Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely Part 9

He came of a gentle family of moderate means: "tenui vico, at honesto genere."

Again a Bishop of Norwich was translated to Ely. #Sir Thomas Gooch#, second Baronet of Benacre (1748-1754), had been Master of Caius College, Cambridge, and Bishop of Bristol before he went to Norwich. At Cambridge he was instrumental in raising funds for building the Senate House; at Norwich he greatly improved the palace, and obtained charters for two societies for the relief of widows and orphans of the clergy; but there is no record of anything special achieved by him at Ely. He died at Ely House in 1754, and was buried in the chapel at Caius, where is a lengthy inscription enumerating his preferments and his three wives.

#Matthias Mawson# (1754-1770) had been Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Bishop of Llandaff, and Bishop of Chichester. While at Ely he spent large sums on the cathedral alterations, as described above, and was also very active in encouraging, by his advice and purse, the steps that were being taken to improve the roads near Ely and to erect draining-mills. The adjoining lowlands had "been several years under water; and the publick roads, at the same time, in so bad a state, as not to be travelled with safety."[5] He founded several scholarships at his old college, of the aggregate value of 400 a year. He died in 1770.

#Edmund Keene# (1771-1781) had been Master of Peterhouse and Bishop of Chester. The inscription on his monument at Ely was written by himself. He died in 1781.

#The Hon. James Yorke# (1781-1808), fifth son of the first Earl of Hardwicke, had been Dean of Lincoln, Bishop of S. David's, and Bishop of Gloucester. He died in 1808, and was buried at Forthampton, in Gloucestershire.

#Thomas Dampier# (1808-1812) was son of the Dean of Durham. He was Dean and afterwards Bishop of Rochester. He died suddenly in London in 1812, and was buried in the chapel of Eton College.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BISHOP WOODFORD'S TOMB.

_Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._]

#Bowyer Edward Sparke# (1812-1836), Bishop of Chester, previously Dean of Bristol. In his time the temporal jurisdiction of the bishop over the Isle of Ely came to an end. On State occasions a sword used to be carried before the bishop when he attended cathedral service; but this practice ceased when it was no longer right to exhibit any emblem of judicial authority. The sword itself was buried with Bishop Sparke.

#Joseph Allen# (1836-1845), Bishop of Bristol. He published some sermons and charges. He secured from the ecclesiastical commissioners a large increase in the income of the bishopric.

#Thomas Turton# (1845-1864) had been Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, Dean of Peterborough, and, for a short time, Dean of Westminster. He was author of several works. By his will he left 500 for the improvement of the nave of the cathedral. He died in 1864.

#Edward Harold Browne# (1864-1873) was of great reputation as a scholar and theologian. He was chairman of the Old Testament Revision Committee. He became Bishop of Winchester in 1873, and died at Bitterne, in Hampshire, in 1891. He was buried at West End, Southampton.

#James Russell Woodford# (1873-1885) was Vicar of Leeds. He published many sermons and lectures, and was well known as a successful organizer and an eloquent preacher. He died in 1885.

#Lord Alwyne Compton# (1885-1905) was a son of the second Marquess of Northampton, and was previously Dean of Worcester. Resigned, and died, 1906, and was buried at S. Martin's, Canterbury.

#Frederic Henry Chase# (1905-) was formerly Norrisian and Lady Margaret Professor, and President of Queens' College, Cambridge, and is the author of numerous works in critical theology.

The names and dates of the earlier bishops are taken from Bishop Stubbs'

"Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum." Of the bishops between 1609 and 1845 there was only one (Peter Gunning) who was not translated to Ely from some other see. It is now an unwritten law that the Bishop of Ely should be a Cambridge man. For at least two centuries and a half this rule has been followed, if we except Francis Turner; and he, though of New College, Oxford, had been Master of S. John's, Cambridge. Unless otherwise stated, the bishops were buried at Ely.

The original diocese of Ely was enlarged, in 1837, by the addition of the counties of Huntingdon and Bedford, and the archdeaconry of Sudbury.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Cathedrals "of the old foundation" were cathedrals from the first, and had deans and chapters of secular canons. Those that were once conventual churches had no deans or canons till Henry VIII. An easy way of identifying cathedrals of the old foundation is this: if the non-resident canons have the t.i.tle of prebendaries, they are members of a cathedral of the old foundation. The modern dignity of honorary canon was created in order that all other cathedrals might have a body of clergy corresponding to the prebendaries of the ancient cathedrals.

[2] He is called, in Bishop Stubbs' "Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum," Herve le Breton.

[3] Quoted by Bentham, p. 187.

[4] Of Peterborough, in his "Musae Subsecivae."

[5] Bentham, p. 213.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PRIOR CRAUDEN'S CHAPEL.

_Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._]

CHAPTER VI.

THE PRECINCTS.

Besides numerous remains of mediaeval architecture to be found in the residences and private grounds of the cathedral clergy, there are some buildings of great interest to the south of the cathedral, the two most remarkable being the infirmary and Prior Crauden's chapel. Of the former no more than the piers and arches are to be seen, as the roof is gone, and the whole has been converted into residences. The latter is quite perfect.

The #Infirmary# is in the same relative position to the church as at Peterborough, at the south-east. The plan was that of an ordinary church, with nave, aisles, and chancel; but the chancel was the chapel, the aisles were the quarters of the inmates, and the nave was a common hall, or ambulatory. So complete was the resemblance to a church that the true purpose of this and other similar buildings elsewhere had been quite forgotten, and it was left to Professor Willis to discover that the remains were not those of a disused church. Bentham[1] has an engraving of the arches and clerestory, divested of all the domestic additions, which to a modern student of ecclesiastical architecture indicates at once a building of Norman date, which is described as an elevation "of the remains of the Old Conventual Church of Ely, built in the time of the Heptarchy, A.D. 673, and repaired in King Edgar's Reign, A.D. 970." In the plan given in the same plate an imaginary apse is marked out with dotted lines.[2] In the chapel is a groined roof, and this belongs to the latter part of the twelfth century; but the nave arches, where are some very good and unusual mouldings, have nothing of Transitional work, and in the absence of doc.u.mentary evidence would be a.s.signed to 1140 or 1150. The hall, situated to the north of what would, in a church, be called the north aisle of the nave, is the work of Walsingham.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLAN OF THE INFIRMARY AS GIVEN IN BENTHAM'S "HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES"]

#Prior Crauden's Chapel# is a most exquisite specimen of the Decorated period, designed by the same master mind that created the octagon and the lady-chapel. Crauden was prior from 1321 to 1341. Built as a private chapel, it was at one time converted into a dwelling, but is now restored to sacred uses as the chapel of the King's School. It is situated to the south of the deanery. It is of small dimensions, being only thirty-one feet long; and this is exactly double its breadth. The vaulted roof springs from cl.u.s.tered shafts in the walls; in the eastern half, on each side, are two tall windows of two lights, with most graceful tracery; at the east is a window of five lights, of equally beautiful tracery, filled with stained gla.s.s, of which the five lower figures are ancient and said to have been brought from Cologne. The west window has four lights. When Professor Willis was conducting some members of an architectural congress, in 1860,[3] over the monastic buildings, on arriving at this "beautiful little gem of architecture,"

in the course of his remarks "he pointed to the restorations that had taken place, and found that they were good ones, the actual mason's lines having been taken in some instances. In one or two cases where the work was destroyed the s.p.a.ces had been filled up with plain block, purposely to show where the masonry had been knocked away." Some curious tiling is to be seen on the altar platform: there are figures of Adam and Eve and numerous unusual designs. On no account should this chapel be left unvisited.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ELY PORTA, THE GREAT GATE OF THE MONASTERY, 1817.

_From Stevenson's Supplement to Bentham._]

The great gateway of the abbey, #Ely Porta#, remains in a nearly perfect condition. It was the place where the manor courts were held, and was in course of erection when Prior Bucton died in 1397. From his successor, in whose time it seems to have been completed, it is sometimes called Walpole's gate. At one time a portion was devoted to the brewery, and here the audit ale was brewed till so recently as Dean Goodwin's time.[4] It is now used partly as a house for the porter and partly for the school. The new buildings of the school, just opposite, are on the site of an ancient hostelry called the Green Man, which was "possibly the descendant of some mediaeval lodging-house to which pilgrims resorted."[5]

Between Ely Porta and the cathedral are to be seen many fragmentary remains of the old monastery, some of Norman date, now forming parts of houses. Over the road to the west of these buildings there used to be a covered pa.s.sage, called "The Gallery"--a name still retained by the street itself--leading from the bishop's palace to the cathedral. Access to this from the cathedral was in the western transept. The writer has not been able to hear of any engraving or drawing of this.

The remains of the refectory and of the Norman kitchen are in the deanery grounds. The guest-house is wholly absorbed in the deanery.

There is a picturesque entrance into the close, on the north side, from High Street. The buildings on each side of it and the room above (now the muniment room) are quite ecclesiastical, though modernised and in part new. The eastern portion occupies the site of the s.e.xtry.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "History," 1771, Plate IV.

[2] Another instance of imperfect acquaintance with church architecture is found in one plan of the cathedral (not in Bentham) in which the lady-chapel is called the chapter-house.

[3] At which the writer was present.

[4] "Ely Gossip," p. 5.

[5] _Ib._, p. 7.

INDEX.