THE PALACE.
The palace of the Bishop of Norwich, then commonly called Wyke's
Bishop's Palace, was one of the most splendid buildings in the whole
of East Anglia. It was built in those early days when the men of God
were also, alas! compelled by ignorance to be men of war; who, though
loving peace, had so many temporal possessions in estates, and fines,
and properties of various kinds, that they were expected to defend
them with armed men, instead of with the sword of the Spirit, or the
Word of Truth.
The building was of very ancient date, and was castellated and well
fortified with bastions at eight different points, surrounded by a
moat of great width, with a huge drawbridge on the western front. It
was situated in a beautiful valley, surrounded on three sides by
hills of considerable height, even now called the Bishop's Hills, and
in what was then called Ufford's Dale, in which were the celebrated
Holy Wells, where pilgrims came from all parts to visit the font St.
Ivan, said to have the effect of curing every disease.
The castle, as it might be very properly called, had four
watch-towers, in which were windows looking towards the four points,
north, east, south, and west. In no other part of the structure,
save the warder's room over the great gateway, was there any window;
for this building had withstood many an insurrection, and many an
incursion of the furious Dane, and was not only a Bishop's palace,
but, in the ninth century, one of the strongholds of the townsmen of
Ipswich beyond their walls.
There was a great square in the centre, into which all the apartments
of the palace looked, so that it was not until the visitor had passed
under the great arch that he could conceive the beauty of the
building, or form any idea of the extent of its accommodation.
Externally, its character was sombre, having battlements on all
sides, enlivened only by the watch towers, plain walls, strong and
thick, though in its latter days, in the time of which this history
treats, symptoms of decay began to be visible in various parts, where
landslips from the springs around had caused considerable
inclinations of the buttresses. Still the inside of the area was
kept up in all the characteristic state of Goldwell, Bishop of
Norwich, the last of the possessors of a palace at Ipswich.
A small creek at that day ran up the valley in which the palace was
built, and approached so near it that a boat could ascend from the
Orwell almost up to the moat. That creek does not now exist, but in
its place there are magnificent fish-ponds, and the ancient stream is
diverted to a use very foreign to its original purpose.* But the
palace was not half so grand in its appearance as its stately inmates.
* The Cliff Brewery.
Goldwell Hall, which then belonged to Bishop Goldwell and was so
called in his lifetime, was the marriage portion of one of his
sisters, who married Geoffery De Clinton, of Castle Clinton, near
Linton, in Cambridgeshire. He was a wealthy noble, as well as proud,
and had but one daughter by this marriage, though he had two sons by
a former wife. He married Alice Goldwell when he was much advanced
in years, and could scarcely expect to see his young offspring arrive
at womanhood.
In consequence of this, and of the loss of his partner, the Lady
Clinton, he left his daughter to the sole guardianship of Goldwell
(then Secretary of State) her maternal uncle. He left the income of
certain estates in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire, to the
Bishop, as long as his child should live and remain single, and then
to be given to her as her dower; and in case of the demise of the
said Bishop and his niece, then to revert to the heir-at-law of the
family of Goldwell. The Bishop's private chapel then stood on the
opposite side of the hill on which the mansion was built.
Alice De Clinton, the particular care of the Bishop of Norwich, grew
up under his superintendence a most magnificent woman to look at; so
much so, that she was generally called Alice la Grande. She was very
stately in her person, and always wore a haughty expression of
countenance. She was quite a drawback upon the hospitality of
Goldwell; yet, strange to say, she possessed a great degree of
influence over the Bishop. He was liberal beyond what was usual in
his day, and was never but once betrayed into an act of persecution,
and that was in the case of one single heretic, John Bahram, whose
death-warrant he countersigned not many months before his own exit.
Goldwell was not in spirit a persecutor: he had been possessed of
very high influence in affairs of State, and was a learned and
liberal-minded man. He who was not to be deceived by courtiers,
could be commanded even by his niece, and yet be blind to her power.
He was proud of her, but it was because she was proud of herself, and
would brook no equal.
Her pride was so great as to be proverbial; and most persons were
glad when Alice De Clinton was not at the palace. She would yield to
none--not even to her uncle, the opinion she had once adopted. With
neither priest nor squire of inferior degree would she ever exchange
a word, though he might be a visitor in the palace, receiving the
hospitality of the Bishop. Her hauteur was so great that none but a
lord must speak to her; or if they did dare to do so, her uncommon
expression of disdain was enough to silence any humble-minded man.
Her bounty to the poor was never bestowed from pity. She gave the
boon, whatever it might chance to be, as a gift after partaking of
high mass; but none could possibly feel that relief of spirit which
acknowledged the blessing was due to the giver, since she would make
every one to understand he was much more blessed in receiving than
she was in bestowing. Alice De Clinton gave with such haughtiness as
to make the gift painful; so much so, that whenever she visited
Goldwell Hall, in the neighborhood of Ipswich, it was called by the
poor _Cold Hall_, so stiff, so benumbing was the influence of her
miscalled charity.
To the palace of Wykes, in that day, came many of the unfortunate,
who, in the previous wars of the Roses, and in foreign as well as
domestic broils, had been reduced to become objects of bounty.
House, home, board, and lodging, the weary pilgrim and broken-down
stranger would always find at the hospitable palace. Those were days
at least of generosity in this respect, whatever pride or
superstition might be connected therewith; and, singular as the
custom would now appear, the Bishop never sat down to his meal at
mid-day without the company of every stranger in the palace.
Alice had been an inmate of De Freston's castle with her uncle in the
early days of Ellen's childhood; and such was the meekness of the
daughter of De Freston that even the proud Alice condescended to look
upon her as a friend; but it was certainly as a friend beneath her,
one to whom she might show a kind of patronizing air without any
compromise of her dignity.
Years had elapsed sines the maid of Freston Tower had been summoned
to visit Alice De Clinton. The messenger, however, had arrived at De
Freston's castle, and the lord and the lady prepared to set forth
upon their journey. In those days no carriage came sweeping round to
the hall-door with their prancing steeds, and gold-laced coachmen and
footmen; but ladies rode on horse-back, or were borne in covered
litters to their places of entertainment. Horses 'with flowing tails
and flying manes,' dressed with gorgeous trappings and high saddles,
came from the stables to the mansion. There was no lack of
attendants, for a noble then counted his state by the number of his
retainers.
Ellen and her maid, on palfreys of beautiful jet black, were soon
ready for the journey to Wyke's Bishop's Palace. Lord De Freston, on
a milk-white horse of uncommon strength, one he had received as a
gift from Lord Willoughby, from Hanover, accompanied his daughter,
whilst a train of servants preceding as well as following, all
mounted on black steeds, made him and his Snow-Ball, as he was
called, so much the more conspicuous.
His horse had eyes so full of fire, and nostrils so expanded, that he
looked well adapted for the battle-field. But he was now upon a
visit of peace, and to a peaceful man: and his cavalcade left the
castle accompanied by men bearing all the usual luggage which such
state visits required.
De Freston, indeed, infinitely preferred the journey by water; for he
was too sensible a man to delight in the mere pageantry of
appearance, yet he was not insensible to the customs of his age. He
had, however, a daughter in whom he delighted, and the thought that
Alice De Clinton, who loved the forms of etiquette, and would blush
to see any one she called _her_ friend lowering herself by
condescension, would be affronted were he to forget the dignity of
his barony, induced him to take the journey with all his retinue.
They descended the Freston Hill, which was then the boundary of the
park, and swept along the strand, toward the Bourne Ford, where,
following the guide who knew the passage, they dashed through the
briny flood, and paced along the levels of Stoke, the tide of the
Orwell actually washing their horses' hoofs, as if they were riding
along the sea-shore. So beautiful and so clear were the waves of the
river which then washed the banks of its course, that the receding
tide left a sand almost as clean as that which borders the German
Ocean.
So high were the waves at that time at the Prior's Ford, between St.
Peter's Gate and Stoke, that the party had to sweep round beside the
narrower stream of the Gipping, and pass over the Friar's Bridge
before they could enter Ipswich.
The town was at that time celebrated for its religious houses, Grey
Friars, Black Canons, White Monks, Benedictines, Carmelites, and all
manner of brotherhoods and botherhoods of papal Rome. Mendicants of
all descriptions accosted the industrious with a boldness such as no
beggars dare in these days assume, for fear of the treadmill. But
the terrors of Rome were much greater upon the priest-ridden yet
industrious Britons than ever the treadmill could be to the vicious.
Those who were sanctioned by the Pope to beg, carried along with them
a mandate which few dared refuse to obey. The anathemas of the
church were then bestowed with such a plentiful outpouring of bile
upon such trivial subjects, too, as would have made Longinus laugh at
the sublimity of their pompousness. But men trembled then with
scarcely any conscience, for absolution had its pecuniary price, and
could be purchased for sins, past, present, and to come.
The holy brethren at the Friar's Gate bent lowly to De Freston as he
gave them his salutation, and passed on through St. Nicholas Street,
past Robert Wolsey's house, down to St. Peter's Priory, along the
warder's way, over the Bailiff's Customs Quay, through the parish of
St. Clement, into the hamlet of Wyke's Ufford. The cavalcade then
proceeded on what was termed the procession-way, leading to the
shrine of St. Ivan, from which they digressed on the broad Palace
Road to the Bishop's Gate.
The whole party soon passed over the drawbridge, then under the
warder's arch into the area of the palace, where the verger, with the
silver and golden ornaments of office, stood prepared with a number
of serving-men to receive the noble.
'Here, my men,' said De Freston, after he had assisted Ellen to
alight, 'ye will refresh yourselves and horses, and then set forth
upon your return by the way ye came, and see that ye keep well
together, and enter into no broils with any one. Ye will be in
readiness for your summons for our return whensoever ye receive
command. Pass on!'
De Freston and his daughter passed into the presence of Bishop
Goldwell, who was seated in a chair of state at the upper end of a
long and vaulted chamber prepared for their coming.
He rose, his step was proud and stately, and his large and noble eye
glanced a penetrating look upon the noble. Goldwell would maintain
in private the same dignity which he was accustomed to show in
public. He was gracious though grand; his manner mild, bland, yet
becomingly distant. Though a man of state, he was also a man of
ease, and showed what was due to his own person, and what he expected
even if he did not deserve it--which he did as much as any other man
could.
He received the Lord De Freston and his daughter with such a
courteous manner, as only to seem himself to be proud before his
household. With the most paternal air he accosted Ellen, receiving
her hand at her father's request, and led her to a seat, and, with
great politeness, welcomed De Freston to his palace.
'Fair daughter!' he said to Ellen, 'this visit to my niece affords us
both infinite pleasure: we have sought it many a day; but I scarcely
think that Alice will be able to recognise thee; for thou art grown
up from childhood to such form and feature that I should not, but for
the likeness to thy father present, have discovered thee to be his
daughter.'
Then, turning to the father, he added--
'I am proud to see thee, De Freston, maintaining thy years with
becoming verdure. Time has laid his hand upon me, and the cares of
state have borne me down.'
'I hope the years of peace yet reserved for your reverence may make
amends for all your state anxieties.'
'I thank thee, De Freston, but let me send for Alice at once.'
The Bishop rang a small bell; a female made her appearance, and was
ordered to inform her mistress that Lord De Freston and his daughter
had arrived.