Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans Part 1

Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans.

by Thomas Perkins.

PREFACE

The Rev. W.D. Sweeting, who had originally undertaken to write this monograph on St. Albans, having been obliged, on account of ill-health, to abandon the work, the Publishers asked me to write it in his stead.

My task was rendered much easier by Mr. Sweeting kindly sending me much material that he had collected, and many valuable notes that he had made, especially on the history of the Abbey.

My best thanks are due to the Dean for kindly allowing me permission to examine every part of the Cathedral church, and to take the photographs with which this book is ill.u.s.trated. A few ill.u.s.trations only are from other sources, among them those on pages 9 and 11, for permission to use which I have to thank Mr. John Murray. I have also to acknowledge the courtesy of the vergers, Mr. Newell and Miss Davis from both of whom I obtained much information; Miss Davis's long connection with the church, and the interest she takes in every detail connected with it, rendered her help most valuable. I have consulted many books on the Abbey, among them Lord Grimthorpe's and Mr. Page's Guides, Mr. James Neale's "Architectural Notes on St. Albans Abbey," and papers read before the St. Albans Archaeological Society by the Rev. Henry Fowler.

THOMAS PERKINS.

TURNWORTH.

_July, 1903._

ST. ALBANS CATHEDRAL

CHAPTER I.

HISTORY OF THE BUILDING.

Long before any church stood on the site of the present cathedral, long before the time of Alba.n.u.s, who is universally allowed to have been the first Christian martyr whose blood was shed in this island, events that have found a place in the early history of Britain occurred in the immediate neighbourhood of the city we call St. Albans. Here in all probability stood the _oppidum_ or stockaded stronghold of Ca.s.sivellaunus, who was chosen to lead the tribes of South-Eastern Britain when Julius Caesar in the year 54 B.C. made his second descent on the island. We all know the story, how the Britons gave Caesar so much trouble that, when at last Roman discipline had secured the victory, he, demanding tribute and receiving hostages as guarantees for its payment, left Britain and never cared to venture upon any fresh invasion. We know that the Trin.o.bantes were the first to sue for peace, and, abandoning Ca.s.sivellaunus, left him to bear the brunt of Caesar's attack upon his stronghold, how this was destroyed by Caesar, and how Ca.s.sivellaunus also was obliged to make submission to the Romans.

Nearly a century pa.s.sed before any Roman legionary again set foot on the British sh.o.r.es; but when at last, in the days of Claudius, A.D. 42, the Romans invaded the island, they came to conquer and occupy all except the northern part of Britain. In the early days of their occupation a walled town, which was soon raised to the rank of a _municipium_, was built on the south-western side of the Ver, and from the name of the river was called Verulamium or Verlamium. It soon became a populous place, for when in A.D. 61 Boadicea, the Queen of the Iceni, stung by the insults and injuries she and her daughters had received at the hands of the Romans, raised her own and the neighbouring tribes to take vengeance on their oppressors and

Ran the land with Roman slaughter, mult.i.tudinous agonies; Perish'd many a maid and matron, many a valorous legionary; Fell the colony, city, and citadel, London, Verulam, Camulodune.

It is recorded that no less than seventy thousand fell in these three places and the villages around them.

But her vengeance, sharp and sudden, was not allowed to pa.s.s unpunished by the Romans, and Suetonius Paulinus, hurrying from North Wales, though too late to save the three towns, utterly routed the forces of Boadicea somewhere between London and Colchester.

After this Verulamium became once more a prosperous town, inhabited partly by Romans, partly by Britons, who under Roman influence embraced the civilization and adopted the customs of their conquerors. By whom Christianity was first introduced into Britain we do not know; probably it was brought from Gaul. In the reign of Diocletian a great persecution of the Christians arose throughout the Roman empire. The edict enjoining this persecution was promulgated in February, 303 A.D., and the persecution lasted until the Emperor abdicated in May, 305 A.D. It was carried out in Britain by Maximia.n.u.s Herculius and Asclepiodotus, and it was during this persecution that St. Alban won the martyr's crown.

Though the story is embellished with certain miraculous incidents which most of us will reject as accretions of later ages, yet there seems no reason to doubt the main facts.

Alba.n.u.s, or Alban, as we generally call him, was a young soldier and a heathen, but being a man of a pitiful heart, he gave shelter to a certain deacon named Amphibalus, who was in danger of death. Amphibalus returned his kindness by teaching him the outlines of the Christian religion, which Alban accepted. When at last the persecutors had discovered the hiding-place of Amphibalus, Alban, in order to aid his escape, changed garments with the deacon, and allowed himself to be taken in his stead, while Amphibalus made his way into Wales, where, however, he was ultimately captured and was brought back by the persecutors, who possibly intended to put him to death at Verulamium, but for some reason which we do not understand he was executed about four miles from the city at a spot where the village of Redbourn now stands, the parish church of which is dedicated to him. Meanwhile Alban was charged with aiding and abetting the escape of a blasphemer of the Roman G.o.ds, and then and there declared that he too was a Christian. He was ordered to offer incense on the altar of one of the Roman G.o.ds, but refused, and as a consequence was condemned to be beheaded. The place chosen for his execution was a gra.s.sy hill on the further side of the river Ver. Great was the excitement among the inhabitants of Verulamium, for as yet they had seen no Christian put to death, and Alban was, moreover, a man of some mark in the place. So great was the crowd that it blocked the only bridge across the stream; but Alban did not desire to delay his death, so walked down to the river-bank. At once the waters opened before him, and he, the executioner, and the guards pa.s.sed dry-shod to the opposite bank. This wonder so struck the executioner, that he, throwing down his sword, declared he would not behead Alban and also professed himself a Christian. When the band reached the hill Alban craved water to quench his thirst, for it was a hot summer day, June 22,[1] and at once a spring burst forth at his feet. One of the soldiers struck off the martyr's head, but his own eyes fell on the ground together with it; the executioner who had refused to do his duty was beheaded at the same time. These miracles are said to have so much impressed the judge that he ordered the persecution to cease. The traditional site of the martyrdom is covered by the north arm of the transept of the present church, and this site is in accordance with Beda's account, which states that St. Alban was martyred about five hundred paces from the summit of the hill. When persecution had entirely ceased, a few years after Alban's death, a church was built over the spot hallowed by his blood. Beda, writing at the beginning of the eighth century, speaks of the original church as existing, and describes it as being a church of wonderful workmanship and worthy of the martrydom it commemorated. But in all probability the church standing in Beda's time was not the original one; this no doubt had been swept away during the time of the English invasion of Britain, when, as Matthew Paris tells us, the body of Alban was moved for safety from within the church to some other spot, whence it was afterwards brought back and replaced in the original grave.

[1] It must be remembered that June 22 in the year 303 A.D.

would be, as now, close to the longest day, as the alteration of the calendar known as the new style simply made the equinox occur on the same day of the month as in 325 A.D.

That the spot was held in some reverence as early as the fifth century is proved by the conduct of Germa.n.u.s, Bishop of Auxerre. A synod was held at Verulamium in the year 429 A.D. to condemn the "Pelagian heresy"

which had budded forth anew in the island, having had its origin in the teaching of the British monk Pelagius towards the end of the fourth century. Germa.n.u.s and Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, attended this Council and refuted the followers of Pelagius. It is said that Germa.n.u.s opened the coffin of the martyr and deposited in it some precious relics, receiving in return for them some relics from the coffin, and a piece of turf cut from the site of the martyrdom.

From this time we hear nothing for several centuries of the church or the neighbouring town of Verulamium, save that after the Teutonic conquest the town was known by the name of Werlamceaster, Watlingceaster, or Waetlingaceaster, the two latter names being derived from that of the Roman road, the Watling Street that runs through it.

The site of the martyrdom also received a new name--Holmehurst or Derswold.

The next event recorded in connection with our subject is the founding of a Benedictine monastery by Offa II., King of the Mercians, about the year 793 A.D. He searched for and found the coffin that contained the martyr's bones. This, as already stated, had been removed from the original church dedicated to his memory, in order to save it from destruction at the hands of the Teutonic invaders, and had remained concealed, its very position forgotten, until it was miraculously revealed. The coffin was then opened; the martyr's body and the relics given by Germa.n.u.s were found therein, and thus the ident.i.ty of the remains with those of Alban was established beyond doubt. Round the martyr's head Offa placed a golden circlet whereon were written the words: "Hoc est caput Sancti Albani." A reliquary richly decorated with precious stones was made to receive the body, and this was then deposited in the then existing church, which Offa repaired so that it might serve as a temporary resting-place until a grander church could be built. Offa had made a journey to Rome to get the Pope's consent to the foundation and endowment of the monastery.[2] At this time also Alban was canonized, so that henceforth he may be rightly spoken of as Saint Alban.

[2] A payment known as Peter's Pence had first been levied by the King of the West Saxons in 727, and was a tax of one penny on each family that owned lands producing thirty pence per annum; its object was the support of a Saxon College at Rome.

Offa now induced the Pope to allow the pence so collected from his kingdom to be paid to the Abbey of St. Alban instead of the Saxon College at Rome. The payment was called Peter's Pence because it was paid on August 1st (the day dedicated to _St.

Peter ad Vincula_), the day on which the relics of St. Alban had been discovered.

All that Offa seems to have been able to do besides repairing the church was to erect domestic buildings for his monks, who in course of time numbered a hundred. We have no record of any partial rebuilding, or enlargement even, of the church of Offa's day. From the fact that certain remains of it were incorporated in the present building, and that these were of the character generally called "Saxon," there is little doubt that the church of the monastery was not the little church erected in the fourth century over the martyr's grave, but one of later date, probably the one described by Beda as standing in his day, built in the latter part of the sixth or in the seventh century. We have no further record of this church, but we know that the ninth Abbot, Eadmer, began to collect materials for rebuilding the church; but the work was not begun until the time of the fourteenth Abbot, Paul of Caen, who was appointed by William I. So enthusiastically did he work, that in the short s.p.a.ce of eleven years (1077-88) the church was rebuilt. The rapidity of the building was no doubt chiefly due to the fact that there was no need of hewing and squaring stone, for the Roman bricks from the ruins of the old city of Verulam were ready at hand, and the timber collected by Paul's five predecessors was well seasoned. It is said that the new church was not dedicated until the year 1115, but it is hard to believe that so long a s.p.a.ce of time as twenty-seven years would be allowed to elapse between the completion of the building and the dedication. It is possible there may be some error in this date.

We can form a good idea of this Norman church. It was like several of the other cathedral and abbey churches built at the same time, of vast size, far grander than their prototype in Normandy, St. Stephen's at Caen. The following table gives approximately the dimensions of some of these churches:

Length of Number of Bays. Total Nave. Nave. Presbytery. Apse. Length.

St. Stephen's, Caen 193 9 2 ... 290 Canterbury 185 9 10 5 290 Winchester 318 14 3 5 ...

St. Albans 275 13 4 ... 460 Bury St. Edmund's 300 15 4 3 490

The church consisted of a nave with aisles; the arches of the main arcade were semicircular, the piers ma.s.sive and rectangular; there were no mouldings, the orders of the arches, like the piers, having rectangular corners. There were possibly two western towers, which stood, like those of Rouen and Wells, outside the aisles on the north and south respectively, not at the western ends of the aisles (a far more common position), thus giving a much greater width and imposing appearance to the west front.

The existence of western towers of Norman date has been doubted by some antiquaries; some indeed imagine that John de Cella's thirteenth-century west front was built several bays further to the west than the Norman facade, and that the foundations of the unfinished towers were laid of old material by him. It is impossible to be absolutely certain on this point, but the argument sometimes brought forward that the nave was inordinately long for one of Norman date may be answered by mention of the fact that the Norman naves at Bury and Winchester were even longer, and that generally the Norman builders delighted in long structural naves, the eastern bays of which, however, were, together with the s.p.a.ce beneath the towers, used for the choir or seats for the monks, the eastern part of the church beyond the crossing being generally occupied by the presbytery and the sanctuary where the high altar stood. In after times, however, considerable eastward extensions were made, as at Canterbury, and the monks' seats were then in many cases moved eastward into the part of the church beyond the tower, the rood-screen being stretched across the church between the eastern piers that supported the tower.[3]

[3] The chief argument against the belief that western towers existed at St. Albans is that no doc.u.mentary record of them is found. On the other hand it may be said that, whether the towers were built or not at the same time as the rest of the church, it is far more likely that John de Cella and William of Trumpington would have lengthened the church eastward than westward, when we find so many instances of eastward extensions during the thirteenth century, and of some before the twelfth century closed. The plan given in the text, a.s.suming the existence of Norman towers, is that adopted by Sir Gilbert Scott, who had the opportunity of examining the foundations when restoring the church; his opinion was that the foundations were of Norman date. Of one thing we may be certain, that if finished western towers ever existed, they were of Norman date. For none were carried to completion by William of Trumpington.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLAN OF THE NORMAN CHURCH.

From Sir Gilbert Scott's Lectures. (By permission of Mr. John Murray.)]

The transept had no aisles either on its eastern or western side; the eastern termination differed much from anything in existence now.

Mr. Prior in his "History of Gothic Art in England" tells us that two types of east end were to be found in the Anglo-Norman churches, both brought from the Continent, one the chevet prevalent in Northern France, the other derived originally from fourth and fifth century churches of the East, pa.s.sing to Lombardy in the ninth century, and then along the Rhine and even reaching Normandy. Such was the original eastern termination of St. Stephen's, Caen; such may still be seen in St.

Nicholas', Caen. This east end consisted of a number of parallel aisles, each with its own apse at its eastern end. "Norman use had squared the aisle endings of the choir two bays beyond the cross, the apse projecting its half circle beyond this, as at St. Etienne's, Caen, and in this form Lanfranc's Canterbury had been built."[4]

[4] Prior's "History of Gothic Art in England," p. 63.

In St. Albans this plan was further developed; from each arm of the transept two apses projected eastward, the outer ones consisting only of a semicircular projection from the transept, the inner ones of a rectangular bay from which the semicircular part ran eastward. The choir aisles, as we should now call them, consisted of four bays, beyond which they ended in a projection semicircular within, but rectangular when seen from the outside, the walls being thickened at the corners. These aisles were divided from the presbytery not by open arcading but by solid walls. The presbytery itself terminated in a semicircle projecting beyond the ends of the aisles. This extended as far as the centre of the present retro-choir.

Above the crossing rose the central tower, much as we see it to-day, save that it was probably crowned with a pyramidal cap rising from its outside walls. Probably also the tower as well as the rest of the church was covered with whitewashed plaster, thus hiding the material of which it was built--the Roman bricks of which mention has been already made.

These bricks surpa.s.s in hardness and durability those of modern days, and are of different size and shape from those we are acquainted with.

Those used in St. Albans are of two sizes, 17 8 2 and 11 5 2.

The joints are wide, the mortar between the courses being almost as thick as the bricks. The window jambs and the piers were built or faced with brick; even the staircases were of brick. What stone was used is clunch, from Tottenhoe in Bedfordshire, which, according to Lord Grimthorpe, is admirably suited for interior work, but absolutely worthless for exterior, as it decays very soon, and if it gets damp is shivered into powder by frost.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SOUTH-WESTERN PORTAL, BEFORE THE REBUILDING OF THE WEST FRONT. From a drawing by W.S. Weatherley, in Sir G. Scott's "Lectures on Mediaeval Architecture." (By permission of Mr. John Murray.)]

The Norman church, finished as we have seen in 1088, stood without change for rather more than a century. Then changes began. Abbot John de Cella (1195-1214) pulled down the west front and began to build a new one in its place. He laid the foundation of the whole front, but then went on with the north side first. The north porch was nearly finished in his time; the central porch was carried up as far as the spring of the arch; the southern porch was carried hardly any way up from the foundations.[5] The porches are described by those who saw them before Lord Grimthorpe swept away the whole west front as some of the choicest specimens of thirteenth-century work in England. The mouldings were of great delicacy, and were enriched with dog-tooth ornament. It is said that Abbot John was not a good man of business, and that he was sorely robbed and cheated by his builders, and so had not money enough to finish the work that he had planned. To his successor, William of Trumpington, it therefore fell to carry on the work. He was a man of a more practical character, though not equal to his predecessor in matters of taste. He finished the main part of the western front. Oddly enough no dog-tooth ornament was used in the central and southern porches, and the character of the carved foliage differs also from that of the north porch. In Abbot John's undoubted work the curling leaves overlap, and have strongly defined stems resembling the foliage of Lincoln choir, while that of Abbot William's time had the ordinary character of the Early English style. There is evidence to show that he intended to vault the church with a stone roof; this may be seen from the marble vaulting shafts on the north side of the nave between the arches of the main arcade, which, however, are not carried higher than the string-course below the triforium. The idea of a stone vault was, however, abandoned before the two eastern Early English bays on the south side were built, for no preparation for vaulting shafts exists there.

[5] Sir Gilbert Scott was of the opinion that the south porch was also John de Cella's work.

Abbot John de Cella had begun to build afresh the western towers, or, according to some authorities, to build the first western towers that the church ever had; we have no record of their completion, and it is said that Abbot William abandoned the idea. We have only the foundations by which we can determine their size. William of Trumpington transformed the windows of the aisles into Early English ones. He also added a wooden lantern to the tower, somewhat in the style of the wooden octagon on the central tower of Ely.

At some time, but we do not know exactly when, the Church or Chapel of St. Andrew adjoining the north nave aisle of the monks' church, extending as far east as the sixth bay, was built for the use of the parishioners, who had no right to enter the monastic church. This Church of St. Andrew opened into the north aisle of the Abbey Church, being separated from it by an arcade of four arches. It had a nave with aisle and chancel. Its total length was about 140 feet, its width about 61 feet. It is conjectured that the north-western tower was converted into a kind of antechapel or entrance porch for the Church of St. Andrew.

There was a door leading from the aisle of the Abbey Church into the chancel of St. Andrew's; this door, walled up, may still be seen in the fifth bay from the west end. In order to avoid the necessity of returning again to the history of this church, it may here be stated that it was rebuilt by John Wheathampstead after he had been re-elected to the office of Abbot in 1451; and that it was destroyed after the dissolution of the monastery, when there was no longer any need for it, as the parishioners bought the Abbey Church for parochial use. The place of the old arcading was then taken by a blank wall without any windows; this was pulled down and the present wall built by Lord Grimthorpe.

In the latter half of the thirteenth century the reconstruction of the eastern end was begun by Abbot John of Hertford. Here, as in many other churches, the Norman choir was too short for thirteenth-century requirements. The walls of the presbytery were raised and its high-pitched roof converted into a flat one. The church was gradually extended eastward by Abbots Roger of Norton and John of Berkhampstead; first the Saint's Chapel was built, then the retro-choir, and finally the Lady Chapel, which was finished by Abbot Hugh of Eversden in 1326.