LANDLORD EDMUND.
Some three centuries or so had elapsed since _Beodric's-worth_[4]
became St. Edmund's _Stow_, St. Edmund's _Town_ and Monastery, before
Jocelin entered himself a Novice there. 'It was,' says he, 'the year
after the Flemings were defeated at Fornham St. Genevieve.'
Much passes away into oblivion: this glorious victory over the
Flemings at Fornham has, at the present date, greatly dimmed itself
out of the minds of men. A victory and battle nevertheless it was, in
its time: some thrice-renowned Earl of Leicester, not of the De
Montfort breed (as may be read in Philosophical and other Histories,
could any human memory retain such things), had quarrelled with his
sovereign, Henry Second of the name; had been worsted, it is like, and
maltreated, and obliged to fly to foreign parts; but had rallied there
into new vigour; and so, in the year 1173, returns across the German
Sea with a vengeful army of Flemings. Returns, to the coast of
Suffolk; to Framlingham Castle, where he is welcomed; westward towards
St. Edmundsbury and Fornham Church, where he is met by the constituted
authorities with _posse comitatus_; and swiftly cut in pieces, he and
his, or laid by the heels; on the right bank of the obscure river
Lark,--as traces still existing will verify.
For the river Lark, though not very discoverably, still runs or
stagnates in that country; and the battle-ground is there; serving at
present as a pleasure-ground to his Grace of Northumberland. Copper
pennies of Henry II. are still found there;--rotted out from the
pouches of poor slain soldiers, who had not had _time_ to buy liquor
with them. In the river Lark itself was fished up, within man's
memory, an antique gold ring; which fond Dilettantism can almost
believe may have been the very ring Countess Leicester threw away, in
her flight, into that same Lark river or ditch.[5] Nay, few years ago,
in tearing out an enormous superannuated ash-tree, now grown quite
corpulent, bursten, superfluous, but long a fixture in the soil, and
not to be dislodged without revolution,--there was laid bare, under
its roots, 'a circular mound of skeletons wonderfully complete,' all
radiating from a centre, faces upwards, feet inwards; a 'radiation'
not of Light, but of the Nether Darkness rather; and evidently the
fruit of battle; for 'many of the heads were cleft, or had arrow-holes
in them,' The Battle of Fornham, therefore, is a fact, though a
forgotten one; no less obscure than undeniable,--like so many other
facts.
* * * * *
Like the St. Edmund's Monastery itself! Who can doubt, after what we
have said, that there was a Monastery here at one time? No doubt at
all there was a Monastery here; no doubt, some three centuries prior
to this Fornham Battle, there dwelt a man in these parts of the name
of Edmund, King, Landlord, Duke or whatever his title was, of the
Eastern Counties;--and a very singular man and landlord he must have
been.
For his tenants, it would appear, did not in the least complain of
him; his labourers did not think of burning his wheatstacks, breaking
into his game-preserves; very far the reverse of all that. Clear
evidence, satisfactory even to my friend Dryasdust, exists that, on
the contrary, they honoured, loved, admired this ancient Landlord to a
quite astonishing degree,--and indeed at last to an immeasurable and
inexpressible degree; for, finding no limits or utterable words for
their sense of his worth, they took to beatifying and adoring him!
'Infinite admiration,' we are taught, 'means worship.'
Very singular,--could we discover it! What Edmund's specific duties
were; above all, what his method of discharging them with such results
was, would surely be interesting to know; but are _not_ very
discoverable now. His Life has become a poetic, nay a religious
_Mythus_; though, undeniably enough, it was once a prose Fact, as our
poor lives are; and even a very rugged unmanageable one. This landlord
Edmund did go about in leather shoes, with _femoralia_ and bodycoat of
some sort on him; and daily had his breakfast to procure; and daily
had contradictory speeches, and most contradictory facts not a few, to
reconcile with himself. No man becomes a Saint in his sleep. Edmund,
for instance, instead of _reconciling_ those same contradictory facts
and speeches to himself,--which means _subduing_, and in a manlike and
godlike manner conquering them to himself,--might have merely thrown
new contention into them, new unwisdom into them, and so been
conquered _by_ them; much the commoner case! In that way he had proved
no 'Saint,' or Divine-looking Man, but a mere Sinner, and unfortunate,
blameable, more or less Diabolic-looking man! No landlord Edmund
becomes infinitely admirable in his sleep.
With what degree of wholesome rigour his rents were collected, we hear
not. Still less by what methods he preserved his game, whether by
'bushing' or how,--and if the partridge-seasons were 'excellent,' or
were indifferent. Neither do we ascertain what kind of Corn-bill he
passed, or wisely-adjusted Sliding-scale:--but indeed there were few
spinners in those days; and the nuisance of spinning, and other dusty
labour, was not yet so glaring a one.
How then, it may be asked, did this Edmund rise into favour; become to
such astonishing extent a recognised Farmer's Friend? Really, except
it were by doing justly and loving mercy to an unprecedented extent,
one does not know. The man, it would seem, 'had walked,' as they say,
'humbly with God;' humbly and valiantly with God; struggling to make
the Earth heavenly as he could: instead of walking sumptuously and
pridefully with Mammon, leaving the Earth to grow hellish as it liked.
Not sumptuously with Mammon? How then could he 'encourage
trade,'--cause Howel and James, and many wine-merchants, to bless him,
and the tailor's heart (though in a very short-sighted manner) to sing
for joy? Much in this Edmund's Life is mysterious.
That he could, on occasion, do what he liked with his own, is
meanwhile evident enough. Certain Heathen Physical-Force
Ultra-Chartists, 'Danes' as they were then called, coming into his
territory with their 'five points,' or rather with their
five-and-twenty thousand _points_ and edges too, of pikes namely and
battle-axes; and proposing mere Heathenism, confiscation, spoliation,
and fire and sword,--Edmund answered that he would oppose to the
utmost such savagery. They took him prisoner; again required his
sanction to said proposals. Edmund again refused. Cannot we kill you?
cried they.--Cannot I die? answered he. My life, I think, is my own to
do what I like with! And he died, under barbarous tortures, refusing
to the last breath; and the Ultra-Chartist Danes _lost_ their
propositions;--and went with their 'points' and other apparatus, as is
supposed, to the Devil, the Father of them. Some say, indeed, these
Danes were not Ultra-Chartists, but Ultra-Tories, demanding to reap
where they had not sown, and live in this world without working,
though all the world should starve for it; which likewise seems a
possible hypothesis. Be what they might, they went, as we say, to the
Devil; and Edmund doing what he liked with his own, the Earth was got
cleared of them.
Another version is, that Edmund on this and the like occasions stood
by his order; the oldest, and indeed only true order of Nobility known
under the stars, that of Just Men and Sons of God, in opposition to
Unjust and Sons of Belial,--which latter indeed are _second_-oldest,
but yet a very unvenerable order. This, truly, seems the likeliest
hypothesis of all. Names and appearances alter so strangely, in some
half-score centuries; and all fluctuates chameleon-like, taking now
this hue, now that. Thus much is very plain, and does not change hue:
Landlord Edmund was seen and felt by all men to have done verily a
man's part in this life-pilgrimage of his; and benedictions, and
out-flowing love and admiration from the universal heart, were his
meed. Well-done! Well-done! cried the hearts of all men. They raised
his slain and martyred body; washed its wounds with fast-flowing
universal tears; tears of endless pity, and yet of a sacred joy and
triumph. The beautifulest kind of tears,--indeed perhaps the
beautifulest kind of thing: like a sky all flashing diamonds and
prismatic radiance; all weeping, yet shone on by the everlasting
Sun:--and _this_ is not a sky, it is a Soul and living Face! Nothing
liker the _Temple of the Highest_, bright with some real effulgence of
the Highest, is seen in this world.
Oh, if all Yankee-land follow a small good 'Schnuespel the
distinguished Novelist' with blazing torches, dinner-invitations,
universal hep-hep-hurrah, feeling that he, though small, _is_
something; how might all Angle-land once follow a hero-martyr and
great true Son of Heaven! It is the very joy of man's heart to admire,
where he can; nothing so lifts him from all his mean imprisonments,
were it but for moments, as true admiration. Thus it has been said,
'all men, especially all women, are born worshippers;' and will
worship, if it be but possible. Possible to worship a Something, even
a small one; not so possible a mere loud-blaring Nothing! What sight
is more pathetic than that of poor multitudes of persons met to gaze
at Kings' Progresses, Lord Mayors' Shows, and other gilt-gingerbread
phenomena of the worshipful sort, in these times; each so eager to
worship; each, with a dim fatal sense of disappointment, finding that
he cannot rightly here! These be thy gods, O Israel? And thou art so
_willing_ to worship,--poor Israel!
In this manner, however, did the men of the Eastern Counties take up
the slain body of their Edmund, where it lay cast forth in the village
of Hoxne; seek out the severed head, and reverently reunite the
same. They embalmed him with myrrh and sweet spices, with love, pity,
and all high and awful thoughts; consecrating him with a very
storm of melodious adoring admiration, and sun-dyed showers of
tears;--joyfully, yet with awe (as all deep joy has something of the
awful in it), commemorating his noble deeds and godlike walk and
conversation while on Earth. Till, at length, the very Pope and
Cardinals at Rome were forced to hear of it; and they, summing up as
correctly as they well could, with _Advocatus-Diaboli_ pleadings and
their other forms of process, the general verdict of mankind,
declared: That he had, in very fact, led a hero's life in this world;
and being now _gone_, was gone, as they conceived, to God above, and
reaping his reward _there_. Such, they said, was the best judgment
they could form of the case;--and truly not a bad judgment. Acquiesced
in, zealously adopted, with full assent of 'private judgment,' by all
mortals.
* * * * *
The rest of St. Edmund's history, for the reader sees he has now
become a _Saint_, is easily conceivable. Pious munificence provided
him a _loculus_, a _feretrum_ or shrine; built for him a wooden
chapel, a stone temple, ever widening and growing by new pious
gifts;--such the overflowing heart feels it a blessedness to solace
itself by giving. St. Edmund's Shrine glitters now with diamond
flowerages, with a plating of wrought gold. The wooden chapel, as we
say, has become a stone temple. Stately masonries, long-drawn arches,
cloisters, sounding aisles buttress it, begirdle it far and wide.
Regimented companies of men, of whom our Jocelin is one, devote
themselves, in every generation, to meditate here on man's Nobleness
and Awfulness, and celebrate and show forth the same, as they best
can,--thinking they will do it better here, in presence of God the
Maker, and of the so Awful and so Noble made by Him. In one word, St.
Edmund's Body has raised a Monastery round it. To such length, in
such manner, has the Spirit of the Time visibly taken body, and
crystallised itself here. New gifts, houses, farms, _katalla_[6]--come
ever in. King Knut, whom men call Canute, whom the Ocean-tide would
not be forbidden to wet,--we heard already of this wise King, with his
crown and gifts; but of many others, Kings, Queens, wise men and noble
loyal women, let Dryasdust and divine Silence be the record!
Beodric's-Worth has become St. Edmund's _Bury_;--and lasts visible to
this hour. All this that thou now seest, and namest Bury Town, is
properly the Funeral Monument of Saint or Landlord Edmund. The present
respectable Mayor of Bury may be said, like a Fakeer (little as he
thinks of it), to have his dwelling in the extensive, many-sculptured
Tombstone of St. Edmund; in one of the brick niches thereof dwells the
present respectable Mayor of Bury.
Certain Times do crystallise themselves in a magnificent manner; and
others, perhaps, are like to do it in rather a shabby one!--But
Richard Arkwright too will have his Monument, a thousand years hence:
all Lancashire and Yorkshire, and how many other shires and countries,
with their machineries and industries, for his monument! A true
_pyr_amid or '_flame_-mountain,' flaming with steam fires and useful
labour over wide continents, usefully towards the Stars, to a certain
height;--how much grander than your foolish Cheops Pyramids or Sakhara
clay ones! Let us withal be hopeful, be content or patient.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Dryasdust puzzles and pokes for some biography of this Beodric;
and repugns to consider him a mere East-Anglian Person of Condition,
not in need of a biography,--whose [Old English: weoweth], _weorth_ or
_worth_, that is to say, _Growth_, Increase, or as we should now name
it, _Estate_, that same Hamlet and wood Mansion, now St. Edmund's
Bury, originally was. For, adds our erudite Friend, the Saxon [Old
English: weowethan], equivalent to the German _werden_, means to _grow_,
to _become_; traces of which old vocable are still found in the
North-country dialects; as, 'What is _word_ of him?' meaning, 'What is
_become_ of him?' and the like. Nay we in modern English still say,
'Woe _worth_ the hour' (Woe _befall_ the hour), and speak of the
'_Weird_ Sisters;' not to mention the innumerable other names of
places still ending in _weorth_ or _worth_. And indeed, our common
noun _worth_, in the sense of _value_, does not this mean simply, What
a thing has _grown_ to, What a man has _grown_ to, How much he amounts
to,--by the Threadneedle-street standard or another!
[5] Lyttelton's _History of Henry II._ (2d edition), v. 169, &c.
[6] Goods, properties; what we now call _chattels_, and still more
singularly _cattle_, says my erudite friend!