_SUUM CUIQUE TRIBUITUR._
Let us leave the snug cot and return to the desolate ruins of the Abbey.
Scarcely have the sounds of the footsteps of our two friends died
away, when another step comes along the cloisters from the opposite
direction, and after the pause of a moment it ascends the stair leading
to the Abbot’s chamber.
Hush! the new-comer is talking to himself, soliloquizing aloud.
“Methought I heard steps and voices, and saw from the opposite cloister
the gleam of a light in this very chamber. Nicholas has played me
false--the young hound; I shall have a rod in pickle for his back. He
should have been here to-night, to share my watch; he sent word he was
on their track, and that they were _en route_ for Glastonbury Abbey; no
doubt to visit the secret chamber, and he knew that I meant to await
him here alone, where I have had but a cold time of it, and, I fear, a
useless watch, for how can one person guard so large a place?
“Still the secret might be worth keeping to ourselves, for I am assured
there is much gold, and if we could but surprise and slay them after
they have betrayed their secret, we might enrich ourselves and no man
the wiser, and then make our market of the parchments afterwards.
’Tis but an old man and a mere boy; Nicholas might grapple with the
young one, and willingly would, for he hates him, while I disposed of
the monk-knight, which would but cost me a thrust or two; and then if
my page were sore pressed, I might lend him a moment’s assistance,
although it would be rare sport to see him finish my precious nephew
himself, and I think he _could_, for he must be the stronger, since
he has had no confinement or torture to weaken his nerves or sap his
health, and should be the better swordsman of the two. Ah! what is
this?”
He was trembling with excitement, not unmingled with a sensation like
fear, as he turned a dark lantern, and caused the hidden light to
reveal the entrance, which Cuthbert had unwittingly left ajar, for the
spring, rusty with damp, had failed to act.
Down the thirty steps; down to the iron door at the bottom, first
closing the upper door.
“I shall have the secret all to myself, not even Nicholas shall know
more than I choose to reveal; a man is his own best confidant, thanks
to the saint, or may be the devil, who has helped me. Ha! ha!”
Suddenly he started, and a chill of terror caused the cold sweat to
stand on his brow; was that a peal of distant laughter mocking his
words? Satanic laughter?
“I am becoming fanciful. Ah! here is the spring; no more mystery, the
door opens, I will press it back against the wall; yes it is safe, it
stands quite still.”
He enters the vault, and passes from mortal sight for ever.
Let us stand outside and watch that door.
It is certainly moving, almost imperceptibly; oh, how terrible that
slight motion. It increases in speed, _vires acquirit eundo_; oh! will
no one warn the guilty wretch within of his danger.
Clang! In that sound is the awful doom of one who is lost soul and
body,--the warning portent is explained, its fore-boding fulfilled.
Again that low but awful peal of laughter breaks the echoes. Ah!
who shall paint the agony of the few hopeless days of darkness,
which remain to him in his icy tomb--the pangs of hunger and thirst,
delirium, and madness?
We draw a veil over them, and bid Sir John Redfyrne a last farewell.
* * * * *
Upon the following morning the sun rose brightly upon the earth; so
soundly slept Sir Walter and his adopted son, that old Hodge had to
knock once or twice ere he could arouse them.
“Look, Cuthbert,” cried Sir Walter; “the rising sun dispersing the
darkness of the night, a harbinger of better days to us; dress quickly,
commend thyself to God, and let us be stirring: for although we have
heard nought of Sir John, it may be as well to put the sea between us
and him, now our work is accomplished.”
They occupied adjacent couches in the same room, and both had slept,
without once awaking, from the time they lay their heads on their
pillows; a sense of delicious rest, of labour achieved, had been theirs.
And now after their thanksgivings to God, they came down to breakfast
with hot spiced wine, before a warm fire; and although the reverence
always accorded to rank in those days, made the old yeoman hesitate to
set “cheek by jowl” with a knight and Prior rolled into one, yet Sir
Walter soon put him at his ease, and the four made the last breakfast
which they were ever to share together.
Cuthbert’s heart was too full for speech; he had cause to entertain
the warmest feelings of affection for his kind foster-parents, and now
he was leaving them perhaps for ever, for he could not hope to re-visit
England, unless a total change took place in the government and its
policy; and meanwhile the sands of life were running out for the aged
couple.
But the last farewells had to be said; the honest yeoman brought the
two horses round to the back door; the few necessaries they had were
packed in their saddle-bags, and bidding a longing lingering last
farewell, they turned their backs upon Glastonbury, and took the road
for Lyme Regis.
They rode leisurely, for they knew no need for special haste, and
enjoyed the invigorating and bracing air; oft-times from some eminence
they turned back, and looked over the plain of Avalon upon the lofty
Tor, with mingled feelings; it was the land-mark of home, but it was
the place where foul injustice had been wreaked upon one they had both
loved.
Late in the evening they beheld the sea in the far distance, and soon
after nightfall entered Lyme Regis, where Cuthbert sought his uncle,
while he left Sir Walter at the inn.
Such a journey as they had accomplished would have been difficult in
France without passports, or in any continental land until a much
later day; but in England well-dressed and respectable travellers might
travel unquestioned, in the absence of any cause to the contrary, and
take up their quarters without exciting suspicion, even in the last
days of bloody Harry.
Cuthbert sought his “uncle,” with whom it will be remembered he had
spent the ten months after the martyrdom of the Abbot, and found him
just returned from a fishing expedition. At first the old fisherman
could not recognize the lad who had once won his affections in the
young man who stood before him, but when he did so, the warmth of the
reception was all that could be desired; he almost dragged Cuthbert to
his “aunt,” and no persuasion would induce them to let the youth return
to spend the night at the inn with Sir Walter.
What a story had Cuthbert to tell them! “Uncle,” “aunt,” and two or
three “cousins,” stalwart young fishermen: they stood aghast with open
mouths and erected ears at his narration of the scenes at Exeter, which
were quite fresh to them, for news travelled very slowly in those days,
and even otherwise they might not have recognized Cuthbert under the
altered name.
And when he asked their help to convey him and his adopted father
across sea, he was met by an enthusiastic reply, “Wind and tide both
serve, why not to-morrow morning, my boy; loath are we to part with
thee so soon, but thy safety is the first consideration.”
So the following morning Sir Walter and Cuthbert, both clad in fishers’
garb, joined the fisherman and his stalwart sons on the beach. The
largest boat, or rather sloop, was got under weigh, the wind blew
directly off shore, and soon they saw the white cliffs of Dorset, and
the red ones of Devon, which meet near Lyme Regis, receding on the
right and left.
As they drew out to sea, and the whole coast line became visible, Hey
Tor and the moorland hills loomed in the far distance on the left, and
until they sank beneath the sea Cuthbert never took his eyes from them.
Now all was sea and sky for many hours, until the coasts of Normandy,
about the mouth of the Seine, came into sight. And they ran the boat
up the river to the nearest point to the great Abbey of Bec, founded
by the famous Herlwin in 1034, and which had furnished two successive
Archbishops to Canterbury in the persons of Lanfranc and Anselm.
The present Abbot had been a personal friend of Father Ambrose, and so
soon as they had bidden a kind and grateful farewell to their English
friends, the honest fishermen, who absolutely refused the offer of gold
for their services, they directed their steps to the famous Abbey.
After a journey of some hours, they arrived safely at Bec.
“Behold an Abbey, which God has yet preserved from the spoilers,” said
Father Ambrose, as he looked upon the glorious pile--grand as that they
had lost--and then added with a sigh, “Alas, poor Glastonbury.”
There they met unbounded hospitality, and Father Ambrose only waited to
bestow his adopted son in the care of the Baron de Courcy, whose castle
was hard by, ere he resumed that life he had never willingly abandoned.
The Baron de Courcy was a descendant of an old and famous Norman house,
distinguished in the days of the Conquest, when Aymer de Courcy,
refusing to share in the sports of England, retired to his Norman
estate, although he had fought at Hastings, and enjoyed the favour of
the Conqueror.
His good qualities, well known to those who have read of them in the
“Andredsweald,” a chronicle of the house of Michelham in Sussex,[57]
had not suffered in transmission through so many generations: and our
Cuthbert found a warm reception in the Norman household.
And so they both gained a home, each after his own heart, and the
recent trials seemed only to enhance the sweet sense of security they
now enjoyed.
“When the shore is gained, at last,
Who will count the billows past?”
But they had not been three months in their new homes, when tidings
arrived from England of the death of their oppressor. Henry VIII. had
passed to his last account on the early morn of the twenty-eighth of
January, fifteen-hundred and forty-seven; passed from his earthly
flatterers and parasites, who had treated him as if he were a demi-god,
to the awful judgment bar whither he had sent before him by the hands
of the executioner some seventy thousand of those subjects who had been
committed by the King of kings to his care.
_There_, where prince and peasant, lord and slave, king and monk, are
all equal, where there is no respect of persons, we leave him and close
our tragical story.
FOOTNOTES
[57] The “Andredsweald,” a tale of the Norman Conquest, by the same
author.
Epilogue.
Here, when I first told this story to a generation of schoolboys, long
since dispersed over the face of this busy world, I concluded my tale,
and returned to my study, but I was followed thither by some young and
eager story-devourers, who, like Oliver Twist, “asked for more.”
“Please, sir, we want to know what became of the treasure?”
“Oh,” said I, “I forgot to mention that in Queen Mary’s reign, Cuthbert
paid a visit to England in the train of the French Ambassador, Monsieur
de Noailles, and found an opportunity of revealing the secret to the
Queen. He was sent with some others to Glastonbury, and there they
found the mouldering skeleton of Sir John Redfyrne, keeping watch over
the chest.”
“But how did they know who he was?”
“The name was engraved on his sword, ‘John Redfyrne, Knight.’”
“Did Cuthbert know that it was his uncle?”
“Not at the time, nor for years afterwards.”
“I fancy,” said a youngster, “Cuthbert would still have preferred the
name ‘_Trevannion_’ to ‘_Redfyrne_,’ even if he had known.”
“But what did they do with the treasure? Was the Abbey ever rebuilt?”
“No, for one of the conditions which the nobles, who held the Abbey
lands, exacted when Mary restored the Papal Supremacy, was, that they
should be left undisturbed in all their ill-gotten possessions: you
may be sure that the gold was applied to such uses as the last Abbot
himself would have approved.”
“But were old Giles and his wife alive then? did they ever see Cuthbert
again?” enquired a chubby little fellow.
“He yet lived, but the dear old dame had gone to her rest. Cuthbert’s
visit was the last gleam of joy in the good old yeoman’s well-spent
life: his foster son closed his eyes, and laid him to rest by the side
of his beloved wife.”
“And did Cuthbert ever get the lands of Redfyrne?”
“No, for he never claimed them, and they passed to the next of kin.”
“But did Cuthbert have plenty of money?” cried a little fellow,
anxiously.
“Yes, the King of France, Henry the Second, bestowed a valuable estate
upon him, close by the Abbey of Bec, with the rank of Baron, in reward
for his extraordinary valour, displayed when he led the forlorn hope
at the taking of Metz, in 1552; which city remained a French fortress
until the late Franco-German war.”
“And did he marry that Isabel Grey of Ashburton?”
“No, she married a fat and well-liking Devonshire squire.”
“Poor Cuthbert; what a shame!”
“Oh, you need not pity him; few people marry their first love; he found
ample consolation in Eveline de Courcy, daughter of the baron, had many
bright-eyed sons and daughters, and lived happy, as the story-books
say, ‘ever afterwards.’”
“But how was it ever known who were his true parents: for it must have
been found out, or we should never have had this tale,” said an older
boy.
“You remember the good old priest of S. Mary of the Steppes in Exeter?”
“Yes,” cried several, “he was sent to fetch _that_ Sir John Redfyrne to
old Madge.”
“Well, after the death of the poor old woman, he found a sealed
packet in her chamber, directed to himself, with the words, ‘To be
opened in case of my sudden death,’ which revealed the truth, but he
dared not act upon it at once, in favour of an attainted person, and
against a court favourite: he waited his time. Meanwhile, in the early
years of Edward the Sixth, the Devonshire rebellion broke out, and
suspected of being implicated therein, he fled across the seas, and
eventually, after many years, became a monk in the Abbey of Bec. There
he discovered the identity of Cuthbert, then resident at the castle of
Courcy, hard by, with the youth who so narrowly escaped the scaffold
at Exeter. Then he revealed the secret to Father Ambrose, and he to
Cuthbert.”
“Then why did not Cuthbert claim his own?” said many at once.
“Because he had already attained all he desired in France, and the
England of Elizabeth, much as it is lauded by many, had no attractions
for him: besides there would have been the old question of the
Supremacy to have fought out again; I am not in a position to say that
his opinions had undergone any change on that point, and otherwise he
could not have lived in peace in his native land.”
“But he was wrong in contending for the supremacy of the Pope, was he
not?” said an incipient theologian.
“Undoubtedly; but as a modern historian, not usually credited with
Catholic sympathies, says of the Carthusian martyrs who died for the
same belief, ‘We will not regret their cause; there is no cause for
which any man can more nobly suffer, than to witness that it is better
for him to die than to speak words which, he does not mean?’”[58]
“What a wicked monster Henry the Eighth must have been!”
“Yet he had, perhaps, the majority of the nation with him; and
doubtless his heart was hardened by continued prosperity and the
flattery which he breathed as his vital air. I shall never forget
the solemn thoughts which came upon me when I once stood over the
plain stone which marks his grave at Windsor: the remembrance of his
many victims, the devout Catharine, the stately Wolsey, the learned
More, the pious Fisher, the faithful monks of the Charterhouse, the
Protestant martyrs, the gallant Surrey, and a host of others. Then came
the thought, he has long since met his victims at the judgment-seat,
and he and they have been judged by One ‘too wise to err, too good to
be unkind;’ let us leave him to that judgment, which also awaits us
all. But hark, there is the Chapel bell.”
_Exeunt omnes._
FOOTNOTES
[58] Froude, Vol. III., Cap. ix.
NOTES.
_Note A, P. 2._--ANTIQUITIES OF GLASTONBURY.
The town of Glastonbury is a place, whose historical traditions stretch
back to a very remote antiquity. It was known to the early Britons
as “Inis Avalon,” or the Isle of Apples, for that fruit was said to
grow spontaneously on the rich soil. Thus Camden writes, or rather
translates an ancient ode:--
“O Isle of Apples; truly fortunate,
Where unforced fruit, and willing comforts meet;
For there the fields require no rustic hand,
But Nature only cultivates the land:
The fertile plains with corn and herds are proud,
And golden apples smile in every wood.”
The cluster of hills was (as the name “Inis Avalon,” or “Insula
Avalonia,” implies) once an island, surrounded by water from the inlet,
we now call the Bristol Channel.
It was not conquered by the English or West Saxons, until the year 658,
when Kenwalk [Cenwealh] of Wessex, defeated the Britons after a hard
fight, and drove them across the Parret, but it was Christian long
before it was English, for it is certain that it was a centre of Welsh
Christianity from the earliest times.
Ancient legends relate that S. Philip the Apostle, anxious both to
spread the knowledge of the Gospel, and to provide for the safety of
his friend Joseph of Arimathæa, exposed to danger from the hatred of
the Jews, combined these ends by sending him to Britain with eleven
brethren, and some add that S. Mary Magdalene accompanied him.
They were greatly tossed by the waves, and buffeted out of their
course, so that they landed on the Isle of Avalon, where Arviragus, the
king, received them kindly; and gave them permission to build a Church,
which they did, dedicating it to the Blessed Virgin, a dedication
afterwards forgotten, for it was finally dedicated to S. Joseph
himself, and under the name “Vetusta Ecclesia,” most carefully encased
with stone and preserved by subsequent architects, until the great fire
in 1184.
It is also recorded that the landing of the Saint and his companions
took place at the northern side of Wirral Hill, at a place called in
old maps, “The Sea Wall;” the exact spot was anciently identified by
a hawthorn tree, which sprang from the staff S. Joseph struck into
the ground when he landed. Many trees propagated by grafts from this
wonderful tree still exist; they flower at Christmas in honour of the
Nativity.
The legend adds, that S. Joseph brought with him a most priceless
treasure, “The Holy Grail,” the very chalice in which the Saviour
administered the Sacrament of His Blood.
The Cup, the Cup itself, from which our Lord
Drank at the last sad Supper with His own;
This, from the Blessed Land of Aromat--
After the day of darkness, when the dead
Went wandering over Moriah--the good Saint,
Arimathæan Joseph, journeying brought
To Glastonbury, where the winter thorn
Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord.
TENNYSON.--_The Holy Grail._
The original Chapel, built, according to tradition, by S. Joseph and
his companions, stood at the west end of the great Abbey Church. It was
60 feet long by 20 broad, and, whatever we may think of the tradition,
was doubtless one of the oldest churches in Britain; under its altar S.
Joseph was said to lie buried.
Furthermore we are informed that the Ambassador, sent by Pope
Eleutherius in answer to the petition of King Lucius, landed here, and
revived the faith, when it was becoming decayed; but the whole legend
of King Lucius is rejected by modern historians.
Here also it is said that S. Patrick, after the conversion of Ireland,
retired in his seventy-second year, and ruled as Abbot for thirty-nine
years, dying in the year 472, in the one hundred and eleventh year of
his age. He was buried in S. Joseph’s Chapel.
Here also S. David, the patron Saint of Wales, is said to have ended
his days; he wished to reconsecrate the Vetusta Ecclesia, or Chapel of
S. Joseph; but our Lord appeared to him in a vision, and informed him
that HE had consecrated it Himself.
Here King Arthur, the hero of a hundred fights, and a thousand myths,
was said to be buried with his Queen Guinevra. His heroic deeds, in the
defence of his country, against our pagan forefathers, have been sung
by many Bards of old, but by none more sweetly than by our greatest
living poet. Thus he describes the parting scene with the brave knight,
Sir Bedivere, after the hero’s last great battle with his treacherous
nephew, Mordred, at Camlen in Cornwall:--
“But now farewell, I am going a long way,
With these thou seest, if indeed I go,
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt,)
To the island valley of Avilion,
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly, but it lies
Deep meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns,
And bowery meadows, crowned with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.”
But the hope was vain; he went to Avalon to die.
This story was sung by the Welsh Bards to King Henry II. on his journey
to Ireland in 1177, and interested him so deeply, that he recommended
a search for the remains, and that they should be (if found) exhumed
and re-interred in the Church, as a more fitting resting place. This
wish was carried out after that king’s death by his nephew, Henry
de Soliaco, then Abbot, in 1191, and in the spot indicated by the
Bards, the remains were found both of Arthur and his queen. Geraldus
Cambrensis, who was present, relates the scene, and says that a stone
was found with a leaden cross bearing the inscription,--“_Hic pace
sepultus rex Arthurus, in insula Avalonia_,”--and beneath it the
remains of the hero king, which were of giant proportions, and of
his queen, mingled in the same coffin. In the large skull were three
wounds, and in the cavity occupied by the queen’s remains a tress of
fair yellow hair, which being touched fell to pieces. The remains were
duly honoured by a black marble mausoleum in the Church.
When more than eighty years had passed away, the greatest of the
Plantagenets, Edward the first, and his Queen Eleanor kept the
festival of Easter at Glastonbury, and the tomb was opened for their
inspection; when the king commanded the hallowed relics to be exposed
before the high altar, for the veneration of the people, ere they were
recommitted to their resting place; _there_ to rest, until the tyrant--
“Cast away like a thing defiled
The remembrance of the just.”
We have dwelt upon these old legends, not without pleasure, as recorded
chiefly by William of Malmesbury, on the authority of a “Charter of S.
Patrick,” and an ancient British historian whose writings were then
extant, but whose name he does not hand down to posterity.
But the Charter is pronounced by Archbishop Usher to be the forgery
of a Saxon monk, and historians in general, consider the truth of the
legends, hitherto recorded, as doubtful as those of the kings of Rome,
or of the Trojan war.
Still, there can be little doubt in a candid mind, that these ancient
myths enshrine many facts, that in the early British times, nay in
the very infancy of Christianity, Glastonbury was a centre of light
under its earlier name, “the Isle of Avalon,” and that the site of
S. Joseph’s Chapel, or the “Vetusta Ecclesia,” is that of one of the
oldest, or perhaps _the_ oldest Christian Church in Britain.
We have already seen that the English Conquest had advanced as far
as Glastonbury by the year 658. Sixty years afterwards, Ina, King of
Wessex, after building the first Church in Wells, by the advice of
Adhelm, Bishop of Sherborne, (in which diocese the new conquests were
incorporated until the foundation of the See of Wells by Edward the
Elder in 909,) rebuilt the monastery on the Isle of Avalon, which by
that time, owing to the subsidence of the sea, had either ceased, or
was fast ceasing to be an island; save, so far as it was encircled
by the waters of the river Brue and its tributary streams, with the
marshes they formed. So long as the English had remained heathen they
had destroyed all the Churches and monasteries they found; now that
they, the West Saxons, had become Christian they respected the Churches
and monks, and thus they became great benefactors of Avalonia, or as
the English called it, “Glæstingabyrig,” or “Glastonbury.”
Ina died at Rome, whither he had gone, after resigning his crown, in
all the “odour of sanctity.”
The monastery was burnt by the Danes in the following century, and
restored by the great Saint Dunstan, as described in the author’s
earlier tale, “Edwy the Fair, or the First Chronicle of Æscendune.”
Here King Edgar died, and was buried; here, as recorded in a later tale
of the writer, “Alfgar the Dane, or the Second Chronicle of Æscendune,”
the murdered Edmund Ironside was solemnly interred.
The first Norman Bishop, was one Turstinus, or Tustain, and a testy
Abbot was he; he had a dislike to the ancient Gregorian music, and
bade his English monks sing Parisian tones; but they clung to their
old melodies; they had obeyed their foreign tyrant in other things,
but would not give up their Gregorians; so the Abbot called in Norman
soldiers to coerce the unwilling songsters, and there was a terrible
riot in the Church, for the Normans did not respect the sanctity of the
place, and slew many monks therein, so that after the conflict ended
many arrows were found sticking in the Crucifix over the high altar.
The plain Saxon edifice of Ina looked mean to men accustomed to the
Norman abbeys, and therefore Tustain rebuilt the greater portion.
The well known fighting Bishop, Henry of Blois, brother of King
Stephen, was appointed Abbot of Glastonbury in 1126, and Bishop of
Winchester in 1134, retaining the earlier appointment also till his
death in 1171. He rebuilt the monastery from the very foundations,
(says an old chronicler) as well as a large palace for himself.
But in the year 1184, on the 25th of May, a terrible fire destroyed the
whole monastery, save the bell tower, and a chapel and chamber, built
by Abbot Robert (A.D. 1172). Henry the Second, then king, immediately
issued a charter, beginning with the words, “Whatsoever a man soweth
that shall he reap,” and announced, that in order to lay up treasure in
heaven, he and his heirs would restore and raise it to greater glory
than before.
He built the Church of S. Mary, commonly called S. Joseph’s Chapel,
on the site of the Vetusta Ecclesia, with “squared stones of the most
perfect workmanship, profusely ornamented,” and it was consecrated by
Reginald the Bishop, on S. Barnabas’ Day, 1186.
The great king only lived three more years, and after his death the
further restoration went on but slowly, so that it was not until one
hundred and nineteen years had passed away, that the great Abbey Church
of S. Peter and S. Paul, which figures in our story, was completed and
dedicated, in the year 1303, in the days of Abbot Fromont, and the
reign of Edward the First.
The Abbey is said to have suffered grievously in the earthquake which
shook the country in the third year of Edward the first, 1274.
The eight Abbots who succeeded in order, carried on the work of
beautifying and enlarging until Richard Beere, 1493-1524, the last
Abbot but one, finished by erecting the king’s lodgings for secular
clergy.
Then when all was “as perfect as perfect could be,” so far as the
outward structure, came the terrible fall our story records.
_Note B, P. 11._--LAD AND LASS.
“The old good wife’s well hoarded nuts
Are round and round divided,
And many lads’ and lasses’ fates
Are there that night decided;
Some kindle quickly, side by side,
And burn together trimly,
Some start away with saucy pride
And jump out o’er the chimney.”
Burning the nuts is a famous charm. They name the lad and lass to each
particular nut, as they lay them on the fire, and accordingly as they
burn quietly together, or start from beside one another, the course and
issue of the courtship will be.--_Brand’s Popular Antiquities._
_Note C, P. 11._--FETCHES.
These are the exact figures and resemblances of persons then living;
often seen not only by their friends at a distance, but many times
by themselves; of which there are several instances in Aubrey’s
Miscellanies. These apparitions are called “Fetches,” and in Cumberland
“Swarths;” they most commonly appear to distant friends and relations
at the very instant preceding the death of a person whose figure
they put on; but sometimes there is a greater interval between the
appearance and death.--_Grose_ _apud_ _Brand_.
_Note D, P. 25._--COUPLED BETWEEN TWO FOXHOUNDS.
“Sir Peter Carew, being a boy at about the date of the tale, and giving
trouble at the High School at Exeter, was led home to his father’s
house at Ottery, coupled between two foxhounds.”--_Hooker’s Life of Sir
Peter Carew._
_Note E, P. 31._--THE PARCHMENTS.
The Abbot’s connection with “The Pilgrimage of Grace” has never been
proved, but it is scarcely unjust to assume, as is done in the text,
his general sympathy with the movement. Froude says it was discovered
that he and the Abbot of Reading had supplied the northern insurgents
with money.
“Treason doth never prosper, for this reason
That if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
Thus, had the northern movement succeeded, it might generally be
acknowledged to be as justifiable as the similar popular risings of
1642 and 1688; it failed, and the story has been written by the victors.
_Note F, P. 38._--THE LAST CELEBRATION.
The account of this last celebration is taken from the touching and
affecting narrative of Maurice Channey, a survivor of the Carthusian
monks, who suffered in 1535, _mutatis mutandis_. Locality and names
being changed, the story in the text is a narrative of facts. It will
be found in the ninth chapter of Froude’s Henry VIII.
_Note G, P. 73._--DEATH OF ABBOTT WHITING.
For the purposes of the story the writer has taken some little
liberties with the traditional account of the martyrdom, which here he
supplies, beginning with the trial at Wells:--
“When he arrived at Wells, the old man was informed that there was an
assembly of the gentry and nobility, and that he was summoned to it,
on which he proceeded to take his seat among them, the habits of a
long and honourable life clinging to him even after his imprisonment.
Upon this the crier of the court called him to the bar to answer a
charge of high treason. “What does it all mean?” he asked of his
attendant, his memory and probably his sight and hearing having failed.
His servant replied that they were only trying to alarm him into
submission, and probably this was the opinion of most who attended
the court, as well as the jurors. “As worshipful a jury,” writes Lord
Russell to Cromwell, “as was charged here these many years.” And there
was never seen in these parts so great an appearance as were at this
present time, and never better willing to serve the king. He was soon
condemned, though he appears not to have understood what had happened,
and the next day, Nov. 15th, 1539, he was taken to Glastonbury in his
horse-litter.
“It was only when a priest came to receive his confession as he lay,
that he comprehended the state of things; then he begged that he might
be allowed to take leave of his monks before going to execution, and
also to have a few hours to prepare for his death.
“But no delay was permitted, and the old man was thrust out of the
litter on to a hurdle, upon which he was rudely dragged through the
town to the top of the hill which overlooks the monastery, where
he took his death very patiently, in the manner described in the
text.”--_Rev. J. H. Blunt’s Reformation of the Church of England_, p.
349-350. (From original authorities.)
_Note H, P. 78._--ENGLISH FARMERS.
“My father was a yeoman and had no lands of his own, only he had a farm
of three or four pounds by the year at the uttermost, and hereupon he
tilled as much as kept half-a-dozen men. He had walk for a hundred
sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine. He was able, and did find
the king a harness with himself and his horse. I remember that I
buckled on his harness when he went to Blackheath field. He kept me to
school or else I had not been able to have preached before the king’s
majesty now. He married my sisters with five pounds or twenty nobles
each, having brought them up in godliness and fear of God. He kept
hospitality for his poor neighbours and some alms he gave to the poor,
and all this he did of the said farm.”--_Latimer’s Sermons_, p. 101.
_Note I, P. 93._--THE ABBEY CHURCH.
Add this sentence accidentally omitted from the text:--
“There, in that desecrated spot, reposed the ashes of the mighty dead;
there, if tradition may be believed, rested the hero king Arthur,
the defender of the land against the English invasion, the hero of a
hundred fights, the subject of a thousand myths; _there_ rested the
holy bones of him who had afforded his Saviour the shelter of a tomb,
but whose own resting place was thus defiled; there lay S. Patrick, the
Apostle of Ireland; there, S. David, the patron Saint of Wales; there,
S. Dunstan, whose bones were said to have been brought hither, after
the sack of Canterbury by the Danes in 1012.[59] So highly had this
spot been reverenced, that Kings, Queens, Archbishops and Bishops, had
given large donations to the Abbey, that they might secure a resting
place amongst the hallowed dead. Here lay the mournful historian,
Gildas; here the venerated remains of the Venerable Bede; here lay King
Edmund, the victim of the assassination at Pucklechurch; here King
Edgar, the magnificent; hither, amidst a nation’s tears, they bore the
heroic Ironside to his rest--and now! ’twas enough to make an angel
weep--and a mortal wonder whether the nation had ceased to reverence
its ancient greatness; or indeed to believe in Him Who is the God to
Whom all live, whether men call them dead or not; and Who has taught
us to reverence the sleeping dust, wherein His Spirit once moved and
energized.”
_Note J, P. 117._--THE GUBBINGS.
The Gubbings were a kind of gipsy race who infested Dartmoor, and who
were united in a confederation under one whom the people called the
“King of the Gubbings.” Old Fuller (p. 398) writes:--
“They are a peculiar of their own making, exempt from Bishop,
Archdeacon, and all authority, either ecclesiastical or civil. They
live in cotes (rather holes than houses) like swine, having all in
common, multiplied, without marriage, into many hundreds. During our
civil wars no soldiers were quartered _upon_ them, for fear of being
quartered _amongst_ them. Their wealth consisteth in other men’s goods;
they live by stealing the sheep on the moors, and vain it is for any to
search their houses, being a work beneath the pains of any sheriff, and
above the power of any constable. Such is their fleetness, they will
outrun many horses; vivaciousness, they outlive most men, living in
ignorance of luxury, the extinguisher of life. They hold together like
bees; offend _one_, and _all_ will avenge his quarrel.”
_Note K, P. 135._--THE BLACK ASSIZE.
“Among the memorable events of these times, in which innocent Catholics
were everywhere made to suffer, is that which took place in the city
and university of Oxford. One Rowland Jenks (a bookseller), was
arraigned as a Catholic (for the publication of some unlicensed books
against the changes in religion), found guilty, and being but one of
the common people, was condemned to lose both his ears. But the judge
had hardly delivered the sentence, when a deadly disease suddenly
attacked the whole court; no other part of the city, and no persons,
not in the court, were touched. The disease laid hold, in a moment,
of all the judges, the high sheriff, and the twelve men of the jury.
The jurymen died immediately, the judges, the lawyers, and the high
sheriff died, some of them within a few hours, others of them within a
few days, but all of them died. Not less than five hundred persons who
caught the same disease at the same time and place, died soon after,
in different places outside the city.”--_Rushton’s Continuation of
Sanders_, Book iv., Cap ix.
_Note L, P. 232._--DEMOLITION OF ABBEYS.
The reader may wonder that men should have been found, so ready to
plunder the house of God; so greedy, as the country people everywhere
showed themselves, to share in the plunder of the Church.
The following extract from “Ellis’ Original Letters,” is much to the
point, and will at least enlighten us as to their motives, which were
of the earth, earthy:--
“I demanded of my father thirty years after the suppression, (that
would be in the time of Elizabeth) which had bought part of the timber
of the Church, and all the timber in the steeple, with the bell frame,
with others his partners therein (in the which steeple hung eight or
nine bells, whereof the least but one could not be bought at this day
for twenty pounds, which bells I did see hang there myself, more than a
year after the suppression), whether he thought well of the religious
persons, and of the religion then used, and he told me ‘yea,’ for he
said, ‘I did see no cause to the contrary.’ ‘Well,’ said I then, ‘how
came it to pass, you were so ready to destroy and spoil the thing that
you thought well of?’ ‘What _should_ I do,’ said he, ‘might I not, as
well as others, have some profit of the spoil of the abbey? for I did
see all moved away, and therefore I did as others did.’ Thus you may
see, as well as they who thought well of the religion then used, as
they which thought otherwise, could agree well enough, and too well, to
spoil them. Such an evil is covetousness and mammon, and such is the
providence of God to punish sinners in making themselves instruments
to punish themselves and all their posterity, from generation to
generation. For no doubt there have been millions that have repented
the thing since, but all too late.”
FOOTNOTES
[59] The Canterbury folk denied this and said they had still got them;
nay, in the days of King Henry VII. the Archbishop of Canterbury
threatened to excommunicate those who venerated the “pretended relics”
at Glastonbury.
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
Fairleigh Hall. A Tale of the Neighbourhood of Oxford during
the Civil Wars. _Cloth_, 3/6.
Æmilius. A Story of the Decian and Valerian Persecution.
_Cloth_, 3/6.
Evanus. A Tale of the Days of Constantine the Great. _Cloth_,
3/6.
The Camp on the Severn. A Tale of the Tenth Persecution in
Great Britain. _Cloth_, 2/0.
The Victor’s Laurel. A Tale of the Tenth Persecution in Italy.
_Cloth_, 2/0.