THE RECLUSE.
In the days of Bishop Goldwell, and towards the end of the existence
of the palace of Wyke's Bishop, there lived a man who came from a far
country, and took up his solitary abode at the head of the little
stream which rose from the side of the hill, in the valley of Utford.
He had existed twenty years in that secluded spot, and was never
known to shave his head or trim his beard in the course of that
period.
In an age when superstition reigned supreme, and the poor dejected
sinner knew not how to worship God in spirit and in truth, without
flying from the face of men, and seeking something in solitude; in an
age when the ministers of Rome taught that penance was meritorious,
the self-immolating sacrifice of solitude became the surest way to
obtain the crown of the saint; and many were the conscience-smitten
convicts who were urged to depart from every tie of life, and give
themselves up to the sternest impositions of devotion. They would
retire from the world, live in a cave, kneel a certain number of
hours on a hard stone before a cross in the wall of their cells, eat
just enough coarse bread to keep life from departing, and drink of
the water from some fountain sacred to their fancy.
Amongst the ignorant, these men were looked upon with the most
profound veneration, were esteemed paragons of excellence; the most
virtuous, the most pious saints upon earth. Their names were handed
down to posterity, their deeds mentioned with respect, whilst they
themselves deceived their own hearts with the ideas of their own
fancies for divinity.
At the period of this narrative there existed a devotee of this kind,
who went by the title of St. Ivan. He boasted his descent from
Hurder the Dane; and, because his father, grandfather, or
great-grandfather had been stolen, when a child in his mother's arms,
and carried away by the chieftain, Hurder, during a Danish incursion,
he called himself of Danish extraction. There was an Ivan de Linton,
who originally built the chapel of Wyke's Bishop, and appointed
priests to chaunt a requiem therein, for his father's soul, who was
saved in the battle with the Danes upon Rushmere Heath, and died in a
cottage or cave where an old man lived, at the Ufford Dell. A wild
descendant of this Ivan came from Cambridgeshire, and became the St.
Ivan celebrated for his solitary eccentricity. He was a physician in
the latter part of the reign of Henry V.; so that he must have been
an old man when he retired from the world.
For twenty years he administered advice to all who came to him, and,
as he recommended abstinence for a certain number of hours previously
to his consideration of plethoric diseases, he obtained wonderful
celebrity for the cure of the Holy Waters from St. Ivan's Spring.
Thus the spot was called, and, to this day, bears the name on the
Holy Wells.
This old man used to perambulate the Bishop's palace every day. He
never entered its walls, because he used to say that, when he did so,
they would fall down, because the palace had been built upon the site
of the chapel of his forefathers. He was greatly respected by the
inhabitants of Ipswich, as pilgrims from all parts came to be healed
at the well of St. Ivan.
From time to time, as the old man went his rounds, perambulating the
moat of the castle, he observed, as many others might have done, had
they as regularly frequented the spot, indications of danger in the
walls of the building; for the banks of the moat on the castle side
began to press more and more into the waters, evidently showing that
a settlement was taking place which must one day be destructive to
the edifice.
From year to year he had observed these signs, and no doubt expected
to behold the demolition of a palace which he considered an
innovation of his rights. For the twenty years he lived there, this
was the theme of his prognostication, whenever any friend or stranger
visited his cell. His ominous declarations had rather increased with
his latter years, as the slips into the deep moat became larger.
Lord De Freston had often visited this eccentric man, and finding
something more in him than the delusions of ignorance, he made great
allowance for his vagaries. He found him communicative and
well-informed upon all historical subjects, though pretending to be
wrapt up in abstruse fallacies. He humored his fancies, and received
from him far more honest disclosures than such men are apt to make.
But upon the subject of the fall of Wyke's Bishop's Palace, he found
an uniformity of opinion that made him doubtful of the man's sanity.
Little, however, did that nobleman know of the daily calculations of
St. Ivan, and perhaps, had he been aware of them, he would have
equally doubted their accuracy.
A friendship certainly subsisted between them, which was nurtured by
the kind heart of De Freston; for, unknown to the recluse, he
employed poor people, from whom alone the hermit would take anything,
to supply him with gifts of bread and viands whenever he could
understand they would be received. Kind acts are always, one day or
other, rewarded, let them be done by whom they will; whilst unkind
ones will as assuredly meet with bitter reflections, if ever
retribution visit the offender.
Noon, as was stated at the end of the last chapter, was the hour of
hospitality at that day, when men were less hasty to be made rich,
and could afford the most wakeful hour of the day for public
entertainments. Now, indeed friends visit each other at hours when
their ancestors were about to retire for the night. But the hour of
noon that day was a busy hour in the palace of Wyke's Bishop. It was
alive with people passing and repassing, as the dinner-bell in the
lofty turret kept up its peal. A joyful sound, indeed, to many a
poor priest, who was melancholy only, on the prescribed day of
fasting, when he was bound to keep in his own cell.
Many of the wealthiest townsmen were expected. The mayor, burgess,
and portmen, together with their wives and daughters, were to be
partakers of the hospitality of the Bishop. Understanding, as they
soon did, that Ellen De Freston, the amiable daughter and heiress of
the Lord of Freston Tower, was to be there, they assembled with far
lighter hearts and livelier countenances than if they had no one to
meet but her contrast, Alice De Clinton.
There came also, at the invitation of Bishop Goldwell, the priests of
St. Peter and St. Lawrence, the priests of St. Mary at the Tower, St.
Mary near the Elms, St. Saviour, St. John, St. Margaret and Trinity,
then held as one, and of St. Michael, which stood upon the borders of
the town wall. These were all assembled in the great hall, or
banquetting-room of the palace, and took their seats previously to
the entrance of Bishop Goldwell. The table was so arranged, in the
shape of a section of a roof, that the Bishop was seen, as it were,
from every part of the board, and could himself see every one of his
visitors. He could thus be addressed by any one without
inconvenience, and every speech could be distinctly heard.
As the Bishop entered, the numerous company rose. His reverence
came, accompanied by the bailiffs of the ancient borough and their
friends, together with all such as were acquainted with Lord De
Freston. There was Edmund Daundy, Thomas Smart, Robert Tooley, John
Sparrowe, and several others, twelve in number, who entered from the
palace reception-chamber into the hall. The Bishop led the way in
state, followed by Alice and Lord De Freston, Daundy and Ellen,
Latimer and the bailiff's wife, and other couples, who were escorted
to their seats with all-appointed etiquette.
Lord De Freston sat on the right hand side of the chair, or throne,
and next to him sat Alice De Clinton, at whom no one could look
without being struck with her cold and haughty dignity. Next to her,
to his discomfort, sat William Latimer, who was in every respect a
gentleman, at perfect ease with himself and others, though far from
obtrusive. A daughter of the house of Sparrowe, a very ancient
family in Ipswich, sat on his right, and then several of the
burgesses of the town, the priests, and travellers, mendicants, and
strangers, to the end of the table.
On the left of the Bishop sat Edmund Daundy, and next to him Ellen De
Freston, and next to her John Sparrowe and others invited as friends,
and then Thomas Bilney, John Bale, and several of their friends who
had come with them, to hear what advice the Bishop would give in
those troublesome times.
The 'benedicite' was chaunted by the priests, and the company
arranged for the feast partook of the celebrated hospitality of that
princely bishop, than whom Norwich never, in those Popish days,
before or after, had a more truly liberal prelate. He was a man with
a great degree of knowledge of men and manners.
He professed not a liberality he did not practise. He was consistent
in his conduct, and did not condemn the ignorant. He courted not
popularity at the expense of public principle, nor made friends of
the private enemies of the church in preference to the encouragement
of his own clergy. He regarded the conscientious scruples of others,
permitted free discussion before him, and gave his opinions and
advice with judgment and discretion. He was superior to the times he
lived in, and was much beloved, both in private and public.
Whilst the Bishop was entertaining his company, St. Ivan, whose hour
for perambulating the walls of the palace had arrived just as the
bell had ceased, descended from his cave. He bound his loose vest
round his loins, and, taking his staff in his hands, began his walk
down the stone steps from his dwelling. The old man always knew
everything going on in the palace. The poor who visited him could
tell him the characters of its inmates, and frequently they described
the haughty maid in her true character. He had that day heard of the
arrival of Lord De Freston and his daughter, and was observed to be
more than usually stirred in his mind at the circumstance. He paused
as the palace came in his view, and shook his long white locks from
his forehead as he surveyed the walls.
''Was it for this,' he exclaimed, 'that my venerated sire built on
yonder site the Chapel of Ufford, that wassail and waste might come,
and the pomp, pride, and state of a Bishop's See might be gathered
therein, to greet the nobles of the land, and the inhabitants of this
town? Did he, for the space of a whole year, kneel day by day on the
cold stone with which he laid the very foundation of his chapel? Did
he dedicate the same to the saints, and vow to heaven one half of his
wealth to build a holy temple, where priests should pray day and
night, and the holy fire should be kept burning upon the altar? Was
it for this, that, over his bones which lie there, a Bishop should
hold his court, and invite all the world to partake of his
hospitality, whilst I, the descendant of the founder, should be
doomed to live in the sandstone cave of the Holy Wells, and to see
the inheritance of my fathers thus polluted? But it will not be for
long. Those walls will fall. They have not long to stand, perhaps
not a day. I must look to it again.'
It was in this strain that the recluse indulged in his own peculiar
view of things, and entertained a morbid hope that he should live to
see the fall of Goldwell's palace walls. He indulged in a propensity
for the superstitious, and, like an ancient sage, spoke in an
oracular manner, as if positive of nis own inspiration. He was,
however, much more hopeful from his earthly view of the state of the
building and its adjacent ground, than from any second sight that he
possessed, and this he hastened that very day to indulge.
St. Ivan, reverenced as he was by all the ignorant, and even
respected by the learned, was not much regarded by the monks of St.
Peter's Priory, or the abbots of Bury, on account of his utter
detestation of their absurd relics, and silly pretensions to things
they called sacred, which were of no estimation in his eyes--such as
the shirt of St. Edmund, one of his sinews, his sword, the parings of
his toe-nails, and other things to which they attributed great
sanctity; drops of Stephen's blood, a piece of the real cross, the
coals which broiled St. Lawrence, pieces of the flesh of saints and
virgins, St. Botolph's bones, St. Thomas-à-Becket's boots, penknife,
etc., skulls, candles, crosses, and such a variety of holy things,
one and all of which St. Ivan, like a wise man, laughed at.
Though the monks were jealous of him, and some termed him heretic,
others entertained a superstitious dread of him, which he well knew
how to manage. The learned fraternity of Alneshborne alone paid him
any respect, and he used to tell Lord De Freston that these
Augustines were the only monks he ever knew good for anything.
The old man was kind to all. The austerity of his manners was
softened by any case of humanity in distress; and it is supposed that
a disappointment in his life, either in ambition, love, or
professional celebrity, led him to the lonely cell of Ufford's dale.
In that day, religion was so clouded with oral traditions, vain
external ceremonies, and exclusive dogmatical pretensions to superior
gifts of healing, miracles, and works, that real faith and godliness
were things almost driven from the earth. No wonder, then, that a
man who had perception enough to see so much dishonesty should be
driven into himself for notions of duty and worship.
There was deep anxiety in his countenance as he glanced into the
rippling stream from the Holy Wells, and took his way down its
pebbly, shingly, and craggy sides towards Wyke's Bishop's palace.
His foot was firm, his eye bright, and except the trembling of the
hand as he placed his staff upon the ground, but little could be
discerned of infirmity.
His path lay on the outside of the moat, and was so worn by twenty
years' perambulations, as to have created a path, known as St. Ivan's
path; few would walk in it, and hence the old man's observations upon
the sinking of the walls, and the encroachings of the turfy bank,
though strictly marked with willow twigs, were unnoticed by others.
That day, all his landmarks were bent prostrate with the waters, and
with consternation, increased by previous anticipation, he observed a
certain tremulous motion of the waters, ebbing from beneath the
castle side of the bank. For a moment he stood aghast. He knew well
what was going on in the palace, the number of souls therein, and the
imminent danger which awaited every one then feasting at the Bishop's
board. Recovering himself from his surprise, humanity prevailed over
every other consideration, and the thought of so many perishing
induced him to hasten his steps round the moat.
As he went on, his keen perception became more alarmed, for he
perceived that the fall of the palace must quickly come. His
agitation increased to such a degree, that he could not move quick
enough, and men were surprised to see St. Ivan, hitherto always slow,
calm, and gentle, with his hoary hairs and well-composed walk, now
stepping short and quick with extreme trepidation.
His heart seemed swollen within him; his agitated spirit, now that he
saw the near accomplishment of what he had been looking for so long,
was dreadfully disturbed. He knew it would be in vain to tell the
warder, the gardener, or the serving men. He knew they all
understood that he would not pass the draw-bridge lest it should fall
upon him, as he himself had issued a sort of oracular declaration
that when he entered the palace it would fall down. He, therefore,
hastened his steps, determined to terrify every one out of the palace
before the crash came.