed to imply such evil _imaginations_, was to be interpreted as
treason and punished by death. See Perry’s History of English Church,
p. 112-3.
CHAPTER V.
_THE ROAD-SIDE INN._
The evening of Tuesday, the twelfth of November, in the year of grace
fifteen hundred and thirty-nine, was closing in.
The day had been very fine, such a day as we sometimes enjoy, even in
November; the golden sunbeams had brightened the foliage which yet hung
upon many of the trees of the forest, and turned the russet plumage
into gold. Now and then, in the calm atmosphere, a leaf would flutter
down, and break the oppressive silence of the forest of Avalon.
It is broken more seriously; hark, that is the tread of many feet, and
those voices are the voices of lads out for a day in the woods. See
here they come into this lonely haunt, where no road or path exists,
startling yon raven from his perch; see how sulkily he flies away, as
if to say, “What right have these intruders here?”
A large chestnut-tree has dropped its fruit on the ground, and amidst
the dead leaves the lads are searching, and loading their pockets with
the spoil; there are about twenty of them, evidently a band of the
Glastonbury boys, and amidst them we recognise two old acquaintances,
Cuthbert and Nicholas Grabber.
“It is time to be moving,” says Cuthbert; “we promised the Prior to be
home in time to sing vespers.”
“Sing vespers! how pious we are!” said Nicholas, and the irreverent
fellow clasped his hands together affectedly, and began to chant in a
ridiculous voice the Psalm “Dixit Dominus.”
“Stop that,” said several voices at once, and Nicholas obeyed, finding
the general feeling was against such mockery, as it ought to be with
sensible and manly boys.
“Well, thank God, there will not be many more services in the Abbey;
I am for _freedom_, for shaking off the yoke of bondage under which
the old monks have kept us: those visitors who have been taking an
inventory of the goods and chattels at the place, are only a token that
the end is near; and it can’t come too soon for me.”[15]
“More shame for you to say so, after you have been educated at the
cost of the Abbey, and eaten and drunk its fare for many years,” said
Cuthbert.
“And poor fare I have found it: I daresay the Abbot’s favourites get
better,” replied Nicholas.
“‘Abbot’s favourites,’ what do you mean?” said Cuthbert, colouring.
“Let those who find the cap fit, put it on.”
“He means it for _you_, Cuthbert,” said two or three voices at once.
“I suppose one can’t help being liked,” said Gregory Bell.
“Nay, but one should not curry favour at the expense of others.”
“That isn’t fair,” cried Adam Banister; “no one can say Cuthbert is a
sneak.”
“Sneak! who guided the commissioners to find the Abbot? that was the
part of a sneak,” said Cuthbert; “but I know one way in which I could
avoid favour; by running away from school and being brought back tied
between two foxhounds, on all fours.”
A general burst of laughter, and then Nicholas lost all self-control,
and struck Cuthbert in the face.
“A blow!” “A fair blow!” “A fight!” “A fight!”
Yes, a fight was inevitable under the circumstances; according to the
moral (or immoral) code of the fifteenth century, no one could receive
a blow from an equal without returning it, unless he wished to be
exiled from the society, whether of boys or men. Nothing was clearer to
their eyes than that the duty of all good Christians was to fight each
other.
So the blow was returned, straight between the eyes. But a fight was
too good a thing to be lost in that irregular manner: a ring was
formed, two seconds selected, Gregory Bell for Cuthbert, and a cousin,
like-minded with himself, for Grabber.
Now we are not going to enter into the details of the fight--those who
like a scene of the kind will find one well described in “Tom Brown’s
School Days,”--suffice it to say in this instance, that the contest was
long and desperate, not to say bloody, and that in spite of Grabber’s
greater physical strength and weight, the skill and endurance of
Cuthbert gave him the advantage, as indeed I think he deserved to have
it.
So intent were the twenty lads upon the scene, that they did not notice
how the sun went down amidst rising clouds, how the wind began to
sigh through the forest; darkness was gathering over the spectators
and combatants, who had now fought many rounds, lasting nearly an
hour, when at last, to the great joy of many present, Grabber, at the
conclusion of a round, in which he had exhausted all his strength,
got a knock-down blow, and was unable to “come up to time,” so amidst
deafening cheers, Cuthbert was hailed as the victor.
He advanced to Grabber who was supported on the knee of his second.
“Give me your hand, Nicholas, and let us forgive and forget. I hope you
are not much hurt.”
Grabber sullenly refused.
“That shows a bad heart; a fellow should never bear malice for a fair
thrashing, one can only do his best after all,” said Gregory.
And the majority shared his opinion.
“We must make haste out of the woods, or we shall lose our way and be
here all night.”
Three or four boys remained with Grabber, for he was not without his
sympathizers,--we are sorry to say there are black sheep even in the
best schools,--and these would not leave the spot with the rest, but
said they could find their own way home.
The others struck boldly towards the west, which was easily
distinguished, owing to the reddened and angry clouds, which showed
where the monarch of the day had gone down.
But soon these also disappeared, and the road was not yet attained;
darkness fell upon the scene, and the lads who were with Cuthbert
wandered about lost, utterly lost, until a distant light gladdened
their eager sight, and with a joyous cry they bent their course towards
it.
In a few minutes they emerged from the woods on the high-road from
London, where a well-known inn, “The Cross Keys,” hung out a lamp as a
guide to travellers.
They all knew their way now, and would fain have started home at
once, only Cuthbert was faint after his late exertions, and a cup of
“Malmsey” seemed the right thing.
“You had better let him have a good wash; cold water will revive him,
and remove the blood from his face too,” said the landlord, who saw the
lad had been fighting, and a fight was too common a thing, we are sorry
to say, to excite any further comment or enquiries, on his part.
So they adjourned to the pump, where, with the help of a rough towel,
Cuthbert soon made himself presentable, although he still bore very
evident traces of the conflict.
This necessary task accomplished, the boys entered the inn, ordinarily
a forbidden place to them, and the landlord brought a cup of wine for
Cuthbert.
But while they were there a body of armed men entered the house.
They wore the uniform of the King’s guard: there was no regular army in
those days, every man was a soldier in time of need, but there was a
small body of men kept about the King’s person, who were sent from time
to time on special services, and were called the King’s “beef-eaters.”
And these were some of them.
“Landlord, bring us some mulled sack,” said one who appeared to be
their leader, “and tell us, have you seen that fox the Abbot of
Glastonbury pass this way to-day on his road home?”
“He has not yet returned from London?”
“Nay, but he is on his way,--we have no listening ears have we?” The
boys were separated by a partition. “Are you for Abbot or King?”
“I am a friend to the King.”
“Well said, so should every good Englishman be; and we have charge to
arrest this wily Abbot on his return, as a foe to King Harry, and take
him to Wells to be tried for his life.”
“Has he not been tried and acquitted?”
“He has been solemnly condemned in a Court where Thomas Cromwell sat as
prosecutor, jury and judge: but that is not quite the law, so he has
been dismissed home, and we have been sent by an after thought to take
him to Wells for a _regular trial_.”[16]
“On what charge?”
“Robbing the Abbey Church.”
“Good heavens!”
“Why, I thought thee a friend of the King.”
“So I am, but what can all this mean?”
“That he hid the Abbey plate, so that the King’s visitors could not
find it, when they wanted to make an inventory, and confiscate patens
and chalices for the King’s use.”
“But it was his own.”
“Only in trust, you see.”
“Still he might hide it in trust for the Abbey, that would not be
robbery.”
“Friend, I should advise thee to _consider_ it robbery in these days;
it is better for all men who do not want their necks stretched to think
as the King and his minister, Thomas Cromwell, think; don’t fear but we
shall find men to bring him in guilty.”
The poor inn-keeper was silent; perhaps he remembered that one of his
predecessors had been hanged for saying he would make his son heir to
the “Crown,” meaning the “Crown Inn.”
The boys stole out unobserved.
“What shall we do?”
“Go and meet the Abbot and warn him, he will pass Headly Cross.”
“But then we may but share his fate,” said several.
“I shall go if I go alone,” said Cuthbert.
“And so shall I,” said Gregory Bell.
“Well, two are as good as the lot of us, and better; more likely to
pass unobserved,” said Adam Banister; “the rest of us had better get
home, and tell the monks all we have heard and seen.”
* * * * *
It was a wild place, Headly Cross, where two woodland roads crossed
each other. Report said that a cruel murder had been committed there
years agone, and that the place was haunted; every one believed in
haunted places then.
But as there was a choice of routes, and the Abbot might come _either_
way, it was the right thing to await him where the roads converged.
And there Cuthbert and Gregory waited all alone, as the dark hours
rolled away, until they heard the “Angelus” ring from a distant tower,
and knew it was nine o’clock, when decent people, in those days, went
to bed.
The chime had hardly died away, when they heard the tread of horses,
and soon three riders came in view in the dim light of the stars; and
the boys recognised the Abbot, with two attendants, one his faithful
serving man, the other a stranger.
Cuthbert dashed forward. “My Lord Abbot,” he said, “one moment, it is
I, Cuthbert, and here is Gregory Bell.”
“Cuthbert and Gregory Bell; why are you here, boys?”
“We have heard a plot against you: men are waiting at the ‘Cross Keys’
to arrest you, and take you for trial at Wells; they say it will cost
your life.”
“On what charge?”
“Concealing the Abbey plate.”
The Abbot smiled sadly.
“My children,” he said, “this can hardly be true, yet if it _be_ as you
say, I will not fly a jury of my countrymen.”
“Neither could he,” said the stranger on his left hand, “if he _would_;
my duty is to see him safe to Glastonbury, unless relieved beforehand
by royal authority.”
“You see, my Cuthbert and Gregory, that your devotion is all in vain;
neither _would_ I avail myself of it if I _could_. Mount on the pillion
behind me, Cuthbert; my good Ballard here will take Gregory behind him,
and you may return with us to Glastonbury, if such return be permitted.”
“It never will be, never will be,” said Cuthbert, with sinking heart.
And how that young heart beat, as they approached the “Cross Keys,” and
as a line of men, forming across the road, stopped the cavalcade.
“My Lord Abbot, we arrest you in the King’s name.”
“On what charge?”
“Robbery of the Abbey Church.”
“This is a base pretence, to deprive me of the credit of martyrdom for
my convictions: but there was One who suffered more for me.”
And the Abbot yielded himself peacefully to those who sought his life.
FOOTNOTES
[15] Advantage was taken of the Abbot’s compulsory absence to take the
necessary steps for the dissolution of the monastery. (Froude.)
[16] In some private memoranda of Thomas Cromwell, which still exist
in his own hand-writing, occur the words,--“Item. The Abbot of Glaston
to be tried at Glaston, and also to be _executed_ there with his
accomplices.” The trial, however, took place at Wells, the execution (a
foregone conclusion) at Glastonbury, as related in the story.
CHAPTER VI.
_THE TRIAL._
The period of English history of which we are now writing has been
aptly called “The Reign of Terror.” England under Thomas Cromwell, and
France under Robespierre, were alike examples of the utter prostration
which may befall a mighty nation beneath the sway of one ruthless
intellect.
To make the King absolute, and himself to rule through the King, was
the one aim of the man whom Fox, the Martyrologist, grotesquely calls
“The valiant soldier of Christ:”--for this end he smote down the Church
and the nobility: Bishop Fisher and the Carthusians represented the
ecclesiastical world, the Courtenays and the Poles the aristocracy,
Sir Thomas More the new-born culture of the time; and Cromwell chose
his victims from the noblest and the best. The piety of Fisher, once
the King’s tutor, to whom his mother had committed her royal boy on
her death-bed, could not save him; nor his learning, Sir Thomas More;
nor her grey hairs, the Countess of Salisbury. Spies were scattered
through the land; it was dangerous to speak one’s mind in one’s own
house; nay, the new inquisition claimed empire over men’s thoughts; we
have seen that the concealment of one’s sentiments was treason.
Will my more youthful readers wonder then that men could be found to
convict upon such charges as those preferred against the aged Abbot of
Glastonbury? They need wonder at nothing that occurred while Bloody
Harry was King, and Thomas Cromwell Prime Minister.
The juries themselves sat with a rope around their necks; when the
Prior and the chief brethren of the Charter-house waited upon Cromwell
to explain their conscientious objections to the Oath of Supremacy,
loyally and faithfully, he sent them from his house to the tower; when
the juries would not convict the ecclesiastics, he detained them in
court a second day, and threatened them with the punishment reserved
for the prisoners, unless they found a verdict for the crown; finally,
he visited the jurymen in person, and by individual intimidation
forced the reluctant men to find a verdict of guilty, whereupon the
unfortunate monks were hanged, drawn, and quartered, with every
circumstance of barbarity, suspended, cut down alive, disembowelled,
and finally dismembered.[17]
Thursday, the fourteenth of November, 1539, was a gloomy day: black
leaden clouds floated above, the ground was sodden with moisture, the
leaves, fallen leaves, no inapt emblem, rotted in the slime, a heavy
damp air oppressed the breath; the day suited the deed, for on that
day the aged Abbot of Glastonbury was formally arraigned at Wells,
together with his brethren the Prior and Sub-Prior, on the charge of
felony,--“Robbery of the Abbey Church with intent to defraud the King.”
They might well have proceeded against him under the Act of Supremacy,
but variety has charms, and this new idea of felony commended itself to
the mind of Cromwell, as a good device for humbling the clergy.
Lord Russell, one of Henry’s new nobility who supplied the places left
vacant by so many ruthless executions, whose own fortunes were built on
the plunder of the Church, sat as judge, and there were empannelled, we
are told, “as worshipful a jury as was ever charged in Wells.”
The indictment set forth that the prisoners had feloniously hidden the
treasures of the Abbey, to wit, sundry chalices, patens, reliquaries,
parcels of plate, gold and silver in vessels, ornaments, and money,
with the intent of depriving our sovereign lord the King of his
rightful property, conferred upon him by Act of Parliament.
“What say you, Richard Whiting, guilty or not guilty?”
The aged prisoner looked around him with wondering eyes; he scanned the
crowded array of spectators, then the jury, who looked half ashamed of
their work, and finally rested his eyes upon his judge.
“How can I plead guilty where there can be no guilt? These treasures
were committed to my care to keep for God and Holy Church; it is not
meet to cast them to swine; no earthly power may lawfully take to
itself the houses of God for a possession, or break down the carved
work thereof with axes and hammers. Am I tried before an assembly of
Christian men, or before heathen, Turks, infidels, and heretics?”
“It is not meet for a prisoner to revile his judges,” said Russell; “as
an Englishman you are bound by the Acts of Parliament.”
“Talk not to me of Parliament; you have on your side but the Parliament
of this sinful generation, and against you are all the Parliaments
who have sat from the Witan-agemot downwards, who have granted and
confirmed to us of Glastonbury, those possessions which you would
snatch from a house which has been the light of this country for a
thousand years; to resist such oppression and sacrilege is not _guilt_,
and I plead in that sense, ‘Not Guilty.’”
“Thou showest but little wisdom in pressing thine own opinion against
the consent of the realm.”
“I would fain hold my peace; but that I may satisfy my conscience, I
will tell thee that while thou hast on thy side but a minority in a
single kingdom, the whole of the Christian world, save that kingdom, is
dead against you, and even the majority here condemn your proceedings,
although the fear of a barbarous death silences their tongues.”
“Of whom art thou speaking?”
“Of all the good men present.”
“Why hast thou persuaded so many people to disobey the King and
Parliament?”
“Nay, I have sinned in dissembling my opinions, but now I _will_ speak.
I disallow these changes as impious and damnable (general sensation);
I neither look for mercy nor desire it; my cause I commit to God, I am
aweary of this wicked world, and long for peace.”
He sank upon the bench behind him, as did his fellow prisoners, and
none of them took any further obvious interest in the proceedings.
Formal evidence was brought to prove the discovery of treasure hidden
in secret places, but all this fell very flat upon the audience, the
fact was tacitly admitted on both sides, _the_ difference of opinion
only existed as to the guilt thereof.
There was no room for doubt in Lord Russell’s mind; he summed up the
evidence against the prisoners, and reminded the jurymen that their own
loyalty was on trial, a very forcible hint in those days, and one which
few men dared disregard.
They retired; returned with downcast looks, and gave a verdict in
accordance with the evidence: theirs not to argue the point of law, the
fact was sufficient.
“Prisoners at the bar,” said the judge, “you have been convicted on
the clearest evidence of an act of felony--of seeking to deprive the
King of the property willed to him by the high estates of the realm, in
trust for the nation. Into your motives I need not enquire, but no man
can be a law unto himself; born within these realms you are subject to
the authorities thereof, and for your disobedience to them you must now
die. The only duty remaining to me is to pronounce upon you the awful
sentence the law provides against your particular crime--that you be
taken hence to the prison whence you came, and from thence be drawn on
the morrow, upon a hurdle, to the summit of Glastonbury Tor, that all
men far and wide may witness the royal justice, where you are to be
hanged by the neck, but not until you are dead, for while you are still
living, your bodies are to be taken down, your bowels torn out and
burnt before your faces; your heads are then to be cut off, and your
bodies divided, each into four quarters, to be at the King’s disposal,
and may God have mercy upon your souls.”[18]
A dead silence followed, broken at last by the Abbot’s voice.
“We appeal from this judgment of guilty and time-serving men to the
judgment of God, before Whose bar we shall at length meet again.”
* * * * *
It was late in the same evening, the curfew had already rung, the rain
was still falling at intervals in the streets of Glastonbury, as if
nature wept at the approaching dissolution of the venerable fane which
had been the ornament of western England so long.
In spite of the weather, many groups formed from time to time outside
the gatehouse of the Abbey, for there the three prisoners had been
brought from Wells, and there, in the chamber over the gateway, in
strict ward, they were passing the last night the royal mercy permitted
them to live.
A youth, repulsed from the door which gives admittance to the upper
chambers, retired with despairing gesture; his face bore marks of
intense emotion, the tears had worn furrows therein, and from time to
time a sob escaped him.
A companion pressed up to his side.
“Will they not let you in?”
“No, Gregory, I have begged in vain these three times.”
“Why not try the sheriff, he is said to be merciful?”
“I can but try, I will go to his house at once.”
As due to his office, the high sheriff of the county was charged with
the details of the morrow’s tragedy; he liked the task but little,
still he viewed it as a simple matter of duty, and could not flinch
from it.
He was resting after the fatigues of the day, and in truth, thinking
very uneasily over the events of the trial.
“What if, after all, he is in the right--that appeal to the judgment
bar above was very solemn--when that great assize takes place, in whose
shoes would it be best to stand, in the place of the judge or the felon
of to-day?”
A domestic entered--“A lad craves a moment’s speech.”
“Who is he?”
“I know him not, but he has been weeping bitterly, as one may see by
his face.”
The sheriff hesitated, but he was in a merciful mood; he suspected the
object of the visitor, and it was a good sign for the success of the
suppliant that he permitted the visit.
“Well, my lad,” said he, as Cuthbert entered, “what is the matter now?”
“I have a boon to crave, your worship; you will not refuse it me?”
“Let me first hear what it is.”
“The Abbot has been my adopted father, my best friend from childhood;
let me see him once more, let me receive his parting blessing, ere
wicked hands slay him.”
“Wicked hands, my lad, you forget yourself, and where you are.”
“Pardon me, I meant no offence; I know it is no fault of your worship.”
“It is but a slight boon, after all,” said the sheriff, “and one which
_may_ be conceded;” and as he spoke he wrote a few lines on a slip of
parchment. “They will give you admission for half-an-hour, if you show
them this at the gateway.”
“May I not stay longer?”
“It would not be kind to those who are to die; they need their time to
make their peace with God.”
“That is already made, your worship.”
“I trust so,” said the sheriff, with a sad faint smile at the boy’s
earnestness.
“Who art thou, my lad?” he said.
“The Abbot’s adopted son.”
“But who were your real parents?”
“I know not.”
“What name do they call you?”
“Cuthbert, I have none other.”
“Poor lad,” said the sheriff, as the boy departed, “it seems almost
like a familiar face, yet I have never met him before; some accidental
likeness, I suppose.”
FOOTNOTES
[17] Lingard v. 19.
[18] This terrible sentence is copied from the form in actual use until
the present century.
CHAPTER VII.
_GLASTONBURY TOR._
A dead silence reigned around the precincts of the once mighty Abbey,
many of the monks had fled, fearing lest they should share the fate
which had befallen their superiors, and having no decided predilection
for martyrdom; but many still shuddered in their cells, or wandered
aimlessly about the doomed cloisters, so soon to be a refuge for bats
and owls.
Only a few lights burned here and there in the darkness of that
November night, but one shone steadily from the window of the strong
room over the gatehouse, where the three fated monks awaited their doom.
Scantily furnished was that chamber; three wooden chairs with high
backs grotesquely carved, a massive table in the centre, a huge hearth
decorated with the Abbey arms, upon which smouldered two or three logs,
for fuel was cheap, and the night was cold and damp. Against the wall
hung a crucifix, and there, with their faces towards the memorial of
the martyrdom which redeemed a world, knelt the three.
We cannot follow their mental struggles, which found relief in
prayer--in intense prayer, in burning words of supplication, which
wafted their spirits on high, and gave them strength to say “not my
will but Thine be done.”
A step on the stairs, but they rose not from their knees; they felt
that one had entered and was kneeling behind them, and at length they
heard sobs escape from their visitor, which he could not repress.
They rose slowly from their devotions, and the Abbot grasped Cuthbert’s
hands and raised him from the floor.
“My child,” he said, “dost thou grieve for me?”
A sob was the only answer.
“Listen, my child, which is best, heaven or earth, Paradise or
Glastonbury?”
Still no answer.
“And they but rob us of a few brief years, which to aged men like us
must be years of suffering; they separate us from the ranks of the
Church Militant, but not from those of the Church Triumphant, that is
beyond their power; they may kill the body, but after that they have no
more that they can do.”
“But the shame, the disgrace!”
“Is it greater than the Son of God bore on Calvary? Nay, my son, let us
not grieve that it has pleased Him, of Whom are all things, to ordain
this painful road, which He Himself has trodden before us; nay, sob
not, nor sorrow as those without hope, but live so that thou mayest
rejoin us in the regions of Paradise.”
Cuthbert gazed upon the calm majestic face of the old man, and it
seemed to him irradiated by a light from above. He repressed his grief,
and listened to the last words of his friend.
“It is written that in the last days perilous times shall come, and we
have fallen upon them; happy then that God removes us to His secret
chambers, where He shall hide us until the iniquity of a world be
overpast, and His redeemed come with triumph to Zion. Before us now
is the _via Dolorosa_ of a brief hour, but from the gibbet we shall
scale the skies. For _thee_, my son, is the life-time of trial and
temptation, wherefore I pray for thee, and _will_ pray for thee when
thou shall see my face no more. Remember, dear child, he that endureth
to the end, the same shall be saved, and let neither men nor devils rob
thee of thy crown.”
“By God’s help I will endure.”
“I believe that thou wilt strive, yea, and prevail. But _one_ more
thought to earthly things, and I resign the world for ever. Thou
rememberest the secret chamber?”
“I do, Father.”
“And the ring which is now on the finger of him who shall claim thy
promise?”
“Well, my Father.”
“Await him, my son, in Glastonbury, not in the Abbey, that will be
destroyed by wicked hands, but in the house of thy foster father, Giles
Hodge, whose name thou must take, and be content to pass as his foster
son till the time comes, and thy services are claimed. He who bears the
ring will provide for thy future.”
“Oh, think not of that.”
“I _have_ thought of it, and now, my child, thou mayest again join us
in prayer.”
“The half-hour has passed,” said a rough voice at the door.
“Thy blessing, Father.”
“It is thine, my child: Benedicat et custodiat te Deus omnipotens,
Pater, Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus, nunc et in sæcula sæculorum.”
* * * * *
Upon the summit of the hill men are working all through the storms of
the night, erecting a huge gibbet, from the cross-beam of which three
ropes are now dependent; beneath is a huge block, like a butcher’s
block, and a ghastly cleaver and saw rest upon it; hard by stands
a caldron of pitch, which but awaits the kindling match to boil and
bubble.
Through the dark shadows of the clouds, or in the bright light of the
moon when the winds open a path for her rays, ghostly figures flit
about. It is well that they should work in darkness,--it were better
that such work were not done at all. Thus they execute the will of the
ruthless Tudor, the Nero of English history; well, he and his victims
have long since met before a more awful bar.
The winds blow ceaselessly all through the night, but in the morn the
clouds are breaking; in the east a faint roseate light appears, and
soon brighter streaks of crimson fringe the clouds, which hang over the
dawn; anon the monarch of day arises in his strength, the shadows flee
away, and from the summit of the hill a vast extent of sea and land is
beheld, rejoicing in his beams.
A crowd gathers around the gatehouse, some few royal parasites to jeer,
men at arms to guard the prisoners, and prevent any attempt at rescue,
more sad and tearful faces of women, or sternly indignant visages of
bearded men.
“Here they come.”
The trampling of horse, a train of strong wooden hurdles, each drawn
by a single horse, appears; hard carriages these on which to take the
ride to eternity, but many an innocent victim has fared no better.
The doors are opened, and the Abbot appears first: a blush overspreads
his aged cheeks, as the indignity thus palpably presents itself, but
uttering, “And this, too, I offer to Thee,” he lies down upon the
hurdle, and they bind his hands and feet to the crossbars, carefully,
that they may not touch the ground, for those in charge of the
execution would not willingly offer additional pain--some of them are
sick at heart as they fulfil the will of the tyrant Tudor.
The Prior and Sub-Prior submit to the same painful restraint, and the
_via Dolorosa_ is entered.
All through the streets of the town, where the Abbot has often ridden
in triumphant processions, the highest in dignity of all far and wide,
the hurdles jolt along: the aged frames of the sufferers are fearfully
shaken by the rude joltings, but they remember that _via Dolorosa_
which led to Calvary, and accept the pain for the sake of the Divine
Sufferer, in Whom our sufferings are sanctified.
There are those present who are paid to raise hisses and hootings, and
to revile the passing victims, but they are awed by the attitude of the
spectators in general, and forfeit their wages.
Up the hill with labouring steps the horses tread: at length the
rounded summit appears, and the gibbet looms in sight.
The sufferers see it not, owing to their prostrate condition, until
they are beneath it. “It is easier to bear than the cross, brethren,”
says Abbot Richard.
The victims are unbound from the hurdles, and one after the other
resigns himself to the rude hands of the executioners; for now, under
this reign of terror and bloodshed, ecclesiastics are led forth in
their _habits_ to die without being first stripped of their robes, and
degraded. There is a meaning in this, it is not of mercy.[19]
The Abbot yields himself first, calmly reciting the words of the 31st
Psalm, “In manus tuas, Domine, commendo Spiritum meum.” The _two_ pray
for him until their own turn comes.
“Go forth, O Christian soul, from this world, in the Name of God the
Father Who created thee, of God the Son, Who redeemed thee, of God
the Holy Ghost Who hath sanctified thee; may thy place be this day in
peace, and thine abode in Mount Sion.”
Their faces did not grow pale, neither did their voices tremble--they
declared as they died that they were true subjects of the king in all
things lawful, and obedient children of Holy Church.
So one after the other they suffered--we spare the reader the sickening
details, which Englishmen could _look_ on in those days, and which
innocent men were called upon to suffer, but which we shudder even to
read.
But we will conclude with a letter written by Lord Russell to Cromwell
on the 16th of November, being the day following the tragedy.
“My Lorde--thies shal be to asserteyne, that on Thursday the
xiii. daye of this present moneth, the Abbot was arrayned, and
the next daye putt to execution, with ii. other of his monkes,
for the robbyng of Glastonburye Churche; on the Torre Hill,
the seyde Abbottes body beyng devyded in fower partes, and his
heedd stryken off, whereof oone quarter stondyth at Welles,
another at Bathe, and at Ylchester and Brigewater the rest, and
his hedd upon the abbey gate at Glaston.”[20]
* * * * *
As the traveller, in modern times, passes swiftly along the Great
Western line between Weston and Bridgewater, he may see, on his left, a
round conical hill, rising abruptly from the flat plain, a plain which
was once a sea, a hill which was once an island. This is Glastonbury
Tor.
Fair and beautiful it looks in the summer sunlight, but it was once
the scene of the foul judicial murder which we have endeavoured to
describe.[21]
FOOTNOTES
[19] “While he was waiting for the hangman, he was questioned again by
Pollard as to the concealment of plate, but he had nothing more to say,
and would accuse neither himself nor others, but thereupon took his
death very patiently.”--_Blunt._
[20] This letter is authentic, spelling and all.
[21] See Note G. Death of Abbot Whiting.
CHAPTER VIII.
_ON THE TRACK._
“We grieve not o’er our abbey lands, e’en pass they as they may,
But we grieve because the tyrant found a richer spoil than they;
He cast aside, as a thing defiled, the remembrance of the just,
And the bones of saints and martyrs he scattered to the dust.”
_Neale._
It was in vain that Bishop Latimer besought the tyrant, mad after the
spoils which a venal parliament had given him, to let at least _some_
of the monasteries remain as the houses of learning. Few countries
could boast of such shrines as those which adorned like jewels the
shires of England--but all were ruthlessly sacrificed, from the fane
which rose over the mighty dead at Battle, to the humblest cell which
but sheltered half-a-dozen poor brethren or sisters.
Such was the value of the noble library at Glastonbury that Leland,
an old English antiquarian, tells us, when first he beheld it, “The
sight of its vast treasures of antiquity so struck me with awe, that I
hesitated to enter.”
Yet we learn from Bale, that such noble collections were sold to
grocers for waste paper, and that he knew a man who had bought for that
purpose two large monastic libraries at the dissolution, and added that
he had been using their contents for ten years, and had hardly got
through half his store.
So strongly built were many of the Abbeys, that they had to be blown
up with gunpowder, after they were stripped of all that could be sold;
the lands were given to greedy favourites, Cromwell himself is said to
have secured thirty Abbeys, and the ready money was spent at court in
gambling and dissolute living.
So, in a few years, all the wealth which flowed into the hands of the
crown was dissipated, and instead of the remission of taxation, by
the hope of which many had been bribed to assent to the fall of the
monasteries, the burdens laid upon the people were heavier than before.
* * * * *
Four months had passed away since the tragical events recorded in our
last chapter, and the blustering month of March was in mid-career;
the winds swept over the ruined Abbey, now in great part roofless, and
dismantled, the abode of bats and owls; they swept over the bare and
rounded summit of Glastonbury Tor, stained so lately by a foul deed of
blood. Many a violent storm of rain had beaten upon that blood-stained
summit, and the traces of the butchery had long since vanished; but the
peasants yet gazed up to the hill top with awe and wonder.
But the storm which had desolated the proud Abbey had left the humble
cottage of Giles Hodge untouched: there the old man and his wife lived
in peace, like their neighbours, and went through their daily round,
their trivial task--
Each morning saw some work begun
Each evening saw its close.
Their foster son was often present to their remembrances, but he had
not been with them in person since the martyrdom. They had wisely
judged it best to remove him from the immediate neighbourhood of such
harrowing recollections, and as old Giles had a brother who lived at
Lyme Regis, a seafaring man, thither he had sent Cuthbert to spend the
winter.
The change of scene had wrought good. The poor boy had gone there
broken-hearted, and suffering from the nervous excitement which he had
passed through; the shock had been very great, but youth is elastic,
and soon recovers from such a strain. The sea and its wonders, the
romantic scenery around, all contributed to the beneficial change.
Sometimes Cuthbert would go out fishing with his uncle, as he had
learned to call the brother of his foster father; the fishing awakened
all his interest: on the deep all the night, watching the moonbeams on
the waves, the gradual breaking of the dawn, the “many dimpled smile of
ocean:” all this was new to the land-bred youth, and exercised a most
happy effect upon his health and spirits.
But it must not be supposed that he forgot the Abbot, or that he was
unmindful of the secret entrusted to him; he had told his foster father
that he expected some communication from the friends of the late Abbot,
and old Hodge had promised that if anyone arrived, and presented the
ring which was to serve as a token, he would send for Cuthbert without
any delay.
And at last the message came, just when Cuthbert returned home with
his “uncle,” after a most successful night at sea, bringing the scaly
spoils of the deep in their boats. A rustic messenger had ridden across
the country from Glastonbury, through Langport, Ilminster, Chard, and
Axminster, a distance of from thirty to forty miles.
Old Giles could not write, he only sent word by his envoy, “Come home,
I have seen the ring, he expects thee to-morrow.”
* * * * *
We have not hitherto explained fully the social position of Giles
Hodge. Well, he was a yeoman, having no lands of his own; only he had
a farm of three or four pounds a year,[22] and hereupon he tilled as
much as kept five or six men. He had walk for a hundred sheep, and his
wife milked thirty kine. He was able and bound to provide one man and
horse, with “harness” for both, when the king had need of him; for
this species of feudal tenure yet lingered, and supplied the want of a
standing army. In short, he was an English yeoman, “all of the olden
time.”
The fire was burning brightly on the hearth in old Giles’ cottage,
which looked as pleasant as in days of yore; he and his old dame
occupied their chairs on either side, for the day’s work was over, and
they were resting after its fatigues, whilst they anxiously awaited the
arrival of their foster son, their Cuthbert.
It was only just dark, not yet seven o’clock; the evening meal was
already prepared, and set forth with many a tempting dish upon a comely
white cloth, to tempt the appetite of the darling of their old age.
A knock at the door--the hearts of the old couple beat with
anticipation--yet the knock! Would Cuthbert stop to knock? “Come in,”
they cried.
The latch lifted, and their parish priest entered, Doctor Adam Tonstal.
“Good even to you, my worthy friends; I have come for a chat with you
about a matter of importance.”
“Nothing amiss about Cuthbert, I hope,” said the old dame, anxiously.
“No, there is naught amiss, _yet_ still my errand is about him. Are you
not expecting him home?”
“Yes, thank God, this very night; we thought when you knocked that it
was he.”
“Well, I know you will be glad to see him again, for he is a worthy
lad, and there are few who have not a good word for him, but it will be
just as well not to let anyone know of his arrival, and to get him away
again as soon as possible. My object was to warn you against allowing
him to return, and also to advise you not to tell anyone where he may
be found.”
“But why,” inquired Giles, aghast, as soon as he could get a word in;
“what harm hath the poor lad done?”
“Harm, forsooth!” then lowering his voice, “what harm had Richard
Whiting done?”
“But Cuthbert is too young to be answerable for such weighty matters.”
“I know _that_, but not too young to be an object of interest just now.
You see it is reported that he was deep in the Abbot’s secrets.”
“They would indeed be weighty secrets, which the Abbot would entrust to
a mere boy.”
“Ordinarily your remarks would be just, but the case is peculiar. The
Abbot was suspected to be in possession of lists of names, of papers,
nay of treasure, in connection with the rising in the north, which had
been entrusted to him after the disastrous collapse of the Pilgrimage
of Grace: we are all friends here,” added the priest, fearing lest
he might have committed himself, for had such an expression as
“disastrous,” applied to the royal triumph, been reported to Cromwell,
it might have been his death-warrant.[23]
“We are alone, my wife and I, and we be no tale-bearers.”
“Well then, it is said that there must be a secret chamber, somewhere
in the Abbey, not yet discovered, in spite of all the search made for
it by Sir John Redfyrne, the administrator of the property of the Abbey
for the king; who is also an ally of Cromwell, that arch-heretic, and
oppressor of the Church. You are sure there is no one in the house save
yourselves?”
“Quite sure, don’t fear; but what has this to do with Cuthbert?”
“Only that a lad named Nicholas Grabber offers to make oath that he
heard the Abbot reveal the secret to Cuthbert, when the two were in
his private chamber, and bid him await the arrival of some mysterious
person, with a ring: Grabber’s account is very defective, but he says
the Abbot discovered his presence, and ordered him roughly away.”
“As I live,”--said Giles.
“Of course you know nothing,” said the priest, interrupting, “but I
have learned through friends that a warrant is about to be issued
against the lad: now if he is taken----”
“But they can lay no _crime_ to his charge, to know a secret is no
crime.”
“But they _may_, and probably _will_ consider that secret of sufficient
importance to the State to insist upon its disclosure, and if the poor
boy, as will very likely be the case, refuse to tell, they will see
what the thumb-screw, or failing that, even the rack, may effect.”
“Good heavens! Saint Joseph forbid.”
“Amen; but the best way is to keep Cuthbert out of the way.”
“Too late; for here he is!”
The door opened and our hero entered, all flushed with travel, and with
the delight of meeting his old friends, whom he embraced warmly; after
which he saluted the priest with a lowly reverence.
“How well he is looking, poor lad,” said the dame: for his face was
flushed with pleasure, or she might still have seen some traces of his
recent trial. A more thoughtful expression sat on his features, such a
period as he had gone through had done the work of years in sobering
his boyish spirits, and bringing on, prematurely, the thoughts and
cares of manhood.
“Now, Cuthbert,” said the good priest, “I will take a turn on the
green, while you tell all your news to your kind friends, and satisfy
your hunger, and after that I will return for a little talk with you;”
and he went out, but only to pace up and down the green, keeping the
cottage still in sight.
And we too will leave the good souls within to their endearments for
the same space of time; they will soon know the extent of the danger in
which their foster boy is placed.
But the priest knows it, and he walks up and down, peering sometimes
into the darkness beyond the green, in the direction of the town,
scrutinizing the faces of the passers-by, until curfew rings from the
tower of his own church. Then he re-enters the cottage.
Cuthbert, hunger satisfied, is seated in the chimney-corner; the logs
sparkle in the draughts of wind, which find their entrance through
every cranny; the aged couple are seated as before.
“Father, we have told Cuthbert that you think he ought not to stay
here, but he says he is bound to remain over the morrow; that will not
hurt, will it?”
“Not if he is unseen, and the news of his coming has not got abroad.”
“Did anyone see thee, child, as thou enteredst the town?”
“Alas, I fear _one_ did; Nicholas Grabber was hanging about the gate on
the common.”
“Nicholas Grabber; then, my boy, thou must not tarry an hour; it is he
who hast already betrayed thee.”
“Betrayed me! how?” said Cuthbert, alarmed.
Then the priest told Cuthbert all that our readers have already
learned from his lips, and the lad at once recognized his danger, for
he remembered how Nicholas had lurked about the Abbot’s chamber that
eventful night, when the secret was revealed to him.
“You are right, Father,” he said, “I must go.”
“Too late!” said the priest, “too late!”
For at that moment the tramp of many feet was heard without, followed
by a violent knocking at the door, which the priest fortunately had
barred when he entered.
“Hide him,” said the good man; “I will keep them at bay for a few
minutes.”
And the old people hurried Cuthbert out of the room.
“The back door,” said the boy.
“Nay, that is watched too; I hear them whispering without.”
“Then I am lost.”
“No! no! my boy,” said the old woman, “come up stairs, and get into the
loft.”
They went hastily up the stairs, into the old people’s bedroom.
There was no ceiling, but that which plain boards overhead, separating
them from the attic beneath the roof, afforded; knocking one of these
aside with his staff, the old man bade Cuthbert mount on his shoulders,
and get into the loft. The lad did so easily, for the roof of the room
was low, and then replaced the boards, so that no one could see that
there had been any disturbance thereof.
The loft was often used for the storage of fruit, corn, _flax_, and the
like, and there was a quantity of the latter material stored therein;
on this Cuthbert lay.
Meanwhile the priest below fulfilled his task.
“Who are ye, disturbing an honest family after curfew?”
“Officers of the law, constables; open, in the name of the law.”
“There be many who avail themselves of that name, with very little
title; robbers be about, and I must have surer warrant ere I admit you.”
“_Open_, or we will break down the door.”
“Nay, and thou come to _that_ game, there be those within, good at the
game of quarter staff; meanwhile we will blow the horn and rouse the
watch.”
“Thou old fool, we will break thy bones, as well as the door; we tell
thee _we_ are the constables--the watch.”
“’Tisn’t old Hodge’s voice,” said another; “ask the fellow who he is.”
“Who art thou, fool?”
“That is for wise men like thee to find out.”
“Well, then, here are Roger Hancock, John Sprygs, James Griggs, Denis
Howlet, the four constables, and Laurence Craveall, a body servant of
Sir John Redfyrne.”
“I fear me, friend, thou art taking the names of better men in vain;
more to the token, thou showest thyself a liar: for well do I know that
neither Jack Sprygs nor Jim Griggs ever leave the ale-tap after curfew,
until it is time to tumble, drunk, into their sinful beds.”
“Break open the doors,” cried the two impugned worthies, in a rage.
“I will loose the mastiff upon you.”
But in spite of this direful threat, which it would have been difficult
to fulfil, as no mastiff was in the house, the men commenced breaking
down the door.
At that instant old Hodge appeared, and signifying by a sign all was
right, cried aloud--
“What are you doing at my door?”
“Breaking it down, with a search warrant for our justification.”
“Thou mayst save thyself the trouble; I have nought here to hide;” and
the old man withdrew the bars.
Four ill-looking men, Jacks in office, entered, and behind them two
faces appeared, whose owners preferred to stay without; the one was the
valet of Sir John Redfyrne, the other Nicholas Grabber.
The two constables whom he had so grievously aspersed fixed their eyes
upon the priest.
“So it was thou, was it, who kept us waiting?”
“Your pardon, if I mistook you; doubtless you have good cause for your
untimely errand.”
“We have pulled down monks, and your turn may come next,” said the
surly John Sprygs, “and then you may not have the chance of taking
sober folks’ reputation away; but enough of this, where is that young
rascal, Cuthbert Hodge, if that is his name, we have a warrant for his
apprehension?”
“Why, he has been away ever since November.”
“But came home to-night; here is the witness. Nick Grabber, when didst
thou last see Cuthbert Hodge?”
“This evening, riding with another lad through the common gate, on the
Langport Road.”
“And does thy worshipful father permit thee, now thy school days are
over, to spend thy time in Glastonbury as a spy?” said old Hodge.
“My worshipful father has given me to the care of Sir John Redfyrne,
as a page, old man, so thou hadst better keep a civil tongue in thine
head, and it will be better for thy young bastard’s bones; he shall pay
for it.”
“I think, my son,” said the priest very quietly, “that when thou wast
coupled between two hounds, as a truant, thou must have learnt from
them to bite and snarl.”
“We have no time for all this nonsense,” said the head constable,
“where is this youngster?”
“Since you say he is here, you had better find him.”
“He has not gone out by the back door,” said Grabber.
“Or you would have grabbed him.”
“Even so, with right good will.”
They proceeded to search the house, but all in vain, and they were at
length about to conclude that the boy had left the place before their
entrance, when Grabber remarked to one of the constables, that he might
be above the boards of the bedroom. “When we were schoolfellows,” he
said, “I have often heard him say that very good apples were kept
there.”
“The boy has got the right sow by the ear,” says James Griggs, and
followed by the others, he went upstairs again, whereupon the old lady
began to cry.
“Ah,” said Nicholas, “the scent is hot, the old lady gives tongue.”
A board was withdrawn, chests piled beneath, and John Sprygs cried out,
“Now, young Nick, you go and grab him.”
“After you,” said Nicholas, who remembered the weight of his young
opponent’s fist that night in the woods.
John Sprygs mounted, and was no sooner in the loft than he cried,--
“The place is as dark as pitch, pass me up the torch.”
“Nay! nay!” cried Giles Hodge, “the place is full of flax.”
“We will take care of that; thou dost not want thy precious brat found.”
Up went the torch which the men had brought with them, a flaring pine
torch, to assist in the operations; in very wantonness Nick Grabber
tossed it into the fellow’s hand, crying “Catch.” He missed it, and it
fell into a heap of flax. The man started back to avoid the blaze which
instantly sprang up, and so put the fire between him and the moveable
planks--the only moveable ones--which served as a trap-door.
“Come down, come down,” called out the appalled voices below.
But the wretch could not face that sea of flame, until, maddened by
desperation, he took a header as boys might say, at the opening through
the fire, and falling head foremost on the bedroom floor, split his
skull and died on the spot. The others could do nothing for him, the
loft was one mass of flame, and shouting “Fire! Fire!” they ran to
get water, in a vain attempt to save the cottage. But of this there
was little hope; the roof was of thatch, and the building mainly of
timber, so they saw in a few minutes that there was nothing for it but
to help the aged couple to save their furniture.
But what of Cuthbert? they had forgotten him, for the time, then they
said,--
“The boy couldn’t have been there, nor in the house, or he would be
driven from his hiding-place now. See how unconcerned the old man
looks; he wouldn’t look so if his precious boy were in danger.”
FOOTNOTES
[22] Multiply by twelve for the modern equivalent. See Note H.
[23] A priest of Chichester, named Christopherson, suffered death
for saying that the king would be damned for the destruction of the
monasteries.
CHAPTER IX.
_IN THE RUINS OF THE ABBEY._
No, Cuthbert was not burnt, as the reader has already conjectured, or
our tale would come to an untimely close, untimely as the death of our
hero, and we will now explain the manner of his escape.
Once in the loft, he remembered that in the innocent confidence of his
boyhood, he had prated of its treasures to Grabber, who he doubted not
was with his pursuers, and he felt that there was scant safety in his
hiding place.
But there was yet an avenue of escape: a little opening at the end of
the loft, which the ill-fated constable had overlooked, like a dormer
window, admitted light and air to the loft; if he could force himself
through that, and it was only a very small opening, he would emerge on
the roof, and in the darkness might descend and escape unseen.
He tried and succeeded, and sliding down the long sloping roof, as he
had often done when a small boy, alighted at the back of the house,
while all the officers were within, those who had kept guard without,
having joined the rest, when they judged by the uproar, that the lad
was found.
But one yet watched there,--the priest who rejoiced to see him. He had
left the house when Grabber told the secret, from reluctance to witness
the capture of the harmless boy.
“Thank God, my boy,” he said, “thou hast outwitted them; go and hide in
the Abbey ruins, I shall be there at midnight, I have business there,
in the desecrated church; I will tell thy friends thou art safe; go at
once.”
The boy darted away for the Abbey, but soon he heard loud shouts of
“Fire!” “Fire!” and saw the reflection of the flames in objects around.
Full of anxiety for his foster parents, he could not help turning back,
and would again have run into danger, for the officers, anticipating
such a result, were looking everywhere amongst the crowd, and would
surely have seen him, had not his wise friend, the good parish priest,
also anticipated the same, and met him.
“Nay, nay, my lad, thou canst do no good, and wilt only add to their
troubles; go into the Abbey church and wait there till midnight; thou
art not afraid?”
“No,” said Cuthbert, “only take care of _them_,” and he retraced his
steps to the Abbey.
[Illustration: “THE BOY DARTED AWAY FOR THE ABBEY.”
_Page 92._]
The moon had arisen, and illuminated the scene, when through a gap in
the boundary wall Cuthbert entered the once sacred precincts; his heart
was very heavy as he gazed upon the mutilated cloisters, doors torn
from their hinges, windows dashed out, roofless chambers from which the
lead had been torn,--gazed as well as a moon struggling amidst clouds
would allow him to gaze, gazed and wept.
The same ruins seen now, after the mellowing influences of time have
toned down the painful features, excite interest unmingled, in the case
of most visitors, with regret, and they say, “What a beautiful ruin;”
but it was different then: a visit to Glastonbury, Tintern, or Furness,
must have rent the heart of any one who could feel for the victims
of injustice, or grieve over the wanton mutilation of all that was
beautiful in architecture, or sacred in religion.[24]
When our hero entered the once beautiful Abbey church, when he saw the
ashes of the holy dead scattered abroad, their tombs defaced; above
all, when he saw the altar which had been stripped and rent from its
place, and this by a people who had not yet renounced their faith in
the sacramental presence, by a king who at the same time sent men and
women to the stake because they disbelieved in Transubstantiation,[25]
he fell upon his face and sobbed, while the words escaped his lips,
“How long, O Lord, how long?” All his early teaching had led him to
revere what he saw thus desecrated, and he was shocked to the very core
of his heart.
He saw the moonbeams fall through broken windows and chequer the
mutilated floor with light; he sought in vain a place of rest, until it
occurred to him that the organ loft which was over the entrance to the
monk’s choir, and which was reached by a winding staircase, would be
the best place of refuge, in case he should be sought, which he deemed
_unlikely_; there were but few who would harm him, and they were off
the scent.
I do not attempt to analyse his feelings towards Grabber, neither
would it have been well for the latter to have met Cuthbert just then;
warm-hearted and loving to his friends, nay, Christian in heart as
Cuthbert was, it would have been hard at that time to put in action the
spirit of forgiveness as one ought.
Up the spiral staircase he crept into the loft; there some cushions
were left by chance amongst the remains of the organ; he contrived to
make a couch out of two or three of them and slept.
How long he knew not, but at length he seemed to hear the bells ring
out the midnight hour, and he began to dream that he was assisting at
a solemn office for the dead. He awoke and raised himself up; the same
sounds he had heard in his dream were actually ascending from below.
“Requiem æternam dona eis Domine et lux perpetua luceat eis.”
Then followed the words of the psalm:--
“Te decet hymnus Deus in Syon, et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem.”[26]
He gazed around him in amazement. He discovered the familiar odour of
incense, he perceived the glimmer of many tapers. He dared at last, not
knowing whether he beheld ghosts or living men, to look over the edge
of the gallery, and saw a company of monks in the familiar Benedictine
habit, standing around an open grave, while beyond them the desecrated
altar was set up, and furnished with its accustomed ornaments, and the
Celebrant with his assistant ministers, stood before it.
Then he was convinced that he beheld living men and no phantoms, and
that he saw before him those who survived of his former preceptors and
teachers, the monks of Glastonbury.
Whom then were they burying? for whom did they chant the requiem Mass?
And now the epistle was read, and afterwards the solemn sounds of the
sequence arose:--
“Dies iræ Dies illa
Solvet sæclum in favilla
Teste David cum Sibylla.”[27]
He hesitated no longer, he glided down the stairs, and soon his boyish
voice was heard in the sweet verse:--
“Recordare Jesu pie
Quod sum causa tuæ viæ
Ne me perdas illa die.”[27]
As he sang Cuthbert saw he stood by the good parochus.
The gospel followed, telling of Him Who is the Resurrection and the
Life; after which one of the brethren, a man with the aspect of one in
authority, stood forth, and began a short address:--
“We are met to-night, brethren, like the faithful of old, to render
the last rites of the Church to the mutilated remains of our beloved
brethren; gathered, at what risk ye know, from the places wherein the
tyrant had exposed the sacred relics, which were once the home of the
Holy Spirit, wherein Christ lived and dwelt; yea, and which shall rise
again from the dust of death, when body shall unite with the redeemed
regenerate soul, and soar from death’s cold house to life and light.”
He was interrupted by a sob (it was from Cuthbert), but he went on.
“And now we bury them in peace, we place the bones of the last
Abbot,--and one more worthy has never presided over Glastonbury,--with
those of his sainted predecessors: together they sleep after life’s
fitful penance, together they shall arise, when the last trump shall
echo over the vale of Avalon. Nor do we forget his faithful brethren,
once the Prior and Sub-Prior of this holy house; they were with him
in his hour of trial, they rest with him now, their mortal bodies,
all that was mortal, here, but their souls, purified by suffering
have, we doubt not, entered Paradise, where they hear those rapturous
strains, that endless Alleluia which no mortal ear could hear and
live. In peace; but secure as we feel for them, we have yet to implore
God’s mercy for ourselves, and His suffering Church, upon which blows
so cruel have fallen. In these holy mysteries, while we commend our
dear brethren to His mercy, our supplications are turned (as saith
Augustine) to thanksgivings; but for ourselves, oh, what need of prayer
that we may breast the waves, as they did, and when the Eternal Shore
is gained, who will count the billows which roar behind?”
The service proceeded, and when all was over, the stone was replaced
over the grave, which was made to appear as though nought had disturbed
its rest in its bed, the tapers were extinguished, and but one solitary
torch left alight.
He who appeared the leader of the party, now approached Cuthbert.
“My son,” he said, “dost thou know this ring?”
“I do,” and Cuthbert bent the head.
“Thou meetest me fitly here; and here, over his grave who loved thee, I
take thee to be my adopted child; thou hast found another father in the
place of him thou hast lost; fear not thy foes, I know thy danger, ere
the dawn break thou shalt be in safety.”
_End of the First Part._
FOOTNOTES
[24] See Note I. The Abbey Church.
[25] The Six Articles became law the same year, enforcing nearly all
Roman doctrine.
[26] Eternal rest give unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine
upon them.
Thou, O God, art praised in Sion, etc.
[27] 398, Hymns A. and M.
“Day of wrath, O day of mourning.”
“Think, good Jesu, my salvation, etc.”
PART II.
_Cuthbert the Foundling._
O fair Devonia!
Land of the brave and leal, how bright thy skies!
How fresh do show thy rich and verdant meads!
How clear the streams! which from thy hills do run:
How grim the tors! which granite rocks do crown:
How sweet the glens! whose depths the forest hides:
How blue the seas! which ruddy rocks do bound:
Fain would I seek amidst such beauty--rest:
And bid the world--Adieu.
CHAPTER I.
_THE OLD MANOR HOUSE._
There are few districts in England more picturesque than the southern
slopes of Dartmoor; the deeply wooded glens, the brawling mountain
torrents, the huge tors with their rock-crowned summits and the mists
curling around them, the fertile plains beneath with their deep red
soil, the blue ocean girdling all with its azure belt; all these unite
to form a picture, which _once_ seen, recurs again and again to the
memory, while life lingers.
A few years after the scenes recorded in the first part of this
tragical history, a young traveller left the inn of the “Rose and
Crown,” Bovey Tracey, late one September evening, bound for the
moorland. The sun was sinking towards the western heights which
bounded the plain, the giant bulwarks of the moorland--Hey Tor, with
its fantastic crown of gigantic rocks, Rippon Tor, with its cairn of
stones,--were already tinged with the glorious hues of sunset, and the
purple heather which covered their slopes, looked its best in the tints
of the departing luminary.
Our traveller was a youth who had perhaps seen some twenty summers,
but whose smooth face was yet undignified by the beard of manhood; his
attire was of the picturesque style made familiar to us by the pencil
of Holbein: over a close-fitting doublet and nether garments hung a
mantle, flowing open and sumptuously embroidered; his velvet cap was
bound round with a golden band, and adorned with a bright feather and a
jewelled clasp, a silver-hilted sword hung by his side.
“You must ride quickly, Master Trevannion, or you will hardly climb
the pass before dark, and it is a bad road by the side of the Becky,
especially opposite the fall,” said the landlord, kindly.
“I know every foot of it, my Boniface, and so does my steed; never fear
for us.”
“It will be dark early, and perhaps wet; look at that cap of mist upon
Hey Tor.”
The youth glanced at the little cloud. “I shall be home before it
descends,” he said; “Good night, landlord,” and he rode quickly away.
“Who is yonder stripling?” said a dark-browed stranger, as the landlord
re-entered the inn.
“The son and heir of Sir Walter Trevannion,” replied the landlord
respectfully, for the stranger had announced himself as “travelling on
the King’s business,” and was evidently a “man of worship.”
“And how do you name him?”
“Cuthbert Trevannion, some day to be _Sir_ Cuthbert, when Sir Walter,
now past his fiftieth year, is gathered to his fathers.”
“And this Sir Walter, what was he doing in _his_ father’s life-time?”
“That is hardly known--some say that he was a monk before bluff King
Hal pulled down the rookeries, and that he keeps up the old cloister
life with a few brethren in the old hall, which he seldom leaves; but
that can hardly have been the case, for then how could he have been
married and become possessed of so goodly a son?”
“And the son--does he confine himself much to the hall?”
“Oh, he hunts and hawks like other young men, only he keeps somewhat to
the home preserves, and seldom shows abroad.”
“Are there any other children?”
“No, this is the only child.”
“And the mother?”
“Died before Sir Walter came home.”
“What year was that?”
“I cannot remember--but----”
“Go to, refresh thy memory with a cup of thine own best sack at my
expense, it is before thee on the table.”
“Well, I think it was in forty.”
“And this youngster seems about twenty years old; he would have been a
boy of fourteen then.”
“Your worship has some interest in him?”
“Nay, only a passing recollection.”
* * * * *
We will leave the worthies to their talk, and follow the traveller.
He had now ridden about three miles from Bovey, when he entered a long
pass between two ridges of hills; by his side a trout stream, called
the Becky, tumbled along, larch trees grew on the banks, and the
heights above were crowded with dwarf oaks, beeches, and other forest
trees.
Whistling to himself he rode along, hastening to get home ere it was
quite dark, for the roads were both difficult and dangerous, save to
those who knew them well.
Soon the valley contracted, and there was only room for the torrent and
the road, while the craggy wooded heights rose yet more lofty above:
sometimes, over their summits could be seen the rounded heights of the
moorland.
The tumbling of a cascade to the left, was heard as the road parted
from the river, and began to ascend a dark pass, where the faint
decaying light was almost excluded by the foliage.
In devious zig-zags the road ascended to the upper plateau, and our
rider, the summit attained, looked back at the valley. It was a mass of
foliage, which hid the depth; the upper branches glimmered in the rays
of the departing sun which was just disappearing behind a wild-looking
hill, whereon appeared a mass of rocks, so closely resembling the ruins
of a castle, that it needed a keen eye to discover the deception at a
glance.
But the rocks of Hound Tor were too familiar to our youthful friend to
detain him a moment, and riding through a few meadows, he drew up at
the gate of an ancient manor house, beneath the slope of a rock-clad
hill, which was crowned by a mass of granite resembling the human form,
and from the protuberance of what represented the nasal organ, called
“Bowerman’s Nose.”
The reader will search in vain for that manor house now; the park in
which it stood has been disafforested, and subdivided into numerous
farm holdings; the stones which formed that mighty wall which encircled
the pleasaunce or garden, or which composed the stately pile within,
may yet exist amidst the materials of many cottages, where beside
poverty and squalor one beholds a carved architrave, or shattered
column; but we are writing of days long gone by.
Cuthbert Trevannion, to give him the name by which mine host of the
“Rose and Crown” distinguished him, rode up an avenue, and throwing the
bridle of his horse to a groom who stood ready to receive it, asked--
“Is my father at leisure?”
“The supper bell has just sounded.”
Retiring for one moment to wipe off the sweat and dust of the road, our
youth entered the “refectory,” as they called it at that house.
It was indeed to all appearance a monastic house--within a room,
wainscotted with dark oak, nine or ten grave old men sat on each side
of the board, and at the head sat Sir Walter Trevannion; all present
wore the dress of the Benedictine order, which, banished from the
stately abbeys founded for the exercise of its splendid worship,
lingered on by the charity of a few worthy knights or nobles in many a
similar asylum, where, until death the poor brethren still kept up the
exercise of their self-discipline.
To this, Henry had no objection, now that he had their money; for had
not the statute of the six articles just declared that vows of celibacy
were binding until death; a piece of cruel sarcasm, when everything
which could render them _tolerable_, had been taken away, so far as
the power of the crown extended.
During the supper, all were silent, while one of the brethren read a
homily of S. Augustine; but the meal ended, Sir Walter beckoned to his
_son_ to follow him into the study.
But it is time that we drop the mask, and explain ourselves.
Cuthbert Trevannion, now so called, _was_ our Cuthbert; Sir Walter was
that Ambrose, the bearer of the ring, who had received him into his
care, as related at the conclusion of the former part of this tale;
where he had passed six eventful years: years which had witnessed the
dastardly end of the life of the “malleus monachorum,” Cromwell;[28]
the divorce of one queen, the execution of another, and had seen the
tyrant pass into the last stage of his sanguinary reign--burning the
Reformers, and butchering the Romanists who would not acknowledge his
supremacy; the only tyrant upon record, who had the privilege of
persecuting both sides at once.
The inn-keeper’s account of Sir Walter was true so far as it went; we
will supply the necessary details.
He was the second son of Sir Arthur Trevannion, the head of an old
Devonian family, but against the will of his father he had assumed the
Benedictine habit, and become the Prior of the famous Abbey of Furness,
in the far north, under the name of Ambrose, so that his father and he
did not meet for many many years.
Under that name he became implicated in the rising called the
Pilgrimage of Grace, and when his Abbey was dissolved found refuge
abroad, where the news of his elder brother’s death reached him. It
was then thought expedient that he should return home in the guise of
a layman, where owing to the fact that he had taken the monastic vows
under an assumed name, his identity with the Father Ambrose of Furness,
proscribed by the government, was not suspected, and he was received by
his father as a returned prodigal, fresh from abroad.
The old knight only survived his return a few months, and for the sake
of offering a home to the poor houseless Benedictines whom he gathered
round him, Father Ambrose accepted the facts of his position, and
became, without question, Sir Walter Trevannion of Becky Hall, and the
protector of Cuthbert, to whom he had conceived so great an attachment
(which the lad well deserved) that he adopted him as his son, whereas
his first intention had been to place him in a more subordinate
position until he should shew himself worthy of higher promotion.
Thus to the outward world he was the country knight, but when the gates
were shut and he was alone with his brethren, he was Prior Ambrose.
Thus six uneventful years--uneventful, that is, to them--had passed
away, in the quietude of their moorland home, beneath the shade of the
mighty hills, far from the scenes of political strife.
And there Cuthbert’s education had been completed; when we reintroduced
him to our readers he was already in the bloom of early manhood.
“Happy the people, who have no history,” says an old well-worn proverb;
for history is only interesting when it deals with those days of war
and excitement which were miserable to contemporaries, but lend a charm
to tradition: “nothing in the papers to-day,” say we moderns, almost
vexed that no train has run off the lines, no steam-boat exploded, no
murderer exercised his art, to fill the columns.
Similarly those six years of Cuthbert’s past life would have no
interest for the reader, but they had been happy ones to him--
“The torrent’s smoothness ere it dash below.”
And often in later years did he recall them with regret.
And although he and his adopted father knew it not, another period of
deep excitement and great trial lay before them, upon the eve of which
we draw up our curtain and arrange our _dramatis personæ_.
FOOTNOTES
[28] “Dastardly,” for he who had with such cruel indifference sent
others to the stake, the quartering block, or the axe, lost all his own
courage when a like doom impended over himself--when, without a trial,
he was sentenced, by the process of a “bill of attainder,” which he had
first invented. In the most abject manner he fawned on the tyrant, and
besought mercy in terms which were a disgrace to his manhood. Innocent
of intentional treason against Henry no doubt he was; but was he more
so than many of his own victims, whom on the fifth of July, 1540, he
went to meet before the bar of God?