GOVERNMENT.
How Abbot Samson, giving his new subjects seriatim the kiss of
fatherhood in the St. Edmundsbury chapterhouse, proceeded with
cautious energy to set about reforming their disjointed distracted way
of life; how he managed with his Fifty rough _Milites_ (Feudal
Knights), with his lazy Farmers, remiss refractory Monks, with Pope's
Legates, Viscounts, Bishops, Kings; how on all sides he laid about him
like a man, and putting consequence on premiss, and everywhere the
saddle on the right horse, struggled incessantly to educe organic
method out of lazily fermenting wreck,--the careful reader will
discern, not without true interest, in these pages of Jocelin Boswell.
In most antiquarian quaint costume, not of garments alone, but of
thought, word, action, outlook and position, the substantial figure of
a man with eminent nose, bushy brows and clear-flashing eyes, his
russet beard growing daily grayer, is visible, engaged in true
governing of men. It is beautiful how the chrysalis governing-soul,
shaking off its dusty slough and prison, starts forth winged, a true
royal soul! Our new Abbot has a right honest unconscious feeling,
without insolence as without fear or flutter, of what he is and what
others are. A courage to quell the proudest, an honest pity to
encourage the humblest. Withal there is a noble reticence in this Lord
Abbot: much vain unreason he hears; lays up without response. He is
not there to expect reason and nobleness of others; he is there to
give them of his own reason and nobleness. Is he not their servant, as
we said, who can suffer from them, and for them; bear the burden their
poor spindle-limbs totter and stagger under; and, in virtue of _being_
their servant, govern them, lead them out of weakness into strength,
out of defeat into victory!
* * * * *
One of the first Herculean Labours Abbot Samson undertook, or the very
first, was to institute a strenuous review and radical reform of his
economics. It is the first labour of every governing man, from
_Paterfamilias_ to _Dominus Rex_. To get the rain thatched out from
you is the preliminary of whatever farther, in the way of speculation
or of action, you may mean to do. Old Abbot Hugo's budget, as we saw,
had become empty, filled with deficit and wind. To see his
account-books clear, be delivered from those ravening flights of Jew
and Christian creditors, pouncing on him like obscene harpies wherever
he showed face, was a necessity for Abbot Samson.
On the morrow after his instalment he brings in a load of money-bonds,
all duly stamped, sealed with this or the other Convent Seal:
frightful, unmanageable, a bottomless confusion of Convent finance.
There they are;--but there at least they all are; all that shall be of
them. Our Lord Abbot demands that all the official seals in use among
us be now produced and delivered to him. Three-and-thirty seals turn
up; are straightway broken, and shall seal no more: the Abbot only,
and those duly authorised by him shall seal any bond. There are but
two ways of paying debt: increase of industry in raising income,
increase of thrift in laying it out. With iron energy, in slow but
steady undeviating perseverance, Abbot Samson sets to work in both
directions. His troubles are manifold: cunning _milites_, unjust
bailiffs, lazy sockmen, he an inexperienced Abbot; relaxed lazy monks,
not disinclined to mutiny in mass: but continued vigilance, rigorous
method, what we call 'the eye of the master,' work wonders. The
clear-beaming eyesight of Abbot Samson, steadfast, severe,
all-penetrating,--it is like _Fiat lux_ in that inorganic waste
whirlpool; penetrates gradually to all nooks, and of the chaos makes a
_kosmos_ or ordered world!
He arranges everywhere, struggles unweariedly to arrange, and place on
some intelligible footing, the 'affairs and dues, _res ac redditus_,'
of his dominion. The Lakenheath eels cease to breed squabbles between
human beings; the penny of _reap-silver_ to explode into the streets
the Female Chartism of St. Edmundsbury. These and innumerable greater
things. Wheresoever Disorder may stand or lie, let it have a care;
here is the man that has declared war with it, that never will make
peace with it. Man is the Missionary of Order; he is the servant not
of the Devil and Chaos, but of God and the Universe! Let all sluggards
and cowards, remiss, false-spoken, unjust, and otherwise diabolic
persons have a care: this is a dangerous man for them. He has a mild
grave face; a thoughtful sternness, a sorrowful pity: but there is a
terrible flash of anger in him too; lazy monks often have to murmur,
"_Saevit ut lupus_, He rages like a wolf; was not our Dream true!" 'To
repress and hold-in such sudden anger he was continually 'careful,'
and succeeded well:--right, Samson; that it may become in thee as
noble central heat, fruitful, strong, beneficent; not blaze out, or
the seldomest possible blaze out, as wasteful volcanoism to scorch and
consume!
* * * * *
"We must first creep, and gradually learn to walk," had Abbot Samson
said of himself, at starting. In four years he has become a great
walker; striding prosperously along; driving much before him.
In less than four years, says Jocelin, the Convent Debts were all
liquidated: the harpy Jews not only settled with, but banished, bag
and baggage, out of the _Bannaleuca_ (Liberties, _Banlieue_) of St.
Edmundsbury,--so has the King's Majesty been persuaded to permit.
Farewell to _you_, at any rate; let us, in no extremity, apply again
to you! Armed men march them over the borders, dismiss them under
stern penalties,--sentence of excommunication on all that shall again
harbour them here: there were many dry eyes at their departure.
New life enters everywhere, springs up beneficent, the Incubus of Debt
once rolled away. Samson hastes not; but neither does he pause to
rest. This of the Finance is a life-long business with him;--Jocelin's
anecdotes are filled to weariness with it. As indeed to Jocelin it was
of very primary interest.
But we have to record also, with a lively satisfaction, that spiritual
rubbish is as little tolerated in Samson's Monastery as material. With
due rigour, Willelmus Sacrista, and his bibations and _tacenda_ are,
at the earliest opportunity, softly yet irrevocably put an end to. The
bibations, namely, had to end; even the building where they used to be
carried on was razed from the soil of St. Edmundsbury, and 'on its
place grow rows of beans:' Willelmus himself, deposed from the
Sacristy and all offices, retires into obscurity, into absolute
taciturnity unbroken thenceforth to this hour. Whether the poor
Willelmus did not still, by secret channels, occasionally get some
slight wetting of vinous or alcoholic liquor,--now grown, in a manner,
indispensable to the poor man? Jocelin hints not: one knows not how to
hope, what to hope! But if he did, it was in silence and darkness;
with an ever-present feeling that teetotalism was his only true
course. Drunken dissolute Monks are a class of persons who had better
keep out of Abbot Samson's way. _Saevit ut lupus_; was not the Dream
true! murmured many a Monk. Nay Ranulf de Glanvill, Justiciary in
Chief, took umbrage at him, seeing these strict ways; and watched
farther with suspicion: but discerned gradually that there was nothing
wrong, that there was much the opposite of wrong.