Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely Part 25

"To Thee give I thanks, Thou Lord of all living, For all good hap In this life here.

Sore need I now, O Maker mild, That Thou should'st grant My spirit grace; That my soul to Thee May depart in peace, And flee to Thy keeping, Thou King of Angels.

To Thee do I pray That the Gates of h.e.l.l Prevail not against me."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _West Aisle of the North Transept, Ely._]

The Danes carried off Brithnoth's head; but his body was rescued; and, according to his wish, the monks came and brought it back to Ely, where the Abbot buried it, replacing the missing head by one of wax.

During the eighteenth century the skeleton was met with in the course of some excavations and recognised as Brithnoth's by the absence of the skull. It now lies in Bishop West's beautiful chapel, along with the bones of other Anglo-Saxon worthies.

The Lady Elfleda, Brithnoth's widow, added largely to the benefactions he had bestowed on Ely; she gave the Abbey valuable lands within easy reach of the monastery, and she moreover presented to the church a golden chain, and a curtain worked with the most notable deeds of her husband's life. Those who have seen the Bayeux tapestry, representing the events of the life of William the Conqueror, can picture to themselves what Lady Elfleda's curtain may have been a century earlier.

In the next generation (1016) a body of the monks of Ely accompanied another hero to battle against the Danes. The hero of this generation was Ethelred's son, King Edmund Ironside; the battle was the great fight of a.s.sandun, a place impossible to locate with certainty, but not improbably situated on the south-east border of Cambridgeshire.

During the last twenty-five years the Danes had become more and more daring, and now, under their great king, Canute, the mightiest of all Scandinavian monarchs, they were attempting nothing less than the organised conquest of England. Thus Canute and Edmund were face to face in a desperate struggle, and, after five indecisive battles in a single year, Edmund was defeated, on St. Luke's Day, at a.s.sandun, and his defeat was shortly followed by his death. Canute then a.s.sumed the crown, by right of conquest, a right which he proclaimed by calling himself not, like his predecessors, "King of the English," but "King of England."

He proved, however, not at all a bad king. He had been brought up a Christian, and he took the Church under his protection. He bore no malice against the monks of Ely for their support of Edmund Ironside, but, on the contrary, treated the Abbey with marked favour, and gave her rich endowments. More than once he visited Ely, and we all know the lines of the cheery old ballad which relates how Canute in his barge was rowing near the island. It runs thus:

"Merrily sang they, the monks at Ely, When c.n.u.t the King he rowed thereby; Row to the sh.o.r.e, men, said the King, And let us hear these monks to sing."

This was in the summer-time,[209] when the waters were open; but not seldom Canute made his visits in the depth of winter, when, on the Feast of the Purification, the Abbot of Ely each year entered on his Chancellorship of the realm, an office which he shared in turn with the Abbots of Canterbury and Glas...o...b..ry, each holding this office for four months at a time. The legend may well be true, which tells how, on one of these mid-winter visits, Canute reached Ely (from Soham)[210] in a sledge, preceded by the heaviest man that could be found (characteristically nick-named "Pudding"), who skated ahead of the King to ensure the ice would bear. On another occasion Canute was accompanied by his wife Queen Emma, and she, in token of her regard for the Abbey, left behind, as her gift, splendid hangings for the church, and for the shrine of the foundress. An altar frontal of green and red and gold, and a shrine cover of purple cloth, bedecked with gold and jewels, are described as being of exceptional beauty and value, "such as there was none like to them in richness throughout all the realm."

[Footnote 209: Archdeacon Cunningham doubts this.]

[Footnote 210: See p. 178.]

This was not Emma's first connection with Ely. While she was yet the second wife of Ethelred the Unready (after whose death she married the victorious Canute), her younger son, Edward, afterwards King Edward the Confessor, had here been presented in infancy at the altar, and had been in childhood a pupil of the choir school, where his special proficiency in learning psalms and hymns gave promise of his future saintliness. The Ely choir school was, at this time, probably the most noted educational inst.i.tution in England, and was under the direction of the Precentor, who had general charge over all the literary work of the house, such as the reproducing of books, etc. That this precocious scholar, who left Ely at nine years old, ultimately came to the throne, while Alfred, his elder brother, did not, is due to one of the most ghastly tragedies of English history.

After the death of Canute in 1035, it became a question whether this same Alfred, "the Etheling" (_i.e._ Prince), Emma's eldest son by Ethelred, now a man of over thirty, or Harthac.n.u.t, her only son by Canute, a boy of sixteen, or one Harold, who, though not an Etheling, claimed to be Canute's eldest son, should be chosen King of England.

Harold, in spite of grave doubts as to his paternity, "had all the cry"; and when Alfred, "the innocent Etheling," made an attempt to protect his widowed mother against the new King's oppression, he was sent as a prisoner by ship to Ely. Before being landed his eyes were put out, in a manner so brutal that he shortly died of the shock, to find a grave in the Abbey church under its western tower. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicler records this crime in a pathetic ballad, denouncing it as even beyond the horrors of the Danish wars:

"Nor was drearier deed Done in this land, Since Danes first came."

That no blame need be attached to the monks of Ely for this atrocity is indicated by the fact that, when Alfred's brother, Edward the Confessor, came to the throne, he confirmed all their ancient charters, granting lands and privileges to the Abbey, and himself became a benefactor to the place of his education.

With the Norman invasion, Ely again becomes a centre of war. Led by Christian the Bishop, and Osbiorn the Earl, a force of Danish adventurers had appeared in the Humber, professing to be the allies of the English in their struggle with the Normans. Their real object was to place their own King Sweyn, the nephew of Canute, on the throne of England, and, if foiled in this purpose, at least to enrich themselves with England's plunder. After partaking in scenes of devastation in Yorkshire, they sailed southward till they reached Ely, where they took up their quarters. Here the fenland folk forgathered with them, for the Norman was a more thoroughgoing oppressor than any Dane; and, in especial, the "strenuous" outlaw Hereward "the Wake" joined them "with his gang."

To show their zeal against the French--and to indulge their l.u.s.t of plunder--they set off, by water, to Peterborough, where the Abbey had been recently conferred on a Norman ruffian named Thorold. To save this good old English foundation from such degrading occupancy, Hereward, as their guide, led them on, first to sack and then to burn it to the ground. The Danes, having got their booty, promptly sailed away, while Hereward returned to Ely, there to make his memorable stand against William and the Normans. Fiction may have embroidered the tale of his prowess; but there remains a foundation of truth, even after the superstructure of romance has been removed. At Ely were now gathered together to him a mixed company of fugitives; misfortune, according to her repute, making strange bed-fellows.

When William had conquered at Hastings, England, as a whole, was at first disposed to accept the verdict of battle, and to acknowledge his claim to the throne, as it had acknowledged Canute's. But when the necessities of his position, as the captain of an invading army, forced him to confiscate every estate in England (except the Church lands), and to bestow it on some Norman adventurer; when every single Englishman in high office, Sheriff and Alderman, Bishop and Abbot, was turned out to make room for a Frenchman,[211] the whole nation glowed with outraged patriotism, and Ely seemed likely to become a second Athelney, whence the spark of resistance to the tyrant might spread like wildfire throughout the length and breadth of the land.

[Footnote 211: See my _History of Cambridgeshire_.]

And had there been a second Alfred this might well have actually come to pa.s.s. As it was, many of the magnates who could not brook submission retired to the "Camp of Refuge," as the Island of Ely now got to be called. This fastness, being surrounded on all sides by deep fens "as by a strong wall," promised them a sure retreat, and for a while enabled them to baffle all the efforts even of the mighty Conqueror to subdue them. Thither came Archbishop Stigand (deposed by the Conqueror to make way for the great Lanfranc); thither came the Abbot of St. Albans, thither came the valiant Ethelnoth, Bishop of Durham; thither came Morcar, the last Earl of Northumbria, "with many a hundred more," both clergy and laity. Here they received shelter and hospitality from Thurstan, the last of the English Abbots of Ely.

By the general voice Hereward was chosen as their captain, and fortified the island against the Conqueror. William, on hearing of this, hastened to Cambridge with his whole army, and invested the place (so far as it was possible to invest it) both by land and water, building a castle at Wisbech on the north, and at Reach on the south.

At Aldreth, where scarcely a mile of fen parted the Island from the mainland at Willingham, he made a floating bridge of trees and f.a.ggots, fastened underneath with cow-hides; but when his men attempted to cross it, the unsteady structure capsized, and that portion of the army engaged in the attempt was drowned.

Perplexed and almost daunted, William, with his court and army, retired for a time to Brandon in Suffolk; while the refugees at Ely spent stirring days. The knights and churchmen were hospitably entertained in the refectory of the abbey, every man with his shield and lance hanging near him, to be ready in case of sudden alarm. Their days were diversified by raids into the surrounding country beyond the fens, to s.n.a.t.c.h what provisions they could for their fastness; and these raids of the islanders were so dreaded throughout the district, that its inhabitants were thankful for the protection of William's soldiery.

Hereward, according to the legend, hearing that another attack was imminent, followed the example of Alfred the Great by betaking himself in disguise to Brandon to learn the King's designs. He found that William, by a judicious mixture of severity and conciliation, had won over a certain number of the outlying fen-folk, and had imposed upon them the task of conveying a great store of wood and f.a.ggots for him to Aldreth, with which to construct there a causeway once more.

Hereupon Hereward, still in his disguise, feigned that he was himself one of these traitors to England, and eager above all the others to help the Conqueror against the marauding thieves of the Camp of Refuge. It was he who was foremost in collecting f.a.ggots for the wood-pile at Aldreth, and then, when all was gathered, who was it but Hereward that set it on fire so that all was lost? And once more, when the besiegers were making a third attempt to gain the island, under the auspices of a reputed witch whom the pious William deigned to employ for the sustaining of his men's sunken courage, it was Hereward who fired the reed-beds through which the foe was advancing, so that the whole column, witch and all, were involved in one common destruction.

Finally William, finding that he could not reduce the island by force, resolved to bring it under by political pressure, and threatened to grant to his supporters all the Abbey lands within his power. On hearing this the Abbot and monks resolved to surrender, and they sent secret messengers to William, who was at Warwick, offering to submit to him on condition that he would spare the possessions of the Abbey.

To this the King consented; and during Hereward's absence from Ely on a foraging expedition, he landed without resistance on the fen-girt island. Hereward on his return found that all was lost, and himself barely escaped with a few followers, to live on as outlaws in the greenwood for a few desperate years, till at length he, too, "came in," and was granted "the King's peace."

On William's unopposed success through their connivance the monks fondly imagined that they had something to expect from his grat.i.tude, and were preparing a formal welcome and act of submission when it should please him to visit the abbey church in thanksgiving for his victory. William, however, had other designs, and paid his visit without notice, at an hour when he knew that the brethren would be in the refectory at dinner. He stood alone before the High Altar, and casting upon it a single mark of gold, equivalent to about 150, quietly departed.

Meanwhile the hapless monks were startled from their meal by the abrupt entrance of a Norman knight, Gilbert de Clare, with whom they had made interest, and who now rushed in shouting to them: "Ye wretched drivellers! Can ye choose no better time for guzzling than this when the King is here, yea, in your very church?" Instantly every monk sprang to his feet, and the whole community made a rush for the church. But it was too late. William was already well on his way out of Ely, and the unhappy monks had to run three miles before they caught up to him at Witchford. There they did at last succeed in impetrating his pardon, but he laid upon them a fine of no less than 700 marks of silver,[212] to meet which almost all the ornaments of the church had to be melted down. The ingots were minted into coin in the abbey itself; but the moneyers employed proved fraudulent, and the royal officers at Cambridge, to whom the cash was paid, reported it deficient in weight. This gave William an excuse for laying on a further fine of 300 marks, so that altogether no less than the equivalent of 20,000 was wrung by him out of the Brotherhood.

[Footnote 212: A mark of silver was worth 13_s._ 4_d._; a mark of gold was 100 shillings. A labourer's wage was at this date 1_d._ per day, so that these sums must be multiplied thirty-fold to get their equivalent value at the present day.]

Yet the monks were not mistaken in thus casting in their lot with the Normans, for though William imposed these heavy fines upon them, though he heaped vexatious indignities upon them, though he inflicted shocking mutilations on their adherents (not on themselves, for he was careful to spare the monks in this respect), though he compelled them to maintain a foreign garrison of forty French knights at their very doors, yet in spite of all this the Abbey, with its seventy monks, prospered under his iron rule. The strange condition of the house at this juncture is vividly recorded for us by a picture, still preserved in the Bishop's palace at Ely and known as the "Tabula Eliensis."

This "tabula" is a painting of no artistic merit, dating probably from the reign of Henry the Seventh, but copied from an older one which has perished. It is divided into forty squares, and in each of these appears a knight and a monk, the names of both being given fully and distinctly. The knight is helmeted and holds his drawn sword in his right hand, while between him and his neighbour, the cowled monk, hangs his shield emblazoned with his arms. All indicate how the knights and monks, when thus forced to dwell in close contact, became friendly together as time went by.

Several of the monks bear names which show us that the ancient British stock of the Girvians still survived in the neighbouring fenlands.

Among them we find, Donald, Evan, Cedd, Nigel, Duff, David, Constantine: names familiar to us in connection with Highland, Welsh, or Cornish literature. Strange as it seems to include such names as David and Constantine in this list, we have history, legend and geography to justify our counting them as in use among the later Britons. And it may be noted that, until the twelfth century at least, a man's name is an almost certain guide to his nationality, as (to some extent) it is to this day. After that, the old English nomenclature, both male and female, was almost wholly supplanted by that of the Normans; the only native names to survive being those of special heroes and saints, such as Alfred, Edward, Edmund, Edgar, Ethel, Audrey and Hilda.

The nave and transepts of Ely Minster erected during the century that followed, still stand to show us to what splendid purpose Norman architects could design and Norman workmen could build. For here, as elsewhere throughout England, one of the first and most striking results of the Conquest was such an outburst of church building as the country had never yet known. Edgar's church, though barely a century old, was condemned as hopelessly out of date. Something on a much grander scale was now felt needful. The new Church was founded, in 1083, by the aged Abbot Simeon, an act of great courage and faith in a man so old. He it was who began to build the north and south transepts. He also laid the foundation of the central tower and of an apsidal choir. Both tower and choir have fallen and been replaced, but the transepts stand to this day.

As soon as the choir was ready for it, the body of the first Abbess was brought from the Anglo-Saxon church close by, built under Edgar the Peacemaker, where it had rested for 130 years, and was placed in the new Norman choir behind the high altar. At her feet was laid her sister s.e.xburga, who had succeeded her as Abbess, and, on either side, the sister and niece who had, each in turn, followed after her as rulers of the house. The earlier church was then pulled down. All this did not take place till 1106, and long before then Simeon, like his namesake a thousand years before, had sung his "Nunc dimittis,"

leaving his work to be carried on by the devoted and energetic Richard, the last of the non-episcopal Abbots of Ely.

For an event of even greater moment than the building of the church took place about this time. Early in the twelfth century, in order to quell some dispute that had arisen as to the authority of the Bishop of Lincoln over the Abbot of Ely, the Pope had consented, at the request of King Henry the First and Archbishop Anselm, that the Abbot of Ely should become a Bishop, with the Isle of Ely and the County of Cambridge as his See.[213] More than 700 years went by before any change was made in the extent of the diocese thus created; for it was not till 1837 that the counties of Huntingdon and Bedford and the western half of Suffolk were added to it.

[Footnote 213: The county, at this time, comprised only the district south of the Isle. This ecclesiastical connection between it and the Isle was the first towards their later unification. See p. 8.]

We owe to the creation of this Bishopric the very existence of Ely Minster as it now stands; had it remained merely an abbey, instead of being also a cathedral, it would have perished at the Reformation, along with the yet greater church at Bury St. Edmund's not far away, and with many another sister abbey throughout the land. At Ely, too, we should see before us ruined arches open to the sky, beautiful indeed and pathetic, but no longer a centre of worship. To this day the Bishop of Ely sits in his cathedral not as Bishop but as Abbot; not at the south-eastern but at the south-western end of the choir stalls, while the Dean occupies the seat once belonging to the Prior at the north-western end. Richard, as we have said, was the last of the Abbots of Ely who were Abbots and nothing else. Hervey, appointed in 1109, was the first Bishop-Abbot. He had already been Bishop of Bangor, whence he had been driven by a Welsh revolt.

This may be the place to say something of the abnormal civil position held by the Bishops of Ely till recent times. Etheldreda, the foundress of the Abbey, reigned, as the widow of her first husband, Tonbert, over the whole Isle of Ely, and exercised therein the full Royal rights of secular jurisdiction. These rights pa.s.sed on to the Abbesses who succeeded her, and then in turn to the Abbots who followed; they were confirmed by the Charter of Edgar in 970, and again by Edward the Confessor, and when the abbots became bishops they still continued to exercise this jurisdiction. Each succeeding Prelate enjoyed rights throughout the Isle somewhat resembling those of the Prince Bishops of the continent.

This went on until Henry the Eighth fell upon the Church, and took away not only many of the Episcopal demesnes but also many of the Episcopal privileges (if indeed they may be so termed). Such rights as the King spared survived for 300 years longer. The Bishop of Ely still possessed a jurisdiction of considerable importance and dignity, holding almost sovereign authority within his "Franchise," which was styled "the Royal Franchise or Liberty of the Bishops of Ely." He himself appointed his own Judges to hear all cases within the Isle of Ely; a.s.size and Quarter Sessions were held in his name and at his pleasure; his chief bailiff acted as High Sheriff, and he nominated the magistrates. It was the Bishop's Peace, and not the King's Peace, against which malefactors throughout the Isle were held to offend.

This went on till 1836, when on the death of Bishop Spark, these last remnants of Etheldreda's jurisdiction as Queen-Abbess ceased by Act of Parliament.

But to this day there live on some far-off echoes of the Girvian princ.i.p.ality. The Isle of Ely, with its three Rural Deaneries and forty-six benefices, is ecclesiastically under the immediate jurisdiction of the Bishop; no Archdeacon holds any authority there, as in other parts of the diocese, except in the parishes of Haddenham and Wilburton. True, we have an Archdeacon of Ely, but he ought rather to be designated Archdeacon of Cambridgeshire, for, with the exceptions named, beyond the limits of the county proper he is powerless. The Isle, moreover, has its own County Council quite distinct from that of Cambridgeshire, while the common High Sheriff of both divisions is nominated from each in turn.

And in the very heart of London, close to Holborn Circus, traces of this civil jurisdiction still survive in Ely Place, where stands, ab.u.t.ting on houses of the most commonplace type, the beautiful chapel dedicated to St. Etheldreda, built at the close of the thirteenth century, and once attached to the town palace of the Bishops of Ely.

Ely Place was a "Liberty," and, within the memory of those still living, the Royal writs did not run here, and no police-officer or sheriff could follow a debtor who had here taken sanctuary; it was, moreover, rated on a basis peculiar to itself. The "Liberty" is still governed by certain Commissioners, elected annually by the householders. It has its own day and night watchmen, with their gold-laced hats, who fulfil the function of policemen, and the silence of the night is, even in this twentieth century, broken by their call, hour by hour, as of yore. We all remember how Shakespeare makes Richard the Third say to the Bishop of Ely,

"My lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn I saw good strawberries in your garden there,"

and the reference to these lines in the "Ingoldsby Legends" is hardly less familiar. Palace, strawberries, garden are no more; the property once held in this region by the See of Ely has pa.s.sed by purchase into other hands, but the chapel is still here, well tended, the same House of Prayer, after many vicissitudes, that it was 600 years ago; the din of modern city life being there shut out by walls eight feet thick.

There exists in London one more very different relic of the old demesne of the Bishops of Ely. On the frontage of a great house in Dover Street, now occupied by the Albemarle Club, with ma.s.sive stone facings without and marble halls within, there may be seen, over the second storey, a mitre carved in stone, shewing that once it was the abode of the Bishops of Ely; for after their old Palace in Holborn was sold, this "Ely House," built about 1775, took its place, to be sold in turn early in the twentieth century with a view to forming a nucleus toward the endowment of a new bishopric, when the proposed subdivision of the present diocese can be carried out. Times have changed; and the Bishop of Ely is now free from the burdensome luxury of an official residence in London.

CHAPTER XV

Bishop Northwold.--Presbytery Dedicated.--Barons at Ely.--Fall of Tower, Alan of Walsingham, Octagon.--Queen Philippa.--Lady Chapel, John of Wisbech, Bishop Goodrich.--Bishop Alc.o.c.k.--Bishop West.--Styles of Architecture.--Monastic Industries.--Mediaeval Account Books.--Clothing and Food of Monks.--Benedictine Rule.--Dissolution of Abbey.--Bishop Thirlby.--Bishop Wren.--Bishop Gunning.--Bishop Turner.