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DREAMLAND IN HISTORY
Zbc Stor^ of tbc IHonnan 2)uhc5
BY
The Very Rev. H. D. M. SPENCE D.D.
DEAN OF GLOUCESTER
J1V7V/ ILLUSTRAT/OXS BY HERBERT RAILTON
LONDON
Wm. ISBISTER Limited
15 & 16 tavistock street covent garden
1891
TO
'Fictoria, (aueen antr CFmjpreis^f,
The Dcaji of Gloucester,
availing himsel/ of a gracious permission.
Dedicates these little studies,
on the seven N'ornian Founders of the Royal
and Imperial House of England.
CONTENTS.
Part I.
THE NORMAN DUKES.
I. ROLLO
II. Duke Guillaume Longue-Epee
III. Duke Richard I. Sans-Peur .
IV. Duke Richard II. Le Bon (" L'Ami des
— Duke Richard III.
V. Duke Robert Le Magnifique
VI. Duke William (the Conqueror) .
VII. William the Conqueror, Seventh Duke of
Normandy, King of England .
VIII. The Vanishing away of the Normans
Moines
3
19
31
46
55
64
84
109
Part II.
THE STORY OF A NORMAN ABBEY.
I. Dreamland — ^The Dead King and the New
Work in the Norman Abbey of Glou-
cester 125
II. The Inventors of Perpendicular Architec-
ture . . . .146
b
X COXTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
III. TheBenedictine House of Gloucester . . .164
IV. The Birthday of our Gothic Minsters . . . 1S3
APPENDICES.
I. The Great East Windov/ of Gloucester Cathe-
dral 205
II. Gloucester and its Abbey 211
III. The Nemesis of the Normans 220
IV. Monastic Life in 1890 224
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
By HERBERT RAILTON.
Engraved by L. Chefdeville.
Part I.
THE NORMAN DUKES.
The Choir, Gloucester Cathedral
West Front of Rouen Cathedral
Bayeux Cathedral .
South Transept, Baveux
A Street in Rouen
The Tomb of Rollo in Rouen Cathedral
Old Houses, Bayeux
Rue aux Juives, Rouen .
Fecamp Abbey
Lady Chapel, Fecamp
Norman Work in Apse of Abbey, Fecamp
Shrine of the Precious Blood, Fecamp
The Ambulatory of the Abbey, Fecamp
A Bit of Old Fecamp ....
Choir of Abbey, Fecamp ....
St. Gervais, Falaise .....
Arlette's Fountain, Falaise ....
Birthplace of William the Conqueror, Falaise
Porte des Cordeliers, Falaise
A Street in Falaise .....
The Valley of the Ante, Falaise
Duke Robert's Window, Castle of Falaise
A Peep of Talbot's Tower, Castle of Falaise
St. Pierre, Caen ......
Abbaye aux Dames, Caen ....
PAGE
Frontispiece.
S
1 1
13
15
19
23
25
33
35
37
39
47
51
53
55
56
57
59
60
61
62
65
66
67
XII
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Castle of Falaise .....
Apse of Church of Ste. Trinite, Falaise
Tour du Bec-Hellouin .
Gloucester Cathedral from N.E.
Abbaye de Bec ....
South Transept and Tower, Fecamp
Interior of Bayeux Cathedral
Entrance to La Vielle Tour, Rouen
Norman Work in Les Halles, Rouen
St. Gervais, Rouen ....
St. Etienne, Caen .....
Gloucester Cathedral from N.W.
PAGE
68
69
75
79
81
82
88
95
99
lOI
104
117
Part II.
THE STORY OF A NORMAN ABBEY.
Gloucester Cathedral ■ '^-S
In the North Cloisters . .126
Lavatory in the Cloisters 128
Entrance to Crypt . . . . . . . . -130
Shrine of Edward II 133
College Lane ........... 138
Tower from the Dean's Garden 141
Across the South Transept . . . . . . . .144
Ambulatory showing Shrine of Edward II. . . . .151
The Lady Chapel 153
Gloucester Cathderal from N.W. . . . . . .156
A Peep from the North Transept . . . . . -163
The Deanery . . . . . . . . . . -165
The Deanery from Cloister Garth .166
The Cloisters . . . . . . . . . .168
Gloucester Cathedral from S.E. . . . . . . -171
The Cloisters 175
The Sedilia 186
North Transept with Early English Screen . . . . 1S8
Cathedral from Oxbody Lane . . . . . . -195
Norman Nave . . . . . . . . . . igS
Gloucester Cathedral from W. . . . . . . 199
fri>
t^mwA
:^art
fiCft)%in SaKCs
THE NORMAN DUKES.
^^,^. CHAPTER
OliliO
There are two little chapels, the one on
the right and the other on the left of the
• nave of the great Cathedral of Notre-
Dame at Rouen. The chapels are small
and dark, with no particular beauty of
^^ ;^ - ^ ,.^ carved pillar or jewelled glass to mark
I ■ '. them out for special notice in that stately
I • . House of God. Yet round those small and
' . gloomy shrines should centre the chief in-
terest which belongs to the fairest city in
the broad French provinces and its matchless Cathedral, for
beneath the rough stones of the little chapels' floor rests all
that earth possesses of two of the greatest men who have
ever worn crown and coronet, men who with their children
have shaped and moulded the destinies of the two foremost
nations of modern times — England and France.
Rollo and his son Guillaume Longue-Epee were laid,
when their rough, stern life's work was done — the one worn
4 THE NORMAN DUKES.
out with years and toil, the other murdered in his golden
prime — in the stately minster of their well-loved city,
and some two hundred years later were translated from
their first resting-place in the sacristy to the little chapels
where they still sleep. The effigies which rest on their
tombs date from the da3'S of St. Louis. That of Rollo has
been repaired and renewed so often that it has probably lost
most of its distinguishing characteristics. The effigy of his
son William Long-Sword preserves the traditional features
dating, no doubt, from a period far more remote than that of
St. Louis, and as the stranger from other lands gazes on
this remarkable face he feels he is looking on something not
unlike what the mighty Norman was in life.
Who were these famous Normans who with their strong
hands and stronger brains created the England and France
we know, but have left behind them, singularly enough,
neither name nor nation ? Only the curious student knows
now anything of Norman history. Their race, most of their
literature, their very name, has disappeared. Even the fair
province whence, during their two centuries of romantic
Norman history, proceeded those princely Crusaders, those
conquerors of England, South Italy, and Sicily, those pro-
found scholars and thinkers,* those great architects — the fair
province whence all these came men choose to call by new
and tasteless names ; \ a strange destiny in truth for this
splendid and victorious people !
Almost the only visible trace which this great people
have left are a few grand and stately minsters in England,
such as Durham and Norwich, Ely and Gloucester, and a
number of curious and interesting churches, some especially
* Of course, men like Laiifranc and Anselm are reckoned as belonging to
Normandy, the country of their adoption, and where their real life-work was done.
t Normandy is now known as Manche, Calvados, and Seine Infdrieure,
Eure, &c.
ROLLO. 7
of great size and beauty, in the old towns in Normandy;
splendid monuments which still speak of the great men who
planned them, built them, prayed and taught in them.
These N'onnans, who were they, after all ? Other
Vikings and sea-pirates had left Denmark and Norway and
the fiords running up from the wild North Sea, men like
Hastings, Guthrun, Ragnar Lodbrok, and many more still
remembered or nameless.
Their wild raids for many a weary year had been the
desolation, not only of England under Saxon rule, but of
Western and Northern France, Holland, Flanders, and far
away into Central Germany, and even along the coast of the
blue Mediterranean.
The black Viking keels had ploughed up all the Anglo-
Saxon rivers. They were long the terror of the Rhine and
the Elbe, the Seine and the Loire. Cities far inland, such as
Cologne and Treves, bore for many a year the traces of their
fatal prowess.
But all these wild children of the North have left little
mark behind them save blackened and plundered homesteads,
ruined churches and monasteries, and a terrible memory,
such as is left by a passing desolating pestilence.
One only of this long and terrible procession of death and
rapine really has left a name and memory, one of the most
illustrious of names and grandest of memories in the world's
story — Rollo.
The misery of the ninth century was almost inconceivable.
There was no great central power to defend the splendid
cities, the numerous and wealthy monasteries, the well-tilled
farms of Germany and of France. The far-stretching king-
dom of Charlemagne had split up into many fragments ; and
burning jealousies and intestine feuds occupied the entire
attention of the more powerful princes who ruled over the
divided empire of the great Charles. From the North, " like
8 THE NORMAN DUKES.
a stage procession winding in and out, disappearing and
returning, their numbers magnified by their activity," the
Northerner plundered, burnt, harried city and village,
monastery and farm. From the south-east the Magyar
hordes found an easy and profitable prey in the wealthy
German cities. How thoroughly these wild tribes did their
savage work in one portion of Europe the dry record of a
contemporary chronicle tells us better than any rhetoric,
" Ungarii vastando venerunt usque Fuldam." The Saracens
desolated Spain and the Provencal Lands and swept over the
whole of the Mediterranean Sea and its beautiful shores. We
read, within the space of a few years, of the burning of Treves,
Cologne, Maestricht, Liege, Coblentz, Aix-la-Chapelle, and
many another fair city. We hear of the noblest churches, the
stateliest monasteries, schools of learning, monuments of art,
all given over to the sword and the flames. But the busiest
of these plundering bands, as far as we can see through the
dim mists of centuries, were the Northmen. So terrible, so
far-reaching were their ravages, that into the Gallic liturgies
a new supplication was introduced, and was used long after
the Danish Raven banners had ceased to be a terror ; so deep
rooted in men's hearts was the fear and dread of these terrible
foes — " A furore Normannorum libera nos." *
But all these fearful scourges came and went, and left
nothing behind them save a memory of desolation and ruin.
Barely the names of a few of the more famous of these robber
sea-kings remain to us. In the year of Grace 911, some
century and a half before the decisive fight at Hastings, the
name and fame of Rollo emerge out of the mist of confusion
which characterizes the scanty annals of that most unhappy
ninth century and the opening years of the tenth. Several
fairly trustworthy chroniclers — certainly not very friendly to
these northern adventurers — relate the coming into power of
* Palgrave, i. 451.
ROLLO. 9
this strong and mighty sea-king. In the reign of our great
Plantagenet King Henry II., an Anglo-Norman trouveur,*
Wace, gathered up the written and oral memoirs of Rollo,
and in a long and picturesque poem relates the story of his
life in the now famous " Roman de Rou."
W^e learn that Rollo was driven in early life from his cold
north country by home troubles, and as a sea-king wandered
and plundered for some thirty or more years over the north
and west of France, occasionally visiting England with his
black robber-ships.
Still in the prime of life, the sea-rover dreamed of found-
ing a permanent settlement. He chose the banks of the river
Seine and the beautiful and fertile province it waters and the
once-flourishing city of Rouen for his new home. It was an
impoverished and half-ruined city and a country harried by a
long series of cruel raids that Rollo took possession of, and
acquired a sort of legal title to, by the terms of a vague treaty
he made with the titular King of France, Charles the Simple.
Then follows the romantic and marvellous story of the
sea-king's life at Rouen. The thirty wild years as a rover by
land and sea — thirty years of rapine and of cruel deeds done
to well-nigh defenceless cities, villages, and monasteries —
would seem a strange preparation for one who was to orga-
nize an important nation, who was to weld together men of
various races, who was to lay the strong ground-stories of a
mighty realm destined in a few short years powerfully to
influence the history of the world. Yet this is what Rollo the
Viking, the wild Northman freebooter, did in Rouen and
Bayeux between a.d. 911 and a.d. 927. The first of the
seven mighty Dukes of Normandy must have been more than
sixty years old when he began his curious and enduring work.
The word "enduring" is used advisedly, for what Rollo
did in his new land of the Northmen — a wide extent of
* See Note on page iS.
C
lO THE NORMAN DUKES.
country roughly including Normandy and Brittany, and later
Maine, as we understand the terms — was permanent. What
he began, his six successors went on with and developed —
the strong and firm government, the respect for the Christian
faith, law, and order, the gradual restoration of the old ruined
religious houses, and their great educational and other works ;
the curious welding together of Dane and Frenchman, which
produced the Norman — all these things were the care of the
old freebooter, Rollo the Viking, his children and children's
children for six generations. The strange result was, that in
less than a century and a half after the grim old Dane was
laid in his tomb in the Rouen Minster which he had restored,
his Norman land was famous throughout Christendom —
famous alike for the splendid gallantry of its knights and
nobles, as for the exalted devotion of its ecclesiastics — was
famous for its new school of architecture, for its lordly min-
sters, its vast monasteries, its flourishing cities ; was — still
more remarkable — famous for its matchless schools, and even
for the beauty of its " Romance "* literature.
For three generations, that is, during the reigns of Rollo,
of Guillaume Longue-Epee, and Richard Sans-Peur — the two
last were the son and grandson of Rollo — a period of some
ninety eventful years, the old Norsk religion in which Thor
and Odin were worshipped and the wild banqueting hall of
Valhalla looked to as the glorious goal of the unconquered
fighting hero — the old Norsk religion struggled with Chris-
tianity in the hearts of the great Norman Dukes and their
faithful companions in arms.
Rollo and his two successors were more than nominal
Christians, as we shall see. His son and grandson, Guillaume
and Richard, were, at times, even fervent devotees to the
Christian faith. But the spirit of the old-loved Paganism
* By Romance «e understand the Langitc d'oil. which, by an easy transition,
became the " French language " of to-day.
ROLLO.
I I
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of their fathers ever and anon
influenced them and their
followers, and while Rouen
remained the centre of the
Christianized Northmen, Bayeux, on the north-west, for more
than a hundred years was the home of the Danish party, and
perhaps in secret the shrine of the old Danish relii,rion.
12 THE NORM AX DUKES.
The traveller, as he passes over the waving corn-fields and
the low, breezy, swelling hills of Western Normandy, when
he first catches sight of that matchless cathedral towering
over the little decaying Bayeux city, much of it the work
of Odo, the conqueror's mighty brother, remembers the
long contest between the two religions, the true and the
false, and in that majestic Bayeux minster sees to which of
these religions in the end the final victory fell.
But the old Pagan spirit, as we have said, for a century
still lived — though half-concealed — in the Norman Dukes.
This was especially noticeable in their marriages. The aver-
sion of these brilliant and successful men to the Christian
marriage tie is remarkable, and the first three Dukes made
no concealment of their dislike to the princesses to whom,
mainly for political reasons, they were united by Christian
rites. Their love and affection all belonged to the partners
whom they had chosen for themselves, and to whom some old
Pagan rite loosely bound them, and not to those highborn
women whom, without pretending to love, they had married
with all the ceremony of the Christian Church— the royal
Gisella, the daughter of France, the highborn Carlovingian,
and Liutgarda, the princess of the haughty line of Verman-
dois, and Emma, the beautiful sister of King Hugh, the first of
that long unbroken line of kings of the house of Capet, these
princesses, each of whom in turn sat under the proud ducal
canopy at Rouen, the unloved and neglected consorts of the
first three mighty Dukes, were all childless. The mothers
of Guillaume Longue-Epee, of Richard the Fearless, and
Richard the Good, the monk's friend as men called him,
were Popa, " the Poppett," the love of Rollo, and Espriota,
the Danish girl who, in those stormy days, in many changes
of fortune, was true to death to the murdered William of the
Long Sword, and Guenora, so long loved by Richard the
Fearless.
RULLO.
13
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These noble ladies
were afterwards the
theme of many a lilt in
the picturesque and
vivid poetry of the Nor-
man trouveurs. But their
position and their influ-
ence in the Courts of
Rouen, Bayeux, and
Fecamp were owing to
the old Pagan spirit
which still lived in the
hearts of these famous
Norman princes; for the
marriage tie between
them and the great
Dukes was no Christian
■ceremony but an an-
cient rite, which seems to
have been dissolved and
taken up again at plea-
sure — a marriage rite
which was still cherished
by these mighty sons of
the Northern sea-kings.
This curious survi-
val of Paganism, which
exercised so powerful
an influence on the
otherwise Christian life
of the Norman Dukes,
was only really discontinued in the days of William the
Conqueror, the son of Robert the Magnificent and Arlette,
the daughter of the tanner of Falaise, who sternly discoun-
W
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14 THE NORMAN DUKES.
tenanced any relaxation of the sacred Christian marriage
law, and whose pure and spotless name and life — a grand
example to the dissolute princes of the time — was not the
least among the many titles of honour which belong to
William, Duke of the Normans and King of the English,
who won Harold's crcwn at Hastings.
One of the Norman trouveurs thus sings of Espriota, the
dearly loved of Guillaume Longue-Epee, and the Danish
marriage : —
" Icele ama moult e tint chere,
Mais a Danesche manere,
La voult aveir, non autrement
Ce dit I'estorie, qui ne merit."
But to return to the first of these Norman chiefs. The
story of Rollo's twenty years' reign reads like a fairy tale
which tells how the great Free Lance, as some centuries later
he would have been termed, in the evening of his wild and
stirring life, after his permanent settlement on the banks
of the Seine, was changed as though by magic into the
thoughtful and wise ruler, as eager for the welfare of the
broad province over which he ruled as in old days he had
been for its harrowing. He set himself, during the twenty
years which yet remained to him of life and power, to restore
the dilapidated towns and cities of his beautiful domain.
Rouen he literally rebuilt. The foundation of the northern
tower of Rouen Cathedral is most probably his work. From
Rollo's days, Norman dukes and kings of France in succes-
sion have enlarged and beautified the prosperous capital
of Normandy. In spite of the chilling neglect which in the
France of to-day allows so many of her noble religious
monuments to decay, Rouen is still one of the fairest cities in
Europe, and possesses some of the grandest churches in
Christendom. The work of the Viking Rollo, and his chil-
dren, is stfangely preserved in the city he loved so well.
J
Mill"' U ^ '' / \'Aii^m ///*■- 1
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if
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Legends are
still extant
which tell of
his especial
love for jus-
tice. One
relates how
by Rollo's
decree a
wise custom
was estab-
lished in
Normandy
— that who-
soever sus-
tained or
feared to
sustain any
damage of
goods or life
was entitled
to raise the
country by
the cry of
" Haro,"
or Ha
R o u
(RoUo),
1 6 THE NORMAN DUKES.
upon hearing which all the lieges were bound to join in
pursuit of the offender. Harou — Ha-Rou * — ^justice invoked
in Duke Rollo's name, this was called the " Clameur de
Haro."t
Another legend tells us how one day after the chase
Rollo was resting in one of the forests hard by Rouen, and
he determined to try the effect of his laws by hanging on the
branch of one of the trees which overhung a broad reach of
the Seine, where the river expands into a lake or mere,
his golden bracelets, the ensign of the sovereign dignity.
Three years later he found his bracelets hanging where he
had left them. The mere was henceforth named Rou Mare —
the Mere or Lake of Rollo. The forest of Roumare, in the
environs of Rouen, still preserves by its name the memory of
the legend. Similar stories are preserved of our English
Alfred, of Theodoric the Ostrogoth, and of other popular
heroes famed for their wisdom and justice.
In the course of the twenty years which succeeded the
permanent settlement of the famous Viking Rollo at Rouen,
the original territory which he seized, and through the treaty
he concluded with King Charles the Simple acquired some
legal right over, was enormously augmented by successful
feats of arms. Not only did he acquire permanent possession
of the whole of modern Normandy, but Brittany was more or
less subject to him, and even the wealthy province of Maine
seems to have passed under his rule ; but his singular ability
was even more conspicuously shown in other and very dif-
ferent works than merely in feats of arms, however successful.
Rollo and his immediate descendants showed a curious
* This curious and most ancient custom, with some modification, still exists in
the Channel Islands, which, after all these centuries, still remains an appanage of
the English Crown, a perpetual reminder to our princes of their splendid Norman
ancestry.
t Palgrave, i. 696 — 698, derives the old English exclamation, " Hurrah," from
this traditional. invocation of the name of the Norman chief.
ROLLO. 17
power of adapting themselves to the customs and habits of
the people among whom they settled. It has been well said
that within a hundred years after the settlement at Rouen the
children of Rollo and his companions, " though still proud
of the Norman name, were content as speakers of the Ro-
mance or French tongue to call themselves Frenchmen —
though Frenchmen on a far nobler and grander scale than
other Frenchmen." It was the same spirit and power of
selection and adaptation of what was good and great in
stranger peoples which in the days of William the Con-
queror enabled them, when once they had settled in England,
unconsciously but surely to become Englishmen, but "nobler
Englishmen" than Edward the Confessor's subjects, or even
than those gallant men who fought under the banner of the
"fighting man " with Harold at Hastings.
Their adoption of the French or Romance tongue was
especially remarkable. Within forty years from the estab-
lishment of Rollo at Rouen * the old Danish language
struggled for existence. It was in Normandy that the
Langue d'oil (Romance) acquired its greatest polish and
regularity. The earliest specimens of the French language,
in the proper sense of the term, are now surrendered by the
French philologists to the Normans. f
When Rollo reached his eightieth year — whether, as
some say, urged by his fiery chieftains, or feeling his fading
strength unequal to the burden of ruling and organizing his
now mighty state, harassed by his neighbours, who viewed
the growing power and splendid successes of these sea-
pirates, as they termed them, with ever-growing jealousy —
the old man resigned the active duties of chief ruler to
his son, the brilliant son of Popa — Guillaume Longue-Epee.
Rollo lived on five years longer to watch and advise. The
story of his life relates how, as the great chieftain lay dying,
* Freeman, i. 150. t Palgrave, i. 763.
D
1 8 THE NORMAN DUKES.
terrible memories of what he had done in bygone years,
when he had roamed the seas and rivers of Northern
Europe as a Pagan Viking, visions of human victims
sacrificed at the altars of Odin and Thor disturbed and
affrighted him. In the intervals of these awful dreams he
showed himself the steadfast friend of the Church of his
glorious later life, and died, the Trouveur biographer tells
us, a devout Christian, in the odour of sanctity —
" Ici trespasse Rous li proz et li vaillanz,
Od fin duce e saintissime, e plein de jorz e d'anz."
Benoit de Saint Maur, 8342.
[Note. — The Romance languages (Romana Rustica) sprang out of the cor-
ruption of Latin. In France the Romance was divided into two dialects, the
La?2g!/e d 'oc and the Latigue d'oi'l {oc and oil being words signifying "yes " — oil
afterwards being corrupted into oy and Qui). The regions in which these dialects
were spoken were, roughly, separated by the River Loire. The Langue d'oc, save
as a provincial patois, is dead. The Langue d'oil— the dialect of the northern
provinces and of the Norman Frenchman, has grown into the French language.
The poet of the Langue d'oil was termed a Trouveur. The poet of the
Langue d'oc was termed a Trotibadeur . " Thus the names of Trouveur and Trou-
badeur are obviously identical. — But, except in name, there was no resemblance
between the minstrels of the northern and southerji dialects. The invention of
one class was turned to description, that of the other to sentiment ; the first were
epic in their form and style, the latter almost always lyric ; one school produced
Chaucer, the other Petrarch." — Hallam's Middle Ages, chap, ix., part ii.]
CHAPTER II.
Duke Guillaume Longue-Epee.
The recumbent statue in the Rouen Cathedral
(of the time of St. Louis) represents the famous
Viking clad in ducal robes. " The sculptor has happily suc-
ceeded in embodying the notion conveyed by tradition and
history — the once mighty man of war, thoroughly worn out,
the sunken lips, the furrowed brow, the strength of fourscore
years come to labour and sorrow."*
But the work of Rollo — that strange mighty work which
created the Norman, and changed and shaped anew the
chief nations of the world of tne West — went on under his
• Palgrave, ii. 63. Since Palgrave wrote this description of the tomb the
restorer's not ahvays skilful hand has sadly interfered with this most interesting
effigy of one of the great founders of the proud Norman dynasty.
20 THE NORMAN DUKES.
son, after the worn-out warrior-statesman was left to sleep in
the minster he had raised in his loved Rouen. The hand
of the restorer has spared the effigy of Rollo's son, which
perhaps bears the traditional features of the great second
Duke. Most probably the thirteenth-century effigy was a
faithful copy of a much earlier monument. The figure
represents a crowned and armoured soldier, with his hand
resting on the golden hilt of that famous long sword from
which William takes his name. The tomb is in a little recess
of the dark chapel, and the figure represents a warrior fallen
asleep in the prime of life and strength. The thirteenth-
century sculptor has left on the still youthful face of the hero
duke an expression of intense weariness — worn out with the
restless anxieties of his busy, work-filled life; utterly tired
out with his labours, the Prince seems to have fallen asleep
in his harness, with his hand grasping the hilt of the famous
long sword so often unsheathed against mistaken patriotism
at home and the bitterest jealousy abroad.
The son and successor of Rollo was evidently a very
gifted man ; like most of the princes of his famous house,
he possessed extraordinary vigour. The Trouveur sung of
his stroke being that of a giant, his features beautiful, his
complexion bright as a maiden's. During his too short
reign of fifteen years he exercised absolute power over the
broad dominions which acknowledged the Norman sway.
He inherited his father's love for justice and law, and among
the princes of his line was distinguished for his wise states-
manship. Like Rollo, too, he saw that if his Normans were
to become a permanent and enduring power in France, they
must gradually become Frenchmen. So he encouraged the
"Romance" tongue at his Court, and adopted the customs
and pomp of the Kings of France and the great French
princes — identifying himself and his people in many ways
with French interests and feeling. The Duke Guillaume
DUKE GUILLAUME LONGUE-EPEE. 21
is not unfrequently painted in Romance history as a saint
and martyr. He scarcely deserves these titles, for though
just and generous, though generally well loved and admired,
he was but a fickle friend at best, not unfrequently changing
sides in the ceaseless wars and troubles of that restless and
uneasy period. One who well grasped the character of this
brilliant and yet impulsive hero writes of him, " that he could
never hold fast either to the good or evil, always wrestling
with himself and failing, inwardly warned yet disobeying the
warning, ardently affectionate yet destitute of fidelity, un-
stable in all his ways."* Yet in spite of all this, Duke
Guillaume possessed far nobler qualities than any of the
contemporary princes of the time who bore rule in France
and the neighbouring countries ; and his rule and influence
were perhaps the most far-reaching of any of the great French
princes of his day. His life work was to weld together in
one the Northman and the Frenchman, and while brineine
the whole of his broad dominions within the pale of Christian
and French civilisation, preserving intact the dauntless
courage, the high ambition, the many splendid qualities
which were the heritage of the nobler spirits of these old
Northmen.
The first four Norman Dukes were all subject to strong
religious impulses, and each of them did much to restore the
ruined churches and monasteries ; but, singularly enough,
although they were far more than merely professing Christians,
the first three preferred the old Pagan rite of marriage (and
each of the three, after publicly marrying with all the solemn
rites of the Christian church a Princess of hieh lineaee, eave
the love and devotion of a life to another to whom the Prince
was united by some old Danish Pagan rite). The legitimate
consort of Guillaume Longue-Epee was Liutgarda, a Princess
of the powerful Vermandois house, but following his own
* Palgrave, ii. 69.
22 THE NORMAN DUKES.
wilful way he loved Espriota, a Danish girl, who was the
mother of his heir, the noble boy afterwards known in history
as Duke Richard the Fearless.
There was no excuse for this deliberate choice of evil, for
this open disregard of a bond looked upon as sacred by the
religion these mighty chieftains accepted and even made real
sacrifices for, a religion which they undoubtedly believed in
with all their souls. This strange conduct on their part was a
relique of the old Pagan faith of their fathers, which, as we
have said before, was never thoroughly eradicated until the
"Conqueror's" days. Possibly it was a concession they
willingly made to the wild Danish Viking spirit which sur-
vived in all its fierceness in a strong party among these old
Normans, and which for some hundred years after Rollo's
settlement at Rouen had its headquarters in the Danish city
of Bayeux.
Rollo, in a moment of bitterness, is reported to have said
that his son Guillaume was better fitted in spirit for a monas-
tery than a sovereignty.
But the early love for solitude and the monastic life dis-
appeared in the stir and excitement of his life as supreme
ruler. Profusely splendid in his court and camp, Duke
Guillaume was never really generous to the Church. In the
old Merovingian days, before the black ships of the Viking
Jarls had desolated the beautiful province afterwards known
as Normandy, more than sixty monasteries, some of great
size and influence, had flourished. All were destroyed in the
terrible days of the Northmen's raids. Not a few of these
under the Norman Dukes were rebuilt, but many remained
a ruin and a name. Of these restored religious houses, the
once-splendid Jumieges, not far from Rouen, on the banks of
the winding Seine, owed its restoration to the Duke Guillaume.
It was not long before the dread day on which the brilliant
and powerful Norman chief fell under the assassin's sword.
DUKE GUILLAUME LONGUE-EPEE.
n
Here the Duke, utterly tired out with his life, excitement, and
restless toils, perhaps oppressed by some weird presentiment
of his coming violent death, asked his friend, the Abbot of
restored Jumieges, to receive him as a monk in his quiet,
peaceful monastery. In late years Duke Guillaume had
oftentimes resorted to Jumieges and its Abbot for rest and
repose.
But the Abbot ^ - '■.,
steadily refused, even
though the Duke was
persistent in his re-
quest to be allowed to
throw off his armour,
and put aside his ducal
robes and crown and
to assume the coarse
serge gown of the
Benedictine monks.
With a strange insist-
ence the Duke argued
his right to give up
the world. A com-
promise was at last
effected. His friend
the Abbot persuaded
him to continue to hold *-■ . " ■ ~ ^'^
the reins of govern-
ment ; indeed, who was to succeed the son of Rollo ? Guillaume
had but one son, Richard, and Richard was still a child, and
the mother was not even the Duke's lawful wife, Liutgarda
of Vermandois. Espriota, the mother, too, was the object of
the bitter jealousy of Liutgarda. What would become of the
boy Richard if the Longue Epee was sheathed for ever and
his father a cloistered monk in secluded Jumieges? Perhaps
24 THE NORMAN DUKES.
moved by this thought of the defenceless child, Duke Guil-
laume agreed still to wear the coronet of Normandy, Brittany,
and Maine, still to wear over his coat of mail the insignia
of his great office, but he only did so on condition that in
secret the Abbot would give him the dark gown and cowl of a
Benedictine. Before men Guillaume would still play the
part of Duke and Prince, for his boy's sake, but before his
God he was the cowled monk. The strange and secret bar-
gain was concluded ; frock and cowl were deposited in a chest
and placed in his palace at Rouen. The silver key which
opened the chest the Duke fastened to a girdle which never
left him. With a heavy heart, with the shadow of death
pressing on him, he called his three dearest friends round
him and presented the child Richard to them, his old com-
panions-in-arms. Then these men, who had served Rollo
with unswerving loyalty, swore, if Duke Guillaume died in
their lifetime, that they would guard the little child as the
hereditary chief of the Norman race.
Something kept whispering the Monk-Duke, still compara-
tively young and in the very prime of life, in the midst of all
his magnificence and power, that his days on earth were
numbered — the dread shadow of coming death seemed to
hover over court and camp. It was never absent. The
fourteenth-century sculptor who carved the face on the chapel
tomb, no doubt a copy of a far older effigy, has caught the
presence of the shadow resting upon the grave, worn face.
There was a restless, feverish impatience during that last
year to secure the position of the beautiful child of his love>
Espriota. So for once putting aside his tastes and inclina-
tion for France and France's ways and customs, putting away
his great love for " Romane " Rouen, he determined to keep
his Pentecostal festival— it was his last, and Guillaume seemed
to know it — at the Danish city of Bayeux— Bayeux, the centre
of the old Danish life in Normandy, half Pagan still, a city
DUKE CUILLAUME LONGUE-EPEK.
25
in the days of the
early Norman Dukes
where the ways and
thoughts of France
were unknown, where
the very children
lisped in Danish syl-
lables. To Bayeux
Duke Guillaume
summoned all the
chieftains of Nor-
mandy and Brittany,
and there he pre-
sented to them the
boy Richard, and the
great assembly swore,
when their noble
Duke and Chief was
taken from them, to
be the liegemen of
the fair -haired and
ruddy-cheeked child.
The father promised
the boy should be
brought up in Danish
Bayeux away from
the sights and influ-
ences of " Romane"
Rouen. Time enough, •■ ■ ;
he thought, for the '
child prince to learn
to love France. As a child he should grow up a Dane among
Danes. The old Viking spirit must live again in the Duke
of the Normans. The Romance tastes, the ambition to
2 6 THE NORMAN DUKES.
be a great prince of France, these thing's were sure to
come later ; but there was some danger that the reckless
daring, the old spirit of adventure, the splendid vigour, the
indomitable determination which with other noble features
belonged to the old Northmen, might totally disappear
and give place to the more effeminate though perhaps more
winning French or " Romance" spirit.
In " Romane " Rouen the desire was to shun the barbaric
dialect of the sea-kings ; the habits, traditions, memories of
the old Scandinavian home were ignored; the beautiful Seine
city which RoUo had rebuilt and beautified, aimed at becoming
Romane and French : and so well did it succeed in its aims
that not only did its Court rival the most splendid of the
Courts of the King of France and his great feudatories, but
the language of North and Central France, the " Romance,"
found the principal seat for its cultivation in Rouen, the city
of the Danish sea-kings.
But Duke Guillaume, with that rare and far-seeing
instinct which seems to have been the peculiar heritage of
the Norman Dukes of the house of Rollo, saw that if the
traditions and memories, the habits and thoughts, and the
language and poetry of the great vigorous North were
ignored, and then forgotten, his people would be merged
among the partly worn-out races of France. That was far
from being the destiny which Rollo and Guillaume dreamed
of for the Norman. So the father made provision for his boy
who was to inherit his broad dominions to be brought up
amidst the traditions of his forefathers.
The key to the blurred and confused story of the death of
Guillaume Longue-Epee must be sought in the bitter and
relentless hatred which the great provinces of France
cherished towards their new Norman neighbour. He was
the son of one of the fierce and dreaded sea-pirates who for
long and weary years had laid waste and devastated their
DUKE GUILLAUME LOXGUE-EPliE. 27
fairest provinces. The pirates had settled in their midst, and
apparently without an effort had become one with themselves —
Frenchmen, only nobler and grander Frenchmen. These
hated Normans in an incredibly short space of time had made
themselves masters of the fairest provinces of France. They
had become their rivals, ay, and successful rivals, in all the
arts of peace, as they had proved themselves to be in the
arts of war. So these long-descended French chiefs and
their followers hated the Normans with an inextinguishable
hatred ; and for more than fifty years after the death of Duke
Guillaume Longue-Epee, the powerful sovereign of the gay
and splendid court of Rouen, "Dux Piratarum," the Leader
(Duke) of the Pirates, was the common appellation of the
Count or Duke of the Normans.
Dimly through the haze of centuries we catch sight of
the bitter jealous hate crystallising into a definite plot
against the life of the Princely Norman Guillaume. The
story of shame is blurred and confused, but many of the
greatest names in Christendom seem to have been more or
less privy to the dark scheme of murder. After the death of
the noble Norman Guillaume Longue-Epde, the King of
France, Louis d'Outremer, and the still greater Duke of
France (Hugh le Gros) professed much indignation against
the doers of the deed of blood. But if they were not actually
privy to the details of the cruel murder, it is known that they
and many others of the great French chieftains earnestly
desired the death of the Norman sovereign. They hoped
that the death of the brilliant and loved Norman chief would
be a fatal blow to the steady unexplained prosperity and the
rapidly growing power and influence of the Norman people,
which excited so many fears, such burning jealousies.
*******
There had been a long-standing feud between Guillaume
Longue-Epee of Normandy and Arnoul, Count of Flanders.
28 THE NORMAN DUKES.
Count Arnoul wrote to Guillaume Longue-Epee asking- to
meet him, and to try in a friendly interview to settle their
mutual grievances. He was too infirm, pleaded the Flemish
chieftain, to undertake so long a journey as would be required
to visit the Norman at his home in Rouen — would Duke
Guillaume meet him nearer? He suggested a convenient
Irysting-place. A little island on the Somme, not far from
Amiens, was the place of meeting. The armed escorts were
left on the river bank. The two Princes, accompanied by a
few of their most trusted friends, were ferried over to the
little green island in the middle of the river. It was a
December day, and the interview was cut short bv the settine
in of the early winter twilight. The conference had been
more than friendly. Count Arnoul professed himself dis-
satisfied with his position among the independent princes
of France, and offered to accept the Norman Duke as his
Protector and Sovereign, covenanting that the broad and
fertile Flanders, after his death, should become part of
Norman territor}^ These friendly and more than generous
overtures won the heart of the unsuspecting Guillaume, who
tarried in the little island to the last minute with his new
friend, who had sworn eternal friendship to Normandy and
had arranged that in no distant future, Flemings and Normans
should be one people. When the conference was just over,
the Duke of the Normans sent his little group of " fideles,"
in a large boat, over the river to join the main body of his
guards, lie remained talking with Count Arnoul to the last
minute on the island — he would cross, last of all, in a little
skiff, soon after his friends.
The grey December shadows fell deeper and deeper over
the dark Somme and the green island. The " fideles " of the
Norman and their boat were quickly ferried over, but their
loved Duke still tarried. From the banks of the Somme the
Normans strained their eyes in the December twilight, to see
DUKE GUILLAUME LONGUE-EPEE. 29
what was delaying their master. No thought of treachery
seems to have occurred to any one, till, in the half-light of
the grey winter afternoon, they heard a cry of distress and
anguish, and saw, or fancied they saw, in the dark waters,
a human form struggling past. They crossed over again and
found their master, Guillaume, bleeding from several savage
sword- thrusts, but quite dead, and in the distance they could
distinguish the plash of oars up stream, which quickly carried
Count Arnoul and the assassins out of their reach.
The body of the murdered Duke was ferried over. His
appalled and grief-stricken followers, tenderly washing the
body of their loved master, found, as they took off the blood-
stained garments, the silver key of the chest in the palace
at Rouen, fastened to the dead man's girdle. When the chest
was opened, the monk's cowl and robe which the Abbot of
Jumieges had given him, when he persuaded him to give up
his cherished idea of abdicating, was found in it, Guillaume's
much-prized treasure. Wrapped in a silken shroud, all that
remained of Duke Guillaume was brought back to the Rouen
Palace he had left so short a time before in all the pride of
manly strength and absolute power over the fairest region of
France.
But King, and Duke, and Court, and the many Frenchmen
who with a fierce hate hated the Norman, reckoned without
their host when they dreamed that the Norman Power would
be shattered when their famous sovereign Guillaume Longue-
Epee was removed.
They had no suspicion of the real character and temper of
the men they so disliked and feared. Before the sad funeral
company had laid the dead son of Normandy in his sleep-
ing chamber in the Cathedral, his trusted friends had met to-
gether in the beautiful city of their murdered master. These
gathered together round Guillaume's coffin. They included
old grey-headed companions of Rollo with their sons and
30 THE NORMAN DUKES.
grandsons, men who were the ancestors of the future con-
querors of South Italy and Sicily, men whose children's chil-
dren fought and won on the stricken field of Hastings, men
whose descendants became the foremost Crusaders, the fathers
of the proudest Houses of the mighty Anglo-Norman King-
dom, and in their midst, standing by the coffin of Guillaume,
was a little fair-haired boy, with ruddy cheeks, whom they
had fetched from Danish Bayeux. One grey-headed chieftain
held the ducal coronet on the boy's head, one kissed the little
hand, and the others swore eternal allegiance and fidelity to
their child-Duke Richard, who in sorrow and perplexity stood
gazing on his father's coffin.
It was the last great service Guillaume, the son of Rollo,
could do his people and the land, this welding together by his
coffin the varied interests of his mighty chieftains. In this
solemn moment the Norman-Dane and the Norman-French-
man forgot their jealousies, their antipathies, the conflicting
interests of the old religion and the new, in their stern resolve
to avenge their master's death by raising the throne of their
master's son higher than the thrones of any of the Princes
of France.
Well and truly they kept their vow. Backed up by their
strong arms and their reckless gallantry, their wisdom in the
council chamber and in the field, the child-Duke of Normandy,
known in after years as Richard Sans-Peur, in a reign of fifty
years raised the provinces of Rollo and Guillaume to the first
rank among the powers of the west.
*******
These are some of the memories which cluster round the
little dark chapel in the aisle of the great Cathedral at Rouen,
where the grim stern effigy of the second Norman Duke
keeps watch and ward over the mouldering remains of what
was once Guillaume Longue-Epee, Rollo' s son.
CHAPTER III.
Duke Richard I. Sans-Peur.
Midway between Di-
eppe and Havre a lit-
tle river winding under
some green wooded hills
round a steep, pictu-
resque cliff into the sea,
forms the harbour of
Fecamp, now a famous
deep-sea fishery station,
and one of the less-
known Norman bathing stations of the great
French capital. Leading up from the shore and
Its groups of those fantastic dwellings which the modern
Parisian loves, is a long straggling town with little to interest
or to charm. On a sudden, after a vfeary mile of dull quiet
houses and duller shops, the stranger as he comes suddenly
on an open "place," is arrested by the sight of a mighty
minster church. Everything that modern industry could
do to disfigure the splendid work of an age, whose high
32 THE NORMAN DUKES.
aspirations are now too often forgotten or ignored, has been
done here. A huge porch veils successfully the minster's
west end. This was the unhappy thought of the eighteenth
century, while the state architects of the nineteenth century
have so successfully adapted the many graceful buildings
which once surrounded the abbey to the civic and other
requirements of our time that all trace of their ancient
beauty and fitness has now well-nigh disappeared.
Still, in spite of the efforts of this dreary, tasteless school
of modern builders, there remains with us the time-worn and
majestic pile, which, notwithstanding its hideous surroundings,
charms us with its grey scarred beauty, and we forget the
present and its mistakes when we gaze on this mighty relic
of the past.
The Abbey in its present form dates generally from the
thirteenth century, but its interior and exterior contain many
remains of a far older date. For instance, its transepts
north and south, were evidently built much as we see them,
probably in the days of Duke William, the conqueror of Eng-
land ; portions of them even earlier.* As the stranger gazes
up at these vast wings of the Abbey he feels he is looking at
masonry which the Normans who fought at Hastings had
looked on. Within, as the same stranger walks round the
ambulatory which fringes the choir and high altar, he is
arrested in the north-eastern portion by arches and pillars
which remind him of Gloucester and Durham, save that the
Norman arches and capitals in the corner of the Fecamp
Abbey are rougher and perhaps tell of an older generation
than the builders of our great Anglo-Norman minsters.
The Norman Abbey was erected on the site of one of the
oldest sanctuaries in Christendom. We trace its existence
* The older portion dates from about the same time as the old Abbey of West-
minster, which gave place to the noble minster of King Henry III. which we know
so well.
DUKE RICHARD I. SANS-PEUR.
Zl
S^ -^^ia^^^
far up the stream of time. Tradition sa3'S the first simple
sanctuary was raised in the third century by Boso, the mis-
sionary of St. Denys. In the fifth century Anseguise, a
Prankish chieftain of Clovis, the Merovingian king, while
hunting came upon the ruins of a church and altar. The
Prankish noble appears to have arranged to rebuild the primi-
tive church and to restore the Christian worship there, but
death put an end to his project. The old church remained
desolate for nearly two hundred years longer, when Waninge,
the friend and minister of Bathilda, widow of Clovis II.,
erected on the old site of Boso, an Abbey, and large conven-
tual buildings. This was consecrated with great pomp a.d.
665, in presence of the Merovingian sovereign, Clotaire III.
In common with all the religious houses in the north of
Prance the great Fecamp abbey and convent was burnt and
sacked by the Norsemen — Hasting, the terrible sea pirate,
is credited with the deed. Guillaume Longue-Epee, the son
of Rollo, built the castle and palace, and restored, though
by no means magnificently, the ancient church. His son
F
34 THE NORMAN DUKES.
and successor, Richard Sans-Peur, determined to replace It
with some of its ancient grandeur.
Now to what did this secluded spot on the north coast of
France owe its reputation for sanctity? The story tells us
v;hen Richard Sans-Peur, in the earlier years of his long and
eventful reign, was at his favourite palace at Fecamp, where
he was born, where long years afterwards he died, and where
his remains at the end were laid, it struck him that his lordly
castle (its ruined towers are still to be seen in the garden of
the Dean of the Abbey) overshadowed the comparatively
small and humble House of God. He determined to rebuild
it with stately magnificence, and desired that due search should
be made among the archives of the Abbey, which were still
preserved, for anything bearing upon the past forgotten his-
tory. Due search was made, and the following strange story
was brought to light and rehearsed before the young Duke.
The narrative related how Joseph of Arimathaea, after
he received the sacred body of Jesus from the Roman
soldiers, with tender care removed the blood which had
coagulated about the five wounds, and ever afterwards
reverently preserved the sacred relic. On -his deathbed he
confided the precious memorial of the great sacrifice to his
nephew Isaac, who, on the approach of the troublous times
which heralded the last siege and destruction of Jerusalem,
fearing lest Joseph of Arimathaea's treasure should fall into
the hands of the Pagan Roman, sealed up the coagulated
blood in two leaden phials. These he hid in the thick trunk
of an ancient fig-tree, which he, to preserve it from the hands
of the Romans then pouring into the Holy Land, threw into
the sea. The waves carried the precious burden eventually
to the north coast of Gaul, and there the fig-tree trunk
which held the two little leaden phials was cast up on the
shore of the river which, flowing through the valley, now
forms Fecamp harbour.
DUKE RICHARD I. SANS-PEUR.
35
•■* ^*
m-h^'' vm-'M^i-
m-^.^-
It is uncer-
tain whether
this strange
old legend
was the basis
of the extra-
ordinary sanc-
tity which— for
several centu-
ries previous
to the days
of Guillaume
Longue-Epee,
the son of
Rollo — evi-
dently belong-
ed to the
{' oratory, the
church, and
subsequently
the religious
house of Fecamp ; a tra-
ditional sanctity which in-
fluenced Guillaume in his
selection of Fecamp as a favourite residence. There is no
doubt it was a famous sanctuary in the comparatively secure
times of the Alerovingian kings, with a story which reached
far back to the days when Roman Proconsular officers ruled
in Gaul. When the strong arm of the Emperor Charlemagne
was removed, and the sacred house of Fecamp, with countless
other shrines, was destroyed and sacked by the ruthless Norse-
men, the ruin of the house and the devoted self-sacrifice of its
inmates were notorious among other similar acts of ruin and
self-sacrifice which distinguished that wild and reckless age..
I^^:7(5B^el.
j|AtW
36 THE NORMAN DUKES.
Richard Sans-Peur — so runs the Norman story — was
intensely interested when he heard the marvellous legend
which was preserved at his favourite house and birthplace,
and caused diligent search to be made for any traces of the
old sacred treasure. Beneath the altar of the new church —
an altar which his father had erected as near as possible
to the altar of the old ruined Merovingian House — Duke
Richard found the trunk of the famous fig-tree, and in the
fig-tree, securely hidden, the two little leaden phials which held
the remains of the Precious Blood. The phials were placed
in a stone pillar, hard by the altar of the new and splendid
church which the great Norman Duke proceeded to erect.
Tp t(P -BP ^V Tp ^ T^S
When Richard Sans-Peur lived and built his new and
grand abbey round the altar which enshrined the relic of the
Precious Blood, the last quarter of the tenth century had
still to run its course. We are now in the same quarter of
the nineteenth century. Nine hundred eventful years have
come and gone, and the mighty Fecamp abbey still towers
over the little city grouped around it. Some of those grey-
blue walls flecked with lichen of the tenderest green and
brown — scarred with the winter storms of nigh a thousand
years — some of those strong walls beautified with the dim
sweet colouring, are the walls which Richard, Duke of the
Normans, grandson of the sea-king Rollo, planned, and
which, the story tells us, he helped now and again to build
with his own hands. Within the sanctuary the guardian of
the holy ancient fane still shows the devout pilgrim or the
careless stranger a low white marble shrine built into a
massive pillar behind the great altar ; a white shrine sculp-
tured with the quaint sweet grace of the Renaissance period,
in which the little leaden phials of the old legend still rest,
guarding that sacred treasure of the Blood.
DUKE RICHARD I. SANS-PEUR.
37
n.
Norrr)&J).-Work,-v_-^
During the nine
hundred years which
have elapsed since
Duke Richard rebuilt
the ancient pile, the
precious relic has doubtless contributed largely to the fame
and fortune of the Abbey, which, until the great revolution,
ranked among the first of the chief religious foundations of
France. We trace it through the centuries. In 1448 the
theological faculty of Paris gave an especial sanction to the
38 THE NORMAN DUKES.
credibility of the relic. The words of this singular approval
were: "Non repugnat pietati fidelium credere quod aliquid
de sanguine Christi effuso tempore Passionis remanserit in
terris."
In 1 710 a formal and official visit of examination was
made by the then abbot of the Royal Abbey of the Holy
Trinity of Fecamp, de Villeroy, accompanied by several
high officials. An account of this official visit and examina-
tion was drawn up and certified to by a long list of witnesses.
From a recess {inie armoirc) carefully fastened up, hollowed
out of the great pillar by the High Altar, which for centuries
had been the traditional resting-place of the Relic, they took
a little silver-gilt reliquary, shaped like a tower, about four
inches long and two inches broad. In this silver tower were
two narrow silver bottles, and in these, two little leaden
phials, which were filled with a red coloured dust. The
phials and their contents, after careful examination, were
reverently replaced in the great pillar.
In the Terror, 1793, one of the dispossessed monks of
the Abbey — one Dom Letellier — before the great Church
was pillaged and desecrated, contrived to secrete the famous
Relic. When the Abbey became the parish church of
Fecamp, the sacred treasure was restored, and again
replaced in its old home in the pillar behind the altar.
On certain days the traveller will still see a little crowd of
worshippers kneeling round the pillar, and receiving back
from the officiating priest rosaries and medals, which they
had given him to press against the bars of the shrine where
the Relic rests.*
It is a strange devotion, perhaps, but not quite an unreal
one, this realistic form of trusting to the Precious Blood of
Jesus.
* The writer saw such a group of worshippers as he wandered reverently
through the grey old abbey of Duke Richard Sans-Peur and his successors in the
summer of the year of Grace, 1885.
DUKE RICHARD I. SANS-PEUR.
39
Whence came the marvellous legend of the Relic of
Fecamp ? That it existed about the middle of the tenth
century is certain ; now was it invented to induce Duke
Richard to rebuild the old Abbey with greater magnificence ?
There is no question but that for a very long period, probably
several hundred years before his time, a sanctuary, held in
high estimation, had existed on the spot. We can trace its
existence far
Merovingian
not possibly, in
times, owe its
same strange
The roman-
Richard Sans-
hood are well
the King of
advantage of
which follow
of his fath
laume L
took posses
Duke under
bringing up
prince, whom
a ward of the
his own eye
ment of the
back to the
times. Did it
those far back
sanctity to the
old legend ?
tic incidents of
Peur's boy-
known. — How
France, taking
the confusion
ed the murder
Duke Guil-
gue-Epee,
sion of the boy
pretence of
the young
he claimed as
Crown, under
— his ill-treat-
boy, the mar-
vellous escape from the palace on the Rock of Laon with
Osmond de Centvilles, — the return to Normandy and the
consequent hatred on the part of the Normans of King Louis
and his people, are incidents well known. This episode in
the early years of the third Duke of the Normans evidently
increased the bitter hate which seems especially to have
existed between the Carlovineian House and the Normans.
40 THE NORMAN DUKES.
The various principalities, into which that great country,
known in modern times under the name of France and the
Low Countries, was divided, principalities which were in some
way knit together by a slender bond of obedience to the
King w'ho lived at Laon, agreed in one point — hate and
jealousy of the Norman race. These intruders for a long
period had been the restless and relentless plunderers and
devastatorsof" France." Then the wandering freebooters had
settled in the northern districts of the country, and in an
inconceivably short space of time had adapted themselves to
the manners and customs of the race among whom they had
intruded, and had laid the foundation of a powerful and inde-
pendent state. In the arts of peace as well as of war they
had shown themselves superior to the race among whom
they had settled. The French people revenged themselves
by looking upon their formidable neighbours as pirates.
Their hatred was shown in the murder of Guillaume Longue-
Epee — a deed the guilt of which was probably shared in by
not a few of the great French rulers — and the same jealous
hatred was manifested subsequently in the captivity and ill-
treatment of his son and heir, the boy Duke Richard Sans-
Peur (the Fearless).
The long reign of this Richard, a period which extended
over more than fifty years, was marked by the gradual
consolidation of the Norman power over the north and west
of France and far into the interior. With the exception of
that great House, afterwards known under the famous name
of Capet, which ruled over Paris and, roughly speaking, all
the central Provinces, the race of Rollo became, under
Richard Sans-Peur, far the most powerful of all the princely
families who ruled in France and the Low Countries, including
the Royal Carlovingian who reigned nominally the king of all
in the great rock fortress of Laon. The Norman Court of Rouen
or Fdcamp was often the theme of the trouveur's verses.
DUKE RICHARD I. SANS-PEUR. 41
In these we catch sight of this early specimen of a
busy, many-coloured mediaeval scene — the many clergy, the
trains of young knights, the minstrels, the men-at-arms,
— all thronging the Court and endeavouring to win the
favour of the wealthy and powerful Duke, better able than
other princes of his time to reward and encourage all aspirants
after any distinction, whether in peace or war. It was amidst
these gay and splendid surroundings of the Court of the
third Duke that arose those great baronial families of
Normandy afterwards so famous in the wars which led to the
subjugation of England. In the history of England during
the Middle Ages, the names of many of these great Houses
occur again and again in the pages of Froissart and Monstre-
let. The ancestors of many of the men who were foremost
in the Crusades appear first in the long reign of Richard
Sans-Peur and his son. The founders of the Houses of Haute-
ville, Montfort, Montgommeri, de Bohun, Seymour, Valence,
Mowbray, and of many another renowned noble family,
were among the courtiers, the sons, the soldiers of Duke
Richard and his son. Some think that it was in this gay and
brilliant Court that the feudal system, already existing in a
rudimentary shape, first took firm root, and was elaborated
into something like its mediaeval form. It is quite certain
that in Normandy French literature arose. The Norman
trouveurs were subsequently famous above their fellows
throughout the countries of the Langue d'Oil.*
But it is curious that it is in other d.x\^ foreign nationalities
that the Normans and their Dukes, great though they were
at home in their own land, worked the greatest and most
startling results.
"It was Richard's plastic talent," quaintly writes Pal-
grave, " which raised those Normans whose vigour, infused
into the fainting Anglo-Saxon race, has girdled them round
the globe."
• See note on page 18.
G
42 THE NORMAX DUKES.
But the Norman conquest of England, fraught with such
mighty consequences on the world's story, was in Richard
Sans-Peur's days still in a dim and distant future, although
the foundations of the mighty power which rendered the
conquest of England possible were in those days of the Dukes
being swiftly and securely laid. The immediate work of Richard
and his people, however, lay with their neighbours in that great
land of France which the Normans had chosen for their home.
For a long time a deadly struggle had been going on
between Celtic and Teutonic elements for supremacy in
France. The kingly house of the Carlovingians, heirs of the
Emperor Charlemagne, may be said to have represented the
Teutonic element in France ; the Dukes of Paris, the Celtic
element. During the long life-and-death struggle between
these two races for supremacy, the mighty Norman influence
steadily supported the Celtic party ; and during his reign of
fifty years Richard Sans-Peur played the part of the loyal and
generous son, and later, the brother, of the Dukes of Paris.
It is difficult to explain the reason of their devoted preference
— perhaps jealousy of the .sovereign lord at Laon, who
claimed a supremacy over the haughty Norman chieftain ;
possibly the immediate neighbourhood of the Paris Dukes,
whose court and customs were taken as the model for the
splendid courts at Rouen and Fecamp, influenced Norman
opinion; not unlikely the treachery of King Louis d'Outre-
mer towards the dead Guillaume Longue-Epee and his sub-
sequent faithless behaviour to the little orphaned Duke
weighed heavily, too, in the scale. The last Carlovingian
sovereigns were by no means i\\e faineant, unworthy princes
they have often been represented — certainly not forfeiting, as
did the Merovingians who preceded them, their supremacy
through their own sloth and misdeeds.
The kingly heirs of the mighty Emperor Charles seem
to have been vigorous, able men, but they were over- matched;
DUKE RICHARD I. SANS-PEUR. 43
and the great Revolution which for ever destroyed the
Germanic influence, and gave the hereditary supremacy of the
Carlovingians in France to another race, was really in great
measure owing to the Norman power, which threw in its lot,
heart and soul, with the Dukes of Paris.
The race of Rolio may fairly be said to have created
modern France. In the days of Richard Sans-Peur, the broad
kingdom of the Western Franks became in great measure
Celtic. The Romance tongue — the Langue d'oil — rapidly
supplanted the Teutonic dialects in all the northern and
western provinces. Rouen and Paris were the great centres
of the new kingdom. The Normans became more and more
French, without losing, however, the old northern spirit of
adventure and reckless daring. Nor was it until this strange
people had exhausted themselves in their appropriation of
South Italy and Sicily, and still more in their marvellous
conquest of the great Anglo-Saxon empire, that Rouen and
the great Duchy lost its independence. For some one
hundred and fifty years or more after the coronation of Hugh
Capet of Paris, the mighty Dukes of Normandy ruled as
equals with the new Kings of France, and exercised over
European politics an equal, if not a superior, influence to the
Capetian over-lords whom they had assisted to place on the
throne of the Carlovingians.
Like his father and grandfather, Duke Richard married,
with all Christian rites, a princess of the higher lineage, but,
as in the case of Rollo and William Longue-Ep6e, she was
his wife but in name. Emma, the sister of Hugh Capet,
afterwards King of France, the dear brother in arms and life-
long friend of Richard, was chosen from childhood for this
strange loveless position. It was a sad and, apparently,
unmerited fate, for the Duchess Emma appears to have been
endowed with all possible virtues and attractions. Her great
beauty was sung by the trouveurs. But the princess died as
44 THE NORMAN DUKES.
she had lived — childless, neglected, unloved. The old Pagan
instincts led Richard Sans-Peur to prefer an unlawful, un-
blessed union, after the manner of his Danish forefathers.
Guenora, a Danish girl, according to some traditions of
great descent, was the mother of his son and successor, Duke
Richard II. The Norman historians relate how, after the
death of Emma, Richard Sans-Peur married this Guenora
with Christian rites and ceremonies. Several of the sons and
nephews and kinsmen of Richard and Guenora became the
founders of great and historic Norman houses — Lindsay,
Gifford, Tankerville, Gournay, Warrene, Mortimer, and others
whose names in after days appeared conspicuous on the roll
of the Abbey of the Battle — names written large on many a
stirring page of English history.
There were several daughters by this Pagan marriage,
celebrated for their beauty, who filled some of the highest
places among the world-rulers of the day. There was Maud,
Countess of Blois and Champagne ; Havisa, Duchess of
Brittany; and Emma, the Lady of England so well-known in
Anglo-Saxon story, twice the regnant Queen, twice the
dowager Queen of England, mother of King Hardicnute,
and of King Edward the Confessor.
Fifty years of restless, brilliant, busy life prematurely
aged the third great Duke. When scarcely past middle age
his health declined. Worn out, he gradually failed before he
had reached his sixtieth year.
Weak and ailing, and suffering no little pain, but with all
his great mental powers still as fresh and vigorous as ever,
he went to his loved palace and abbey of Fecamp and
prepared quietly to die. With all care and forethought he
arranged the succession of his son Richard, Guenora' s eldest
son. He gathered the Norman nobles round him and
received their homage for his son. Richly he endowed his
other numerous sons, commending them all to the brotherly
DUKE RICHARD I. SANS-PEVR. 45
love and care of his eldest born, and very generously did the
young Richard carry out his father's plans. This noble
group of boys, as we have seen, became the ancestors of
some of the proudest and most illustrious houses in Europe.
Outside the south transept of the great abbey-church he
loved, Duke Richard had placed a huge stone chest. On
the eve of every Lord's day this stone chest was filled with
the finest wheat corn. The poor of Fecamp were invited to
fill from this chest a little measure of grain, and to this
was added a small dole of money.
When the end came Duke Richard was found to have
left careful directions respecting his burial. The well-known
stone chest which had held so often the wheat for the poor
was to be his coffin. The coffin was not to be interred in
the Fecamp abbey — he said he was not worthy to lie there
— but outside, near where the great stone chest had stood.
He was to be buried just beneath the Abbey wall, where
from the roof, probably through an overhanging gargoyle,
the rain of heaven might ever and anon drop upon the
earth which covered his last resting-place.
" Un sarkeu fist appareillier
Lez la meissiere del mustier
A mettre empres sa mort sun cors
Sur la gutiere de defers." — Roman de Ron.
CHAPTER IV.
Duke Richard II. le Box (" L'Ami des Moines"). —
Duke Richard III.
His son scrupulously carried out Richard Sans-Peur's dying-
wishes, but after a time built a little chapel opening into
the Abbey over his father's grave. This second Richard,
the fourth of the Norman Dukes, who reigned some thirty
years over the now renowned and mighty Duchy, like his
three predecessors was a man of conspicuous ability. The
old loyal friendship of his father for the new royal house of
Trance (the Capetian) was kept up, and for all the thirty years
of Richard's reign, Normandy and its dependent provinces
were the bulwarks of the Trench kingdom. In return for
this steady friendship and assistance the Kings of Trance of
the house of Capet treated the Norman Duke and his people
as brothers-in-arms, as belonging to the same nationality as
Trenchmen, and no longer as Northern pirates. Yet in spite
of their recognition by the royal house, a recognition the
father and grandfather of Duke Richard II. had wished for
in vain — the Norman having ever longed with a passionate
longing to be ranked as one of the polished and brilliant peoples
among whom he had settled — Duke Richard and his nobles
still kept up the closest connection and friendship with the old
DUKE RICHARD 11. LE BOX.
47
northern father-
land. The fear-
less race, dur-
ing- the reign of
this great Duke,
while being
Frenchmen in all
that was admir-
able and desir-
able, remained
Norsemen in cou-
rage and spirit
and love for ad-
venture. It was
this courage and
spirit which had
enabled them to
seat a new dy-
nasty on the
throne of France,
a dynasty which
reigned with an
unbroken suc-
cession for more
than eight cen-
turies. Itwas the
same dauntless
spirit which
helped them to
conquer the fair-
est provinces of
Italy and Sicily,
which left them victors on the stricken field of Hastings and
masters of England.
48 THE A'ORMAiX DUKES.
The court of Duke Richard le Bon* was modelled upon
the court of the Kings of France; probably it went far beyond
its model in its rigid etiquette. The great-grandson of the
Viking Rollo, the wild freebooter, surrounded himself with
all the state and pomp which we are accustomed to associate
with the mighty Plantagenet or Valois kings. He would
admit none but " gentlemen " (his chroniclers used this
familiar term apparently for the first time) about his sacred
person. His father, Richard Sans-Peur, was described in a
contemporary chronicle as " Dux Piratarum," and yet
chivalry and feudality appear in some measure developed in
the days of his heir, Duke Richard le Bon. The courts of
Rouen and Fecamp in the first years of the eleventh century
evidently present the first examples of the splendid pageantry
which was one of the great characteristic features of a later
age.
Indeed, the curious early aristocratic development of the
court and government under Duke Richard II. was one of
the principal incentives to a formidable revolt of the peasantry
which took place in this reign, a revolt which was crushed
with extreme sternness and even cruelty.
But the most striking incident in the days of the fourth
of these great Dukes was the outcome of the restless spirit of
adventure.
In old days the ancestors of these Normans had found
those ice-bound countries which fringed the Baltic and far-
stretching North Seas too narrow and too poor for them
and their fast-increasing race. They were hemmed in by
stormy seas, and often by ice-bound waters. The spirit of
adventure, the desire for gold and beautiful things, the
longing for a fairer and brighter home, had led them to
southern seas year after year. Their black ships became
* Besides the epithet of " le Bon," the chroniclers sometimes style Duke
Richard II. " I'Ami des Moines."
DUKE RICHARD II. IE BOX. 49
the terror of the peoples who lived along the seaboard of
Europe, and even far up the great rivers, into the very heart
of England, Germany, and France.
In the course of the reign of the fourth Duke, Richard le
Bon, the spirit of adventure again seems to have seized the
Norman-Frenchman. The fair land they had won in France
became too narrow for some of these restless sons of the
Vikings, and we hear of two bold attempts to make new
settlements in the far south. The first of these — we know
little or nothing of the details — seems to have failed. The
Norman tried to win his way in the great beautiful peninsula
of the west, but the Spanish invasion came to nothing. The
Norman ships, with the Norman knights, of the hapless expe-
dition, never returned. They made no settlement in Spain,
and the attempt seems never to have been renewed.
Far different was the result of the other wild and daring
attempt at southern conquest.
Some ten years before the death of Duke Richard II.
(le Bon), a company of Normans, returning from the Holy
Land, had fought and beaten back a fleet of .Saracens besieg-
ing the South Italian city of Salerno. Gaimar, the Prince of
Salerno, struck with their splendid daring, asked them to
remain with him, and offered them rich gifts if they would
enter his service. The Norman knights refused. "We
fight for our religion, not for gold," they said. The Italian
prince then begged them to send over from Normandy to his
Court any of their brothers-in-arms who cared for fighting
the Pagans, promising a rich reward. The response to this
invitation was the beginning of those famous Italian wander-
ings which surrounded the Norman name, during the eleventh
and followingcentury, with the most marvelloushaloofromance.
Quickly obeying the first invitation to Salerno, little companies
of Norman soldiers and perhaps some adventurers wandered
southwards. Their splendid bravery, their skill in negotia-
H
50 THE NORMAN DUKES.
tion, their marvellous aptitude for government, won for
themselves countships, dukedoms, principalities, and king-
doms. The whole of the beautiful South of Italy and Sicily,
with its fair cities, its boundless wealth, its vineyards and
oliveyards, gradually became Norman. One noble family
from the Cotentin were distinguished beyond all other
knightly adventurers. The castle of Hauteville, in the
neighbourhood of Coutances, furnished in the persons of the
sons of Tancred, the lord of Hauteville, a group of counts,
dukes, and kings who, for some two hundred years, power-
fully influenced the fortunes of Southern Europe, and all the
storied lands which formed the Mediterranean seaboard.
In Southern Italy there was but a little stretch of blue sea
which separated them from Sicily, the fairest island in the
world — Sicily, the garden of the Mediterranean, with its
matchless cities of Palermo and Messina. The pennons of
the Hautevilles were not long before they crossed the narrow
streak of sea. But in Sicily, the Norman Viking — for the
Hauteville, whether called Guiscard, Roger, or Bohemond,
strangely resembled his wild, freebooting ancestor — found a
doughtier foe, a sterner antagonist than the effeminate Lom-
bard or degenerate Greek of Central or Southern Italy.
Across the narrow strait, the Norman found the Saracen in
possession of and determined to do battle for his charmed
Sicilian land. Here the fighting was a reality, and lasted
many years, but in the end the Norman skill and bravery
triumphed completely, and the crown of Sicily was added to
the long and many-coloured roll of Norman triumphs.
In the hour of their proudest successes, the greatest of the
Hautevilles, Guiscard, Roger, and Bohemond, we learn, even
dreamed of winning and wearing the diadem of the Eastern
empire, and for a time even that superb prize seemed to be
within their reach. But it was not to be. After a century
and a half of brilliant rule in Italy and Sicil}', the Sicilian
DUKE RICHARD 11. LE BON.
51
branch of the house of Hauteville became virtually extinct.*
Only a few years after the death of the last Norman King of
S
V
V' ma^h k^Mmy^ • • sic
Sicily, Norman-
dy itself became
a province of the
French monarchy.f
while in England, at the
same period, the Norman
name and influence was a
thing of the past.
The Normans who fought
under the Duke William at
Hastings had created another
and a greater England, and
- . insensibly, in less than one
hundred and fifty years, the
conquerors had been lost in the conquered. Normandy, the
The date of the conquest and annexation of Sicily by the Emperor, Henry
VI., was A.D. 1 194.
t Philip Augustus, King of Krance, formally annexed Normandy to the Crown
of France, ad. 1204, during the reign of Juhn Lackland in England.
52 THE NORMAN DUKES.
ancient province, was wrested from King John by Philip, and
united to the Crown of France in 1204.
Richard le Bon died at Fecamp after an eventful reign of
thirty years — during which period the name and power of the
Normans had enormously increased. He was laid by his father,
Richard Sans-Peur, in the chapel built over the grave under
the south transept of the great Fecamp Abbey — the grave on
which the rain drippings from the gargoyles of the minster
roof might fall continually.
In the reign of the Angevin King of England, Henry II.
(in the year 1162), in the presence of this " tres illustre et
glorieux seigneur," as the contemporary record styles him,
the bodies of the two Dukes — Richard Sans-Peur and Richard
le Bon — were translated from the tomb dug originally under the
dripping gargoyles of the transept to the more honourable
resting-place close to the high altar of the Abbey — a resting-
place which these Dukes refused to reserve for themselves,
deeming themselves unworthy.
A great company of prelates, mitred abbots, and nobles
were present with King Henry II. when the translation of the
Dukes' bodies took place.
Some three and a half centuries later, the grave, by the
high altar was again officially opened (a.d. 1518), and two
lead coffins, slightly injured, were found, containing the re-
mains of the two Dukes. New coffins were provided, and
the bones of the great Norman princes reverently replaced*
again by the high altar.
^ * tF t^S tP '5t" t1>
Duke Richard le Bon left three sons. The eldest, Richard,
had been acknowledged the heir to the broad Duchy before
his father had been laid under the shadow of the roof of the
The exact position of the grave which now contains these remains is unknown.
It is believed the coffins lie in front of the present high altar of the abbey-church, on
the north side.
DUKE RICHARD II. LE BOX.
53
rife
14 • lijy
■^■1^^2S?-i
^,/'^S
Fecamp Abbey. The second, Robert, received as his por-
tion the province of Hiesmois, a beautiful district to the south
and west of Caen. The third, Mauger, took holy orders, and
eventually became Archbishop of Rouen of infamous memory.
The brothers Richard and Robert seem to have fallen out
54 THE NORMAN DUKES.
directly after their father's death about the possession of the
mighty Castle of Falaise — which was in the heart of the
younger brother's portion. We hear of a war, a reconciliation,
and then of the sudden death of the young Duke Richard —
men said by poison administered by his brother Robert's
hand, — at a great feasting at Rouen. The true story will
never be known, but the dark shadow of an awful crime
seemed ever to brood over and cloud the younger brother's
life. Without opposition this Robert became Duke of the
Normans — in a little more than a year after his father
(Richard le Bon) was laid to sleep in the Fecamp Abbey.
The dead Richard was married, or more accurately be-
trothed, to a child, Adele, the daughter of King Robert of
France. In after years the child-widow married Baudouin de
Lisle, Count of Flanders. Her daughter was Matilda, queen
of William the Conqueror; hence apparently the reason of the
Church being so long opposed to the marriage of William,
who was nephew of Richard— William and Matilda being thus
within the forbidden degrees.
CHAPTER V.
Duke Robert Le Magnifiquk.
<-^s*.
■^^^^^tT:::::— The Centre of interest
*^H^;£_~*j_. in the eventful Nor-
Ch,
man story is now removed
from Rouen and Fecamp
to that fortress which still
stands in its gloomy state-
liness one of the mightiest
ruins in Europe — Falaise. It was in this palace fortress
56
THE NORMAN DUKES.
^^<:7
", S**"
.*..^
-^-i
that Duke Robert
loved to dwell dur-
ing his short reign
of some six years.
It was there, at
Falaise, during his
brother Duke Rich-
ard's lifetime, that
the romance of Ro-
bert's lifewas acted.
Robert, so runs
the true story,
fell passionately
in love with Ar-
lette, the young
daughter of Ful-
bert, a tanner of .
the town of Fa-
laise. He used to
watch his love,
men say, from a
window in the mighty donjon
as she washed clothes with her
companions in a fountain just
beneath the castle walls. The
old scenery of Robert's and
Arlette's idyl singularly
enough is unchanged, though
some eight hundred and fifty
summers and winters have passed over the little town and the
mighty castle.
The huge frowning donjon, seemingly growing out of the
precipitous rock, still towers above the little clustered houses as
in the days when the banner of the great Duke of Normandy
DUKE ROBERT LE MAGNIFIQUE.
57
floated over it. It is the same donjon to look at outwardly,
though, within, it is little more than four mighty empty walls.
The round-headed Norman window, through which, men say,
Robert watched for Arlette, is still there, and a bit of Robert's
room. In the valley below the castle the little spring, where
Arlette and her girl companions washed clothes, still sparkles
in the sun rays which fail to brighten the awful gloom of the
fortress above. The very tanyard which belongs to the old
story is still within a stone's throw of " Arlette's fountain."
The story of the loves of Robert and Arlette, and the birth
of their child, afterwards the greatest and most renowned
prince in Christendom, William the Conqueror, was dwelt
upon by the Trou-
. ' veurs. It was evi-
.•- '^, ' dently a favourite
theme for the min-
strelsy of the eleventh
and twelfth centuries.
The beauty of the
girl is dilated on :
her feet rivalled in
whiteness the lily and
the snow : —
(onaicfcr
I
" Que neifs est pale, et flors
deliz."
Benoit de Saint More.
Nothing could be
dreamed of more gra-
cious than Arlette's
beauty : —
" E s'avait la color plus fine
Qui flors de rose ne d'es-
pine,
N^s bien scant, boche et
monton
58 THE NORMAN DUKES.
Riens n'ont plus avenant fa^on,
Ne plus bel col, ne plus beaux braz." (31,250)
Bt-noit de Saint Hfore.
(Trouveur XII. Si^cle.)
Her chamber in the mighty Falaise Donjon was vaulted,
says the Trouveur, and adorned with gold and colours. Does
he mean tapestried, or literally beautified with colouring and
gilding?
" Deci qu'en la chambre voutice
Ou en maint image peintice
A or vermeil et h. colors.''
Bcnoit de Sai)it More.
There is no authentic tradition which positively connects
the dark crime of fratricide with Duke Robert. There was,
after the reconciliation of the brothers, a great banquet at
Rouen, in the course of which poison was, it is said, mingled
with the wine. The Duke and some of the guests died, and
Robert reigned in his brother's stead, and the dark story was
hushed and only whispered. Duke Robert's pilgrimage to
the Holy Land, some six years later, men said was undertaken
out of bitter remorse. The ill-fated journey was arranged,
notwithstanding the urgent remonstrances of his best friends
and most loyal supporters among the Norman Barons, who
looked forward to the chances of their sovereign's death
during the long and dangerous pilgrimage. There was an
heir certainly, the son of Robert and Arlette. But the
heir was a child; and the mother, the tanner of Falaise's
daughter, was scorned by the haughty kinsmen of the Duke
and the proud descendants of RoUo's companions.
But Robert's mind was made up. He would go to Jeru-
salem. Was it not hopeless remorse for some awful crime
which forbade all rest to the unhappy Duke? Before starting
he assembled many of the chief nobles of the Norman Duchy
round him at Falaise. To these, announcing his settled
purpose of praying at the Holy Sepulchre, he gave his little
DUKE ROBERT LE iMAGNIFIQUE.
59
son in solemn wardship. They reluctantly swore fealty to
the boy William, then seven or eight years old, and Duke
Robert started on his fatal journey to Jerusalem, and neither
child nor guardians ever looked on his face again.
There were
many strange
stories told of the
Duke's wild con-
pilgrimage. His
often that of a
was sadly un-
flung away great
reckless prodiga-
duct on that long
demeanour was
man whose mind
hin ged. He
treasures in his
lity. He would
cause, for instance, his mules to be shod with silver, and the
precious shoes to be fastened only slightly to the hoofs,
forbidding his attendant to pick up those cast on the road.
Before he reached his goal he sickened with a deadly disorder,
6o
THE NORMAN DUKES.
some said it
was poison,
but it is not
necessary to
imagine a
crime here.
The sad com-
pany reached
theHolyCity;
the dying
Duke prayed
as he wished
at the sacred
places, then
hasting away,
commenced
his journey
h omeward.
The end came
at Nic3ea, and
Duke Robert
the Magnifi-
cent, as his
contempora-
ries term him,
sleeps his last
sleep in the
C a t h edral
there.
*
*♦*♦**
The little boy, Arlette's son, is now the Norman Duke;
surrounded by jealous kinsmen, by turbulent ambitious
Barons, men. who united in despising and hating his mother,
the tanner's daughter. With only a {&\^ faithful friends near
DUKE ROBERT LE MAGNIFIQUE.
6r
him, William, the future conqueror of England, the greatest
sovereign of the age, began his strange and lonely career in
his dead father's loved Falaise.
We have before us still scarcely changed the scenes
amidst which he passed many of his child-days, the little
town, the green hills, the curious rocks, dating from the dim
far back days when Druids worshipped there ; the rocks which
possibly gave the name Falaise {fchen) to the town and castle :
the two grey old churches in which the boy worshipped—
62
THE NORMAN DUKES.
changed, but only slightly ; and over all towers the grim
mighty Donjon, where the boy Duke lived — after eight and
a half centuries scarcely a ruin in its massive outer walls.
But, though Duke Robert was dead and was sleeping far
away in Asian Nicsea, the romantic story of the beautiful
Arlette's life was far from being closed. Two years after the
death of Duke Robert she married a Norman knight of high
repute, Herluin De Conteville. She lived many years with
De Conteville as his honoured wife, and in the annals of her
son's eventful reign occupied a quiet but distinguished place.
She and her husband, among other untold works, built and
founded the Abbey at Grestain, the fief of De Conteville, and
there tradition says .she and her husband were buried.
But Arlette, the
mother of the Con-
queror, has yet another
title to fame. After
her marriage with De
Conteville she had
three children, a girl
and two boys. Muriel,
the girl, became in af-
ter years Countess of
Albemarle, and then
Countess of Troyes.
Without her boys the
sad and brilliant story
of Harold and the Con-
quest would have lost
the two most striking
figures of the splendid
group who gathered
round King William ;
one of these was Robert,
DUKE ROBERT LE MAGNIFJQUE. 63
Count of Mortain, afterwards Earl of Cornwall, the other
was Odo, the famous Bishop of Bayeux, so well and terribly
known in England as Earl of Kent. These two fought
on either side of their brother William, during the long
and awful day of Hastings, and to these were given the first
and chiefest rewards when the Norman Duke and English
King parcelled out to his soldiers, hapless conquered
England.
CHAPTER VI.
Duke William (The Conqueror).
Each of the six Norman Dukes has a town of the Duchy
connected with his special life story. Rollo gave back its
beauty and strength to the fair capital on the broad Seine,
where he lived during his last twenty marvellous years. The
fortunes of Guillaume Longue-Epee, his famous son, too, are
closely connected with Rouen and its neighbourhood. The
father and the son both sleep in the noble Minster which still
throws its mighty shadow over the city they loved. Richard
Sans-Peur and his son, Richard II., chose as their favourite
home the time-honoured but deserted harbour and shrine of
Holy Fecamp. There the third and fourth Dukes still rest.
The memories of the two Richards haunt the grey and mighty
Minster, which for ever will be inseparably connected with
them. The vast Donjon of Falaise and its beautiful surround-
ings are still eloquent with the story of the loves of Duke
Robert the Magnificent and Arlette, and their boy, afterwards
the Conqueror of England.* The sixth, and most famous of
them all, the son of Robert and Arlette, seems to belong in a
peculiar manner to the city by the quiet waters of the Orne.
When we think of the Conqueror we never associate his
mighty name with Rouen or London, Winchester or Glou-
cester, where so many years of his fateful life were spent,
* The fifth Duke Richard III. is left out here, as his Hfe and reign were prema-
turely cut short. His reign lasted scarcely more than one year.
DUKE WILLIAM (THE CONQUEROR).
65
where deeds were done by him, and words were spoken,
which for centuries have influenced the story of the world ;
but our thoughts are at once turned to Caen, where
the King Duke and his loved Queen built their abbeys of
expiation, and where they were left to sleep after their restless,
brilliant life-journey.
On a rising ground, just on the city confines, stands the
abbey where Queen Matilda rests. Time and the destroyer's
hand have been strangely kind to the Abbaye aux Dames.
Here, after more than eight centuries, but little changed, her
loved church is still
the house of prayer
and praise ; almost
perfect within and
without, the Trinite
Abbaye remains the
matchless specimen
of that famous ar-
chitecture to which
the Norman gave
his name.
Matilda's Abbey
on the hill at Caen
possesses an advan-
tage unshared by so
many of the great
churches of France.
There is scarcely
anything disfiguring
or mean in the im-
mediate surround-
ings. The great
hospital buildings.
66
THE NORMAN DUKES.
which really adjoin the church, are scarcely seen — while the
existence of a splendid and stately home for the sick poor,*
occupying the place of the old religious house, and thus
surrounding the royal abbey and its tomb, would seem in
perfect accord with the mind of the noble foundress, who,
with all her faults, loved well the poor and suffering. It
stands, does her abbey church, on one side of a large
open, solitary "place," with a few mean and squalid houses
in the distance filling up one side, and a ruined church
dating in part from the eleventh and twelt'th centuries, and
some stunted trees on another; the hospital walls closing
up the third side, and a great empty partly grass-grown
This Hospital, with its broad cloisters and ample gardens, is one of the
noblest in France.
DUKE WILLIAM (THE CONQUEROR).
67
space in the centre. The whole of the surroundings are
unlovely and sad-looking, but all far enough removed not
to distract the eye from Matilda's abbey. On a summer
evening I have watched the varying sky tints from that
poor sad "place" on the hill at Caen, with the noble
abbey standing out clear cut and sharply against the pale
blue sky ; and then turning round have seen the tall spires of
St. Stephen across the town, keeping watch and ward over the
still grander church, which for centuries held the grave of
Matilda's husband, the mighty Conqueror. What memories
are called up by the sight of these two silent witnesses — the
two royal tombs ! What thoughts of those brilliant stirring
lives whose story was fraught with such vast issues to the
peoples of modern Europe !
But the boy whom Duke Robert the Magnificent left in
the Castle of Falaise when he set out on his ill-fated pilgrim-
"■Wfi.
-^^^ J!Wi tjff'rrv 1 w V iM. re ' 'i\f'' k • ;i-f ''ttin ^i---. ■•SMI' >■
^.m.^^r-y J«
B»i// by Queen Matilda
68
THE NORMAN DUKES.
age to Jerusalem, had a long and weary life-journey to
traverse before he reached his last resting-place at Caen.
The Conqueror was scarcely sixty years old when he got his
death-hurt galloping over the blazing ruins of Mantes ; but
he had lived over fifty years as Duke and King — fifty years
of splendour and success, such as fall to the lot of very few
even of the most successful sons of men ; fifty full years of
splendour and success, but attended all along with labour and
sorrow — a labour and sorrow which increased with each step
upwards on his road to his lonely greatness.*
William's child-days were few and evil. He was not nine
years old when Duke Robert died. His guardians kept his
mother, Arlette, away from him, fearing lest the jealousy
• William the Conqueror was born in the Castle of Falaise. Many of his
early years of childhood and boyhood were spent here.
^M-^^kti'^-^^'' ■ -
. ~ ■- j>'^
DUKE WILLIAM (THE CONQUEROR).
69
with which the tan-
ner's daughter was
viewed by the proud
Norman Ba-
rons would
injure the
little Prince's
cause. Fa-
therless and
motherless,
surrounded
by stern
grave chief-
tains, the joy-
less child-
hood soon
came to an
end ; and at
an age when
a boy is still
careless and
thoughtless,
Duke Wil-
liam had
learned many
70 THE NORMAN DUKES.
of the harsher and graver lessons of life. Very early in
the midst of those haughty and turbulent Norman Barons,
he displayed the powers of a born ruler of men, as well
as the talents of a daring and skilful commander. His
athletic vigour was remarkable even in that age of deeds
of personal strength and bravery ; men said none could bend
Duke William's bow. In all warlike exercises he displayed not
only remarkable vigour but singular grace. At the battle of
Hastings the greatest of those strong and mighty dukes, the
successors of Rollo, was in his full vigour and prime. He
was just forty years old when he met the last and perhaps
the noblest of the Saxon kings on the hill of Senlac, where
the Abbey of the Battle now stands, and his splendid and
knightly bearing when, all armed before the battle, he sprang
on the noble Spanish horse, the gift of King Alfonso of
Spain, excited a cry of astonishment and admiration. In the
Roman de Rou, Haimer, the Viscount of Thouars, utters the
voice of the mighty Norman host, when at that supreme
moment he cried out that "never was such a gallant knight
seen under heaven, and that the noble Count of the Normans
would become a yet nobler King of the English."
The life of the Conqueror may be roughly divided into
two divisions — some thirty years as Duke of Normandy, and
twenty-one as King of England. The first thirty may be
regarded as an education for the last famous period, so
momentous to all Englishmen. The thirty stirring years of
the Norman period were marked by four great landmarks :
the three battle-fields of Val-es-Dunes, a.d. 1047, IMortemer,
A.D. 1054, Varaville, a.d. 1058, and the final Conquest of
Maine, a.d. 1063.
The victory of Val-es-Dunes closes the revolt of his
cousin and feudatory, Guy of Burgundy, Lord of Brionne, the
Castle on the Risle, near to the then unknown Monastery of
Bee, which afterwards, in its famous Prior Lanfranc, exercised
DVKE WILLIAM (THE CONQUEROR). ~ I
SO vast an influence on William's policy and fortunes. With
Guy were leagued those mighty Norman Lords who were
jealous of the young Duke, and who aimed at a life of robber
independence. With the aid of the King of France the young
Duke, then scarcely twenty-one, completely crushed these
rebels, in whom the wild untamed spirit of the old Norse
Vikings still lived. From the day of Val-es-Dunes William
was absolutely master in his own broad duchy. Mortemer,
seven years later, was a great and crushing slaughter of the
army of the King of France, who, becoming envious of the
fast-growing power of the Duke of Normandy, had invaded
the territories of William. Varaville was another crushing
defeat inflicted by the Normans on the French King, who had
renewed his invasion some four years after the battle of
Mortemer. This victory, won in a.d. 1058, left William per-
haps the most powerful and absolute ruler on the Continent of
Europe. Five years later, partly by force of arms, partly by
intrigue and negotiation, he became sovereign master of the
great and rich province of Maine and of its noble chief city,
Le Mans. This great and important province had been tradi-
tionally granted to the first conquering Viking Rollo, some
hundred and forty years before. But the hold of the North-
men on Maine had been shifting and precarious, and of late
years little more than a shadowy claim. But Duke William
made the shadow a reality, and after a.d. 1063, the flourish-
ing and wealthy city of Le Mans was as much a Norman
city as Rouen or Bayeux.
It is a little hard to pierce through the mists of adulation
which shroud the figure of the Conqueror: naturally enough,
the chronicler and the trouveur of his own and of his children's
age love to paint the great and successful hero in the fairest
colours. Yet we know enough of the state of Normandy to
know that his rule was something more than imperious and
absolute— it was strong, just, and wise. His vast dominions
72 THE NORM AX DUKES.
in France were famous throughout Europe for their general
peace and prosperity. The universal dismay which was felt
when, after his long reign, the sceptre passed, for a time, into
the hands of the gay and dissolute Robert, is an index to
what the people thought of their great just ruler, harsh though
he was and even cruel, in those wild stormy times when life
and property were both of them held by so slender a thread.
But no trouveur, Norman or English, could paint the
ho7ne life of William in colours too golden. In a dissolute age
— when morality was held by all classes only too cheaply —
as the successor of a line of great chieftains who had all been
born out of lawful matrimony, and who, with scarcely an
exception, had openly bid defiance to all those laws, written
and unwritten, with which the Christianity they professed to
revere has endeavoured to purify the family life — as the suc-
cessor of those six mighty chieftains, Pagan still in their
home life, William, with these examples before him, showed
himself throughout his reign as the pattern husband and
father. No light stories were ever fairly whispered of the
Duke and King, ever faithful to Queen Matilda, whom he
seems to have loved with a real, deep love. He set the
highest example to all the courts and princes of his time ;
and when Matilda died, some four years before his death-
hurt at Mantes, we know that all sunshine had passed for
ever from his weary, brilliant life.
His marriage with Matilda, the beautiful daughter of
Baudouin de Lisle, the magnificent Count of Flanders, was no
doubt a love marriage. It was a fortunate connection for the
Duke of Normandy. The alliance with the powerful and
wealthy House of Flanders strengthened him in northern
Europe, but it was the nwman, rather than the Princess, who
helped William so markedly in his strange, work-filled life.
The patient student of history detects here and there in the
nUKE WIL/.JAM fTHE COXQUERURJ. 73
beautiful story of her life grave faults and errors, such as the
one which a reading between the lines of the dry Doomsday
Book record seems to reveal: — how after the Conquest of
England, Queen Matilda asked for and received, as part of
her English appanage, the broad lands of Brihtric, the great
Gloucestershire theign * — Brihtric, whom the story tells us
she had once deigned to wish for as her husband — but Brihtric
loved elsewhere, and Queen Matilda never forgave the slight
shown to the Flemish Princess. After Matilda's death. King
William — was it through remorse ? — gave back to the ruined
Brihtric some of his confiscated lands.
But this unwomanly act — it is not certain she ever did it,
it is only a shrewd surmise — and the treachery with which she
helped her dearly loved eldest son Robert, when he was in
rebellion against his father, are only spots on a very noble
pure life. Her Court was, with its brilliancy and splendour,
a very model of all knightly virtues and noble chivalry. Her
patient love to her great husband, her unwearied devotion to
the many hard State problems which harassed her life in
Wdliam's frequent absence from turbulent Normandy after
the Conquest, her constant care and thought for the poor and
suffering, make up many a varied title to honour in Matilda's
eventful story.
There was some strange bar to the m.arriage with Duke
William. The Church disliked the union, and there was a
long delay before the Church's blessing on the marriage was
obtained ; generally a half fanciful barrier of too near kin-
dred has been supposed to have existed, owing to the
betrothal of Matilda's mother, the baby Princess Adele,
daughter of King Robert of France, to William's uncle,
Duke Richard III. of Normandy.
* Brihtric belonged to the royal West-Saxon house of Cerdic. He was the
son of Algar, Lord of Tewkesbury, and many another Gloucestershire honour, and
was hneally descended from King Ethelwulf, the father of King Alfred.
74 THE NORMAN DUKES.
This was after all but a shadowy connection, for Richard
III. died while Adele was still a child. Adele subsequently
married Baudouin of Flanders, and Matilda was the child of
this marriage.
The historian sometimes asks whether this could have
been that grave bar to the marriage of William and Matilda
which so long deferred the union, and which, for some years
after the marriage, prevented it from receiving the Church's
complete sanction.*
The long and protracted negotiations in the matter of
the marriage with Matilda were conducted, and at last
brought to a successful issue, by Lanfranc, a scholar eccle-
siastic of Pavia, who had chosen Normandy as his home.
After William the Duke, this Lanfranc the scholar-monk of
Bec-Hellouin played the most important part in the great
drama of the Conquest of England.
# * * * # ^ «
Some thirty miles from Rouen, to the east of the ruins
of the old Donjon of Brionne, so rich in memories of the
Normandy of the Dukes and their powerful vassals, rises a
long wood-covered hill. The traveller who would visit the
scene of the most richly storied shrine in France, after a
quiet wandering of about an hour through this silent wood
comes suddenly upon a little secluded valley in the midst of
which runs a clear winding brook. A lofty graceful tower
at once catches his eye, then he notices the ruins of a great
wall which has evidently once enclosed a vast group of
• Later research seems to suggest that at the time of William's courtship
Matilda had a husband still living, a person of some importance in Flanders,
Gerbod, advocate (possibly judge) of the great monastery of St. Bertin at St. Omer,
and the delay and difficulty was occasioned owing to the necessity of obtaining a
formal divorce from Rome. — Freeman, "Norman Conquest," vol. iii. Note o in
appendix. (Freeman, in a long and exhaustive discussion, accepts the fact of the
previous marriage of Matilda, but disbelieves in the divorce, thus assuming the
previous death 6f Gerbod. He maintains that the objection to the marriage was
purely a canonical objection on the ground of kindred.)
DUKE WILLIAM (THE CONQUEROR).
75
^ i-il V-'^ \W
■ ru
1 n: I, ^
buildings. The remains of these buildings, now sadly dis-
figured and curiously adapted into modern covered sheds and
stables, to the eye resembling a vast farm, occupy the centre
of the little valley. This is Bec-Hellouin— once the home of
Lanfranc and Anselm, the home whence Issued in the eleventh
century those most learned and holy men of God, who were
raised up to do God's truest work in France and England.
It is also the remains of the Monastery, which for some seven
hundred years took rank as one of the richest and most
famous of the religious houses of Europe, It is now a lovely
desolate scene, peopled with glorious memories.
Herlwin, the founder of this once famous House of God,
was a Norman noble, who, world-weary, built in the days of
Duke William the first monastery, by the banks of the little
76 THE NURMAX DUKES.
Bee. It was in the beginning but a small unknown society,
very poor and very austere. Thither — when Bee was still an
insignificant community — betook himself Lanfranc the scholar
of Pavia. His early career was a curious one. When still
comparatively young, he left his native Italy and settled as a
teacher in Avranehes-by-the-Sea, probably attracted by the
reputation of the Norman Duchy, a reputation which was
then spreading far and wide over Europe. Soon the fame
of the brilliant Italian grew, and throughout the Duchy the
powers of the great scholar were acknowledged. He seems
to have been one of the profoundest Greek students north of
the Alps, and his Avranches school was quickly crowded
with pupils. But the mere fame of a teacher and scholar
seems to have rapidly palled upon Lanfranc. He longed
after a yet nobler and higher life. So he forsook Avranches
and his school, and hid himself in the woods of the Risle
Valley, where he joined the austere society of Herlwin at
Bee ; here he could be alone to meditate and to pray ; but
his fame and reputation followed him in his seclusion. In
time the presence of the scholar drew round the hitherto
unknown monastery groups of attentive listeners — and Bee
became the Norman centre of religious thought and piety.
The choice of the monks fell on him as their Prior, the
austere and sainted Herlwin still remaining the Abbot. At
first we find Lanfranc under the displeasure of the Duke,
apparently owing to some bold utterances of the monk-
scholar with reference to the doubt of the legality of the
Royal marriage with Matilda of Flanders. Then the Prior
Lanfranc appears as the trusted adviser of William and
Matilda — as the spiritual guide and director of the Court
during all the difficult questions which that marriage stirred
up. We see him referring the tangled question to the Pope
and his Cardinals, and in person conducting the inquiry at
Rome, and bringing the momentous affair upon which the
DUKE WILLIAM (THE CONQUEROR). 77
whole life of William hinged, to a happy conclusion ; winning
for himself at Rome the reputation of the most profound
theologian and scholar in Christendom. From this moment
to the end of William's eventful life, Lanfranc of Bee stood
by the Norman Duke at Rouen, Fecamp, and Caen ; by the
Norman king at Winchester, London, and Gloucester, as the
adviser and counsellor.
The popular conception of the Norman Conquest views
the successful invasion of England as the result of the
burning ambition of the brilliant Duke, urged on by the
selfish greed of his chieftains. The great battle : the death
of the King of England, his brothers, and the noble Saxon
theigns; the slow but complete subjugation of England
which followed : the almost universal confiscation of the
English lands ; the substitution of Norman prelates in the
English sees and abbeys ; of Norman barons on the broad
lands of the English earls and theigns — are popularly re-
garded as a gigantic evil deed,* productive of untold misery.
That misery undreamed of, for many a long year after Hast-
ings resulted, is alas ! too true ; and no one was more awfully
convinced of it than the Conqueror himself, and in his long-
drawn-out death-scene he acknowledged it with bitter, un-
availing sorrow. But the motives which led to the great
invasion were not, as is popularly imagined, simple greed and
lust of power. Lanfranc was the adviser and counsellor of
the greatest of the great successors of Rollo, and Lanfranc
taught William that the subjection of England was a duty the
Norman owed to that God who had raised up the Norman
race to its proud pre-eminence among the nations. He
taught him that the supreme mission of the Norman was to
* The beautiful romance of " Harold," by Lord Lytton, and the learned and
exhaustive history of Professor Fieeman, whose hero is Harold and not William —
though the latter scholar tells the eventful story with striking fairness — have largely
contributed to this popular view.
78 THE NORMAN DUKES.
purify the great Anglo-Saxon Church and to raise the noble
Anglo-Saxon race from the low and comparatively degraded
level to which, undoubtedly, Church and race had sunk. All
things seemed to call the great Duke to undertake the Holy
War, for that was the aspect under which the invasion of
England presented itself to Lanfranc and his pupil William.
The last king of the old royal house of England was passing
away childless. William, the kinsman of the Confessor, had
apparently a better title * to the English crown than Harold,
the son of Godwine. Lanfranc bade his pupil stretch forth his
mailed hand to take the vacant crown, and to do without
flinching the great work of reformation which lay before him.
This nobler aspect of the Norman conquest should never be
lost sight of in the thick clouds of misery and woe that
presently overshadowed the hapless Anglo-Saxon people ;
but only for a time, for this people, after no long interval,
emerged a far stronger and nobler nation than they had ever
been before ; even their Norman conquerors were after a
season absorbed in the Anglo-Saxon race, and the Norman
name and story has now been long forgotten. Bat these Nor-
mans did their work of purifying and ennobling, the work
Lanfranc meant to do ; possibly a far greater work than the
monk statesman ever dreamed of, for William and Lanfranc
created the England we know, upon whose empire the sun
never sets.
The Monk of Bee, who counselled and helped to plan the
Norman invasion, possesses a history so pure, a record so
white, that to impute motives of mere greed or avarice to his
policy would be impossible. In his own land he declined the
highest position open to an ecclesiastic — the Archbishopric
* Edgar Atheling, the foreigner, was never looked on either in England or in
Normandy as a serious claimant of the throne of the House of Cerdic. Duke
William claimed the Crown of the Confessor through his kinship to the dead Con-
fessor, as well as by the bequest of the late king.
DUKE WILLIAM (THE CONQUEROR).
79
^ ^'
-^ J
- -^
^^,0^'Mm
''>:■' /Sjjm'J'*!,-^, /If,,
f'A
«ymr
;it"ii'lf'
.er
of Rouen — preferring the
quieter station of abbot of the new
royal foundation of St. Stephen, at
Caen ; and when in later years he
accepted the see of Canterbury in the conquered land,
he contrived — possibly alone among the Normans in the
age of the conquest — -to win the love of the Anglo-
Saxon people. How thoroughly he performed his great
task of reforming the Anglo-Saxon Church is well known.
8o THE XORMAN DUKES.
The gigantic abuses were corrected. The sloth and in-
activity into which their great Church had sunl: was
changed for a real and earnest zeal ; * schools were every-
where founded, real learning and scholarship took the place
of ignorance and mere superstition ; not only were the old
religious foundations revived with a fresh and vigorous
life, but countless new homes for prayer and study, homes
of help for the poor and sorrowful and sick, were founded in
every part of England. The ruins of many a noble church
and monastery, built under the influence of Lanfranc of
Bee, in their beautiful and touching decay, are scattered
over well-nigh every shire in England ; while such lordly
minsters as the cathedrals of Gloucester and Peterborough,
of Durham and Canterbury — still standing in well-nigh their
ancient grandeur — bear a constant and splendid witness to
the mighty work of Lanfranc, the saintly scholar monk
and the statesman bishop, the friend and counsellor of the
Conqueror.
But although the stately abbey of Bee, — the home of
Lanfranc, the great reformer of ecclesiastical discipline, and
right hand of "the Conqueror " ; -f the home for many years
of the yet greater successor of Lanfranc, Anselm of Aosta,
the saintly scholar, the father of the dogmatic theology of
later times, who, for the sake of justice and truth, braved the
wrath of the most terrible of Kings, the Norman Rufus ; the
most renowned school, too, for many years in Europe,
whither flocked pupils from all Christendom ; — but although
the vast monastery of Bee, with its glorious thirteenth century
abbey, has disappeared, with the exception of one solitary
tower with some ruined walls, and a shapeless mass of horse-
in my own Gloucester, for instance, when Lanfranc became Archbishop of
Canterbury some six or eight monks occupied the old religious house ; under Serlo
the friend of Lanfranc, in the new Abbey, that six became a hundred.
t Freeman, '' Norman Conquest," I., p. 217.
DUKE WILI.TAM (THE CONQUEROR).
8i
^ ^-^ Z ^ ^±
%
«^
^
Abbaye de Bec
As it appeared at the end of the seventeenth century. The splendid choir
was all that remained, and constituted the abbey church.
sheds and barracks,* the other splendid church with which
The Abbey Church of Bec, one of the noblest specimens of Gothic architec-
ture in the thirteenth century, was rebuilt on the old site and partly with the old
materials, in a.d. 1213 — 1264, and finally completed, 1325. In spite of the ravages
of time — (the greater part of the nave had fallen in 1592) — and the evil usage of the
Huguenots, the choir of the great church still remained, at the time of the sup-
pression of 1793, and was one of the noblest in France ; but a few years more of ill-
usage were sufficient for its destruction. It became, in common with the monastic
buildings clustering round it, a depot for cavalry horses, the church being used at
first as a granary. The magnificent stained-glass windows, dating from a.d. 1391,
— 1398, quickly disappeared. The lead roof was stripped, the statuary, the rich and
precious ornaments, reliquaries, &c., the tapestry and splendid tombs were quickly
plundered, sold, and defaced. But still the mighty abbey, roofless and exposed,
remained until ad. 1816, when by direction of the Government, this noble building,
M
82
THE NORMAN DUKES.
^
J
T
C7Z
tX6JVl
■^^%Wf£^
Lan franc was
closely con-
nected, the
abbey church
of St. Etienne
(St. Stephen),
at Caen, over
which Lan-
franc ruled as
abbot during
that eventful
time when the
conquest of
England was
planned and
carried out,
still remains,
much of it as in
the days when Wil-
liam and Lanfranc,
duke and abbot, and later
as king and archbishop,
took counsel together in
its holy walls and prayed in
its sanctuary. (St. Etienne
was not finally completed "'■' •
and consecrated by its late abbot, Archbishop Lanfranc, in the
f-
with its undying memories, was publicly sold for building materials for about /i,400.
Stones richly carved, portions of the tracery, &.C., are still said to be often found
oosely built into walls and other buildings in the neighbourhood. The Chapter
House, erected A.D. 1140 — 1146, a singular and richly-sculptured building showing
the transition period between Norman and Pointed architecture, was found to be
•' in the way " of the arrangement for the State horse establishment, and in 1815,
the government of the day ordered its demolition. The materials of this priceless
and beautiful relic were sold for about ^70. There were many tombs in the abbey,
some of considerable magnificence and importance ; they are destroyed or lost-
DUKE WILLIAM (THE CONQUEROR). 83
presence of William the Conqueror, until a.d. 1086.) The
noble abbey has a peculiar interest apart from its close con-
nection with Lanfranc. Its erection was the Rome-appointed
atoning penance for the canonical irregularity in the marriage
of William and Matilda. The Duke and Duchess each vowed
to erect a monastery with a stately abbey church attached
to It, for religious persons of their respective sexes. We
have spoken already of Matilda's enduring work: St.
Etienne represented William's. The mighty pile has been
well described as, perhaps, the noblest and most perfect
work of its own date. It was his own St. Stephen's (St.
Etienne) at Caen — the abbey of Lanfranc — that the Conqueror
chose — as we shall presently see — for his last home, in
preference to Royal Westminster, hallowed by the tomb of
his saintly predecessor, or storied Winchester ; in preference
to the stately minster of Rouen where Rollo and his son
were laid, or sacred Fecamp, where Richard Sans-Peur and
Richard le Bon were sleeping in the humble tomb of their
choice* — the tomb washed by the rain drops from the roof of
the mighty abbey.
The remains of the Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I. of England, interred at
Bee, 1 1 67, were discovered in 1S47, and were translated to Rouen Cathedral. The
remains of Herlwin, the founder, had been removed in 1792 to the parish church of
Bee, where they still rest beneath a curious wooden slab, probably a copy of the
original stone covering — in the little Parish church (1889). — Fin de Bee Hcllouin
Docitmenta inedita, Brionne, 18S5.
• The original burial place of Dukes Richard Sans-Peur and Richard le Bon
was directly under the walls of the South Transept in the illustration on page 82.
CHAPTER VII.
William the Conqueror, Seventh Duke of Normandy,
King of England.
The drama of the life of the Conqueror — as we have seen —
consists of two acts : the first is filled by his reign as Duke of
Normandy ; the second by his life as King of England. The
first, though it was completely successful, though it closed
with Duke William reigning as absolute sovereign over a
great province, so powerful, so cultured, so filled with great
and renowned men — soldiers, scholars, churchmen— as to
be the wonder of Europe ; the first act, brilliant and successful
though it was, is quite forgotten, so completely was it over-
shadowed by the second, filled by the conquest of England
and the immediate results of the conquest.
It reads — does the story of this conquest, after eight
hundred years — like a faery story, like something unreal, it
is all so stranofe and marvellous. It seemed indeed a wild
scheme that — a province of France like Normandy* — though
it did possess so great a duke as William, so wise a minister
as Lanfranc, so many bold and chivalrous barons — that a
province of France should plan the conquest of a mighty
country like England, far richer, far more powerful, apparently
united and at peace within ; under a king, too, no less wise
than valiant. Yet William planned, and carried out his plan :
one great battle, and the king who m.et him lay dead on the
* Under the general name of Normandy, are included Brittany and Maine,
which at the period of the Conquest formed part of tlic dominions of the Duke of
Normandy.
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 85
Stricken field ; by the dead king lay his brothers, slain too ;
his trusted chieftains, they likewise fell on that fatal Hill ot
Senlac. Even after the great battle it would have seemed
a hopeless task to conquer England ; but William had well
gauged the weakness and the strength of the great island
kingdom he meant to reign over.
At the death of Edward the Confessor England was really
divided into three great jealously hostile camps. Roughly
the South and West (Wessex) were loyal to Harold and the
House of Godwine. The North and centre loved the old
Mercian rulers, and while following the standard of their
Earls Eadwine and Morkere, looked on Wessex and the
pretension of its Earl King Harold with an indifference which
shaded into a jealous dislike. The East was largely inhabited
by Danish settlers, the result of the repeated invasions and
lengthened occupations of the Northmen, who cared but little
for Harold, and were really hostile to Saxon customs. Harold
who, under happier circumstances, would probably have been
a great and successful monarch, was a brave and skilful
o-eneral, and when William landed at Pevensey had just
engaged and routed in the north a powerful invading army,
under Harold Hardrada, King of Norway : the last of the
Viking raids, led by the last of the Vikings. The English
king hurried from the northern field of battle to the south,
to meet the new foe. He was poorly and feebly supported
by the Mercian division of the kingdom, and when he encoun-
tered William and the Norman host, his army was made up
almost entirely of the men of Wessex and the south who had
survived the bloody victory over Harold Hardrada. It says
much for the military skill of Harold, and for his power in
the south, that so few days after the terrible conflict at Stam-
ford Bridee in the north, where Harold Hardrada and the
flower of his army was slain, he was able to present so bold a
front to William and the Normans at Hastings. There is,
86 THE NORMAN DUKES.
however, little doubt that the Saxon king was completely
outnumbered on that fatal day which decided the course of
events for ages.
Critics have reproached Harold for exposing himself in
the battle, and have urged that the fortunes of conquered
England would have been different had the Saxon king
survived to oppose the subsequent progress of William ; but
Harold probably felt that the only chance of victory for his
people lay in his personal presence and prowess in the field.
Nor was he wrong in his judgment, for in spite of the
fearful odds in favour of the Normans, the victory on that
awful day for many hours hung in the balance ; nor was it
until late in the afternoon, when the Norman arrow pierced the
brain of the last Saxon king, that the English cause was lost.
The lover of the eventful story of his native land will
ever gaze with intense and melancholy interest upon the low
range of hills upon which Battle Abbey is built ; there is no
spot in England round which such memories cluster. There —
on the [4th October, a.d. 1066, St. Calixtus' Day (Saturday)
— William of Normandy, the sixth duke in succession from
Rollo, staked his life and the fortunes of his mighty people
on the issue of deadly battle. Every detail of that eventful
day is known. It was full of romantic scenes of dauntless
courage, from the moment when, in the early morning, the
minstrel Taillefer rode out before the Norman host, tossinor
aloft his great sword, challenging the serried ranks of Saxon
foemen, and singing the song of Roland, who fell at Ronces-
valles —
Devant li Dus alout cantant,
De Karlemaine e de Rollant,
E d'Oliver e des vassals,
Ki morurent en Renchevals,
Roman de Rou, 13151, —
down to the solemn hour in the dim October twilight, when
William the Conqueror commanded his tent to be pitched on
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 89
the bloody ground where the standard of the dead Harold
had waved, and which was thickly strewn with the corpses
of the bravest of the English and Normans who had fought
and fallen round the great English king. Never, perhaps,
round a general on the morning of battle had a more
gallant array of chieftains been gathered, than clustered
round William the morning of Hastings — men whose names
have been famous not only in their own stirring times, but
are known in history as founders of houses the illustrious
in our storied English annals. On either side the Duke
rode his two half-brothers — Odo, the famed Bishop of Bayeux,
and Robert, Count of Mortain, the sons of William's mother,
the beautiful Arlette of Falaise, and of Herlwin of Conteville,
whom she married after Duke Robert's death in his distant
wanderings — Odo and Robert, who afterwards received such
vast estates in every corner of conquered England as their
reward. Odo during that awful day fought near his royal
brother, and many a gallant Saxon theign fell beneath the
terrible club which the warrior prelate thought it no sin to
wield. Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, carried no sword or battle-axe ;
to shed blood he deemed a sin against the Church canons ; but,
with a strange casuistry, he allowed himself to crush head-piece
and head with his terrible weapon. With William, too, rode
Geoffrey Mowbray,* the architect Bishop of Coutances, and
* This prelate performed mass in the Norman camp before the great battle,
and subsequently preached at William's Coronation. Ordericus Vitalis relates he
received as repayment of his great services at the Conquest no fewer than 280
manors in England. But his life's work is especially interesting from another
circumstance. He w-as a great builder, and the noble Cathedral of Coutances is
his master-work The first stone of this magnificent minster was laid in A.D. 1030.
The dedication took place in A.D. 1056, and was performed in the presence of Duke
William, the archbishop, his suffragans, and many of the Norman nobles. Coutances
is in the neighbourhood of the Castle of Hauteville. His friendship with that
renowned house led him to visit Robert Guiscard (de Hauteville) in South Italy, to
beg for help in his great building work. He not only obtained money, but it was in
South Italy, and no doubt in Sicily, that he (and his architect) drew inspiration for
his marvellous Cathedral. It is in the Pointed style of architecture, and appears
closely to appro.\imate to Early English (Pointed). Mr. Dawson Turner, F.R.S,
N
go THE NORMAN DUKES.
Remigius, the almoner of the well-known Fecamp Abbey —
the ducal palace and tomb. Remigius —afterwards Bishop of
Dorchester, then of Lincoln, who, after years of patient
labour died, just when his proud cathedral of Lincoln, on the
hill overlooking the old Danish city, was finished ; only three
days before the stately consecration ceremony arranged with
so much care his death took place, one year before Bishop
Mowbray, architect of the Minster of Coutances, died. In
that great Norman host which fought the long day through,
under the influence of a strange spiritual excitement, beneath
the consecrated banner, the gift of Rome and her mighty
bishop the world-famous Hildebrand, were men too like
in the letterpress of Mr. Cotman's exquisite work, "Antiquities of Normandy,"
writes — " Of the identity of the Church built by Bishop Geoffery with that now
standing, it is impossible to entertain a reasonable doubt." If Mr. Dawson Turner's
conclusions respecting the date of the building of the present Cathedral of Coutances
are fairly accurate, some considerable modifications will have to be made respecting
the dates usually given for the introduction of early Pointed architecture into
Northern Europe. For if Mr. Turner and Mr. Cotman's date for the present
Cathedral of Coutances be accepted, then it would appear that early Pointed was
used as the school of architecture in a great Norman Cathedral before a.d. 1056, and
by an able and enterprising prelate who had personally visited and seen the gorgeous
Arabian or Saracenic work in South Italy, and most likely too in Sicily, who too
had drawn his resources with which to build his Cathedral largely from his country-
men who had established themselves and were reigning as Sovereign Princes in
those South Italian lands. The same prelate was closely connected with England.
He was the intimate friend and one of the advisers of the Conqueror, was by his
side at Hastings, and received as his guerdon vast estates in the conquered land.
He lived until a.d. 1093 (reign of Rufus).
Messrs. Dawson Turner and Cotman, writing in the same great work on
Normandy, maintain that the Church of St. Peter, Lisieux, formerly the cathedral,
was designed and commenced a.d. 1049 and virtually finished and consecrated
before A.D. 1077.
This important church too is mainly built in the same Early Pointed style, of
which it is a noble specimen ; the style closely resembles what is known among
us as Early English.
The conclusion drawn by the famous artist and writer above referred to is that
the date of the building of the Lisieux and Coutances Churches establishes the fact
of the Pointed arch being in use not as an occasional variation, but in the entire
construction of churches upon a grand scale, as early as the eleventh century.
VioUet le Due and others, however, prefer to date the present great churches of
Coutances and Lisieux later. But the historical and other arguments of Messrs.
Cotman and Dawson Turner for the earlier date are weighty, and deserve grave
consideration.
WILLIAM THE COXQUEROR. 91
IMongomerie and Beaumont and Bigod, Bohun, Ferrers,
Courtenaye, Percy, Richmonde, Vere, and many others, whose
names and houses have been ever since diis fatal field, part
of the history of England. There is no doubt but that the
Normans vastly exceeded the numbers of Harold's army,
sorely weakened as the latter was by the fierce battle of
Stamford Bridge. The number of nobles and gentlemen of
mark who landed at Pevensey with William are variously
stated, in the copies we possess of the Battle Abbey roll, as
between 600 and 700. The number of fighting men under
William are traditionally placed at 60,000 ; the vessels which
brousfht over the Norman host numbered, accordinsf to one
account, 696, while another mentions over 3,000 ! The battle
seems to have been in a great measure a hand-to hand
encounter ; and as all accounts speak of the conspicuous
bravery and prowess of Harold and his men, and seeing that
only few of these survived the fight, the victory was evidently
largely owing to the great preponderance of numbers in
William's army (14,000 of whom are said to have fallen).
" As a rule, no man of Harold's following who marched to
Senlac found his way back from that fatal hill, the nobility,
the flower of southern England, was utterly cut off."*
*******
The Conqueror's royal tent was pitched that night on the
ridge of the hill where Harold's golden banner, blazoned with
"the Fighting Man," had fallen at lastf as the shades of the
autumn night stole over the scene of carnage ; there too fell
Harold the King, Earl Gurth and Leofwine his brothers,
and Hacon, his nephew, and with them the bravest of the
* Freeman, vol. iii., 501.
+ L'estendart unt ^ terre mis,
Et li Reis Heraut unt occis,
E li meillor de ses amis,
Li gonfanon ^ or unt pris.
Roman de Ron, 13956.
92 THE NORMAN DUKES.
Saxon theigns. There, after the battle, with Odo the Bishop
and a few of his Norman chiefs, Wihiam enjoyed a grim banquet
—and there with the noble dead lying thickly piled up round
his tent, the conqueror slept* on the first night of the
Conquest.
It seems a strange thing to say, but that evening, when
William slept amidst the dead on the spot where Harold fell,
tliat Evening of splendid Norman victory and saddest English
defeat was really the beginning of the noblest portion of the
English story — perhaps the greatest story in the world's annals,
for from that eveninof the Duke of the Normans became the
King of the English, and the chiefs of the Norman Barons
became English Lords, and Normandy henceforward was an
English province till, a century-and-a-half later, Normandy,
the old Home of the seven Dukes, passed with scarcely a
struggle into a dependency of the Crown of France. It, as it
were, spent itself in its last and crowning achievement.
The remaining events so well known in the story of
England followed ; step by step the complete subjection of
England was proceeded with ; five to six years were, however,
needed before rich and powerful England lay at the Con-
queror's feet, but no conquest of a great and populous country
was perhaps ever so complete. William claimed as his own
every acre in the kingdom which once was Edward the
Confessor's. After Hastings and the slaughter there of King
* On this site where King Harold fell beneath his golden standard of the
'' Fighting Man," Duke William pitched his tent on the night of the battle. On
the ridge, where the centre of the Saxon army were entrenched, the Conqueror
afterwards erected and richly endowed the great Abbey of St. Martin, generally
known as the Abbey of the Place of Battle (Battle Abbey). On the spot where
Harold lay dead at the foot of his standard the high altar of the Abbey was erected.
The Abbey church is gone ; for a long period— as Bulwer Lytton in his beautiful
Story wrote— "amidst stagnant water all forlorn, and shattered stood the altar
stone." The sacred stone is still there, marking the site of the Conqueror's
greatest triumph, but its surroundings are no longer forlorn and desolate. Every-
thing there now bears witness to the watchful and reverential care of a devoted and
earnest student of the past.
)vn.L/AM THE CONQUEROR. 93
and TheiL^iis, there was much stubborn but no serious iinilcd
opposition ; step by step the great Norman general and states-
man took possession of city and county. First with little
difficulty he occupied the southern and central district of the
Island. In the West the defence was stubborn and pro-
tracted, but the event never for an instant doubtful. Two
graver campaigns placed the northern counties completely at
his mercy. There again the defence was prolonged and
obstinate, but it was the opposition of a partly undisciplined
people, without a leader, and the foe they had to meet was
the best trained army in Europe, led by a consummate and
veteran o-eneral. Once more in the Fen lands where the
Danes dwelt thickest, the old Saxon remnant of heroes again
gathered together and bade defiance to the Norman invader ;
when these, after a hopeless contest, were finally crushed, the
Duke of the Normans reigned as absolute King of the Eng-
lish. But the work had really been done on the October day
when William fought and defeated Harold at Hastings.
For nearly twenty-one years after Hastings, the Conqueror
ruled over England. He was no mere tyrant, but in the
carrying out of his designs his strong will imposed upon the
English a new language, a new school of thought, a new
mode of warfare, a new social and political system, a new
and far more earnest ecclesiastical government; and the
stubborn and not-unnatural resistance of the Anglo-Saxon
race to all these changes necessitated the sternest, often the
harshest government ; the lieutenants of William — men like
Odo of Bayeux— carried out too the will of their master with
a severity and a cruelty often far in excess of anything he
would have sanctioned, had he been cognisant of their acts.
The stubborn resistance of the first six years compelled him
to act as Conqueror rather than lawful King, and vast con-
fiscations marked his slow but irresistible progress from
Hastino-s to Exeter, from Exeter to York, from York to
94 THE NORMAN DUKES.
Durham. As time passed, partly through the invariable
tyrant-sickness which ever affects the absolute sovereign,
William grew harsher, more careless of the sufferings of
others, perhaps, too, more selfish. The enormous confisca-
tions without doubt inflicted untold sufferings, were produc-
tive of unspeakable misery to thousands. No political
exigency can ever excuse the harrying of the country north
of York. No excuse can ever palliate the awful crime which
desolated the great district afterwards known as the New
Forest, a crime which was committed apparently to enable
the King to enjoy to the full his love of hunting. But on the
whole the suffering and misery very largely — though of course,
not by any means entirely — fell on the higher classes in the
conquered race ; as a rule, no peasant was expelled from his
cottao-e, no churl from the field he inherited from his father ;
there was Vio permanent evil wrought by the Normans on the
great masses of Anglo-Saxon society.* There was much
bitter oppression, much cruel wrong inflicted by William and
especially by his lieutenants, but in proportion as the grade of
society descended, so did the hardships diminish. On the
other hand, the sword of the Norman — as in the case of all
the great Dukes his ancestors — was the sword of justice.
No private slaughter, no violence, no robbery was tolerated,
even in those stormy times when the Norman ruled " the
rich man might travel in England from end to end unhurt
with his bosom full of gold, matron and maiden went forth
blithely without dread of harm." The decaying Saxon
church was really purified and immeasurably invigorated ;
earning again flourished and a higher and nobler standard
was the rule. The ecclesiastical administration of William
and Lanfranc was unquestionably a splendid advance upon
that of Edward and Stigand. In time the consummate
wisdom with which William and Lanfranc wrought these great
* Palgrave, vol. iv., 5-6-7.
WILL/AM THE CONQUEROR.
95
changes bore glorious
fruit ; and though
years of sorrow and
suffering had to be
liiii
«. ft-,, ».^n: Hv} ^
endured, still
with strange
quickness
conqueror and
conquered were
completely blended
together, and the re-
sult was the mighty,
undivided, unconquerable
..=:^-->.=-^ ^ -- Endand of History, the
^"^■iJ^V:::::^ enduring Empire with
all its undreamed-
of glories, the
Empire upon
which the sun
Entrance to La Vielle Tour.
Sit( of the Old Palace of the Dukes of Normandy.
never sets.
* *
When England was completely conquered, when a perfect
96 THE NORMAN DUKES.
network of Norman fortresses, held by Norman knights and
barons, covered the country and held it incomplete subjection,
when the whole of the fair kingdom of Edward the Confessor
lay before the Norman Duke and King as one vast spoil* —
this was the state of things after a.d. 107 i — William the
Conqueror was the greatest, the richest, and most powerful
prince in Christendom. His wealth, largely derived from
England, was simply boundless. One who was privileged to
look on the great King at the time of his highest pros-
perity and grandeur, as he kept three royal feasts, and
held his solemn Council at Winchester, Westminster, or
Gloucester, when he wore his kingly crown as he presided in
regal splendour over his great and powerful court and council,
dwells upon his majestic and kingly presence.
At this time of his reign, about a.d. 1072 — 1076, King
William had reached his highest point in worldly success. He
was king of wealthy and populous England in a way no king
before him had ever been. The whole land literal I v belonged
to him and was held solely by his grant. He was the abso-
lute master of the fairest and most powerful province of
France.
But in the hour of his success, men in whom he had the
deepest confidence began to see the awful wrong of the great
Conquest. t The Norman Prelates seem to have been spe-
cially struck with the terribleness of the Conqueror's work.
Some few among his chosen followers refused to share at
* "According to common report, 60,000 knights received their fees, or rather
their hvings, from the Conqueror. The report is exaggerated as to numbers, but the
race of the Anglo-Danish and EngHsh nobility and gentr)', the Earls and the greater
Theigns disappeared." — Palgrave, vol. iii., p. 479.
t " When William made his first compact at Lillebonne (before the invasion of
England), it is possible that he concealed from himself the injustice that he must
commit, that he did not contemplate the full extent of slaughter and extermination
and robbery, the robbery of a whole nation, which would be needful for the purpose
of carrying it through. The wrong was now consummated, the hideous aspect of
the Conquest was now ■\my€\W.A.." — Palgrai'e iii., 485.
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 97
all in the spoil, and probably the enormous number of religious
foundations in England during the years immediately follow-
ing the Conquest point to the same conviction on the part of
many of his Anglo-Norman nobles, that a great and fearful
sin had been committed, and that some atonement must be
made. William, himself in the full tide of his fortunes, with
his busy anxious life, probably was little touched by remorse,
but in the gloom of later days when his loved Matilda was
taken from him, and grave domestic trouble and ill-health
darkened his fortunes, all those sad and sorrowful memories
came on him with unutterable bitterness. After he lost
Matilda (a.d. 1083) men say he never had another hour of
brightness.
Was it some vaofue foreboding that to him the end of
life and work was at hand, which induced the conqueror at
the great Christmas Court at Gloucester, a.d. 1085 — 6, to hold
that "deep speech" with his Witan, in that ancient chapter-
room of the cathedral— little changed save at the eastern end,
from those far back days — the " deep speech " which resulted
in the vast Record of Domesday, the oldest survey of a king-
dom now existing in the world ?
The great work was fully carried out and transcribed in
the great volumes of Domesday, and deposited in the Royal
Treasury at Winchester. It still exists fresh and perfect as
when the scribe wrote it. The caligraphy betrays an Italian
hand and leads us to conclude that the most was done under
the inspection and direction of Archbishop Lanfranc It was
used first for the general taxation levied the last year of the
eventful reign. Not a hyde, not even a yard of land, not an
ox, a cow, or a swine, but was set down in this wonderful
record. In the August of a.d. 1086, the Witan of England, and
all the landowners who were worth summoning, were gathered
together in a great assembly at Salisbury. Here William
imposed the oath of fealty upon every landholder without
o
98 THE NORMAN DUKES.
distinction of tenure — whoever else miglit be their lord, here
they all became the king's men — 60,000 were said to have met
the king in this famous gathering.
This oath of fealty direct to the king was one of the most
memorable pieces of legislation in the history of England. It
made England for ages an undivided kingdom. This year too
was sadly memorable for other reasons. It was a year of
blighted crops, of grievous murrain among the cattle, and of
sore sickness among the people. Shortly after the great
assembly at Salisbury the news of troubles and revolts in Brit-
tany, of continued disloyalty on the part of Robert the eldest
son of William, determined the Conqueror to proceed at once
to his continental dominions. He never returned to England.
Months of unsatisfactory petty frontier wars consumed
the ne.xt few months. William's indignation was especially
excited by the assistance which the King of France gave to the
disaffected. Some insulting words he was reported to have
spoken reflecting on King William's ever increasing corpulency,
determined William to execute a cruel vengeance on the little
frontier city of Mantes. The trouveur and chronicler dwell
naturally on the circumstances of this brief foray, so memorable
in its consequences ; they relate how the corn and the fast
ripening vintage were destroyed by the Norman soldiers ;
how King William burned Mantes, and how in his wrath,
galloping through the burning ruins of the hapless city, he
received the fatal internal bruise from the tall iron pommel of
his saddle upon which he was jerked as his horse stumbled.
Fainting and sick the warrior king was borne from the ruins
of Mantes to his Palace of Rouen. Then came on a lingering
inflammation, and in spite of all skill and care the Conqueror
grew worse. The end was not far off.
The palace of the Dukes of Normandy, where the sick man
lay, was in the heart of his great ancestral city, close to the
river. It is still there, but strangely disfigured. Compara-
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.
99
tively few travellers penetrate within the vast half-ruined
building of the old ducal palace, now used as a customs ware-
house for stores of wine and oil. But the long rows of
massive Norman columns supporting the rough stonework of
the vast halls are still eloquent with memories of the great
duchy. The noise * of the busy city, the heated atmosphere
of Rouen— it was summer time — were intolerable to the
fevered, dying sufferer. He was removed to the Priory of .St.
Part of the Old Palace of the Dukes of Normandy
Gervais, on a hill just outside the city, and in that religious
House, in sore pain and bitter anguish of mind, he waited for
• " Strepitus Rothomagi quae populosa civitas est intolerabilis erat aegrotanti,
extra urbem ipse rex praecepit se efferri ad ecclesiam S. Gervasii in colle sitam
occidentali." (Ordericus Vitalis) S. Gervais was a Priory of the great Fecamp
Abbey.
lOO THE NORMAN DUKES.
the end. There William lay * for several weary weeks of
fever and pain. The priory has disappeared, and the church
has been recently rebuilt over a crypt f that is of hoar anti-
quity. During that long-drawn-out death-scene, the Conqueror
must have often gazed with varied feelings over the glorious
picture which lay before him of the city and river of his six
great ancestors — none though so great as himself. One thinks
of the dying Conqueror never during those sad weeks losing
consciousness, J but going over the events of that splendid
and successful career of his, and remembering much with
bitter sorrow ; and ever and anon from the litde window of
his chamber of St. Gervais on the hill mazing at the fair scene
bathed in the golden summer sunshine : we can look at it still,
little changed since those sad dying eyes gazed at it. The
broad winding Seine, in parts like a silver lake set with green
woody islets; far away to the south and west the great forests
of Rouvray and La Londe dying away into grey misty
shadows ; more to the west a still darker wall of forest, still
known as in the days of Rollo, Guillaume Longue-Epee, and
Richard Sans-Peur as the Rou-mare, where he had so often
hunted in the days of his strength ; far to the east the white
cliffs of Blosseville, bathed by the river, close in the striking
landscape ; all the near foreground filled in now as then by the
dark mass of the busy city — the city the Norman Dukes loved
so well. The great pile of the cathedral then as now towering
over the crowded Rouen houses ; the mighty pile, though
changed and built and rebuilt, was there, covering the tombs
of Rollo and his son — then as now. Round the bed of the
dying King were gathered bishops and abbots, mighty barons,
with Rufus and Henry, his sons, watching and waiting for
* Ordericus speaks of as much as six wetks.
t The crypt which formed part of the St. Gervais' Priory can still be seen. It
is probably but little changed since the fourth century.
I " In aegritudine sua usque ad horam mortis integrum sensum, et vivacem
loquelam habuit." — Ordcriciis Vitalis.
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.
lOI
-:-.
h
.i,^'^ A
^ 4 ('i^tr..;.,!?; ; %,^
The Scene of the ^ ■ ^
Conqueror's Death.
every word and gesture of the monarch ; the chroniclers and
trouveurs — who on the whole were warm friends and admirers
of the Conqueror— unite in depicting the awful agony of mind
of William during the last days at St. Gervais. There were
I02 THE NORMAN DUKES.
with him many renowned bisliops and abbots, but he longed
for one who was absent — Anselm of Bee. The dying King
felt he could have helped him where no other earthly friend
could, but Anselm was sick and they never met again. The
great state question which agitated him was, the succession to
the crown of England. Robert the eldest was in open rebel-
lion : who was to be the king of England ? For a long time
he shrank from formally bequeathing the splendid inheritance
which he had won — he felt now — at the cost of so much
unspeakable sorrow to others. He remembered the awful
slaughter of Hastings — the terrible harrying of the northern
counties ; the thousands of that noble nation he had conquered
who had perished by sword and famine or in bitter exile, alas !
at his bidding.* Robert, the eldest son, who would be Duke
of Normandy, had forfeited all right to that splendid blood-
stained inheritance. At last he was persuaded to write to
Lanfranc at Canterbury a letter commending his second son
Rufus — ^Rufus, with all his faults, had ever been a faithful son
— Lanfranc the archbishop, whom conquerors and conquered
alike loved and trusted — Lanfranc might crown Rufus if he
pleased : so Wace the trouveur.
Rufus hurried from that memorable death-bed with the
letter, and in due course Lanfranc crowned him with the blood-
stained diadem of England. Then followed a few more
restless days and nights, and at the last many noble prisoners t
and hostages were freed from their captivity. On the 9th of
* " Sic miilta millia pulcerrimae gentis senum juvenumque proh dolor, funestus
trucidavi." — Orderic. Vit. See Palgrave iii., 584, Frecma>i iv.,chap. xxi., for other
references to the death-scene of William the Conqueror.
t It is said that the last prisoner freed by the dying Conqueror was his famous
half-brother— Odo, still Bishop of Bayeux, and once Earl of Kent — who had been
imprisoned by King William after the discovery of the Earl-Bishop's many intrigues.
Odo was believed to be ambitious of the Pope's chair at Rome. He was released,
and again became in his nephew Rufus's reign a powerful prelate, but he never
regained his old position. This restless, self-seeking man joined Duke Robert of
Normandy and the Crusaders, but died, before the Holy Land was reached, at
Palermo.
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 103
September, after a restless night, the \\.'nv^ was awakened
from a fitful slumber by the sound of the great Cathedral bell.
The dying Conqueror asked why it rang. The watchers by
the bed-side replied, " It is the hour of prime, and it is ringing
to invite the citizens to prayer." The King said he too
would pray, and stretching out his hands was heard to say,
'■ To my Lady Alary, the Holy Mother of God, I commend
myself, that by her prayers she may reconcile me to her dear
Son our Lord Jesus Christ ; " and as he prayed, with the
Name of Names on his lips, the spirit of William passed
away.
A strange sad scene followed the death of the great King.
The statesmen and powerful ecclesiastics who had been with
William in his last days at once hurried to their homes— a
general fear lest a period of misrule and lawlessness might be
the immediate outcome of the removal of the strong hand which
for so many years had ruled the great dominions of Normandy
and England. The servants and men-at-arms, taking advan-
tage of the general confusion, plundered the royal apartments,
stripping even the ro)al corpse and the bed on which it was
resting. After a brief delay, the Archbishop of Rouen gave
order that the body of the King should be taken to Caen, to be
buried in his own minster of St. Stephen (St. Etiennei. But
knights and nobles all had hurried from Rouen. There was
apparently no one to carry out the last solemn duties to the
dead. The Christian charity of an unknown Norman gentle-
man, by name Herluin, did what was necessary, and quietly
without pomp, partly by river, partly by land, the dead King
was borne to his loved city of Caen. There Prince Henry,
the Conqueror's third son, and a goodly company of nobles and
ecclesiastics, finding their first panic fears unreasonable, met
the bier and its few attendants. The sad march through Caen
was interrupted by the outbreak of a desolating fire. Many of
those following the royal cofiin were obliged to assist the
I04
THE NORMAN DUKES.
9- %
tT^~",'^'"j fei-T^fc^. f''~*"'^^^lit .
(/« //(/i ai^i^y A'/«?- William was
buried^
sufferers in the burning city. In all this confusion the stately
abbey was reached. Over the coffin of William, the Bishop of
Evreux pronounced a fervent discourse on the splendid quali-
ties of the dead. But before the " Office " was ended a
Norman named Asselin boldly stepped forward and charged
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 105
the dead King with having wrongfully taken from him in past
days the site of the great abbey. It was not the time for an
unseemly wrangle. Asselin was quickly appeased by the offer
of a considerable sum of money. There was yet another
fearful incident in the story. Owing to the clumsiness of the
workmen, as the body was being lowered into the grave, the
coffin broke, and the unwieldy body of the King burst,* thus
" tilling the sacred edifice with corruption. The obsequies
were hurried through, and thus was William the Conqueror
gathered to his fathers with loathing disgust and horror." f
But there is a pleasanter memory of the dead Conqueror
yet to record, for the brothers, King William Rufus and
Prince Henry Beauclerc — afterwards our King Henry I. —
were not unmindful of their mighty father, who had been
laid to sleep under such gruesome circumstances in the Caen
Abbey he loved so well in the heart of his own Norman land.
Prince Henry, remembering one special charge of his dying
father, spent some of the rich bequests which came to him
at once, in founding the stately Abbey of Reading, where
masses were continually to be said for the repose of his father's
soul; the same Abbey of Reading where, in later years. Prince
Henry was laid to sleep himself, after a glorious reign as
King of England.
King William Rufus took charge of his father's tomb at
Caen ; out of the rich treasure + amassed by the Conqueror
* " Dum corpus in sarcofagum mitteretur, et violenter, quia vas per impru-
dentiam coementariorum breve structum erat, complicaretur, pinquissimus venter
crepuit, et intolerabilis foetor circumadstantes personas et reliquum vulgus implevit.
fumus turis aliorumque aromatum de turibulis copiose ascendebat, sed teterrimum
putorem excludere non praevalebat". — Ordericus Vitalis, 662, C.
t Palgrave iii., 590.
X The vast wealth of the Conqueror was well known. He was probably the
richest prince of his age. In addition to his Norman treasures, the accumula-
tions of the Confessor and of Harold became his. The riches of England were
notorious. At the first Paschal feast after " Hastings," which King William
kept at Fecamp in great state, we read how the wealth of England dazzled all
eyes. The robes of state of the King and his chief nobles, rich with gold em-
broidery, the cups of gold and silver, and other treasures out of the spoils of Eng-
P
lo6 THE NORMAN DUKES.
the new king took ingots of gold and many precious gems,
and gave them to Otto the Goldsmith (Aurifaber), far-re-
nowned for his skill in designing and graving. Otto had
already been enriched by William the Norman, and appears
in the Domesday Record as Otto " Aurifaber or Aurifex," the
holder under the king of broad lands in Berkshire. The broken
coffin above alluded to, appears to have been carefully
enshrined in one of stone, hewn out of a solid mass of rock,
and this '-Loculus" was raised on three small columns of
white marble. Above this sarcophagus, under the shadow of
the High Altar, where reposed the ashes of the mighty
Conqueror, rose the splendid golden shrine carved by Otto,
the gold-work encrusted with many precious coloured gems.
Graven in letters of gold was the following stately epitaph,
composed in the Conqueror's honour by Archbishop Thomas
of York:—
Qui rexit rigidos Norniannos, atque Biitannos
Audacter vicit, fortiter obtinuit,
Et Cenomannenses virtute coercuit enses
Imperiique sui lei;ibi.is applicuit,
Ki.x magnus parva jacet hie Gulielmus in iirna
Sufticit et magno parva domus domino,
'I'cr septcm gradibus se volverat atque duobus
Virginis in gremio Phoebus, et hie obiit.
land, made all that France and Normandy had seen, mean by comparison (see
Freeman, vol. iv., 92). Not a little of this wealth went to endow Norman religious
houses especially favoured by William and Matilda. The treasury of the Con-
fessor inherited by Harold had been further enriched by the spoils of King Harold
Hardrada, who fell at the battle of Stamford Bridge. Amongst other treasures,
this King Harold Hardrada is said to have brought with him, when he invaded
England, a vast mass of solid gold brought back after his campaigns in the service
of the Emperor of the Hast. One great golden ingot, which could hardly be borne
by twelve strong men, is especially mentioned. This ingot, with many another
splendid trophy, passed from one conqueror to another, till it formed part of the
boundless wealth cf King William the Conqueror. (See Freeman, vol. iii., 342).
Palgrave (vol. iv., 18) strikingly pictures the sight which met King William Rulus'
eyes, when William Ponte Arche opened the great treasury doors at Winchester to
the Red king. •' We can fancy the riches which the depths displayed by the light
of the toiches: black silver in money, white silver in bars, gold in ingots, gold in
ancient coin ; bezants bearing the impress of the Eastern Emperors, niassive dcenars
lie. led with the Cutic characters, vessels rich with enamel and ancient gems, piles
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 107
Strange how little part the splendid Island conquest seems
to have in this little sonorous and lofty sounding- " Memoir
of the Tomb." The Bri/aniios of the first line probably
referred only to the inhabitants of " French " Brittany.
For many long years the great memory of the dead
seems to have preserved the tomb from ill-usage. Though
it is hard to believe that some needy man-at-arms, English or
French, did not appropriate the gold and gems which blazed
in strange magnificence over the ashes of the first Norman
king of England ; still, up to the Huguenot wars of the
sixteenth century, the hallowed tomb seems to have been
preserved on the whole intact ; we read how, in this stormy
period, the abbey of St. Stephen was sacked and partly
destroyed. In the ruthless havoc the shrine ot the founder
was not spared. The stone coffin, or sarcophagus, was broken
open, and the bones of the Conqueror were scattered to the
winds. The bones, wrote one who had no doubt looked on
the scene of sacrilege, seemed to belong to a man of great
stature.*
One fragment of the thigh-bone f of the great king was
saved by the pious care of one of the abbey monks, and sub-
sequently this poor solitary fragment of one who in life had
wielded, for good and evil, such vast power, was replaced with
solemn rites in a new and less gorgeous tomb than the one
originally graven and designed by Otto Auritaber. This
second interment took place in 1642. The tomb was again
disturbed and removed to another part of the church about a
hundred years later. In 1793, '" the confusion of the
of silken vestments, caftans, robes, and palls stiff with embroidery." Out of this
marvellous Winchester treasure-house, WiUiam Rufus gave the gold and gems to
Otto Aurifaber (the goldsmith) to fashion the superb canopy for his father's tomb.
* " Estoient encore inherentes h. la teste machoires et plusieurs dents, les
autres ossements, tant des jambes, cuisses que des bras, fort longs."— M. DE Bras.
Quoted by Freeman, iv. 719.
t ''Plus long de la largcur de quatre doigts ou environ que ceux d'un bicn
grand homme." — M. de Bras. Quoted by AI. Trebutioi (Caen, cap. iii.).
Io8 THE NORMAN DUKES.
"Terror/' the third tomb of William was again broken into,
and the one poor fragment lost for ever.
Some years after the Prefet of " Calvados," * placed on
the spot in the abbey where the desecrated tomb had been,
the large slab of black marble which still marks the resting-
place of William the Conqueror— now alas empty — with this
inscription —
3Hic scpnltus tst
Enbictissimns
GULIELMUS
(Conqncstor
^ornuiniiiac Pux
i\ 3^ngli;u JU.v
Jiujnscc Joiiiua
CONDITOR
OJui rbiit anno
ml.v.wbit.
* One of the divisions of the great Duchy of the seven Dukes was thus named
by the strange " taste " of the French people.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Vanishing Away of the Normans.
There is a well-known story in Bede* told of Edwin,
King of Northumbria, circa a.d. 620-630. "Often," said
a Saxon Theign to the King, "in the depth of winter
whilst feasting with your Theigns, and the fire is blazing on
the hearth in the midst of the hall, have you seen a bird,
storm-driven, enter at one door and escape at the other;
during its passage it was visible, but whence it came or
whither it went, you knew not." The Theign applied his
simile to the life of man, "who walks the earth for a few
years, but what preceded his birth, and what follows after
his death is unknown." The simile curiously fits in with the
story of the Normans who followed the House of Rollo.
They appeared in the first years of the tenth century, and
disappeared early in the thirteenth. During those three
hundred years their marvellous story fills a very considerable
space in the annals of Europe. F.or much of this period they
were the most prominent figures in France, England, and
Italy. They passed out of sight from all these countries
almost at the same time. The Norman name and nationality
died out well nigh simultaneously in London, Rouen, and
Palermo — the capital cities where they had been paramount
— ^just at the beginning of the thirteenth century.
'Bt'de, Hist., lib. 2. c. 13.
I lO THE NORMAN DUKES.
Who were this marvellous race who played so mighty a
part in the world's eventful story ? Other barbaric nations
have filled many pages of the history of that dim period
which succeeded the fall of the Roman Empire.
The Visigoth has written his name large in Spanish
story. The Ostrogoth and Lombard figure in the chronicle of
changes which befel Italy. The Magyar, from the east and
south, has largely influenced Southern Germany and Hun-
gary. But the Norman has left a deeper mark on the nations
with whom he came in immediate contact than any of these.
These too — Visigoth and Ostrogoth, Lombard and Magyar
— are names which represent mighty peoples, but the Norman
of Normandy and England, South Italy, and Sicily, repre-
sents,' as far as we know, no mighty people, only a chieftain
of pirates and a handful of followers — ^just a few ships of
Vikings. Who were they ? What was the secret of their
mighty power ?
The early story of the founder and creator of all this Nor-
man dominion and power which has come down to us, is com-
monplace and utterly unsatisfying. A very few unsympathetic
contemporary notices written by men who abhorred the very
name of Normans ; * some pages of a dry and rather un-
interesting chronicle,! written some eighty or hundred years
after the first settlement at Rouen ; and the more brilliant and
far more picturesque poems of the Norman Trouveurs,J
composed in the reign of the great Anjevin King Henry II.,
some two-and-a-half centuries after the Viking's death, is all
the literature we possess on the subject of the life and history
of the famous Rollo ; the founder of the mighty line of Dukes
and Kings.
• Flodoard, Canon of Rheims, AD. 916-966 ; Richer, a monk of Rheims, down
to A.D. 998.
t Dudo, Dean of S. Quentin, a.d. 900-996.
X Wace, The Roman de Rou ; Benoit dc Saint More, the Trouveur (dit le
Tourangeaii).
THE VANISHING AWAY OF THE NORMANS. Ill
All we learn from these scanty notices is, that Rollo, the
son of a Norwegian chieftain, was driven by some bloody
family feud to seek his fortune abroad, that he for some forty
years roamed the Northern seas, and with varying success,
helped by a band of freebooters sometimes large, sometimes
few in number, harried many a fair province, now in England,
now in France (Gallia) after the fashion of other piratical
Vikings like Guthrun and Hasting. In comparatively late
life this sea-robber settled in the plundered and devastated
north of France, subsequently known as Normandy, and
there reigned for some twenty years, dying in extreme old
age, having laid the foundation* of a powerful and admir-
ably ordered principality of great extent. His mighty
work was carried on and splendidly developed by his lineal
descendants.
The notices of his early career touch upon his savage
exploits, how renowned cities like Bayeux and Beauvais
were burned, Rollo helping to kindle the flames; how he
besieged and took and burned Meaux and Evreux, and
harassed Paris. How the beautiful country watered by
the Loire and Seine was* ruthlessly harried, Rollo being
especially distinguished among the pillagers. Such, the
chroniclers seem to say, was the strange preparation of
forty 3'ears, for the twenty years' work of the lawgiver, the
church builder, the restorer of desolate cities, the founder of
a mighty dynasty.
We shall probably never know the real story of this man,
so great among earth's great ones, who laid the foundation
of one of the grandest and most far-reaching powers the
world has ever known. His true history will probably
never be told ; who he really was, and what were the sources
of that mighty dominion and far-reaching influence, which
* The date of . the permanent settlement of Rol.'o and his Normans is usually
given as a.d. 912.
112 THE NORMAN DUKES.
created the England we know, shaped the career of France,
and gave to worn-out Italy a new life.*
Nor is it in the language of exaggeration that we have
painted in such glowing terms the career of the descendants
of Rollo and his handful of Vikings, They became, as their
great historian loves to paint them, in an incredibly short
space of time, " the foremost apostles alike of French Chivalry
and of Latin Christianity among the nations of Europe. In
the tenth and two following centuries the Normans of France,
England, and Italy were the foremost among peoples ; in
devotion the most ardent religious reformers, the most
fervent worshippers, the most lavish givers to churches and
monasteries — in ivar, they were in the front rank, as crusaders
and conquerors — in the arts of peace, the children of Rollo
learned, improved, adapted everything." At Rouen, at
Palermo, in London, they welcomed merit of every race and
every language. Art under their auspices produced alike the
stern grandeur of Caen and Gloucester, and the brilliant
gorgeousness of Palermo and Monreale. In these centuries
they were the conquering and ruling race of Europe."!"
My simile, from the old Saxon story, of the Bird flying out
of the blackness of Night into the brilliant fire-lit hall of
the Saxon Theign, when for a brief season it is seen, and
then, flying out again, is lost in the dark mystery of night —
still holds good. A strange mystery — as we have seen —
hangs over the origin of Rollo and his companions — ivho they
were, and wJience they came, from ivhoin they derived that
master spirit of adventure, conquest, and government — no
man knoweth. Then followed the period of their being
* The history of the Normans in Italy has yet to be written, and we are hoping for
this romantic and little-known story from the pen of that great historian, Freeman,
who has already devoted so many well-spent years to investigating the story of
other divisions of the Norman family.
t See Freeman, vol. i., chap. iv. I have taken the liberty here and there of
altering some words, but the thought is all his.
THE VANISHING AWAY OF THE NORMANS. I 13
known and seen, wondered at and admired by all the nations
of the West. Then the vanishing again from the world of
which they had for three centuries been the bravest, the most
distinguished, the foremost in war and peace, in letters and
in art — for it is no straining after word-painting to affirm
that almost simultaneously the Norman disappeared* from
London, Rouen, and Palermo^the world-famed scenes of
his most splendid and brilliant triumphs.
Roughly the dates of this vanishing aivay are as follows : —
It has been truly said that the Norman conquest of
England introduced new kings and a new nobility into the
great sea-girt island. This happened we know in a.d. 1066.
In less than 100 years, in a.d. 1154, the date of the
accession of Henry II. and the Anjevin dynasty, the purely
Norvian period came to an end.
In A.D. I 2 15, the reign of John Lackland, England may
be said to have won over to herself and her especial interests
the N'orman nobles, and in the person of the greatest of the
Plantagenets, Edward I., may be said to have won over to her
side, her king, a.d. 1272.! But the work had virtually been
accomplished years before the last date.
Henceforth the real life of England and her peoples was
drawn from the truest English sources.
The Norman vanished out of sight nearly at the same
time from the other two great centres of Norman life and
influence.
In A.D. 1 194 {Palermo) Sicily was finally conquered by
the Emperor Henry VI.
In A.D. 1204 (Rouen) N^orniandy was definitely annexed
* " The adventurous Normans, who had raised so many trophies in France,
England, and Ireland, in Apulia, Sicily, and the East, were lost either in victory or
in servitude among the vanquished natives." — (Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chapter
Ivi.).
t In England itself the Norman has vanished from sight no less than from
Apulia and Sicily. — Freeman, chapter iv., which see; compare Gibbon, /)£'t//«t' «w/
Fall, chapter Ivi.
Q
114 THE NORMAN DUKES.
to the French crown by King Philip Augustus, John Lack-
land being king of England.
We dwell for a moment on the last thought. After a
career lasting three centuries, a career of unsurpassed splen-
dour and success, the Nonnans have vanished oui of sight. At
first this seems a startling assertion. It is of course indis-
putable that this occurred in Palermo, that the Sicilian and
Italian Noi'inaiis disappeared as a dominant power after the
conquest of the Emperor Henry VI., ad. i 194.
It is equally clear that the Frcinli A'ornians became
absorbed among the French peoples after the formal annexa-
tion of Normandy and the adjacent provinces to the Crown
of France by King Philip Augustus, a.d. 1204 ; the old name
of the famous ancestral home, Normandy, alone remaining,
and in course of time even the name was swept away.
But in England, their proudest conquest, has the Norman,
too, vanished here ? Yes, vanished as in Sicily, Italy, and
France, but in a different way, — not by conquest or by
annexation. In England the conquerors and the conquered
became blended together in an extraordinarily short space of
time; in a few generations the captives may be said to have
led captive their conquerors. The change began in Henry
I.'s reign, when the purely Norman period of our history
was finished, and rapidly proceeded in the days of the great
Anjevin Henry II. Very soon Norman England was England
once again, while the descendants of the proudest of the
Norman invaders were found among the truest and sturdiest
of Englishmen. The great historian of the Conquest, in his
exhaustive work, well traces this gradual but rapid process
of absorption of the Norman element, and in one striking-
passage thus sums up the question: " Our task" (viz. that of
writing the history of the memorable period of Conquest)
"will be done when the foreign (Norman) nobles and the
foreign (Norman) king have in truth become our countrymen;
THE V.WISHIXr, A WAV OF THE XORMAXS. I 15
when the wergeld of the heroes of Senlac has been paid
in full on the battle-field of Lewes, and when the great
assembly which welcomed the return of Godwine rises again
to life in the Parliaments of Earl Simon (de Montford) and
King Edward I."*
But although this mighty people, which for three centuries
so powerfully influenced the western world, so strangely and
completely vanished out of sight, leaving behind them neither
race or language, only a great memory enshrined in some rare
contemporary chronicles in prose and verse, and in a few scant
volumes of modern research, leaving behind only a great
memory scarcely known save to a few earnest scholars, yet
we have among us, still, some vast monuments of them in stone
dating back to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in the form of
noble minster churches and abbeys — many, alas, ruins — and
a few cathedrals. These sacred buildings, with here and
there a ruined castle, are the only visible remains which the
brilliant and successful Norman has left behind him.
They are with us still — these minster churches, abbeys,
and cathedrals — matchless in their scarred beauty, some
coloured with pale grey tints, some red with the v/arm red
sandstone glow, but all clothed now alike with the soft and
tender hue which comes alone from being exposed to the
winter storms of many hundred years, and to the ripening
power of the sun of well-nigh a thousand summers.
There is a strange fitne,ss in these great churches being
the memorials of the Norman race, for they were their own
peculiar work. They were the first builders of these vast
Christian temples in the countries north of the Alps. Before
the middle of the eleventh century scarcely a really gixat
church existed in these lands. It was one of the Norman
achievements, if not to invent, at least to bring to perfection,
a noble style of architecture, subsequently known by their
* Freeman, vol. iv., page 721.
1 1 "6 THE NORM AX DUKES.
name, and then to erect, after their own fashion, in the countries
influenced by their race, especially in England, an infinite
number of splendid Homes of prayer, many of them of a
size hitherto undreamed of in northern Europe.
In those days there were no sumptuous and costly civic
buildings to design and build. The castle and the church
alone required the ingenuity of the architect, " and the castle
was built more for strength than for splendour, thus archi-
tecture had the church alone, and her adjacent buildings, on
which to lavish her skill." *
Into their church building work, the Normans threw their
whole strength and power. It seems to have gone on side by
side with the vigorous determination of some of their noblest
spirits to restore life and vigour of action and thought to the
decaying and seemingly worn out church of the time.
But it was especially in wealthy England, directly after the
conquest, that the most notable of these great minsters arose,
it was here too that they were built — in many cases with a
religious house under the great church's shadow — in the
greatest profusion.
It is no baseless thought which looks for the motive for
much of this lavish expenditure of skill and treasure through-
out England and Normandy, in a deep feeling of remorse on
the part of many a noble Norman for all the untold sorrow and
hopeless misery brought on uncounted families of the Anglo-
Saxons; for while it is indisputably true that the lower ranks
and orders of the English dwellers in the land suffered, com-
paratively speaking, little from the Norman conquest, and in
not a few respects were even gainers by the change of over-
lords, yet the sufferings and misery of the English theigns
and their families were simply unutterable.f
* Dean Milman, Latin Cliristiam'ty, book xiv., chap. viii.
t " The hideous aspect of the conquest was now unveiled, and all saw it, even
they who had profited most by the iniquity in which they and their sovereign were
involved." — Palgrave, N^ormandy ajid Engln)id, vol. iii., chap. -x.
t'i''
-iTTii
.. I
I^,
i i
V--
'-■ V
^jU'^sf^^-
H7/// irntaiiis of the old Monastic Buildings under its shadoiv.
UIK VAXISHIXG A WAV OF THE XORMANS. I 19
The Conqueror during his loni^-drawn-out death-agony in
the priory of St. Gervais on the hill overlooking Rouen, gave
sad utterance to what was no doubt a widespread feeling of
bitter remorse — when with almost his last breath, he mourned
over the many thousands of that most noble English nation
he had brought to misery, exile, and death.*
That this feeling of remorse was by no means confined
to the great King, but was felt at a very early date by others,
appears from the example of Wimund — a very famous learned
monk of St. Leutfred (Diocese of Evreux), who when pressed by
the king to accept a rich English benefice, absolutelv refused
to receive any share of the spoils of a nation which had suf-
fered such sad wrongs as, alas, he felt England had endured.
That this Wimund was a reprcsciitat he Qcc\t.'^\dJ?,i\c of his time,
is shown by his subsequent career. Gregory VII. raised him
to the Cardinalate, and subsequently bestowed on him the
Archbishopric of Aversa. Among laymen who like Wimund
openly showed their remorse, may be instanced Gilbert de
Hugleville, a kinsman of William, who fought by his sove-
reign's side at Hastings, and took part in those campaigns in
virhich the hapless Anglo-Saxons vainly attempted after the
great battle to stay the invader's progress. This renowned
warrior refused to receive lands or lordship in England. He
felt that much bitter wrong had been worked, and vast misery
occasioned by the successful Norman invasion. f There are,
no doubt, examples of other refusals on the part of the Norman
conquerors to share in the spoils of conquered England. Ikit
the vast majority of the Norman chiefs too willingly consented
* Engleterre cunquis a tort,
a tort i ont maint hoem mort. — Wace, 14,267.
" Sic multa millia pulcerrimae gentis senum juvenumque, proh dolor funestus
trucidavi." — Orderic. Vit. 659, c.
t Postquam regnum pacatum est, et Giilielmus regnavit, Giilbertiis, Rcije
multas in Anglia possessioiies offercnte, Neustriam repetiit, legitimaque simplici-
tate pollens, de rapina quidquam possidcre noliiit. Suis contentiis aliena respuit.
Orderic. \'it., 6o5 D. (quoted by Freeman. \'ol. iv., chap. .\i.\.)
I20 THE NORMAN DUKES.
to be enriched at the expense of the vanquished. Many of
these, or their immediate descendants in after years, ivcre
visited by the spectre of remorse for the cruel wrong done. Hence
the vast donations made in the days of the Conqueror and
of his immediate successors, b)' the suddenly enriched Nor-
mans for pious purposes. For the building of new abbeys
and monasteries, for the enlargement or rebuilding on a
vaster and a grander scale of stately cathedrals, churches,
and minsters, incalculable sums* were entrusted to the new
school of vigorous churchmen introduced by Lanfranc and
his friends into the fading Anglo-Saxon Church.
The vast Norman cathedrals and abbeys were planned and
many of them completed in the last quarter of the eleventh and
first half of the twelfth centuries, that is to say in the lifetime
of the Conqueror's friends and their immediate heirs. For
instance, the superb cathedral of St. Cuthbert, at Durham,
was largely the work of St. Carileph, who was nominated
Bishop of Durham in the great Gloucester Council held
by King William, a.d. 1080. Herbert de Losinga, the Bishop
of Norwich, counsellor and favourite of Rufus, designed and
built much of that glorious cathedral of Norwich. Gloucester,
with its grave and massive Norman architecture, was built by
Serlo, the friend of Lanfranc. The stately pile of Canterbury
was largely the loved work of Lanfranc himself The smaller
but beautiful church at Rochester was erected by Gundulph,
the Conqueror's friend and architect, the well-known builder
of the White Tower of London. The abbey of Tewkesbury,
the silver-grey minster set in its green river meadows, retain-
ino- still well-nigh its ancient beauty and splendour, was
founded only some ten years later than Gloucester, its grander
sister on the Severn.
* See below, '' Story of a Norman Abbey," chapter iv., where attention
is called to the fact that more religious foundations were established under the
kings of the Norman dynasty than during the xholc preceding or siibscqueni
period pf Engl ish history.
THE VANISHING AWAY OF THE NORMANS. 12 1
Winchester, Exeter, Hereford, St. Albans, and many-
other mighty sacred piles, of which some are still with us in
well-nigh their old fair loveliness ; some with much of the
Norman character veiled and hidden by the richer and more
elaborate work of another and later age ; some alas in pictur-
esque ruin, bear a similar witness to the skill and devotion —
a devotion spurred on often by a deep spirit of remorse — of
what may be termed the age of the Norman Conquest,
It was living under the shadow of one of these stately
reliques of a vanished people ; it was daily meditating,
teaching, praying among its tall white columns — the same
on which the Red King, Lanfranc the minister archbishop,
and saintly Anselm must have oftentime gazed ; it was the
silent companionship of the mighty building, with its soaring
roof gleaming with dusky gold, with its matchless jewelled
window, half veiling, half revealing with its sweet pale silver
light the white veil of lace-work, carved in stone, tossed by
master hands over the stern grave Norman work in choir and
transept; it was the silent companionshipof the Glorious House
of God in Gloucester, that made me ask myself. Who built these
wondrous Homes of Prayer? What inspiration taught these
builders to build as men had never built before ? Then, in
reply to my silent questioning I wrote my little Norman
story of the great Dukes, and how the last Duke became a
far greater king. Then I thought out how the Norman people
had disappeared, how the very name had vanished, leaving
behind only a mighty memory, and a few noble Houses
of Prayer — inimitable in their solemn beauty — in one of which
my lot was cast.
Then I went on to tell part of its eventful story as
follows : —
R
CHAPTER I.
Dreamland. — The Dead King and the new work in
THE Norman Abbey of Gloucester.
{ ^ )
What a
changed life
is mine, from
one of the
busiest quar-
ters of the
greatest city
in the world
to an old
Cathedral
city — from
London to
Gloucester ; for ten
work- filled years
vicar of a great metropoli-
tan parish, and now chief
custodian of one of those
great religious houses, grey with
years, perfect in beauty, which
form one of the glories of
ong
126
A NORMAN ABBEY.
our storied England !
But for a vicar of
St. Pancras to sit in
the seat of the old
abbots of Glou-
cester involves
a changed '
life, not mere- '
ly new sur- <-
roundings.
It was not
an luihappy
life by any
means, that
old restless
St. Pancras time.
It is all over now,
successes and fail-
ures, sadnesses and
joys, those bright
Sundays, those long
walks through the
Sunday schools, literally
miles of scholars. Ah
me ! how I have loved
them — those schools- —
but they belong now to
a past storied with happy
memories.
Then those evenings
at the grand church,
quaint and charming in its ugliness, but beautiful in its rows
and rows of worshippers ; Sunday after Sunday to meet nigh
two thousand men and women gathered tOQ^ether in the Even-
In the North Cloisters.
DREAMLAND. 127
tide to serve God : those bright, sunny, tiring days are over
and gone, and St. Pancras, its vast schools, its bright church,
its many devoted friends, is now only a memory, but a very
happy one.
How can the new strange future be made beautiful before
God ? useful to the «ieighbours ? That's the problem now
before me.
*******
I was in the cloisters alone one orolden summer eveningr — the
cloister walk of Gloucester, reckoned among cloisters the most
lovely in England, scarcely altered, save being more beautiful
in its grey decay, from the days when the third Edward reigned
in England. I was walking in this still and quiet cloister-walk
and I looked up at the cathedral tower, rising over the battle-
ments of the Norman nave, and the soaring roof of the Tran-
sept, crowning all the lesser pinnacles clustering round in
strange beautiful confusion ; the whole massive pile glowing
with a pale red in the sunset, and then gradually fading into a
silvery bluish-grey. As I looked on the fair sight, I remem-
bered a question which a child once put to me, " How long has
it taken to build it all ? " We talk of five or ten years as a long
time, but men, now long forgotten, were building, planning,
altering, adding to, beautifying this minster of ours for five
hundred long eventful years. Some of it was designed and
finished when Edward the Confessor was king. Earl Harold,
son of Godwin, had no doubt walked and prayed in that quiet
under church beneath the choir, before the luckless day when he
coveted and took a crown instead of his mighty earl's coronet.
Norman William, whom we call the Conqueror, lived here
much, and doubtless helped to build it. His famous Doomsday
Book was planned in the chapter room leading out of this old
cloister walk. William Rufus lay sick in the great Benedictine
House of Gloucester, when he forced the pastoral staff of
Canterbury into the unwilling hand of the holy scholar Anselm
128
A NORMAN ABBEY.
.Ai
'^^^;i!'^:^^f^;'.r^
s?»r^i' Ap'Ct
'^■'-
^.-^'^''t
*. ~^
v-*-
— Anselin whom he came to hate so bitterly, but who, had the
Red King chosen, would have been his friend and counsellor,
who would have saved him from that awful death and the
unblessed grave which was the Red King's fate.
It was in the Benedictine House of Gloucester that the
DREAMLAXD— WILLIAM A'C/-TS. I 29
Strange scene round what seemed to be King William Rufus's
dying bed took place, that first Sunday in Lent, 1093, when
bishops, nobles, and monks stood in the sick man's chamber,
and besought him, amongst other deeds of reparation, to nomi-
nate an occupant to the arch-see of Canterbury, which had been
long vacant, and its great revenues and powers had been seized
on by the King.
Among the crowd which stood by the King was a Norman
monk nam^ed Anselm of Aosta, of the monastery of Bee, of
great reputation for piety and learning, for whom the King had
frequently expressed great dislike. To the surprise of all pre-
sent, King William, raising himself slightly on his bed, told
the courtiers that he had chosen Anselm for archbishop. The
scene that followed the unexpected announcement was a strange
one. The monk Anselm earnestly and pertinaciously refiised
the proffered honour. He asserted he was unfit, ineligible;
nothing would move him to accept the dignity.
The curious scene by the King's bedside lasted a long
while; at last a pastoral staff was brought to Rufus. The
unwilling monk was hurried to the bed where the King
was lying. Anselm clenched his fist, and would not open
it to recdve the staff. The bishops who stood by forced
the reluctant fingers open, and placing the pastoral staff
within them, held the monk's hand firm, and then hurrying
him into the adjoining minster, chanted over the new arch-
bishop the "Te Deum," and thus Anselm strangely and
sorrowfully commenced his great and stormy reign over the
Church in England.
It was in the same holy House of Gloucester that the wicked
William Rufus kept in solemn state his last Christmas festival,
A.D. 1099, wearing his crown and kingly robes.
Only some six months later the solemn crypt of the cathe-
dral, but little changed to-day from what it was in those far-
back times, probably furnished to the monk of Gloucester the
s
I30
A NORMAN ABBEY.
1
< if
>T'i IhJ
/I "^ m w /^ >1, 1
n
1'
^ v'<V
3.
ill- ^1l I
-^JSB:
•r'
sombre imagery of the vision in whicli he saw the immediate
death of the hated king.
It was in the same minster church of Gloucester, the
August of the same year (a.d. iioo), that Abbot Fulchard,
of Shrewsbury, preached on the miseries of England, and
predicted the manner of the King's death in terms so precise
and clear, it seemed as thoutjfh he knew something beforehand
DREAMLAND — WILLI A M RUFUS. I 3 1
of the tragedy of which, in less than three short days, the
New Forest was to be the silent witness.
The preacher's words as delivered in the Gloucester Abbey
pulpit were, " The Lord God will overthrow with a terrible
convulsion the mountains of Gilboa (referring to Kingf Saul's
death). The anger of the Lord will no longer spare trans-
gressors. . . . The bow of divine wrath is bent against the
reprobate, and the swift arrow is taken from the quiver to
inflict wounds. Quickly will this be done." Abbot Serlo, of
Gloucester, sent a special messenger at once to his friend and
frequent guest, then in the New Forest, to relate the strange
and awful portents of the sermon or the dream, perhaps of
both, in the hope that the Red King would repent while for
him time was. William Rufus received the messenger and the
message of Serlo of Gloucester, but only mocked. The
words were spoken on August i, the Festival of St. Peter,
by the preacher in Gloucester Abbey. Two days later, on
the 3rd of August, the King was found stretched on the
ground within the walls of the ruined church just below the
Malwood Castle, a fair scene in the New Poorest well loved
by the wild Red King — was found by Robert Fltzhamon,
Lord of the honour of Gloucester, and another noble, Gilbert
de Aquila, in the agonies of death, transpierced by the
shaft of a Norman arbalist, the blood gurgling in his throat.
The dying- king tried in vain to speak, but no word was
caught by his faithful friends, who tried to pray with him but
in vain.
William Rufus lies in the choir of Winchester Cathedral
with the old West Saxon kings, but for the murdered William
no bells tolled, no alms were given ; for the repose of the soul
of the dead Rufus no prayers were offered. Men thought for
him that prayers were hopeless.
The slab that covered the sad disfigured corpse of what was
once King of England bore no name, no crown, no verse of
132
A NORMAN ABBEY.
Scripture. There was an awful eloquence in the strange
unbroken silence of the tomb in Winchester.
*******
One King of England after the other made Gloucester
Abbey their home ; now it was the scene of a royal coronation ;
now it became a royal tomb. Parliaments were held here ;
stately festal seasons were often kept at Gloucester, not only
by Anglo-Saxon, but by Norman monarchs. It was a very
favourite home of the royal Plantagenets.
From Edward the Confessor's days successive generations
of monks kept pulling down and building up, devising pillars
and arches, raising tall roofs, planning gardens and cloisters,
making the loved House of God in Gloucester more and more
rich with beautiful sculptured fancies. And so the grand old
prayer-house on which I was gazing on that golden summer
evening slowly grew. It was the result of no one architect's
fancy ; it was no design even of one generation ; it was, with
its lovely confusion of styles and orders of architecture, with
its curious and quaint conceits, with its delicate and exquisite
sculptured lacework, it was the outcome of five hundred years
of patient, loving thought on the part of kings and princes, of
scholars and artists, of men of action and men of prayer. No
wonder such a building is inimitable.*
o
There is only one description of figure-tomb really per-
* But in spite of all additions, changes, and decorative work, which went on for
several hundred years, the interior of Gloucester Cathedral (a.d. 1890) is the
interior of a great Norman Church of the last quarter of the eleventh
century. The matchless Norman nave is scarcely changed. The Norman choir
is still with us, only with a veil of Perpendicular lacework tossed over the old
Norman pillars and vast round arches in the fourteenth century. A walk round the
ambulatory of the choir will show this. When in this stately ambulatory, or in the
noble clerestory above, one is tempted to forget the gorgeous fourteenth century
changes, and is at once transported back to the days of the Conqueror and his son
Rufus. Only the Lady Chapel really belongs to a laterage. The arrangements of the
church within are probably still identical with those of Serlo, the friend of Lanfranc,
the first Norman abbot and builder of most of the sacred pile.
DREAMLAND— THE DEAD KING.
^11
missible. It is when the image of the dead lies in quiet
repose ; a standing figure, a kneeling knight or churchman,
even a sitting form is a mistake. It is certainly unnatural,
undignified, positively painful to the beholder ; but the sculp-
tured form of a recumbent figure suggests rest, repose, sleep,
a peaceful waiting till the morning of the great awakening.
The hands folded as though in prayer, the restful upturned
134 A NORMAN ABBEY.
face, the reposeful expression on the Hps seemingly ready to
break into a smile of quiet happiness, all this speaks of
death, as a Christian loves to think of it. It tells of a trustful
waiting for a solemn yet a joyful surprise.
Near what was once the high-altar of the Abbey of
Gloucester, still the sacred spot where the Church of England
perpetually carries out with her true simple rites her Master's
dying charge, is a stately royal tomb, with a graceful and
elaborately carved canopy of stone— one of the most beautiful
tombs in the world. Within this shrine lies a sleeping figure,
robed and crowned. The face — we entertain no doubt it is a
portrait of the dead — the face strangely winning and attractive,
though perhaps somewhat weak in character and undecided,
but singularly peaceful and beautiful in its setting of long
wavy hair ; the face of one men and women would admire
and even love. And seeing that to the rare beauty was added
kingly rank, it was the face of one men would readily die for,
and I dare say not a few did in those stormy turbulent days
when that sad king reigned in England.
Beneath that stately tomb with the fair crowned effigy
rests the unhappy man known in history as Edward II. He
was no stranger in the halls of the great religious house of
Gloucester. Years before the tragedy which closed his life,
King Edward, on a visit to Gloucester, was honourably
received in the monastery, and as he sat at table in the
Abbot's Hall and was looking at the portraits of the kings,
his ancestors, which hung round the walls of the Abbot's
Hall,* the King, in the course of the banquet, turned to
his host the Abbot, and asked him, half in joke, half in
earnest, if the monks would ever give him, the King, a place
among his royal forefathers. The grave Abbot Thoky of
Gloucester answered — were the words of Abbot Thoky a
prophecy ? — that he hoped one day to have him. King
• This Abbot's Hall is still part of the present Deanery.
DREAMLAND— THE DEAD KING. 135
Edward, In the abbey, but in a nobler place than in a mere
guest chamber."
Neither prince nor monk thought, in that high day of
feasting, that for long centuries, hard by the high-altar of the
Abbey, only a few yards away, the Prince's sculptured effigy,
wearing royal robes and a kingly crown, would mark the place
of sepulchre of a murdered King of England. The Abbot's
reply was curiously fulfilled. The side of the high-altar of the
great minster church of the Monastery verily was a nobler place
for the King's effigy to rest in than the dining-hall of the
Abbot.
Gloucester owes much of the glory and beauty of its stately
Cathedral t to the pious daring of this same Abbot Thoky.
When some years after the scene in the Abbot's hall, the body
of the murdered King Edward II. lay unhonoured and
deserted in that gloomy chamber of the keep of Berkeley
Castle, some sixteen or seventeen miles distant from Gloucester,
several of the great religious houses in the neighbourhood
declined to give a grave to the dead king. These not very
brave monks of Bristol, Kingswood, and Malme.sbury thought
that by granting sepulture to the poor remains of the hapless
uncrowned Edward they would expose themselves to the ill-will
of the dead man's wife, the wicked Queen Isabella, who was
exercising for the time sovereign power in the land.
By a happy inspiration, different from his brethren of
' " Edwardus rex secundus post Conquestum, veniens in Gloucestriam, abbas
et conventus eum honorifice suscepit, qui sedens ad mensam in aula abbatis, et
ibidem videns depictas figuras regum praedecessorum suorum, jocose sciscitabatur
ad abbate ulrum haberet eum depictum inter ipsos an non. Cui respondit quod
speraret se ipsum habiturum in honestiori loco quam ibi, quod itaevenit." — Hist, et
Cart. Monast. GIou.
t The vast expenditure required for this gorgeous Perpendicular lacework,
tossed over the stern Norman pillars and arches of the choir, was met out of the
vast sums received by the monks of Gloucester from pilgrims to the shrine of the
murdered king, Edward II.
136 A NORMAN ABBEY.
Bristol, Kingswood, and Malmesbury, Abbot Thoky of
Gloucester tossed aside all cowardly fears and boldly begged
the body of the murdered king. The brave old monk of
Gloucester too was not minded to do this pious loyal deed
privily in a corner ; but with a goodly retinue accompanying
his own carriage adorned with the arms of his stately abbey,
Abbot Thoky sent to Berkeley Castle, and with pomp and
ceremony fetched the corpse of poor murdered Edward home
to Gloucester.
It was a brave, manly, pious act — this of the old Gloucester
abbot. But when they did this noble bit of work, neither
monks nor abbot dreamed of the extraordinary rich guerdon
which their loved minster church would in coming days
receive for their brave and beautiful act of tender chivalry.
The minster had not long to wait before it received its
splendid recompense for the good deed done by its abbot.
For the dead King's son, whom we know as Edward III.,
took speedy and sharp vengeance on his father's betrayers
and murderers. Then, over the murdered King's remains,
he built, near the high-altar, the graceful tomb which, after
five and a half centuries, we still gaze at with wondering
admiration. Edward III. was not content with simply
building a stately tomb to his father's memory, he honoured
with rare honour the monastery and its minster church, which,
in spite of grave danger, had not forgotten the reverence due
to a fallen king.
But royal favour was only a very little portion of the
rich reward which the Abbey of Gloucester received for its
brave act of loving charity.
With one of those sudden revulsions of feeling not uncom-
mon in the story of a people, England turned round and
began to honour with singular devotion the memory of its
once despised and persecuted King Edward.
It was a singular and almost inexplicable cult, this reve-
DREAM LAXn~'l HE DEAD KING. 137
rence for the murdered Edward II. Soon after the accession
of his son, Edward III., crowds of pilgrims, consisting of all
sorts and conditions of men and women, came to visit and
pray over the Gloucester shrine where the remains of the
dead King rested.
Some perhaps came, thinking thus to pay court to the
reigning sovereign ; some because they felt that a bitter
wrong had been done, and they who doubtless had shouted
approval when Edward was shut up in his doleful prison at
Berkeley, now prayed by the tomb-side and offered rich gifts as
a kind of tardy reparation. Some came to Gloucester out of a
hope to win the favour of King Edward III., some from
curiosity, some — possibly the greater number — because they
believed the dead Edward, king and martyr, could some-
how help them and make prosperous and happy their homes.
Miracles were reported to have been worked in that
stately aisle where the new and splendid canopy had arisen
over the white effigy of the persecuted sovereign.
The Abbey treasury grew rich — very rich — with the
pilgrims' gifts.* These pilgrims kept crowding in ever-
increasing numbers to the shrine, and the strange adoration
of the murdered Edward grew more and more popular.
Two years after that memorable day when he brought the
dishonoured remains of King Edward II. to Gloucester, and
laid them with all reverence close to the high-altar of the
proud minster church of his monastery. Abbot Thoky, now an
old man and worn out with thought and care, resigned the
oversight of his great religious house to younger and more
vigorous hands.
• Among the remarkable gifts given to the Abbey at this time by distinguished
persons, such as King Edward III., Philippa his Queen, the BlacI^ Prince, the
Queen of Scotland, and others, were a ship of solid gold, a costly gold cross with
a piece of the "true cross" set in it. A necklace with a precious ruby, a golden
heart, and many valuable pieces of silver. These and countless other treasures
disappeared, it is supposed, when the Monastery was dissolved in the reign of King
Henry Vlll.
138
A NORMA X ABBEY.
John Wigmore, a notable name in the annals, not only of
Gloucester but of famous artist monks, succeeded to the charge
of a grim old Norman minster church dating from the days
of Edward the Confessor, Harold, and the Conqueror. The
great church of the Severn Lands, when John Wigmore
became Abbot of Gloucester, possessed grandeur, solidity.
DREAMLAND— THE DEAD KING. 133
massiveness ; in its general design there was plainness, almost
austerity. It had been built in rude and stormy days after
the fashion somewhat of a f)rtress; the walls were of
enormous thickness, pierced with round, arched windows of
no great size, but of considerable depth. The massive
pillars, and low round aisles, stood grey and solemn, sugges-
tive of vast power and of unshaken duration. It breathed,
did the old Norman minster which Abbot Wigmore found
in Gloucester, awe and solemnity ; but it was wanting
perhaps in that exquisite grace and tender beauty which in
the more splendid mediaeval cathedrals often inspire a higher
devotion.
When Wigmore became abbot of the old Norman pile of
Gloucester he found himself in a different position from that
occupied by any of his predecessors. Loyal Gloucester stood
high in favour with King Edward III., and higher still in
the estimation of the English people. The pious act of his
predecessor, Abbot Thoky, in burying, with all reverence
and honour, the body of the murdered King, was looked upon
by the many as a national act of reparation for a great national
crime, and Abbot Wigmore's great Benedictine House of
Gloucester enjoyed now not merely a high position in popular
estimation, but, owing to this popular estimation, what it had
never possessed before, an overflowing treasury, for the
crowds of pilgrims visiting day by day King Edward's shrine
left behind them substantial tokens of their visit in the shape
of more or less costly offerings.
The monk was often a great architect. Those orlorious
sacred piles men wonder at and admire with so deep an
admiration — mighty piles which grew up in so many centres
of Europe from the eleventh to the fifteenth century — were
largely the fruit of the monk's hand and brain.
The cloister life seems to have been peculiarly adapted to
the architect's craft. The cloister of the Middle Ages pro-
I40 A NORMAN ABBEY.
duced, It is true, famous historians, true poets, philosophers,
lawyers, doctors, statesmen, and certainly not a few of rarely
gifted painters. But the cloister was not the solitary field
where these various masters in their several crafts flourished.
In architecture, however, during that long period which men
roughly call the Middle Ages, the monk was surely the first,
and not only was he the first architect of his own day, but in
succeeding days he has held the first place. The great
monkish masterpieces in architecture are still the schools
whither resort for instruction, suggestion, inspiration, the
foremost in the craft of architects. These old masterpieces,
none dream of surpassing ; our generation, with all its boasted
progress in science and in art, deems itself happy if it can,
with fair success, imitate these matchless buildings.
High among these inimitable works ranks the great
Church of the Severn Lands, the Cathedral of Gloucester.
John Wigmore, who became abbot of the old Norman
minster some two years after King Edward II. was laid to
rest hard by the minster's high altar, was no doubt one of
these great monk architects. He entered on his great office
at a fortunate time ; his abbey stood, as we have seen, high
in royal favour, his treasury was overflowing with gold, and
the revenue arising from the pilgrims to the shrine of the
murdered Edward was increasing year by year.
The old Norman minster church was large enough and to
spare ; its strong foundations, its thick and massive walls, its
mighty columns would endure for ages. There was evidently
no occasion to rebuild or to enlarge it. But the stern plainness,
the grave simplicit)', the severe grandeur of the noble pile mis-
liked Abbot Wigmore and the architect monks of his day.
The Norman cathedral, built some two and a half or three
centuries earlier, might almost seem to have been built
for warlike or defensive purposes. The builders of Abbot
Serlo and of the days of Edward the Confessor were
Ni/
"Pr '
'" ■ ^'m Mu %li ' -^'-
i i
^— -,-:)- -i-. -.— r-t
I
DREAMLAXD^TIIE DEAD KING. 143
evidently impressed with tlie dan;j;ers of the stormy age in
which they lived, and built as though an invasion of Vikings, of
unchristianised Northmen or Danes, had to be guarded against.
The general impression of a great Norman abbey was that a
fortress church rose up before you. Hence the great square
central tower with battlements, like the donjon or keep of a
castle : we see some of these characteristic features at Peter-
borough and at Tewkesbury. Hence too the narrow apertures
for light, in many cases scarcely more than perforations in the
massive walls.
But these old stormy times were now long past. Christian
churches now cast their shadows over those deep blue fiords of
Norway and Denmark whence the war ships of the Vikings
used to sail on their expeditions of plunder among the towns
and villages of England and Normandy. There was no need
in the days when the third Edward ruled for fortress-like
buildings. So Wigmore determined to carry out what had
been long dreamed of in his quiet cloisters, and to reclothe
with a new strange beauty the aisles and choir of his great
minster church.
He would devise a new order in architecture, would re-
clothe, so to speak, the mighty stones of Serlo's minster. It
was a gigantic undertaking, but Wigmore had ample means at
his command to carry it out.
He began his master-work in the vast south transept, in the
great south arm of the cross in the old Norman abbey. It was
a bold and daring work, and must have cost, besides vast
thought, enormous labour. The whole of the old work was
curiously and deftly refaced and covered with pannelling of
richly carved stone. The new (it is now more than five
hundred years old) beautiful stone-work, well nigh as fresh as
on the day of its completion, looks as though it were nailed on
to the original Norman walls and columns and aisles ; it may be
compared to a mighty white stone veil thrown over walls and
144
A .XORMAN ABBEY.
pillars and across
arches ; the little
apertures in the
massy walls v\ ere
changed into
great and stately
windows; the few
old ornaments, al-
ways picturesque
in their rugged
simplicity, were
preserved by the
unerrinof taste of
these fourteenth-
century monk-
builders, and
curiously and
skilfully were
woven into the
new and more
elaborate de-
signs.
Six years sufficed for the completion of this first part
of a vast work. In six years, with a practically bottom-
less purse, the south transept of the old Gloucester minster,
according to Abbot Wigmore's plans, was completed. The
date was a.d. 1335, in which year the first finished Perpen-
dicular piece of work in England left the monk- workmen's
hands.
It was a daring conception, but strangely beautiful— so
beautiful that it not only emboldened the Gloucester monks to
go on with their curious design of entirely remodelling their
grand old Norman minster, but it positively gave a new im-
pulse to English architecture, and the Gloucester design was
DREAMLAND— HI !■: DEAD KING. 145
imitated and elaborated in other great cliurches and abbeys in
our land.
We will go on with our story of how Gloucester put on
the rest of its splendid and glorious robe of stone in another
chapter.
*^ ^ ^ 3k ^ :il:
t^ TI» n^ '^ tp "7^
Sometimes in the late evening-tide, when all is still and
quiet, when strangers and attendants are gone, when the great
church is half veiled, half revealed in the tender grrace of the
lonsf drawn out soft, summer twilight, I eo into that south
transept, with its veil of carved stone, tossed over the
stern grave Norman work, and gaze on the awful beauty
which these workmen, dead and forgotten for more than
five hundred years, called into being. Then I think I
be^in to see something of what Wigmore and his monks
had in their minds when they piled their charmed stones one
on the other, in beautiful confusion as it seems, but really
with studied order ; I begin to see something of those heaven-
ward aspirations of these monk-architects, whom the Divine
and perfect architect lodged during those long ages — men are
pleased to call dark, — in these quiet peaceful homes of prayer
and thought termed monasteries.
u
CHAPTER II.
The Inventors of Perpendicular Architecture.
What a powerful factor is death in our estimation of other men
and women ! There is somethino- stransfe in this ; it does not
gild what is ugly and undesirable, but it makes us forget the
dark side of the one who has gone from us, while it transfigures
with a new strange beauty anything desirable, any fair charac-
teristic, any distinguished position which belonged in life to the
" fallen asleep." It is not absence, permanent absence — not
the eternal (as far as this world is concerned) separation which
does this ; it is death.
Now were death annihilation ; if the dead, body, soul, and
spirit, ceased to exist ; if they had returned to the elements
and had been absorbed, this feeling on the part of men about
the dead would not exist. It is the persuasion, universal, if not
universally acknowledged, the persuasion that death is only a
change of state, which affects so powerfully, so tenderly, so
lovingly, our judgment of the departed.
Never was this human judgment more powerfully affected,
more completely reversed than in the case of that unhappy
king of England w'hose fair white effigy lies hard by the
Gloucester Cathedral altar. Living, King Edward II. seemed
to have forfeited all feeling of love and loyalty on the part of
his subjects, all respect and affection, which even a poor weak
sovereign generally wins from his people — at least from many
PERPENDICULAR ARCHITECTURE. 147
of them, just because he is a king. Edward II., when a
prisoner in Berkeley Castle, apparently had forfeited the
people's love, had lost his own home and hearth, his wife and
child. He still, in spite of his forced abdication, wore the
crown ; we see it in the beautiful Gloucester effigy. But
during those sad days in Berkeley Castle and other prisons, it
was a very crown of thorns.
But no sooner had death touched the poor misguided prince
than a sudden revulsion of feeling set in. Never, perhaps, has
a fairer tomb been carved than the one which the dead man's
son, Edward III., set up over his murdered father in the
Gloucester minster.
Well-nigh five hundred and fifty summers and winters
have passed since the masons put the last stroke to the cunning
work in the old Norman abbey-church, and left the dead
Edward to sleep undisturbed beneath the graceful canopy of
stone and marble ; yet men still come to wonder at it, and to
admire its unrivalled beauty and grace.
But the exquisite shrine in Gloucester was only the begin-
ning of the tardy reparation of England. As we have said,
pilgrims from all parts of the country flocked to Gloucester, to
pray before the royal shrine — for it was in good truth a shrine
of the ill-used king whom they had allowed to be so cruelly
and shamefully done to death.
Not a few doubtless came to the tomb feelino' that some
curse rested on their home and hearth, on account of the bitter
wrong done to the Lord's anointed by his people, who at least
sat still and allowed the deed of shame to be committed on the
King, and thus were in a way sharers in the wicked murder.
The pilgrims hoped their prayers and offerings at the
shrine would shield theDi and their homes from any curse
resulting from the regicides' bloody work.
Men forgot his weakness, his love for unworthy favourites,
forgot those nerveless hands which once held the iron sceptre
148 A NORMAN ABBEY.
in so powerless a grasp, and only remembered his surpassing
beauty and his grace, his winning manners and his princely
bearing. They seemed to fancy God had taken him under
His special care now, and to make up for the hard and cruel
treatment which His anointed had received on earth, had
given him some special place and home among the saints in
glory.
Some such feelings as these* must have moved the crowds
of pilgrims who thronged for so many years the grey old
Norman aisles of the great Gloucester minster church, just
to kneel and pray at the shrine of the dead King Edward.
*******
In the church of Berkeley, one of the noblest parish
churches in the west of England, under the walls of the old
famous castle where King Edward II. 's last days of humilia-
tion and pain were spent, there is a stately tomb bearing a
date not very many years after the death scene in the castle
keep. On the broad white sculptured slab lie two effigies, with
hands folded in attitude of prayer. One of these possesses a
singular interest. The effigy in question is of a knight clad in
a coat of mail, the rich yet simple armour in which the nobles
and chiefs of Edward III. fought and won at Cressy. But we
have not a few examples of these sculptured and painted
effisfies of the warriors of the Edwards. The beautiful tomb
and its recumbent figures would not of themselves claim a
special mention ; but one loves to think — probably with reason
— that the artist, when he designed these fair monuments of
the illustrious dead, tried to reproduce something which
would recall the features of the famous knis^ht or noble when
in life.
The face of the mailed warrior of the tomb in Berkeley
church is an arresting one ; the stranger, as his eye travels over
* Other feelings which probably moved some to their strange cult of King
Edward II. are referred to above.
A'/XC; EDWARD II. 149
the beautiful church, is struck with the great monument near
the east end of the nave, the white monument with the life-
sized images of a knight in full armour of the time of Edward
III., and of a lady. The latter possesses no special interest
save for the antiquarian, who is delighted with the perfect
fourteenth-century figure ; but the face of the knight arrests
at once the gaze of all thoughtful passers-by. The long-dead
and forgotten artist has left an expression on the face of that
sculptured knightly form that none can forget who have really
looked at it.
It is of a man not very much past his prime ; the rich coat
of mail, with the proud ancestral shield of a great house
blazoned over it, tells us we have before us the effigy of one of
the powerful nobles of the court of Edward III.
But it is t\\&/aee which attracts the stranger — it is the face
which positively haioits the stranger as he gazes on it : it
draws him back to look at it again, and yet again. On the face
there is an expression of hopeless remorse, it seems — of a
remorse too great for anything in this life to comfort. It seems
to tell of an eternal regret.
Thomas, Lord of Berkeley, whose remains sleep beneath
that stately white tomb, was master of the castle when Sir John
Maltravers and Sir Thomas Gournay, acting as gaolers,
brought the hapless Edward II. prisoner to Berkeley.
The true story relates how Lord Thomas de Berkeley
received his unhappy royal guest with knightly courtesy, and
treated him with studied respect. This conduct on the part of
the Lord of Berkelev so misliked Edward's cruel eaolers,
Gournay and Maltravers, that they positively would not allow
him to see the poor captive king, and prevented him from
doing anything to soften the rigour of the confinement in his
own castle.
Terrible cruelties seem to have been inflicted on the fallen
sovereign when under Thomas de Berkeley's roof A well
150 A .YORMAX ABBEF.
leading into a damp and noisome dungeon is still shown in
the castle in which they say the king was immured, and there
fed upon a diet of putrid meat, in the hope that mal iria and
unwholesome food would speedily put an end to h's life. But
strangely enough the king lived on, so sterner measures were
resorted to. He was taken from the dungeon and lodged in
a strong chamber in the castle keep.
This room is little changed since the day when the dark
deed of murder was done in it. There still exists the little
terrace outside where the sentinel used to keep watch and
ward by day and by night. The couch where the king's
attendant used to sleep by his royal master is still there, and
the very bed, so the story runs, in which poor Edward was
foully and cruelly murdered, still occupies the old place. The
ancient bed now shown may or may not, in its eutirctv, be the
identical bed of Edward, but the curious and most ancient
coverlet is probably of that period. The whole scene of the
murder is scarcely changed.
It would be needlessly harrowing to dwell on the dread
scene which this room in the castle keep witnessed on the
night of the 22nd September, a.d. 1327. Traditions yet
lineer in the neisfhbourhood that in the meadows beneath the
castle-wall, and which are scarcely a stone's throw from the
church, the shrieks of the dying king were distinctly heard
that night, and that dwellers in the cottages near the castle
were awakened by the piercing cries, "and prayed to God for the
harmless soul which was passing away that night in torture."
Could not the Lord of Berkeley, whose kindly feelings
towards the unhappy Edward were known, though he was
probably under some restraint and suspicion, have contrived
to stop that foul deed done in his own castle ? Is it then a
baseless thought which thinks of the sculptor of the effigy of
the tomb faithfully reproducing the features of Lord Thomas
de Berkeley as he appeared in life, with the memories of that
A'AV(; EDWARD 11.
151
■Sm
^ %m^^^^^^^ii^
dread September night stamped for ever on the face — his
royal master's cries of mortal agony sounding for ever in his
ears ? No expiation, no sorrow we can conceive, could ever
have washed the events of that dread night off the tablets of
the memory. Hence the look, the indescribable look of
hopeless sorrow, of bitter remorse printed on the face of
that silent knightly form lying on the great tomb of Berkeley
church.
The gloomy room in Berkeley castle keep and the
fair tomb and its effigy with the sad sculptured face in
Berkeley church should be studied together with the stately
152 A XOTiJlfAX ABBEi:
shrine at Gloucester, where the murdered Edward lies in
royal state.
tF Tp ^ tF tF yf y^
It is very quiet now, that silent aisle in Gloucester Cathe-
dral, where the fretted lacework of the beautiful canopy throws
its shadows over the white image of Edward. The line of
pilgrims to the shrine has long ceased to stream by.
But as the stranger in Gloucester stops to gaze at, and
to admire, the exquisite work which canopies the royal grave
he asks perhaps the guide the question, " Is the body of the
dead king surely there ? Has it ever been touched by rude
or sacrilegious hands ? " He remembers, if his " memory still
is green," he remembers the story of St. Denyshard by Paris,
and the rifled, dishonoured graves there, once the sacred
resting-place of so many Valois and Bourbon kings of France
— remains which, alas ! were scattered to the winds of heaven
in the stormy revolutionary days, when in unhappy France
throne and altar were alike desecrated. He remembers, too,
how the story of Gloucester tells of the rough soldiers of
Cromwell, of the havoc they made in the sacred precincts. To
them nothing was sacred, neither cloister nor church. Men
relate how they stabled their horses in the beautiful cloister
walks of King Edward III. We look at the broken reredos,
at the chipped and disfigured stones, still lovely in their utter
ruin, and ask what the glorious Lady Chapel must have
been before those days, when the misguided iconoclasts of the
" Republic " busied themselves in destroying what was so
beautiful and venerable in those storied walls of Gloucester !
Had Cromwell's rough troopers dug up King- Edward's
body ? They had no love for kings we know, and Edward's
unhappy story would not have increased their reverence for
the royal state ; and the men who could hack and deface the
exquisite shrines and sacred altars of the Lady Chapel, only a
few yards distant, might well have employed their leisure in
PERPENDIC I -LA R A RCHITEC Tl 'RE.
153
■'^'1:
X-
■4?^
^
^. ']i5el^(5^d
tossing out and scattering to the winds of heaven the remains
of a king rejected by his subjects, as had been the hapless
second Edward.
Some thirty four years ago, the doubt whether or no the
X
154 A AORMAA' ABBF.Y.
body of the king lay beneath his splendid tomb, decided the
canon then in residence quietly to open the cathedral floor
beneath the " Edward shrine " and see.
The solitary survivor of the "exploring" party tells the
story. It was in the deep dawn of an autumn morning when
they assembled, four in number, in the quiet hush of the old
church. On the south side of the tomb they removed the
floor and excavated about two feet or a little more. Then
they worked under the tomb, and there, beneath the flooring
immediately under the monument, the searchers came upon a
wood coffin of great antiquity, quite sound, but the wood was
light as cork. After removing a portion of this they came to
a leaden coffin, quite perfect, made in a very peculiar manner.
It was a very thick sheet of lead, square at the bottom, and
rising on each side like an arch, and so turned over the body
in an oval or arched form, and seen to have been made to sit
nearly close upon the body. The tomb apparently had never
been opened before this, since the morning of the interment
some five hundred and twenty-eight years before. The
searchers left it open for about the space of two hours. The
whole was then carefully closed again without any injury
having been done to the tomb.
The survivor of that little curious group having been
questioned as to details, said the canon refrained from unwind-
ing that heavy sheet of lead and thus exposing the face of the
dead to the light. It would probably, after a short exposure,
have crumbled to dust, so he left it untouched still wrapped in
its leaden winding-sheet. About the lead the survivor said
were many bits of tarnished tinsel, as though something like a
lying-in-state had been arranged by the loyal monks, probably
in the. under church beneath the choir.
So when we gaze upon that solemn, beautiful tomb, we
may rest assured that no rude, impious men have violated it,
no rude careless hands have despoiled it of its sacred contents.
PERPEXDICUI.AR ARCIIITECTLR F.. 155
but that the remains of royal Edward — probably embahncd
by the reverent care of the Benedictine monks of Gloucester,
who dared so much for their fallen King — lie waiting there
the Master's call on the Resurrection morning.
We may feel grateful to the four who verified the actual
position of the King's coffin, that they reverently refrained
from unrolling that winding-sheet of massy lead ; for we feel
assured that there, beneath the fair canopy of fretted stone,
beneath the white and solemn figure of the King, lies at this
moment the body of Edward, with the face still in its old
wan beauty, as on the morning nigh six hundred years ago,
when pious Abbot Thoky's hand tenderly and reverently left
him there to sleep.
The wonderful flow of rich offerings at the tomb of the
murdered Edward went on, rather as time passed increasing
than diminishing ; the treasury of the Benedictine house of
Gloucester grew fuller and fuller. The dreams of restora-
tion, of making the old Norman minster of Serlo — the abbot
chosen by Archbishop Lanfranc — more beautiful, first dreamed
by Abbot Thoky in the reign of Edward II., became likely
enough to be realised. There was no lack of funds. " Re-
ligion," as it has been quaintly said, "religion awoke creative
genius, genius worked freely with boundless command of
wealth."
The old chroniclers of the monastery tell us that the
monks of Gloucester, had they been so minded, might have
rebuilt on a new and gorgeous scale their mighty abbey-
church, so ample were the funds provided in the offerings
at the shrine of Edward II. But the abbot preferred to
change and to decorate rather than to pull down and to
rebuild.
John Thoky, John Wigmore, Adam de Stanton, and
Thomas Horton, abbots of the Benedictine house of Gloucester,
A.D. 1307-1377, a period of just seventy years— names now
1.56
A NO J? A/AN ABBSr.
55. ■•
-VfT"
Cathedral from North-west.
utterly forgotten in the many-coloured story of England —
must have been men of great power and ability.
Some have suggested that in the latter years of the
thirteenth and in the fourteenth century there grew up a
vast secret guild of freemasons connected with or latent in
the monasteries and among the clergy, some of whom were
men of professed architectural science ; but there is no record
of any such guild. The very names of the great architects
who designed the (so-called) Gothic piles of the fourteenth
century, with a few exceptions, such as Erwin of Strasburg,
have been lost. This is a curious and interesting question,
deserving of searching investigation. No one as yet has
been able to throw any light upon it. For instance, was
the glorious Perpendicular of Gloucester first thought
out by the Gloucester monks in the little study-cells
in the cloister walks of the Benedictine monastery by the
monks themselves? Had they any foreign help? Did the
PERPEXDICi'LAR ARCHITECTURE. 157
abbot or prior in their guest-chamber, or in that vaulted
room now the deanery library, entertain men from distant
lands who taught the monks of Gloucester the secrets of the
strange, beautiful craft which with consummate art covered
the Norman transepts and the once dimly lighted choir with
the inimitable veil of curious and delicate tracery in stone,
which with rare skill changed the little apertures for light in
which their Norman fathers had delighted, into those vast
and splendid windows which they proceeded to fill with
glass, stained with the richest, tenderest colouring ?
Be this how it may, the Benedictine abbots of Gloucester
of the fourteenth century and the men they employed surely
devised a perfectly new and exquisitely beautiful form of
architecture.
It was carried out in the two transepts and in the choir of
that grand old Norman minster over which these abbots
presided. Gloucester was the example, par excellence, of that
charming and peculiarly English variety of the wide-spread
Gothic school of architecture known as Perpendicular.
It is probable that the straight lines so characteristic of
their school of " Gothic," were first used in the cathedral of
Gloucester, because the panelling and the tracery devised in
the new work had to be, so to speak, carved on the old
Norman walls and arches and pillars, and straight lines
peculiarly adapted themselves to this service. In Gloucester
the old pillars, the ancient arches were left, but over these a
glorious stone web or veil of tracery was thrown.
It is difficult, almost impossible, to ivrile a description of
the exquisite beauty of the transepts and choir of Gloucester,
as transformed by these fourteenth-century abbots. We enter
the Norman nave, grey and solemn, awfully impressive, with
its vast and massive columns, little chancjed since the da\s
when Abbot Serlo, Lanfranc's friend, in the reign of William
the Conqueror and his son, first designed them. Through an
158 A XORMAX ABBEV.
avenue of these stately pillars, with scarcely any ornament to
distract the eye and the thoughts from the severe beauty of
the building, we pass into one or other of the transepts ; we
look straight forward : still the same grreat round massive
pillars, but shorter than the nave columns, meet our gaze ;
still the same round arches, smaller than those in the nave,
for there is now one row of them above the other, but yet
of the selfsame school. Then we go through a low stone
arch. We are now in the choir, and we find ourselves in
another world of thought. Over the great and massive
columns appears to have been dropped a mighty veil of
tracery in stone, dazzlingly white, though more than five
centuries have passed since that veil was cunningly and skil-
fully woven. A veil, nay, it is a film of tracery, so light— as
one once phrased it well — so light that it seems to need
nothing but the air to carry it.
At the eastern end of this curiously stone-clothed choir, at
the eastern end, the Norman apse, once dark and low-pitched,
was broken through : the old vaulted roof was raised higher
than any choir-roof in England, save in the case of Westminster
and of York. A mighty window — men say the largest in the
world — filled up the place where the old gloomy apse once
closed the sombre vista of Norman columns and arches. The
glass of this window was exquisitely coloured, and a flood of
jewelled light poured in and lit up, with a strange and beautiful
light, the glorious choir and its white veil of sculptured stone.
The effect of ihe Gloucester choir, the creation of the four
great fourteenth-century abbots, those true masters of archi-
tecture, is marvellous. It has been described thus: "At
Gloucester, as we enter the choir, the general effect is that of a
Perpendicular building. We feel that there is something
singular about it, that its effect differs altogether from that of
a Perpendicular building, or of any building with regular and
prominent pillars and arches. The effect is like that of a
PERPENDICULAR ARCHITECTURE. 159
single-bodied building, a gigantic college chapel, a church like
Alby widiout aisles. It is not till we look a little more nar-
rowly that we iind that the greater part of the Norman build-
ing is still there, not rebuilt, not even disguised as it is at
Winchester, but simply hidden behind a veil of Perpendicular
lacework At Gloucester, the later work, without des-
troying the elder, altogether obscures it, and decides the
Qfeneral effect of the buildincr."* Another famous architectural
critic,t commenting upon this strange and magnificent choir at
Gloucester, tells us how " in all cathedrals he observes a screen,
about the height of the present altar-screen, separates the
choir from the side aisles and transepts, but in this cathedral
the screen is carried to the roof and the result was a beautiful
if not a unique choir. The screen of tracery which formed the
sides was situate below the clerestory, plastered (so to speak)
on the Norman walls ; or, in some instances, the original Nor-
man columns have been chipped down until they harmonize
with the general design."
With the clerestory, it must be borne in mind, the old work
ended. The Norman choir was much lower than the present
lofty, imposing structure, which towers over every e.xisting
choir in England, with the exception of York and Westmin-
ster.
t^ 1^ rjp '^ Tp "^
That vast east windowj which floods the choir of Gloucester,
beautiful as a dream, with a soft silvery light — a light faintly
coloured with jewelled shafts of the richest blue and red, with
here and there a vein of faint gold — that vast window could
not have been seen out of England or one of the grey and
• E. A. Freeman.
t Professor Willis, i860. This great architect writes of Gloucester Cathe-
dral as "one of the most glorious examples of architecture he had ever seen." —
Professor M'illis, Lcctm-e at Gloucester, 1866. "The general character which
Gloucester Cathedral presents is that of a Norman Cathedral complete nearly from
one end to the other.'' — Willis.
X See Appendix ii. for a full description of the great window.
l6o A XORMAN ABBEY.
misty northern countries — countries where gleams of light or
shafts of sunshine are exceeding precious. In south or central
Europe the effect of such a mighty window would be simply
dazzling to the eye — would be painful from its excess of light.
The master architect who, it seems, in the Gloucester
cloister cells, devised the aery fabric of the choir of the abbey,
knew how needful light was to reveal the fair beauty of the
mighty walls with that delicate veil of stone tracery which, with
so much loving thought and care, they hung over the grim
walls and the massive low round arches built by their Norman
fathers. They knew that liglit was especially required for the
lofty vaulted roof of stone, so rich in colour, so elaborate with
its tracery.
The monk architects of Gloucester, no doubt, had seen how
the brightness of southern skies through comparatively little
windows had illuminated the great abbey-churches of central
and southern Germany, of Provence, Italy, and Spain, with
shafts of golden light. They knew w^ell that the pale blue of
the skies of the Severn lands were very dim and lightless when
compared with the surpassing brilliancy of the skies of south
and central Europe. Hence the love of the English artist-
monks for huge windows. They would build their minsters,
they would make them rich with delicate lacework of stone,
with altars gleaming with dusky gold and ablaze with varied
colours— and to illumine these they would store up all the
light which they could draw from the mist-stained clouds, from
heavens rarely blue, well-nigh always veiled with the tender,
soft, grey hues of our island atmosphere. Never, as they
planned their vast, yet graceful windows — never, they felt,
was there any danger of over-much light in their minster-
church ; there was no fear of the eyes being dazzled with excess
of brilliancy from the English skies.
These reasons amply account for the three great Gloucester
windows which the monk architects of the fourteenth century
PERPENDICULAR ARCHITECTURE. l6l
put into the new work — into the two stately transepts, into the
tall and graceful choir.
*******
Near the splendid shrine erected by King' Edward III.
over the tomb of his murdered father, and nearer the high altar
of the church, is another tabernacle tomb of exceeding graceful
shape. The tabernacle work for Gloucester is comparatively
modern, and was done in the early years of Henry VIII. 's
reign, under the auspices of the last abbot of the famous Bene-
dictine house at Gloucester, Malverne, or, as he is sometimes
styled, Parker.
The figure within the shrine built by Abbot Malverne is,
however, of a far more ancient date than the days of Henry
VIII., at least two centuries or more older. It is the rough
sculptured effigy, fairly preserved, of a king, robed and crowned,
the Hwiccian king or under-king Osric, the first founder of
the Abbey of Gloucester. It possibly fills the place of a much
older tomb. Osric, the founder of the abbey, lived about the
year of our Lord 689. He subsequently became, history tells
us, King of Northumbria.
Lying on the breast of King Osric is a Norman model of a
stately minster church. The model, old as it is — for it dates
from the Plantagenet kings — is of course an anachronism, for
the church of King Osric must in form have been very different
from the sculj^tured church on the breast of the old Mercian
king. W'hat we see modelled on the tomb is a pure Norman
edifice, and doubtless roughly represents the building built by
Lanfranc's friend. Abbot Serlo, in the da)'s of the Conqueror.
But its chief interest lies in the low, massive tower, which
rises from the centre of the little model, for here doubtless we
possess an effigy — the only one sculptured or painted that we
have — of the old Norman tower of Gloucester Cathedral. It
suggests at once the tower of the sister abbey of Tewkesbury,
which still remains to us well nigh perfect, almost as it left the
1 62 A NORMAN ABBEY.
hands of the Norman builder in the first half of the twelfth
century ; it was a tower with an interior arcade, and evidently
open, like a lantern, to the church below.
The true story of the towers of Gloucester will probably
never now be told. The old monkish records dimly recount
how in the far back days of the Plantagenet kings two unequal
towers, one loftier than the other, stood at the west end of the
great church, while at the east, over the parting of the arms
of the cross, rose the massive tower roughly portrayed in stone
on the tomb of Osric. The same chronicles obscurely hint at
the raising of the same tower a story higher In the first part of
the thirteenth century.
But the monastic annals tell us but little as to the fate of
all these three. Dimly we catch sight of various catastrophes,
of successive fires, and of an earthquake which shook or de-
stroyed the mighty pile of masonry, or perchance of well-nigh
equally solid oak
Sometimes as we read the scattered and obscure notices,
we are almost tempted to believe that In the deep and carefully
matured schemes of the fourteenth-century monk architects the
three towers — possibly weakened if not destroyed by some such
calamitous events (earthquake or fire) as have been referred
to — were carefully taken down, those at the west end never to
be rebuilt ; the monk restorers of the reign of Edward III.
proposing with wonderful audacity to raise a great mid-tower
which should rival In strength and beauty all other towers in
the west and midland counties — a tower which should be at
once the crown and glory of their loved house of God — a tow^er
which should stand In the centre of their great and beautiful
minster, alone, without any lesser rivals to diminish aught of its
grace and loveliness.
That such a far-seeing plan was matured In the monastery
councils Is at least possible, this looking forward to the build-
ing of a magnificent solitary tower In the centre of their beauti-
PERPENDICULA R ARCHITECTURE.
163
ful minster — for
even in the be-
ginning of the
new and elabo-
rate work of
Abbot Wygmore
in the south
transept (a. n.
1329), we find
mighty solid but-
I ^J^-T^l^^'^IIT l'''lilh''#iSfi [Htli-'l tresses or thrusts,
curiously woven
into the delicate
Perpend icular
veil of masonry
— buttresses evi-
dently destined
to support the
vast weight of
some tall and
massive tower
dreamed of in no
distant future.
And in that
future, in a little
more than a hun-
dred years after the great buttresses of stone were woven
into Abbot Wygmore's veil of Perpendicular masonry, the
graceful massive tower we now admire, was slowly and care-
fully completed ; that tower of Gloucester Cathedral, which
has now stood for more than four hundred years simply un-
rivalled in its perfect strength and exquisite beauty.
CHAPTER III.
The Benedictine House of Gloucester.
We cannot forget that here, at Gloucester, we have monastic
buildings of admirable merit, externally far more preserved
than it is usual to find them.
" At Gloucester we can see what a great' Benedictine house
was far better than we can at Ely or Norwich or at Peterborough.
The cloister has no rival in its own class. . . . Of the buildings
on every side of the cloister the remains are neither few nor
unimportant. The refectory of Abbot John de Fulda, the
scene of royal feasting, has left fewer remains than any others,
but enough survives to give some notion of the design. Be-
yond it lay the more distant buildings of the monastery ; the
stately lodgings of the abbot beyond a little stream now hid-
den ; the second cloister and the graceful ruins of the Infirmary.
. . . We come back to the cloister, to mark to the west the
quarters of the prior and his successor, the dean, showing us a
stage of architecture of which we have no exact specimen in
the Minster itself* To the east we have the slype,t the
* The Deanery of Gloucester is one of the oldest dwellings in England ; portions
of it were built as early as the first years of the twelfth century (or even before). Until
circa A.D. 1329, when a new abbot's camera was built, the deanery was the abbot's
camera or lodging ; it consists of two main portions, the one an undercroft, with
vaulted entry and solar and other chambers over, and the monks' parlour, with a great
t In this case a long, stone-vaulted passage, leading from the east cloister to
the outer garden, enriched with Early Norman arches and pillars.
THE BENEDICTIXE HOUSE OF GLOUCESTER. 1 65
dormitory, now the library, above, and the building of the
greatest importance after the church itself, the chapter house "
So writes Professor Freeman in his paper on " Gloucester and
its Abbey." Now who lived in this grey old pile of buildings ?
WHio planned these beautiful solemn cloister walks ? Who
built and maintained that spacious hospital, whose graceful
■.,;
'1 '
,//r'" "■/
"11^.. '^^;fv
South and West Front.
'l^fWg
';,!#•>
> V. ■ \
i^
chapel arches alone remain to tell a bit of the story of the
touchinsf care of the Benedictine order for the sick and
Who dug that deep reservoir in the cloister
suffering ?
vaulted chamber above it, which some experts believe to have been the abbot's
chapel ; others consider it was a guest-chamber. Thus the oldest part of the deanery
(shown in the Illustration on page 166) represents the abbot's camera, and was built
by Serlo the friend of Lanfranc, or his immediate successor. It is filled with remains
of Norman work, some of a rich character. The solar, exterior and interior, was
enriched with early English work sometime in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
The other portion of the house, added some hundred and fifty years later as the
monastery grew in importance, comprises the hall, with the great chamber above
(aula), with kitchens and offices, and large portions of a spacious guest-house, timber
framed. This last — the " guest-house ' -was added in the fifteenth century.
i66
A NORMAN ABBEY.
mil
V -^ ,
J*:^^:«^
,- M
^'St
f
m
a^-'
cJ^eIfe\n1y
garden, and skilfully turned into it the bright waters of the
Fulbrook ? Who first dreamed the grand design of the glori-
It is probable that the scene related above as taking place in the abbot's aula,
when Abbot Thoky made his strange prophetic answer to Edward II., then his
THE BENEDICTIXE HOUSE OF GLOUCESTER. 167
ous Minster church, which casts its broad shadow across
garden and cloister, far over the busy city beyond its
walls ?
Who once lived here, worked here, dreamed here, died
here ? Who wrote in the narrow carrels which line the south
cloister walk, those little cells so cunningly built into the
cloister arches ? Who prayed in the vast adjoining Minster
church, and taught generation after generation of little English
children, who were brought up under the shadow of the holy
house of Gloucester ?
Let me try and weave from old chronicle and modern
research a little tapestry of history, which will tell something
of the past of those long-dead dwellers in the great religious
house, something of the story of their life, their hopes and
onlooks, their mistakes and their merits, what they tried to do
and did.
tF VF TF 7F tF 7F
We have spoken in our first two studies on " Dreamland
in History " mostly of the great Minster church of Gloucester.
We will speak now of the souls who prayed in that fair and
storied abbey, of souls who drew from it — or rather from Him
who dwelt in it, who, I think, dwells in it still — power to live
that life which once exercised so rightly an influence over our
peoples.
guest, happened in the great chamber or aula above referred to, a late careful
examination by well-known scholars having shewn that the chamber in question
is of an earlier date than the first years of the fourteenth century.
It is probable that during the famous Parliament of A.D. 1378, held by King
Richard II. at Gloucester, the King and the magnates held their secret councils in this
same aula (it had become, after A.D 1329, part of the prior's lodging, a new abbot's
lodging having been built). The"Historia Monasterii,' compiled by Abbot Froucester
(the MS. is in the possession of the dean and chapter), styles this aula " camera
hospitii, quae camera Regis propter pulchritudinem antiquitus vocata est."
In the abbot's solar and adjacent chapel (or guest-chamber) it is no stretch of
fancy to assert that most of the English kings from Rufus or Henry I. to Edward
II. have spent more or less time, during their frequent residences in royal Glou-
cester. While the "aula" built in the thirteenth century has, doubtless, on various oc-
casions been the scene of Royal festivity, and at times has served as a Council Hall.
i6S
A XORMAN ABBE}'.
,ft^p*
The Writing Cells or Carrels
nf tlic Monks in the South Cloister.
More than twelve hundred years have passed over the
holy house of Gloucester. But only dim and shadowy forms
seem to flit before us when we try to evoke life out of its
THE BENEDICTINE HOUSE OF GLOUCESTER. 169
early memories. King Osric * of Northumbria, when a
Mercian under-king, first planted the ancient religious foun-
dation and built a church, and his remains moulder beneath
the great pile. His stately tomb, erected long centuries after
his time, is still one of the ornaments of the Minster.
King Athelstan died in royal Gloucester, most likely in
the religious house attached to the church.
The abbey was tenanted in those far back Mercian or
Saxon days by men of whose life and work we only possess
scanty memoranda, and these written by men who loved them
not. These early Mercian or Saxon tenants of the Gloucester
religious house were not monks, as we now understand the
term. They were priests who lived the life of ordinary
citizens, not a few of them married. One of their chief duties,
probably, was teaching the young of both sexes. Evidently
these " secular " priests were popular among their fellow-
citizens, for when the great change was brought about by
Archbishop Dunstan and his school, we learn that here in
Gloucester the people of the city were angry at the change in
the great church and religious house, and harassed and per-
secuted the new comers — the Benedictine monks sent by
Dunstan and his friends. This was in the beginning of the
eleventh century, when Canute was king, a little more than
half a century before the Norman Conquest.
The early years of the new foundation of Benedictine
monks in Gloucester were not a happy or a prosperous time.
The abbey seems to have been partly rebuilt ; but in the first
years of William the Conqueror we read that hvo monks and
eight boys alone tenanted the ancient storied home.
* This Osric was a nephew of Ethelred, the son of Penda, King of Mercia. He
received a gift of broad lands from King Ethelred, on condition of his building an
abbey at Gloucester. This was in a.d. 689. Osric subsequently became King of
Northumbria, where he died, but tradition says he was buried in Gloucester
Abbey, close to the high altar. His brother Oswald received a grant of lands
from Ethelred, apparently on the same tenure at Pershore, and about the same
time Pershore Abbey was founded by this same Oswald.
Z
I70 A NORMAN' ABBEY.
With Norman William, however, a new spirit at once was
breathed into the religious houses of England, a master- mind
guided— during that stern reign — church work in the conquered
island ; Lanfranc was one of those great churchmen of the
Middle Ages, at once scholar and statesman, ascetic and
courtier, one who could with equal contentment spend his days
now in the workshop and in the forge, carving wood and ivory,
and hammering iron, now copying MSS. and teaching children,
now occupied in the court of the Norman duke or king of
England on high matters connected with the State.
Perfect self-abnegation joined to the most exalted devotion
to the work of their order, an intense belief in the high mission
of the Church, as the preserving salt of society, were the chief
characteristics of that brilliant and devoted succession of great
churchmen who restored, or rather rebuilt, the Church of the
Middle Ages upon a foundation story of re-invigorated mon-
asticism. Among them Dunstan, Lanfranc, and Anselm were
conspicuous.
Now Lanfranc was successful in finding a man after his
own heart to breathe new life into the fading house of
Gloucester.
Lanfranc no doubt quickly discerned the unrivalled capa-
bilities of the situation of the old chief city of the Severn
Lands, and with prophetic clearness of vision discerned the
part which Gloucester was destined to plaj' in the history of
Enoland.
For long years it was a favourite home for our kings, and
in placing such a man as Serlo the Norman — his pupil and his
friend — at the head of the little decaying community, Lanfranc
intended to make Gloucester a great Benedictine fortress and
centre in the west of our island.
The astute churchman was not mistaken in his man ; on a
narrower stage Serlo emulated Lanfranc. The little house of
two monks and eight children, with e.xtraordinary rapidity
THE BENEDIC'IIXE HOrSE OF GI.OUCESTEE.
17 I
^^C'^
f ^i' ■L.-r "St
,.><r^^^,*l(
fi'*
grew into a powerful community. A hundred monies, for
instance, replaced the two solitary dwellers in the old home.*
Much of the great Minster church which, after eight cen-
* /n the old Jioiiie, fur under the very shadow of the great Gloucester Abbey in
the beginning of the tenth century, /Ethelflsed, Lady of the Mercians, a daughter of
King Alfred, founded the small Piiory of St. Oswald's, close to the Severn. Its
ruins are with us still. The first Benedictine Abbot of Gloucester (Edric, eleventh
century), alluding ,to the little priory at his gates, styles his own great house"' The
Old Home.'' He calls himself ^i^/w.v ;>; j^V7/rt'./////(7wc.
172 A NORMAN ABBEV.
turies, we still wonder at and admire, was Abbot Serlo's work.
His rule promised to be as enduring as his massive building.
From that day, eventful indeed to the holy house of Gloucester,
when Lanfranc, the monk, scholar, and statesman, placed the
Abbot's crozier in Serlo's hand, the great abbey of the Severn
Lands prospered with a marvellous prosperity. Not a little
of the history of our England was played beneath the grey
shadows of its massive walls.
Here, to the great Benedictine house, when Gloucester was
the third city in the kingdom, kings came and feasted. Here
solemn councils, presided over by kings, met. Here parlia-
ments were held, and deep matters affecting the weal of the
commonwealth discussed. One king received his crown in
front of the high altar of the Cathedral Church. Another
English sovereign lies amongst us still. And the storied
centuries rolled on in their solemn course, and the Gloucester
house of God was famous even among the more famous reli-
gious houses of England. Abbeys rose and fell, but still this
great abbey prospered, and did its work for more than five
hundred eventful years, till that sad day when the crozier,
which had been borne by a long unbroken line of great church-
men, at the rough bidding of Henry YIll.'s commissioners,
was broken in the hands of Abbot Malverne, the last Prelate
of the Benedictines who bore rule in the halls of Serlo.
But the life of the great Minster church went on, though
under changed conditions. The spirit of the sixteenth cen-
tury asked for a new presentment of the religion of Jesus
Christ.
*******
What now was that monastic life which these disciples of
Benedict lived, or tried to live, and which Henry VHI. put an
end to in the sixteenth century ?
Sir James Stephen, in one of his brilliant essays, thus paints
the original idea of the dwellers in a Benedictine house : — •
&
THE BENEDICTINE HOUSE OF GLOUCESTER. 173
" In the whirl and uproar of the handicrafts of our own day it is difficult to
imagine the noiseless spectacle which, in those far back days, so often caught the
eye as it gazed on the secluded abbey and the adjacent grange. In black tunics, the
mementoes of death, and in leathern girdles, the emblems of chastity, might then be
seen carters silently yoking their bullocks to the team, and driving them in silence
to the field, or shepherds interchanging some inevitable whispers while they watched
their flocks, or vine-dressers pruning the fruit of which they might never taste or
speak, or wheelwrights, carpenters, and masons plying their trades like the inmates
of some deaf and dumb asylum : and all pausing from their labours as the convent
bell, sounding the hours of prime or nones or vespers, summoned them to join in
spirit, even when they could not repair in person to, those sacred offices. Around
the monastic workshop might be observed the belt of cultivated land, continually
encroaching on the adjacent forest, and the passer-by might trace to the toils of
these mute workmen the opening of roads, the draining of marshes, the herds graz-
ing, and the harvest waving in security under the shelter of ecclesiastical privi-
lege."— " The French Benedictines," "Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography," vol. i.
pp. 366, 367.
For these hard labours of the hand many of ihe brethren
substituted the different, though no less toilsome, labours of
the brain. Sir Francis Palgrave thus writes of the Norman
Monastery of Bee and of the way in which its denizens spent
their days : —
'' Herlouin, the founder, was of noble birth, the real old northern blood flowed
in his veins, a knight until he renounced the world. Learning he had none — when
he first professed, he could not read a letter ; and he subjected himself to all the
austerities and privations enjoined by S. Benedict's rule. Manual labour was the
employment of the Brethren, and much was Herlouin derided by his former com-
panions when they saw his coarse garments and unkempt beard. Hard and fast
Herlouin worked, aiding the building of the monastery ; except when chanting in the
choir, or partaking of the one daily scanty meal which he grudged himself, you could
always find him digging and delving, or his hand grasping the spade, or with hod on
shoulder, as Lanfranc (afterwards William the Conqueror's Archbishop of Canter-
bury), found him, all begrimed W'ith mortar, engaged in vaulting an oven." — Sir
Francis Palgrave, " Normandy and England,'' vol. iii. p. 259.
To this community of Benedictines under Abbot Herlouin
at Bee, Lanfranc once of Pavia, joined himself It is said he
wished to work too with his hands, but the brothers of Bee felt
it would be wasting the time if so good a scholar used not his
brain in preference to his hands, so he was employed in teach-
ing the young. Under this gifted man Bee expanded into a col-
lege, and scholars resorted to the Norman house from all parts.
But Lanfranc not only taught, but he daily spent some
time in copying MSS. of Holy Scripture, in correcting errors in
174 ^ NOR^fAN ABBEY.
the text, and now and again composing commentaries on cer-
tain portions. The Benedictine monk, whose vocation lay in
scholarship, by no means confined himself to copying MSS. of
the Bible, or to writing commentaries on the sacred text. In
those quiet cells, of which we have in the Gloucester cloister
walks such perfect examples still remaining, every branch of
learning was cultivated.
For instance, in the abbey of S. Boniface at Fulda, the
monks, Euhardus and Rudolph, composed careful and accurate
annals of the reign of Charlemagne. Rudolf, who was master
of the Fulda Abbey School, was the only mediseval writer, it
seems, to whom Tacitus was known at first hand.
Men like Lanfranc and Serlo thought that by restoring the
old way of monastic life, as planned centuries before by Bene-
dict of Nurscia they would best help their brother men. It
was a strange but not an unbeautiful conception.
The general plan was founded on two verses of Psalm
cxix. : V. 62, "■At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto
thee ; " and v. 164, " Seven times a day do I praise thee."
Roughly, the way of life at the Benedictine abbey of
Gloucester was as follows : — In the winter months and through
the early spring, the monk specially charged with this duty
roused the sleeping brothers two hours after midnight. They
slept in dormitories, each occupying generally a .separate
cubicle. The arrangement was simple, each had a mattress,
and was provided with a rug, with a second rug to cover him.
They slept partially dressed, so when roused for Vigils,
two hours after midnight, they came with little preparation
down the winding stairs — they are still there at Gloucester
— into the Minster church, and then they held in the solemn
night hours the first service. After " Vigils," they would
return to rest. As the first streaks of dawn were visible,
they were roused again, again they would worship in the
THE BENEDICTINE HOUSE OF GLOUCESTER. 175
choir of the great church. Matins and Prime would next be
said or sung.
The monks, and apparently the children entrusted to their
care, usually spent some time in the cloisters and garden.
• ^
hi
Mt^-:^'(mm
!J[ Mk ^ I^A -^-rfr- /«,^1
j&f If '' ,
k
]' '
laj-
'J
■^y\
Lavatory and fart of
the Novices' Cloister.
Between eight and nine the brothers dressed themselves for
the day, performed their ablutions in the cloister lavatories —
those lavatories we still possess, with all their wondrous carved
beauty little injured by time.
Then the third service, " Tierce," was chanted, and this
1/6 A NORMAN ABBEr.
was followed by Mass. Some time after Mass was the first
regular meal.* The rule prescribed that this was to consist of
two dishes, mainly of cooked vegetables, though more sub-
stantial viands do not seem to have been forbidden when they
were procurable, with a fixed allowance of bread and wine or
beer. In the summer when the nights were short, a brief
siesta was the practice after the meal.
The whole " House" met once in the day, in the morning
hours, in the Chapter Room. All the members of the Society
took the seats belonging to them on the stone seats round the
great hall. It is still here, practically unchanged, with all its
strange, solemn memories. The Abbot or his deputy presided.
Passages of the Rule of S. Benedict were generally read ;
some words were spoken by the President ; then the several
officers of the House read their reports, and when any of the
monks had failed in their duties their cases were at once
tried, punishments were decreed, and not unfrequently corpo-
ral discipline was inflicted before the whole Society. Lanfranc
specially treated of this singular practice for maintaining rigid
discipline. " During this infliction of this discipline all the
brethren must bow their heads and show compassion for the
penitent with dutiful and brotherly afiection : meanwhile, no
one must speak in the Chapter, no one look at the ofi'ender
except those in high places, who may intercede for him."
The day went on, services alternated with work, or reading,
or'teaching.
Between two and three o'clock Nones were said ; Vespers
were sung at four. Before sunset there was another public
meal, lighter than the first. On fast-days there was no second
meal : additional refreshment at other times in the day was
apparently allowed at times, and in the case of the monks being
engaged in specially laborious duties extra allowances of food
and wine were made.
* The hour for this meal varied according to the season of the year.
THE BENEDICTINE HOUSE OF GLOUCESTER. 177
1 he Abbot had always power to di.ipense with certain
portions of the Rule.
The service termed Compline usually took place about
seven o'clock ; then followed rest. The monastery at about
eight o'clock was quite still. In the dormitory strict silence
was enjoined.
Such is a bare catalogue of an ordinary day in a Benedic-
tine house in England, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
after the reforms of Lanfranc and his school.
Roughly speaking, a quarter of the twenty-four hours was
given to rest (some six hours), seven hours were spent in
church ; eight distinct services being required from each vowed
Benedictine.
This great array of services were considerably varied so
as to avoid as far as possible monotony. The whole Psalter
was enjoined to be sung every week by the original Rule of
Benedict, whose words were, " As by men who know that they
are in the sight of God and angels."
Agriculture, building, paintmg, study, teaching the young,
all formed part of the appointed work of the Benedictine
monk.
Their tender care for the sick was a noticeable feature in
their " Rule." The great founder of the order left special
injunctions here : " Before all things and above all things,"
said S. Benedict, " care must be given to the sick, they must
be served, and Christ in them." In all great houses the
Infirmary and the chapel attached were among the most
noticeable buildings. " At Peterborough," Canon Westcott
says, " the Infirmary contains the most beautiful work that
remains." At Gloucester the exquisite arches of what was
once the Infirmarychapel are well known. Injunctionswere con-
tinually passed enjoining every indulgence, and recommending
that the tenderest care should be shown to the sick and aged.
***** * ♦
A A
178 A XORMA N A BBEJ '.
Men often ask now, what was really the Hfe and work of
these great religious houses ? Was it in truth the ideal life of
prayer, quiet work, self-renunciation, obedience and patient
industry which samtly recluses like Benedict dreamed of, and
practical men like Lanfranc, and Anselm, and their immediate
pupils we know lived ?
To answer the question at all fully would be impossible in
the limits of this little present study.
In these religious houses we must remember were men
living with the same passions and tastes, the same faults and
failings as are common to us all. They played, did these
houses, in disturbed and stormy times, on the whole a very
noble and useful part, and indisputably were a great bulwark
to society.
We have a few trustworthy records which lift the veil
from off their inner life and enable us — as through a glass not
very darkly— to analyse the daily life and conduct, the hopes
and aspirations, the works and doings of some of these
monasteries which, like our Gloucester, have played so great a
part in the story of our past in England.
One of these records possessed a curious attraction for one
who certainly would not be suspected of a very warm admira-
tion for the monkish ideal. Carlyle, strangely enough, devoted
some eighty closely printed pages in one of his works to the
analysis of a diary kept by an undistinguished brother of an
Eastern Counties monastery of Benedictines, in the reigns of
Henry II. and Richard Coeur de Lion.
In the life, familiarly painted by this monk, one Jocelyn
de Brakelonda, the almoner of St. Edmondsbury, we possess a
vivid picture of the every-day monastic life of the England of
the Plantagenet kings. It does not perhaps come up to the
lofty ideal sketched by great souls like Lanfranc and his pupil
Serlo of Gloucester, and lived by men like Anselm of Bee, but
with all its errors and shortcomings, there is much in this
THE BENEDICTINE HOUSE OF GLOUCESTER. 179
monastic life here painted, that is beautiful and desirable,
enough certainly to form the basis of a successful defence when
monasteries are spoken of as merely hives of drones, and
monasticism as a pernicious and harmful conception.
Jocelyn, the almoner of St. Edmondsbury, hides nothing.
He paints the errors, the shortcomings, the excesses, the idle
gossiping, the jealousies of his brother monks, with an
unsparing brush. You feel the man is intensely truthful, you
see that his diary is the picture of a life really lived in a
hundred similar religious houses, and as we walk and muse in
the cloister of Gloucester, in the old-world garden there, in
the grey and solemn Minster aisles, we repeople these loved
and time-worn buildings and gardens with the old inhabit-
ants who lived there when Coeur de Lion reiofned, and
John Lackland plotted and schemed against his nobler
brother.
The monk Jocelyn though does far more than merely
chronicle the little daily disputes, the heart-burnings, and the
jealousies of his brother monks. He paints, too, with no
unskilful hand, the thoughts and imaginings, the ways and
works of his friend and master, the Abbot Samson.
Samson, Abbot of St. Edmond's in the reigns of Henry II.
and Richard Cceur de Lion, was evidently a type of the abler
Benedictines of the twelfdi and thirteenth centuries. He was
a plain, honest man, hard-working, and God-fearing, thoroughly
anxious to do his duty.
His friend, and at one period his chaplain, Jocelyn, in his
amusing gossipy memoirs, sketches Samson's early life in the
community : his unpopularity, and at the same time his repu-
tation as a thorough business man of unswerving honesty of
jjurpose, with some learning, and experience. He tells us of
the last days of the old Abbot Hugo, who reigned in the house
of St. Edmond's before Sam.son, a devout earnest old man,
with failing eyesight and weak health, and then relates die
I So A NORMAX ABBEl'.
events, commonplace events mostly, which led to the election
of Samson as abbot.
His brother monks chose him to the high office, not because
they specially liked him, but simply because they respected him.
He was utterly without friends or interest either in the mon-
astery or in the King's court, and narrowly missed being
confirmed in his office because neither the King or any of his
advisers knew anything about him. He was chosen without
any popular gifts to recommend him, solely because the monks
respected him as a good, true man. His simple hard working
life is related with transparent truth by the monk Jocelyn, who
tells us how zealously Abbot Samson worked to restore the
revenues of the house, which, through the weakness and long
illness of his predecessor, had become sadly disordered ; how
he administered with restless care the internal discipline of his
great house, ever severe yet kind and tender- hearted. The
vast estates of St. Edmond's were carefully watched over.
Barns and farm buildings were built and restored. Churches
were erected in the outlying villages, a hospital was founded
and endowed by him. Schools too for the young were built,
and the great parent house of St. Edmond's and its church
were thoroughly restored and beautified.
Dimly we catch glimpses, between the lines of Jocelyn's
homely diary, of bits of the church life of Coeur de Lion's time.
We see something of the gorgeous processions, the preaching,
the festivals, the Christmas plays, mysteries, as they were
called, performed in the churchyard under the auspices of the
monks.
Abbot Samson was a good scholar, and could preach in
three languages. He was a passionate lover of books, and often
complained that his lot had not been cast in some quiet mon-
astic library. The monastery, where Jocelyn lived, was a
home for all strangers, and for travellers whose duties and
affairs led them into those Eastern Counties, and in troubled
THE BENEDICTINE HOUSE OF GLOUCESTER. l8l
times, not unknown periods wlien our Plantagenet kings bore
sway over us, defenceless folk, such as Jews and their wives
and little ones, found a ready shelter behind the strong walls of
St. Edmond's.
Abbot Samson was no laggard in matters connected with
the State. He was from time to time, we see, associated in
high political questions with the King's justiciaries and others ;
by no means a courtly man — we find him, for instance, guard-
ing, at the peril of his life and liberty, a wealthy girl-ward from
the rapacity of some of the court nobles, who would have
wedded her for the sake of her broad lands. Twelve years of
those restless, toil-filled years, his friend Jocelyn tells us
blanched Abbot Samson's hair, and he became white as snow.
Ikit some would be tempted to ask, has his monk biographer,
in his careless, plea.sant manner, told us nothing of the Bene-
dictine abbot's higher life, nothing of his nobler aspirations ?
We turn over some pages of the long forgotten life-story, and
we find some notes of Abbot Samson's thoughts, for instance,
upon the Crusades.
We lookback from our present vantage- ground of many
centuries' experience and teaching, and entertain little admira-
tion for these strange bloody wars, but as Carlyle once
remarked, " To all noble Christian hearts of that era, what
earthly enterprise so noble ? ''
Our Benedictine abbot would have tossed aside all dignity
and position, all present ease and comfort, and would ha\e
himself joined one of these strange pilgrimages of blood, had
not King Henry H. peremptorily forbade his leaving England.
But when Jerusalem was re-taken by the Pagans, Abbot
Samson put on a hair shirt, and wore under-garments
of rough haircloth ever after, and abstained from flesh and
flesh meals thenceforth to the end of his life. He would be
daily reminded, in pain of body, that his Lord's tomb was in
the hands of unbelievers.
l82 A NORMAN ABBEY.
So this earnest student, this patient administrator of farms
and estates, this doughty protector of the weak and defenceless,
this grave and austere disciplinarian, this practical man of
business, this restorer of dilapidated granges and roofless
homesteads, this builder of hosjDitals, schools, and churches, had
another side, a secret unseen side belonging to his character,
of deep and passionate devotion to his Lord and Saviour.
Jocelyn painted the inner life of Samson as well as man can
paint these things, in his chapter describing how the great altar
of St. Edmond's was rebuilt, and the holy shrine, where the
body of the martyr-king slept, was opened.
7F tF "SF tp t^ ^
Carlyle beautifully sums up the old Benedictine's character,
in his own characteristic language, writing thus of Abbot
Samson : —
" The great antique heart, how like a child's in its simplicity, like a man's in its
earnest solemnity and depth ! Heaven lies over him wherever he goes or stands on
the earth, making all the earth a higher temple to him, the earth's business all a
kind of worship. Glimpses of bright creatures flash in the common sunlight.
Angels yet hover, doing God's messages among men. Wonder and miracle encom-
pass the man. Heaven's splendour over his head, Hell's darkness under his feet.
.A. great law of duty high as these two infinities, dwarfing all else, annihilating all
else. It was not a dilettantism this of Abbot Samson, it was a reality."
*******
This, then, was something of the life and the work of the
Benedictines of Gloucester, and of other religious houses ; and
this was the type of not a few of the men who lived, and prayed,
and toiled in these great monasteries when Plantagenets
reigned in England. Surely a brief sojourn in such a " dream-
land " is pleasant and, perhaps, suggestive, even to men of the
England of to-day.
CHAPTER IV.
The Birthday of our Gothic Minsters,
C)
UR gloriousMinsterChurch
at Gloucester registers,
if I may use the term,
an eventful epoch in the civil
and religious history of England.
I speak of England because it
has for us a more immediate inte-
rest, but what we have to remark
here of England is common in a
greater or less degree to Germany,
France, and the Low Countries.
* * * * .
In our great Gloucester Church, we pass from the stern and
solemn grandeur of the Norman nave, with its massive columns,
its unadorned roof, its comparatively small windows — we pass
through a little iron gateway in the massive screen which
separates the nave from the choir, into a perfectly new and
strange building. It would seem when we passed into this choir,
we were coming into the presence of the work of another age
l84 A XORMAX ABBEY.
altogether ; other ideas have evidently been at work here ;
the views, aspirations, thoughts on the part of the builders of
this portion of the grey time-worn Minster had evidently under-
gone a mighty change. There are no massy fortress like pil-
lars here ; the roofs soar to a height never attempted in the
older Norman nave; a perfect lace-work of tracery in stone
veils the lofty walls and covers the soaring roof. The com-
paratively little windows give place to vast openings generally
filled with the richest jewelled glass, one of them positively
claiming to be the largest in Europe.
*******
The student wonderingly asks whether centuries elapsed
between the period which produced the Norman nave, with its
grave and solemn grandeur, its fortress -like massive forms, its
grey and sombre character, and the age which gave birth to
the builders who changed the great eastern limb of our cathe-
dral into those new forms of beautiful decorative richness,
who rejoiced in the delicate lace-work — the soaring roof with
its rich and elaborate work — the mighty windows, which are
the characteristic feature of the choir of Gloucester Cathedral.
He is surprised at learning that scarcely two centuries
elapsed between the age which produced the Norman nave as
the favourite form of a Christian church, and the age which
devised the choir of Gloucester as the more sacred part of a
great house of God.
What happened in this century and a half to bring about so
great a change of thought ?
Our answer will supply some of the causes which were at
work which produced Gothic architecture, one of the forms of
which was the Gloucester Perpendicular, a style almost pecu-
liar to England.
*******
In a former chapter we sketched out something of the spirit
which dwelt in the Norman master builders. In the time of
THE BIRTHDAY OF OUR GOTHIC MINSTERS. 1S5
the Conqueror, and his father and his sons — roughly speaking
the eleventh century — a feehng of insecurity, of perpetual
danger to life and property, was, perhaps, the dominant feeling
in all men's minds.
No one was secure ; perpetual wars harassed Saxon Eng-
land, as well as Capetian (I use the term for want of a better)
P" ranee, and the Low Countries. England as well as France
dreaded the constant terrorism of the sea pirates from Den-
mark and the northern countries. In both kingdoms the
sovereign was dominated by an ever-changing succession of
professedly subject, but really independent chieftains, who were
at perpetual warfare with their liege lord and with one another.
Germany was in an equally unsettled, miserable condition.
What wonder was it that the churches built in those stormy
days in certain details resembled fortresses ! The dominant idea
in every architect and builder's mind was that the pile
they were designing and erecting must be capable of defence.
The first thought, when a palace or a great house was planned,
was that the palace or house must be in some sense a fortress.
Thus, when the Conqueror erected his London residence, his
architect built him the "Tower of London." The keep of
William's London palace still throws its shadow as the well-
known White Tower over the busy waters of the Thames. So
when an abbey or minster was planned, the same thougJit
coloured the builder's design ; not that a great abbey or a
minster church was meant to stand a siege or receive a garrison
of men-at-arm?, but t lie fortress idea could never be dismissed
from the mind of the architect ; hence, in Norman churches,
the enormously thick walls, the massive pillars, the small aper-
tures for light, the ponderous battlemented tower, faithful
copy of the keep or donjon of a Norman castle. We see the
last feature still in the low square tower of the mighty abbey
which stands in the green water meadows of Tewkesbury by
the Severn waters, only a few miles away, and built probably
li B
i86
A NORMAA' ABBEY.
1. ■ ■
m
?^J^'i
by the same hand,
certainly the fruit
of the same in-
spiration as its
grander sister—
the Minster
Church of Glou-
cester.
From the
day of Hast-
ings on-
ward a
new state
of things
began for
England ;
gradually,
under the
strong rule
of the Conqueror
and his sons, the
general feeling of
insecurity ceased.
After the middle of
the twelfth century,
there was no real fear
of serious disturbance
at home, no dread of
invasion from abroad. The raids of the Vikings were a
terrible story of the past, while the strong hand of the
Angevin kings crushed down independent action and per-
petual civil war among the powerful chieftains at home.
The idea of the stronghold and of the fortress became
less and less a dominant thought. The architect and the
THE BIRTHDAY OF OUR GOTHIC MINSTERS. 1 87
builder had greater scope to exercise ingenuity and skill. In
the reigns of the Angevin kings, Henry II., Richard Coeur
de Lion and John, .-\.d. 1154 — 1216, no monk builder, for
instance, would have planned a new minster church on the lines
of Serlo's church at Gloucester.
The new spirit in architecture which had been /// for more
than a century, and which showed itself in the work known
technically as " Early English " and " Decorated,"* appeared
very markedly in Gloucester in Edward II. 's reign, when
Abbot Thoky substituted in the south aisle, for the plain and
comparatively small windows of Serlo, the splendid and
elaborate " Decorated " windows we now see. This new
spirit in architecture was in a measure owing to the general
feeling of security, which allowed greater latitude and scope
for the imagination.
The time, however, for the full development of the new
ideas in church architecture was when the third Edward's
reign was close at hand. But though the influence of quieter
times, the result of Norman influence and Norman conquest,
may be looked upon as one of the causes which led to the
" invention " of Gothic architecture — a far more powerful
cause existed.
A mighty revival in Church life had taken place, especially
in northern Europe. The new life which was breathed among
ecclesiastics of all des^rees, which rave new and nobler aims
to well-nigh every religious house and foundation, influenced
powerfully all sorts and conditions of men. The Crusades,
those strange, sad wars, undertaken, at first certainly, with a
noble purpose, were one of the outcomes of this universal
religious movement.
The universal practice of simony — in many an individual
case a deplorable licentiousness of manners — had long enfeebled
the influence while it poisoned the life of the clergy. High
* The Sedilia in Gloucester Cathedral form a beautiful instance ol "Decorated"
Work.
i88
A NURMAN ABBEY.
Yui
^ ^< i fA 1 - ^-^ J [ iS::z
{SuJ>_posed tu kd'c'c been a Reliquary.)
aims and lofty purposes had been well-nigh unknown, not only
to the great bulk of the clergy and the dwellers in the many
religious houses, but even to the ecclesiastics occupying the
prominent places in the hierarchy. A lamentable ignorance
of all letters was a feature of the day. In Anglo-Saxon
times it was said that between the Trent and the Thames
scarcely a priest could be found acquainted with the Latin
tongue, although all the services of the Church were written in
that language ! The performance of religious rites by such
ignorant men must have been utterly empty and devoid of all
THE BIRTHDAY OF OUR GOTHIC MINSTERS. 189
real meaning. The monks, with few exceptions, were destitute
of discipHne ; the regular canons worse, constantly lapsing into
drunkenness and disorder. The highest dignitaries in the
Church were equally guilty. For instance, we know that
Hugh, Archbishop of Rouen, who died in 994, having held the
great Norman arch-see for fifty-two years, surrendered himself
wholly to gross sensuality. Another occupant of the same
archbishopric, Mauger, a relation of William the Conqueror,
was, even in an age distinguished for ecclesiastical corruption,
conspicuous for his depravity. " Courtier, soldier, warrior,
prelate, the mitre decked his head, and his mailed hand
clutched the crosier, but he was so wild and ill-conditioned that
we can scarcely think of him in his clerical character." " He
lived the life of a magnificent noble given much more to
hunting and cock-fighting than to episcopal duties." * So vile
and evil was the conduct of this Archbishop Mauger that the
common folk believed he was aided in his acts of wild mischief
by a household demon. This wicked prelate was at last,
owing to the influence of Duke William, formally deposed for
gross licentiousness. This was in a.d. 1062.
Children were even intruded, for State reasons, into great
sees. In a.d. 992, Hugh, brother of a Count of Vermandois,
was made coadjutor archbishop of Rheims, with right of
succession to the archbishopric. When the little Prince Hugh
was raised to this great office in the French hierarchy he was
about two years old !
Simony publicly practised in the highest quarters had
hopelessly corrupted the clergy. Very many of the bishops
and abbots had obtained these high dignities by openly pur-
chasing them. The bishop who bought his bishopric would not
scruple to sell any ecclesiastical post in his gift. " Give you a
nomination to a prebend ! " Philip of France is reported to
* Palgrave, " Normandy and England," iii., book ii. chap. v. Dean Church,
'' Ansehn," chap. vii.
I go A NORMAN ABBEY.
have said to an applicant. " I have mid them all already."
" Learning," writes Sir Francis Palgrave, " had altogether
decayed. He who could read Latin was talked of as a
prodigy. With the decline of ecclesiastical discipline morals
had declined also. Never can the one subsist without the
other. The dusty rule of St. Benedict slumbered on the shelf,
whilst rich fur and fine linen clothed the monk, and the
savoury dishes smoked on the long table of the refectory.
Scarcely could the priest at the altar, reeking from the de-
bauch, stammer out the words of the Liturgy."
I|- "SF T^ tF ^ tF ^
The eleventh century witnessed one of those great
religious reactions which from time to time have so powerfully
influenced the course of this world's history. It was time ; for
the Church, through its own weakness and folly, not to say
open sin, was fast losing its hold upon men. The revival in
religion was not confined to our land or race. From Rome to
Canterbury, from the shores of the Adriatic to the coasts
washed by the wild North Sea, a great change passed over the
ecclesiastical world. Monasteries were reformed ; new life
was breathed into the countless homes of the religious orders ;
ereat churchmen arose and infused something of their ardent
devotion into the hearts of the humblest monk and parish
priest, whose work lay perhaps in remote and secluded
districts. Nowhere was the religious revival more marked
than in Norman England ; nowhere had the Church been less
active, less an influence for good, than in the later period of
the Saxon kings. But in the eleventh century a new and
nobler spirit arose in the Church.
The recorder of merely earthly events is tempted to
ask, whence came this strange, beautiful revival, this longing
after higher and better things, this passionate desire to
lead nobler and less selfish lives ? In England, after the
Conquest, the prelates and abbots were, strangely enough,
THE niRTHDAV OF OUR GOTHIC MINSTERS. 191
assisted by a deep feeling of remorse, which took possession of
the Conqueror and many of his knightly comrades, remorse for
the deeds of blood and violence which accompanied the Nor-
man conquest, remorse for the broad-spread misery which their
stronsf-handed work brought on England. " This feelinir,"
writes Palgrave,* " was probably the cause of the bounteous
donations made by the Normans or their immediate descen-
dants for pious and charitable purposes, more religious founda-
tions havinfj been established under the kings of the Anwlo-
Norman dynasty than during the whole preceding or subse-
quent period of English history. Very many men also sought
rest and consolation in the places of refuge from this world
afforded by the Church." Besides the mighty reforms carried
out under the two first Norman archbishops in such great
religious houses as Gloucester ; during the nineteen years of
Stephen's reign one hundred and fifteen monasteries were built,
and one hundred and thirteen more religious houses were added
to these in the days of Henry II. It has been computed that
in half a century sixty-four of these houses of religion were built
in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire alone. " Multitudes of men were
busied in raising the vast pile of buildings which made up a reli-
gious house — cloister, dormitories, chapels, hospital, granaries,
barns, storehouses. "f
In this mighty revival two men were conspicuous, Lanfranc
and Anselm, the first two Norman Archbishops of Canter-
bury. To these, in England and Normandy, as far as human
agency is concerned, was the great revival of Church life
and work in the eleventh and twelfth centuries especially
due. Great scholars, earnest and devoted churchmen,
statesmen of no mean ability, full of noble and unselfish
enthusiasm, they were both, though dififerent in character,
admirably and specially fitted for the great work of refor-
* " Normandy and England," vol. iii., book iii. chap. x.
t " Henry II.," by Mrs. J. R. Green, chap. 3.
192 A NORMAN ABBEY.
mation and reconstruction of the Church which lay before
them.
The first of the Norman Archbishops of Canterbury, Lan-
franc, possessed in himself many rare and singular gifts. It
was the good fortune of the Conqueror to attach him to his
cause in England. He became the great king's innermost
counsellor ; and for long years, during that stormy and event-
ful period when Norman rule was being slowly and painfully
established in Saxon England, Lanfranc was the trusted Min-
ister and adviser of William. It was through Lanfranc's work
more than by any other human agency* that the Church of the
Anglo-Saxon was redeemed from the sloth and impotency into
which she had sunk. He was at once statesman and church-
man, teacher and reformer, restorer of a scholarship fast
perishing, an accurate theologian, an ardent reviver of zeal
for a nobler and more useful life among the professed ministers
of the Church. He occupied a middle position between men
like the saintly Anselm who succeeded him and the more worldly
bishops of his day — able and devoted men often, but statesmen
rather than churchmen. Had Anselm stood at William's
right hand during that troubled age, he would never have
won William's heart as did Lanfranc, the wise and prudent. Had
a worldly prelate like Ralph Flambard, Bishop of Durham, the
Minister of Rufus, or like A'Beckett, in early days theCounsellor
of Henry II., been the king's choice, men would never have
seen the great Reformation in Church life which so powerfully
affected the course of events in the latter part of the eleventh
and the whole of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The
wise and saintly Lanfranc was exactly fitted to influence the
conquerors for good.
The first Archbishop after the Norman Conquest was a
foreigner, but he was the truest of friends to England. With-
* Compare Palgrave, " Normandy and England,' vol. iii., bookii. ch.ip. v.
THE BIRTHDAY OF OUR GOTHIC MINSTERS. 1 93
out him no Magna Charta would have been possible* some
hundred and twenty-six years later. When he died, a.d. 1089,
his death was mourned as the heaviest loss which could befall
his adopted country.
Anselm, the second of the Norman Archbishops, was "a
monk throughout . . . but he was much more than a monk, a
great teacher, a great thinker, a great kindler of thought in
others ; he was also an example of gallant and unselfish public
service. . . . Penetrated, too, as he was by the new unflinch-
ing- austerity of that hard, stern time, he was remembered
among men less as the great sage who had opened new paths
to thought, or as the great Archbishop who had not been
afraid of the face of kings, or as the severe restorer of an un-
comprising and high-aiming discipline, than as the loving and
sympathising Christian brother, full of sweetness, full of affection,
full of goodness, full of allowances and patience for others, whom
men of all conditions liked to converse with, and whom neither
high nor low ever found cold in his friendship." His influence
was far-reaching, equally powerful in his own quiet cloister at Bee
as in the stir and bustle of the royal court of Rouen or West-
minster : loved by high and low, by the proudest scholar as by
the most illiterate man-atarms.f "We have no man among
us," said a great noble once at the court of Rufus at Glou-
cester, " so holy as Anselm, living only to the Lord. There is
no earthly object that he desires." " He was ever talking of
heaven and of Christ, but in words all could understand and
sympathise in. "J
On the roll of great Englishmen none have won a right to
a higher place than her adopted sons, the first two Norman
Archbishops. Lanfranc, the friend and counsellor of the Con-
queror, perhaps occupies the higher and more prominent place
• Palgrave, " Normandy and England," vol. iii., book iii. chap. xv.
t Palgrave, " Normandy and England," vol. iv. book iv.
X Dean Church, "Life of S. Anselm," chap. i.
C C
194 A NORA/AN ABBFV.
in history, because he was William's friend and counsellor, but
he was ever conquered England's friend rather than her con-
queror's.
Anselm, the loved and saintly monk-bishop, took up and
developed Lanfranc's work. Whatever was true and real, and
whatever was lovely and spiritual in that great Anglo-Norman
Church which played so mighty and beneficent a part in
mediaeval England, was owing in large measure to the great-
hearted Anselm, whom Dante, in his sublime " Vision of
Paradise," couples with the glorified spirit of Nathan the
Prophet, Minister of David ; and John of the golden mouth,
the fearless preacher of Antioch and Constantinople ; and
Donatus the grammarian, the once famous teacher of S.
Jerome. " It is his right place," eloquently writes his biogra-
pher,* " in the noble company of the strong and the meek,
who have not been afraid of the mightiest, and have not dis-
dained to work for and with the lowliest, capable of the
highest things, content, as living before Him with whom there
is neither high nor low, to minister to the humblest."
The two — Lanfranc and Anselm — have left behind them
many a fair monument of their brave earnest lives and far-
reaching holy influence, some carved in stone, some writ in
the deathless memoirs of our great church and nation ; none
of the former, though, more lovely than in the grey towers and
solemn time-worn cloisters of our Abbey of Gloucester, where,
under other forms, the self-same work they initiated still goes
on, and where the spirit which they woke from its death-
like slumber still lives and breathes, a mighty power for good
in this our own strange and restless age.
***** * #
The Abbey of Gloucester, one of the oldest Mercian or
Saxon foundations, is a good example of the work done in
religious houses by Lanfranc and Anselm, and their trusted
* Dean Church.
THE BIRTHDAY OF OUR GOTHIC MIXSTERS. ig;
disciples. Serlo, the Abbot appointed under Lanfranc's
authority, found a ruined house and an empty society. Some
half-dozen monks and a few boys represented the once-famous
foundation of Gloucester. Serlo left a stately Norman Minster,
a spacious monastery, and a flourishing society of a hundred
professed Benedictine monks, with, no doubt, great schools
attached.
Serlo's architect and workmen built his noble abbey in the
true Norman fashion. These craftsmen, brought up in the
school of those rough stormy days, ever had the fortress idea
in their minds, and their proud minster-church bore, as might
have been expected, the signs of a great Norman castle. The
little windows, the squat and ponderous battlemented tower,
resembling a keep or donjon, like what Tewkesbury Abbey
still retains. The dark and gloomy interior, like the great
hall of a baronial stronghold. The very pillars in their
massive bulk telling their story of mighty strength. What-
ever a Norman craftsman built seemed intended to defy the
strongest missiles which the engines of war then in use could
hurl.
But a new spirit was gradually being called into existence
in Serlo's church, and in a thousand other like religious houses
of Europe. Earnestness, devotion, zeal to win souls, love of
study — each and all of these were quickened into life by the
great revival. Divine service was rendered with reverent
care and patient love. The music grew more elaborate. The
solemn procession in the stately minster became more studied
and picturesque. The incense rose in wreathing clouds ; the
prayers were more fervent ; the sermons preached were
more eloquent and touching ; and all these in a different degree
in the thousand churches, after the Lanfrancs and the Anselms
had quickened the dying religious life.
The plain unadorned, though massive Norman fortress-
church of Serlo at Gloucester, became soon insufficient for
iqS
A NORMAN ABBEY.
Mil
,41' 'l^^tHTxIS
the elaborate ritual and the stately
processions of Serlo's immediate
successors. The dark unorna-
mented Norman buildings, with
their general disdain of rich and varied ornament, though
breathing an awe and solemnity peculiarly their own, were
not in harmony with the splendid services loved by Serlo's
immediate spiritual descendants. " The mediaeval hierar-
chical services did not rise to their full majesty and impres-
siveness till celebrated under a Gothic Cathedral."*
Very early in the story of the Church's new and better life
had this desire for a more ornate and less severe and gloomy
style of architecture been felt. Certainly before Anselm's firm
but eentle loving hand had been removed from the helm of the
English Church, the more elaborate and ornamented style,
technically known as the " Early English '' school of architec-
■ ililman, '' Latin Christianity." vol. vi , bool< .\iv. chap. viii.
Transitiotial Nor
leadin. ' "*
■man Gateway
info Hif Monastery
and Abbey. Before this gateway
Bishop Hooper was burnt.
THE BIRTHDAY OF OUR GOTHIC MINSTERS. 20I
tare, was beginning- to supplant the stern old Norman fortress-
like work.
In our Gloucester Minster we have a few, but only a few
traces of these first efforts, which resulted in the finished
Gothic cathedral with us here. Most of the early attempts
have given place to a grander and more perfect conception,
which in good truth did not tarry.
To sum up, in the fourteenth century Gothic architecture,
in all its splendour and variety, was firmly established in
England, France, the Low Countries, and Germany. It was
recognised universally as containing the most perfect and con-
venient, as well as the most beautiful forms for Christian
churches. It appeared, as the great historian of Latin Chris-
tianity eloquently puts it, with strange, with almost startling
suddenness, and with somewhat varied details was generally
adopted in Northern and Central Europe as the favourite type
for ecclesiastical buildings.*
It appeared indeed suddenly, although experts will describe
with learned accuracy the steps by which, through the Norman
or Romanesque, through the schools entitled Early English and
Decorated, the monk builders in England (for with England
this litde study specially concerns itself) reached that lovely
form of Gothic peculiar to England — the Perpendicular. The
Gloucester Minster contains the earliest known workf of this
ereat school of Gothic architecture in its southern chancel,
Jifiis/icd bi/oi'c a.d. 1337. In its choir, completed only a few
years later, it possesses one of the noblest examples of this pecu-
liar architecture so loved in England; a.d. 1350—60 witnessed
the completion of this part of the building, still with us in all
its perfect beauty. Neither in Gloucester nor elsewhere has the
* " Latin Christianity," book xiv. chap viii.
t " Hist, et Cart. S. Petri Monas." See too Professor Willis and Professor
E. A. Freeman, referred to.
D f)
202 A NORMAN ABBEF.
early fourteenth century Perpendicular ever been surpassed,
very rarely equalled. With startling- suddenness, indeed, as
Dean Milman accurately observes, did Gothic architecture
appear among us ; with equally startling rapidity it reached its
highest perfection.
A great change had passed over Northern and Central
Europe, comparative peace and security succeeded to a long
and weary period of general disorder and universal insecurity.
A still ereater change had come over the Church. When
the eleventh century dawned Christ's Church on earth seemed
to be worn out and dying, with little influence or power for
God's work ; the watching angel seemed to be speaking sadly
to the Master, as he pointed to the tree of the Western
Church, " Cut it down ; why cumbereth it the ground ? "
Before the eleventh century had run its course a new and
nobler life in all parts of Central and Northern Europe
had been breathed into the seemingly dying and wornout
Christian community. In an inconceivably short space of time
bishops and abbots, the denizens of lordly monasteries, the
incumbents of humble parish churches, had awaked from their
lone and well-nig^h fatal slumber, had been aroused from
their death-like torpor. The Church was again a mighty
power for good.
When men were released from the perpetual terrorism of
always standing on the defensive, their builders were at once
freed from the burden of obligation to build either for defence
or attack. Thus the architect for the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries found himself free to plan and devise forms at once
more graceful and more ornamental. Very early in the
twelfth century the Norman builder began to weave into his
work those beautiful forms known as Early English. These
forms grew in richness and variety in those comparatively
secure years, when the Angevin sovereigns, Henry II. and
.Richard Coeur de Lion, ruled in England. These richer and
THE BIRTHDAY OF OUR GOTHIC MINSTERS. 203
more ornamented forms are generall>- known under the tech-
nical term " Decorated."
While the Church, with its new life, its fervour, and its
earnestness, kept calling for vaster buildings, for cloisters more
spacious, for loftier and more soaring roofs, for larger and ever
larger windows, windows which should serve the double pur-
pose of admitting more of the light of heaven and of display-
ing the rich and varied tints of the beautiful glass with which
men were beginning to illuminate their stately homes of
prayer ; the constant services of prayer and praise in these
Homes of Prayer became grander, the music more impressive.
Thoughtful churchmen too, felt that— in the comparatively
quiet times which had succeeded the old terrorism of the North-
men—much might be done in the way of education by charm-
ing the ear and delighting the eye. Hence the more elaborate
symbolism in Church Architecture and the care given to sacred
music ; hence the stately procession, the ornate ritual, the
clouds of incense, the solemn, sweet-voiced choir. The Gothic
cathedral, with its mystery of symbol, its vast size, its
jewelled windows, its wealth of colour, its loftiness, its exceed-
ing beauty of rich and varied detail, its peculiar fitness for the
new ornate and splendid services, was exactly designed to
supply a want.
# » # * * * *
This serves to explain the sudden appearance of this new,
this inimitable school of Gothic architecture. This is the true,
simple story of its rapid progress to what humanly may be
deemed perfection in all the lands where the revival of religion
was especially felt. In no country was this revival more con-
spicuous than in England, in no land are the monuments of
this splendid development in art or of the results of the re-
vival more beautiful or perhaps so numerous.
*♦#****
Some five centuries have elapsed since the glorious choir of
204 A NORMAN ABBEY.
Gloucester* left the hands of its monk architects and builders.
Since that marvellous creative century scarcely any further
progress in church architecture has been chronicled among us.
For many along year in England, men planned and built on
the principles of the great Gothic schools, which generally came
to perfection in Central and Northern Europe in the course
of the fourteenth century, but they planned and built with ever
less and less skill and taste.
As the centuries rolled on in their storied course, our
English builders still planned, devised, altered, with varying
success or ill success. The Tudor or Elizabethan schoolf cer-
tainly possesses its own quaint beauty. Wren, a great genius,
without doubt, following Italian masters, gave us, with his
pupils, not a few noble and beautiful churches and one stately
cathedral ; but no true art critic would venture to affirm that
these Italian piles are in harmony with our rugged northern
atmosphere, our pale blue skies, our comparatively few days of
golden sunshine. St. Paul's cathedral, the fair masterpiece
of Wren, with all its stately beauty, is utterly incapable of inspir-
ing the lofty devotion or the reverential awe which we feel
when we eaze on the grraceful tower of a time-worn Gothic
minster such as Canterbury or Gloucester, or kneel, with silent
adoration, in the soaring choir of Westminster or York.
* I speak of Gloucester as my example, but the same stately work went on in
the same creative age in countless other centres in England and in Northern and
Central Europe.
t The skill of this school was exercised rather in manor houses than in
churches.
APPENDICES I-IV.
I. The Great East Window.
II. A Study on Gloucester, read before the Royal Archaeological
Society by the Dean of Gloucester, President of the Historical
Section, 1890.
III. The Nemesis of the Normans.
IV. Monastic Life in 1S90.
THE GREAT EAST WINDOW OF GLOUCESTER
CATHEDRAL.*
Ix many respects this is one of the most magnificent and impor-
tant windows in England. It is filled with beautiful painted
glass, dating from the best period of mediaeval art, about A.D.
1345 — 1350. Its stonework exceeds in size the east window of
York Cathedral (the Gloucester window being 72 feet high by
38 wide, that of York 78 by 33 feet). The lower part, however,
of the Gloucester window is not completely glazed, owing to the
opening into the Lady Chapel. These two windows are the
largest known windows in the world. Some of the figures in the
great Gloucester window have suffered from one cause or other
somewhat severely ; a very few have been pronounced insertions.
But, out of forty-nine, thirty-seven of the figures, and thirteen
of the eighteen armorial shields and the whole of the splendid
canopy work are pronounced absolutely genuine, and several of
the few doubtful insertions are evidently of a most ancient date.
The subject of the paintings is "the Coronation of the Virgin."
The figures consist of winged Angels, Apostles, Saints, Kings
and Abbots.
The date of the window can be accurately ascertained from the
armorial bearings, the character of the stone mouldings, and the
nature of the painted glass. The coats of arms are those borne
by King Edward III., the Black Prince, and their knightly
companions such as Arundel, Berkeley, Warwick, Northampton,
* The writer expresses Iiis grateful acknowledgment for the very material he'p given
him in this little study on the famous east window of his cathedral, by J. Henry Middleton,
Esq., Slade Professor of Fine Arts, in the University of Cambridge. He has also derived
assistance from Mr. Winston's paper, published in vol. xx. of the Archicological yournal.
2 08 APPENDIX.
Lancaster, Talbot, &:c., men who took part in the famous
campaign in which occurred the Battle of Cressy, and who in
some degree were connected with Gloucestershire. It is probable
it was placed in its present position when the magnificent Perpen-
dicular choir was completed, as the gift to the abbey of Lord
Bradestone, a soldier of King Edward IIL and a vassal of the
Honour of Berkeley.
This baron was appointed Governor of Gloucester Castle. The
great stained window was apparently a memorial of the great
Battle, and would now perhaps be termed the " Cressy " window.
While the stonev/ork of this great window is of fully developed
Perpendicular, all the details of the glass are purely Deco-
rated. The Perpendicular work in the choir of Gloucester was
finished before A.D. 1350, and therefore is a very early instance of
this style. Our window thus tells us that the development of
the Perpendicular style took place at an earlier period among
the masons than it did among the craftsmen in stained glass.
The general scheme of colour is extremely delicate and
beautiful. Pot metal and flashed ruby are only used for back-
grounds, the whole of the figures and their canopies being in
pearly white glass, with the drawing of the faces, drapery, &c.,
in " brown enamel," and some enrichments in " silver stain,"
varying from a lemon yellow to a deep orange. The drawing
of the faces (some, alas, now sadly disfigured) and draperies
executed in lines of brown enamel, is specially vigorous and
effective. Extraordinary delicacy and precision of touch are to
be seen in every line drawn by the glass painters of this window.
In point of firmness and touch, one of our greatest critics in Greek
art told me, the work here reminded him of the drawing on the
best painted vases of the Greeks.
With regard to the technical execution of the glass in the
Gloucester window, the only " pot metal " used is the rich blue
of the alternate backgrounds.
" Pot metal " means glass of the same colour throughout its
whole thickness, the pigment (in this case carbonate of copper)
being stirred up with the melted glass in the pot or crucible
before the glass was formed into sheets.
The gorgeous ruby (as is always the case) is what is called
APPEXIUX. 209
" flashed, " that is, the ruby colour is only a thin coating overlaid
on the surface of a colourless sheet of glass. This was done by
first blowing a bubble of uncoloured glass : the bubble was then
dipped in a pot of melted ruby glass, so that it was coated all
over with red. The composite bubble was then blown into an
enlarged disc, and then cut up when cool into the required sizes.
The reason for this process was that the ruljy was so strong a
pigment that it would have made the glass much too dark and
opaque if the w'.iole thickness had been coloured with the red.
The pigment which produced this magnificent ruby colour was an
oxide of copper.
The " silver stain," a bright yellow, is produced by applying
chloride of silver, in the form of a white salt, on to the surface of
the colourless glass. The glass was then heated red hot in a
furnace, the salt decomposed and gave a surface stain to the glass
on which it was laid.
By repeating tliis process more than once, deeper shades of
orange were produced.
The great beauty of the " silver stain " is that it by no means
diminishes the transparency of the glass to which it is applied.
The enamel paint is another surface application. After the
drawing was complete the glass was again heated red hot, and the
enamel lines were fused into their place on the surface of the
glass.
The white glass in this superb window is of special beauty
when compared with that of modern times. Its luminous pearly
look comes from the fact that the body of the glass is full of
minute air bubbles. Each of these air bubbles catches the light,
and then reflects it out from the interior of the glass, so that the
glass is not merely translucent but is itself actually luminous,
each air bubble being a centre of radiated light. It would be
impossible, wrote Mr. Winston, to maet with glass that is more
solid and silvery in effect.
Of the two colours of which this queen among windows is
largely made up, the ruby is beautifully varied, and is most
luminous even in its deepest parts, and the tone of the blue can
hardly be surpassed. Any modern red glass which should equal
in hue the deeper portions of the original red glass used in tlie
E E
2IO APPENDIX.
Gloucester window would be nearly opaque, whereas all the old is
clear and transparent.
This little study on one of the noblest of the old stained glass
windows remaining to us in England, would be incomplete were
no notice taken of the solitary figure in the topmost light. It
was one of the figures alluded to above, as of later insertion, and
represents a Pope of Rome wearing a triple-crowned tiara and
holding a double cross. This figure and its canopy are of the
fifteenth century. It is one of those figures to which a very rare
tech II teal process has been applied, the borders of the drapery
being enriched by small jewels of glass in red and blue. These
are fused on to the surface of the glass so as to stand out in actual
relief, giving an effect of extraordinary richness. This is, how-
ever, lost by the present lofty position of the figure, which was
certainly executed for some position much nearer the eye. This
process of "jewelling" is described by the Monk Theophilus in
his "Schedula Diversarum Artium," written in the twelfth century.
The process seems to have been very rarely practised.
Nowhere is the wonderful skill of the great " builder " abbots,
de Staunton and Horton, and their workmen, in the middle of the
fourteenth centur}^ more conspicuous than in this vast jewelled
wall of glass so grandly strong and yet delicately tender, which
closes the east end of the magnificent choir of Gloucester.
Nothing can be conceived richer than this transparent silver veil
studded with gleaming gems of ruby and sapphire, and which,
instead of obscuring, only makes more lovely and tender the
gleams of light which are absolutely needful to reveal the glories
of the choir with its inimitable tracery which like a veil of stone
lace-work is so strangely tossed over the old grave Norman columns
and the round massive arches.
II.
Gloucester and its Abbey.— A paper read in the Greater
Chapter House of the Cathedral before the Royal Arch^o-
logical Institute of Great Britain, under the Presidency of
Earl Percy and Sir John Dorington, on the occasion of the
Society's visit to Gloucester, 1890, by the Very Rev.
H. D. M. Spence, D.D., Dean of Gloucester, President of
the Historical Section (Archaeological Institute, 1890).
Gloucester.— Its name and many-coloured memories send us
back to the early years of the Christian era. During the Roman
occupation it was an important frontier city. I have been taken
over the Gloucester of the last decade of the nineteenth century
by a distinguished local antiquarian, with the sole aid of VioUet
le Due's sketch map of the Praetorian Camp at Rome: for
Roman Gloucester was strictly laid out on the same plan. Saxon
(English) Gloucester— the city of Alfred's daughter, ^Ethelflaed
somewhi'le Lady of the Mercians, the city of Athelstan and of
Harthacnut— the home so often lived in by the saintly Confessor
king and his great Theigns, such as Godwine, Leofric and Harold,
—was built strictly on the same lines as the old fortified Camp.
The streets of mediaeval and modern Gloucester, one and all,
still follow the lines of the great stronghold of Claudius and
Hadrian, built upon the banks of the Severn waters over against
the wild and turbulent tribes of the Silures of southern Wales ;
this great Place of Arms soon became the chief city and principal
emporium of all the fair Severn Lands.
The Roman city is with us still, beneath our feet. A spade or
pickaxe can at this moment be scarcely used for a few minutes
2 I 2 APPEXDIX^
in our city without disclosing the mighty wall built by the Italian
conquerors, the vast substructures of a temple or of a municipal
building, or the scarcely discoloured mosaics of a pavement,
where these strange Italian wanderers worshipped, worked, and
walked.
With this cultured, many-sided life, in which men and women,
boys and girls of an old, almost forgotten world shared, men and
women who might have talked with St. John, I have not to deal
specially in this little study. My work belongs to another and
a later age. Suffice it to say that the Roman life, with its constant
passing to and fro between Italy and the great southern cities,
with its legionaries and civic functionaries, with all its bril-
liant accompaniments — costly dress, splendid houses, magnificent
temples, gardens, art in its highest development — somewhat
abruptly came to an end in the beginning of the fifth century.
A.D. 405 is a good date. The strange appearance of clouds of
barbarians from the north and east threatened all the provinces,
and even Italy and sacred Rome. All the outlying legions were
recalled, — and what may be termed the story of Roman life in
Britain came to an end. Then settled over the Island and our
Gloucester— for with Gloucester we have to do to-day — an
impenetrable mist. What happened to our prosperous city and
to the county dotted over with beautiful homesteads, and with
not a few palace-like residences like the Chedworth Villa, or the
far more lordly and magnificent House of Woodchester, only
some ten miles distant ? It seems as though Britain after the
legions left was divided out into numerous little kingships. In
the final crash which took place in our part of Britain some 160
years later, Bath, Cirencester, and Gloucester had each their
petty king. We have a few scraps of legendary history, but
nothing dependable. Probably the old Roman provincial life
went on much as before, though on a narrower and less magnifi-
cent scale. Then came the end. Through the dim mist which
had settled over our city and county after A.D. 409 for a century and
a half, we catch sight of a terrible battle between the British
Provincials and the English Invaders. These invaders were West
Saxons under Ceawlin. At the Battle of Deorham the three British
Kings — the successors of the Roman Governors — the three kings
APPENDIX. 213
of Bath, Cirencester, and Gloucester, were slain, and no doubt
directly after, these cities became the spoil of the invading army
of Ceawlin. The battle and rout took place in A.D. 577. The native
British rule had lasted in Gloucester about 168 years. Deeper
and darker now did the mist settle over our city. For some loo
years we are absolutely in ignorance what happened to us. Some
of the great Roman cities of Britain which fell at that period were
simply sacked and deserted, and remained empty and desolate for
a hundred or more years. This we know was the fate of Deva
(Chester) and Bath (Aquae-Solis). Others, such as Anderida in
the Pevensey district in Sussex, have lain still and desolate now
for 1,300 years. Of this once great city portions of the walls and
massive towers still remain. But since the dread day when the
Saxon stormed and sacked the once fair city of Anderida, no
human being has found shelter there. Was Gloucester like Deva
(Chester) and Bath — desolate and empty for a century, or was it
dwelt in by the conqueror ? If so, no doubt the sites of the Pagan
temples and new Christian churches were occupied for a season
by the wild worship of Woden and Thor, for we must not forget
tliat tliis conquest meant the uprooting of Christianity.
Gloucester emerges out of the thick dark mist some 100 years
after the battle of Deorham.
Before taking up the story of Gloucester from another
point of view, the following table, showing the dates of
some of the principal epochs in the history of the city and
abbey, will be useful.
Honorius, A.D. 409. Evacuation of South Britain by Romans.
1 68 years of Petty Kings.
A.D. 577. Ceawlin the West Saxon slays King Coninagil of Glou-
cester, at Deorham. Darkness for a century.
King Penda of Mercia.
I
King Ethelred.
Osric, Oswald (nephews of Ethelred).
~~~\ . f
A.D. 689. tounded Gloucester. Founded Pershore.
Killed by Osric, A.D. 729.
2 14 APPENDIX.
A.D. 689-S23. Osric's foundation was an abbey of nuns. Ladies
of the highest dignity were abbesses, such as Eadburgha, Lady
of Mercia. The last of these Abbesses was Eva, widow of King
Wulphere of Mercia.
A.D. 823. Under Beornwulph, King of Mercia. (Tlie nuns
are said to have fled in the confusion of Mercia's troubles.)
St. Peter at Gloucester became the home of secular canons.
A.D. 918. St. Oswald's Priory founded by yEthelflaed, Lady of
the Mercians. St. Catharine's Church, Gloucester, is built among
the ruins of St. Oswald's.
A.D. 940. Athelstan died in Gloucester; buried at Malmesbury.
A.D. 1022. Benedictines established in St. Peter's Abbey,
Gloucester, under Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester. — i. Abbot
Eadric (the waster of goods). 2. Abbot Wulfstan (monk of
Worcester). 3. Abbot Serlo (monk of Mont St. Michel) in Nor-
mandy.
The Gemots of Gloucester are now endless. Among the most
notable are : —
A.D. 1041. Under Harthacnut, midwinter. At this Gemot the
king sold the bishopric of Durham.
A.D. 1043. Gemot of Gloucester, under Edward the Confessor.
The king decided upon the confiscation of the goods of his mother,
Lady Emma.
A D. 105 1. Gemot of Gloucester on subject of King Edward's
favouring Normans, especially Count Eustace of Boulogne.
A.D. 1052. Head of Welch rebel prince brought to King
Edward at Gloucester Gemot.
When William the Conqueror was at peace and in England
he kept his Christmas Feast at Gloucester.
A.D. 1085-6. Gemot was held when the Conqueror ordered
Domesday Book to be drawn up.
1093. At this Gemot held under King William Rufus, Robert
Duke of Normandy challenges King William Rufus. Freeman
says : " In this reign, almost everything that happened at all,
somehow contrived to happen at Gloucester."
A.D. 1092. Anselm was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
against his will by William Rufus, lying (apparently) sick to
death at Gloucester ; and was consecrated in Gloucester Abbey.
APPENDIX. 215
A.D. 1 100. The death of William Rufus by an arrow was
prophesied by Fulcherius, Abbot of Shrewsbury, in a sermon in
Gloucester Abbey. This same year, Serlo's abbey, well-nigh
completed, was consecrated.
A.D. 1216. Henry III. was crowned in Gloucester Abbey.
A.D. 1378. Richard II. held the famous Parliament in the
buildings of Gloucester Abbey in which the House of Commons
won to itself the control of the finances of the nation.
A.D. 1535. Henry VIII. spent eight days with Queen Anne
Boleyn in Gloucester Monastery.
A.D. 1539. Dissolution of the monastery.
» * * * *
Gloucester Cathedral awakens many memories — stirs up many
and varied thoughts. Its very name sends us back before the days
of Claudius the Emperor, before the Christian era. In England a
few natural objects, a few ancient cities, like London and Glou-
cester, still retain names older than the Roman, the Angle, or the
Saxon. So old is the famous first syllable " Glou," the storied
city's real name, that as yet our most learned philologists hesitate
about its real meaning. We think probably Glou-cestra signifies
" The Fair City," or Chester, but it is only at best a surmise. At
the time of the Conquest the city of Gloucester occupied the third
position in the realm. London and Winchester and Gloucester
seem to have been the three official meeting places for the King
and the great council of the nation.
Look at the pile a moment from the Cloister Garden. Observe
its twin unmistakeable Norman towers, flanking the tall north
transept. They remind us of the invariable feature of these
transepts in all the vast Norman churches, from scarred muti-
lated Fecamp to the serene beauty of Canterbury. They tell us —
though comparatively little else tells us in this fair view from the
Cloister Garden — that the same people built and planned this
great church as built and planned Fecamp Abbey and Canterbury
and many other such lordly piles.
Look a moment at the round-headed windows along the nave.
They tell, too, the same story of their Norman parentage as do the
transept towers, though the muUions of these windows help to
disguise their real character — speaking as they do of another age
2 1 6 APPENDIX.
and of a different inspiration. Then the great windows of the
transept, the elaborate battlements, the exquisite tracery of the
Cloister windows, speak of the new spirit of architecture which
arose in the days of the Third Edward — arose, we think, in these
sacred walls, and suggested a new school of Gothic architecture
which for some two centuries was the favourite style of English
builders — the well-known Perpendicular.
Then the eye rests on the great central tower, which marks the
slight changes which a hundred years or more brought with it in
this style, and tells us how men built and designed in the stormy
epoch of the Wars of the Roses. The eye for a minute leaves the
great church. Nestling close under the transept towers is a large
plain massive building, quite unadorned, unmistakeably Norman of
an early date. In those plain grey walls, probably adorned and
enriched some three or four years later, the Conqueror sat and
held that deep speech with his Witan which resulted in the com-
pilation of Domesday Book.
What a solemn changeless witness to English history is our
great church, with its varied schools of architecture, one succeed-
ing the other ; with its many traditions, with its storied coloured
glass, its under church, its great Chapter Room! How many
scenes of the history of England have been acted in these sacred
enclosures, such as the death of Saxon Athelstan, the anxious day
passed by the Confessor when the conflict between his Norman
friends and the English host under Godwin was at its height ! The
forms of Edward and Earl Godwin, of Harold and the Norman
Count Eustace of Boulogne, of Tostig and Siward, of Gurth and
Stigand, seem to pass before us. So many stirring scenes in
English history passed here. The under church— many of us think
— was built in the Confessor's days. Then William the Conqueror,
not once or twice, wore his crowned helm as he presided in the old
Chapter Room over his barons at the great Christmas feast. I
should think all those mighty men-of-war— the half-brothers Odo
of Bayeux and Robert de Mortain, William Fitz Osbern, Roger de
Montgommeri, Geoffrey de Mowbrai, Roger Bigod, Gundulf of
Rochester, and, greatest of all, Lanfranc. the loved friend and
counsellor, the archbishop —household words with many of us —
oftentimes have held deep speech with their stern lord William,
APPExnix. 217
have feasted in the refectory, and have prayed in the church, and
talcen counsel in this Chapter House.
Some of them and their sons are buried, we believe, beneath
the Chapter Room iloor. Robert the Crusader, the Duke of Nor-
mandy, the unhappy eldest born of the Conqueror, we know, lies
in front of the high altar. William Rufus spent not a little of his
time here. It was in the halls of Gloucester, when he lay sick unto
death, that he thrust the staff of the Archbishopric of Canterbury
into the unwilling hands of Anselm, who received his hurried
consecration in the neighbouring" minster. The nave — save that
the present stone roof replaced the older one of wood in Henry
II.'s days — was, when Anselm was consecrated, very much as we
see it now, only a little whiter and more new looking. Our
Minster Church, among other stirring scenes and stately cere-
monials, witnessed the coronation of King Henry III. and the
sadder sight of the somewhat hurried obsequies of King Edward
II., who lies beneath the exquisite canopied tomb hard by the
high altar.
This same royal tomb received more ornamentation at the hands
of King Richard II., who, curiously enough, round the massive
Norman pillars which overshadow the beautiful tomb of Edward
II., blazoned his favourite device of the white hartecouchant. The
same device which we find on the two contemporary portraits of that
monarch, worked on his robe, one of which is in that most solemn
sanctuary of Westminster Abbey, and the other in ihe famous
Diptych of Lord Pembroke at Wilton House. The device was
the cognisance of his mother, widow of the Black Prince, once
known as the Fair Maid of Kent. It was in Gloucester that
this King (Richard II.j held the famous " Money " Parliament.
The Chronicle tells us that the Commons sat in the Chapter
Room, and the King and the Peers in the Abbot's Aula of the
Deanery.
Returning to the tomb of Edward II., there is a special interest
surrounding this splendid canopied tomb and its beautiful recum-
bent effigy of the murdered King. The neighbouring abbeys of
Bristol, Malmesbury, and Kingswood refused to give the body of
Edward burial within their walls, fearing the resentment of Queen
Isabella. The fearless Abbot of Gloucester, Thoky, cared nothing
F F
2 1 8 APPENDIX.
for the wicked Queen or the unpopularity of the dead King, but
gave the dead Edward a royal funeral, and laid the body tenderly
and reverently close to the high altar of his Abbey. Within a very
short space of time a reaction set in. To the tomb of Edward, the
unpopular murdered monarch, flocked crowds of pilgrims, each
with their offerings more or less costly. Soon we hear that
through these offerings the treasury of the Monastery became so
enriched that had the monks pleased they could have rebuilt the
whole of the vast Abbey. Among the more costly of the earlier
gifts at the tomb were "a ship of gold," "a gold cross with a piece
of the true cross set in it," " a ruby," &c., &c. These costly offer-
ings were from King Edward III., Queen Philippa, the Black
Prince, and others. With this well-stored treasury the great
architects. Abbots Wigmore, Stanton, and Horton, re-cast the
whole east limb of the Cathedral, including the lantern, the two
transepts, and the choir and the noble and perfect cloister. They
prepared, too, for the raising and rebuilding in another generation
of the present matchless tower. The exquisite Lady Chapel was
the work of nearly a century and a half later. The costly and
splendid work of the three great Architect Abbots was commenced
in 1327. The south transept was completed by 1337, and is by
several years the oldest piece of Perpendicular work we are cog-
nizant of. The choir — its superb vaulting, its soaring roof, its
matchless window — was finished before 1350, before which date the
exquisite glass which nearly in its entirety still delights and charms
us, was all fixed in its place. The Cloisters, north transept, and rest
of the splendid stalls were all finished before the end of the four-
teenth century. The great east window, the framework and mul-
lions of which contain a few more square yards than the great
York window, and is therefore the largest in England, and, as far
as I know, the largest in the world, has a peculiar historical interest.
Mr. Winston, one of the greatest experts in ancient stained glass,
after careful investigation into the undoubted genuine heraldic
shields, into the peculiar character of the colours used — after, too,
calling attention to the stone framework being an early but decided
example of the Perpendicular style and the stained glass a pure
example of the Decorated, taking these three points especially
into consideration : — (i), the sort of colours used ; (2), the date of
APPENDIX. 219
the armorial bearings (some thirteen being undoubtedly genuine
ones ; (3J, the difference in styles between the stone framework
and the stained glass ; Mr. Winston unhesitatingly dates the
completion of the window before 1350, and shows us that we have
here a group of the coats of arms of the army of heroes connected
most certainly in some way with the county of Gloucester and
engaged in the campaign of Edward III., which is famous for the
Battle of Cressy. We should now speak of this glorious window,
simply matchless in colour and size, as a memorial of the Battle of
Cressy. I have forborne in this little sketch of historical memo-
ries to touch upon the peculiarly inventive* character of the three
great building Abbots — Wigmore, Stanton, and Horton, and their
immediate predecessor Thoky. My task has been to evoke a few
of the great historic memories connected with this storied pile.
* To these men and their architect. monks we apparently owe the invention of
" Perpendicular," that specially English form of Gothic architecture, which, after the com-
pletion of the changes in the South Transept, and the finishing of the more elaborate and
richer worli in the Choir of Gloucester Abbey — was adopted in countless abbeys and
churches.
It seems, too, more than probable that the same busy and brilliant school of Gloucester
monk-architects devised that loveliest form of ceiling known as " Fan V.iulting ; " for the
matchless Gloucester cloisters are the earliest known examples of this rich and graceful work.
III.
THE NEMESIS OF THE NORMANS.
Although the popular judgment which views the Norman
Conquest merely as a vulgar act of rapine is certainly erroneous,
there is no doubt but that much awful wrong was committed, and
that bitter untold suffering was inflicted on numberless Saxon
hearths and homes. William at the outset probably never dreamed
of the full extent of slaughter and confiscation which would be
needful for the completion of the conquest of such a nation as
that over which King Harold ruled.
It is deeply interesting to mark how in the case of the King
and his chief companions the sternest retribution seems to have
overtaken them in their hour of brilliant success. In the case
of the first Norman king we have already seen how sad and
gloomy were his last years of an almost boundless power, how
after the death of his dearly loved Queen he seems to have sat
upon his lonely throne, friendless and deserted ; his half-brother
Odo, so long his friend and confidant, a traitor ; his eldest son
and heir to his broad dominions, a rebel — well-nigh a parricide.
We have watched his melancholy, long drawn out end at Rouen,
and have listened to his own bitterly self-accusing words, when he
moaned "No tongue can tell the deeds of wickedness I have done
in my weary pilgrimage of toil and care."
The most striking figures in the Conquest were the Duke's half-
brothers, the sons of Arlette of Falaise and Herluin, her second
husband. Of these Odo, the splendid warrior-bishop of Bayeux,
who received with the Earldom of Kent vast estates in so many of
the fairest counties of conquered England, who, as viceroy on
various occasions, exercised supreme power during his royal
APPENDIX. 22 [
brother's frequent visits to his continental dominions— and yet in
spite of all these mighty favours and princely gifts dreamed of yet
higher things and plotted and schemed against his kingly brother.
Not the least among the sorrows and cares which surrounded the
last years of the Conqueror's brilliant solitary life was the treachery
of his brother, the mighty Earl-Bishop. Odo was disgraced and
rigorously imprisoned, his great English estates were confiscated,
and only on the death-bed of William was he released from
captivity. His nephew, William Rufus, restored him the earldom.
Again he conspired against his sovereign and kinsman, and was
driven from England with disgrace and contumely. Then we hear
of this restless ambitious man, disdaining the comparative seclusion
of his Bayeux Bishopric, joining his nephew Robert on his crusade,
and then worn out by his life of storm and intrigue, prematurely
aged, dying on the journey to the Holy Land at Palermo.
The other brother, Robert of Mortain, in the story of the
Conquest filled a yet more conspicuous place. In the decisive
battle he rode close to his brother, Duke William. This great
Norman noble was created by his kingly brother Earl of Cornwall,
and received vast estates in the counties of Cornwall, Devon,
Somerset, Yorkshire, and Sussex. None of the conquerors received
so magnificent an inheritance as this son of Arlette. Yet early in
his nephew Rufus' reign we find him in open rebellion, taking
part with Odo against the king, with many another Norman-
EnglishBaron. After this fierce family war we find a great number of
Norman nobles who fought at Hastings banished for ever from Eng-
land and their estates confiscated. Robert of Mortain's son William,
the Conqueror's nephew, the friend of Duke Robert, after the rout
of Tinchebrai, was imprisoned for life, some say blinded as an
additional punishment. Of the sons of King William, Robert the
eldest born, after a life of strange vicissitudes— appearing, now as the
disobedient and rebellious son and brother, now the paladin, the
brilliant and chivalrous crusader, the bravest of the brave in that
gallant and adventurous army drawn from so many peoples — closed
his striking career with a sad captivity of twenty-one years in Cardiff
Castle, blinded too, says the sad but probably too true story. The
second son, the Red King, in the prime of manhood and at the
summit of his power, was found weltering in his blood, pierced by
22 2 APPENDIX.
the shaft of a Norman arbalest in his own New Forest. As for
Henry, the youngest, tlie brilliant and admired scholar king — he
saw in the loss of his only son, when the White Ship went down,
the judgment of God on the proud Norman house ; men sadly
marked then, how there was no male heir to the mighty Norman
kingdom — only a woman (Matilda) to succeed to the great inheri-
tance in England and on the Continent which the children of
RoUo had acquired— marked sadly how soon only a woman's hand
would be left to curb the wild and turbulent descendants of the
Vikings. Alas, those who foresaw evil days were too surely
justified in their forebodings when the long and bloody war of the
succession began between Stephen and Matilda, and desolated
England directly the strong wise hand of Beauclerc was removed
by death.
It would be a grim and saddening task to relate in detail
the violent and premature end which closed the career of so many
of the men of mark and their immediate descendants who fought
and conquered at Senlac (Hastings). It seems to have been an
awful destiny, a swift and terrible punishment for the nameless
misery and untold suffering which these too often cruel con-
querers had brought on the homes and hearths of the noble
Saxon families.
Outside the Royal House of Rollo, I would instance just one or
two typical examples of the doom which seemed to hang over the
Norman conquerors of England and their immediate heirs.
William Fitzosbern, perhaps the oldest and dearest friend of
King William, was one of the richest endowed of the great nobles
out of the spoils of England. Created by the king Earl of Hereford,
he was so highly trusted by his royal Master that he was left Viceroy
and Regent of Normandy in the King's absence. Thierry
(" Conquete d' Angleterre ") even styles him " le premier des Seigneurs
Normands." In the height of his splendid fortunes, the Earl of
Hereford perished prematurely in the battle of Cassel only five years
after " Hastings," fighting in the hope of winning yet greater spoils
in the name of his wife Richildis, a widow of a Count of Flanders.
Robert Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland, nephew and heir of
Geoffrey Mowbray, Bishop of Coutances, the Conqueror's favourite,
who said mass on the field of Senlac (Hastings) before the battle
APPENDIX. 223
began, received as his magnificent guerdon 200 to 300 fair
manors, together with the great office of Justiciar of England.
This Earl Mowbray married Matilda de Aquila, niece of Hugh,
Earl of Chester, another of the great historical figures of the
"Conquest." JMowbray excited the wrath and the suspicions of
Rufus some five years after King William the Conqueror's death.
The mighty chieftain was let down into the pit of Windsor Castle,
where he remained until his death some thirty-four wretched
years later.
Mercilessly did the first Norman-English Sovereigns treat the
Barons whose strong arms at Senlac (Hastings) won for the
House of RoUo the splendid heritage of the House of Cerdic.
Nor indeed were occasions wanting for a fair excuse for their seem-
ingly extreme severity. The Norman chiefs, with the wild Viking
blood in their veins, were gallant warriors, skilful as they were
brave, yet at best but turbulent and disobedient subjects. The
fratricidal war between Robert the eldest born, and William Rufus
and Henry Beauclerc his brothers, gave endless occasion for
bloody and desperate sentences involving death and torture,
banishment and confiscation, on the chieftains who took part with
one or other of these rival claimants for the diadems of Normandy
and England. Nor did these unhappy internal wars cease until
Robert was immured (and blinded r) in his dungeon at Cardiff,
and Rufus lay in his bloody shroud in his tomb at Winchester.
The first crusade of Duke Robert and the life-long civil war
between Stephen and Matilda were, too, largely instrumental in
thinning the ranks of the Anglo-Norman Baronage.
Dugdale writing in the days of King Charles I., after mourn-
fully considering the dimmed magnificence and grandeur of Eng-
land's ancient families, tells us that — of the fwo Juiiidrcd and seventy
noble families who acquired their possessions by spoiling England,
only ciglit still existed in his (Dugdale'sj day.*
• Palgrave, vol iv., book iv., chap. i.
IV.
MONASTIC LIFE IN 1890.
The reality of the Monastic Life in the Middle Ages is not unfre-
quently called in question. The perpetual and lengthened ser-
vices in church, the grave austere life of privation, the frequent
and prolonged fasts, the solitude, the enforced periods of silence,
have been, by some thinkers, considered unendurable, save in rare
and special cases, and it has been suggested that the " Rule " of
S. Benedict was frequently relaxed and made easier in many of the
great religious houses, and that such a life in its entirety as the
one painted on pages 174-18:, was rarely, if ever, lived by these
great and famous communities. In reply to such questionings
the possibility of such a life being endured is demonstrated by
what we see in our own time.
In spite of the discouragement which INIonasticism has received
in most countries during the past hundred years, it is a fact that at
this moment not a few of these great homes of solitude and prayer
still e.x.ist, and are crowded with inmates, while in countries where
perfect religious freedom and toleration exist, new monasteries
even are still being built.
To take one well-known instance, the "Rule" of the Carthusians
is far more rigid than ever was the Rule of a great Benedictine
house such as that of Gloucester, where Lanfranc's friend, Abbot
Serlo, reigned. The life which the Carthusian at the grand Char-
treuse in Savoy is now leading is no secret, and is the exact model
of the life led in the houses of the same famous monastic order
which still exist in England and in other really free countries.
The following is a fairly accurate sketch of the life now led at
the Grande Chartreuse in the year of grace 1890 : —
APPENDIX. 225
At five o'clock in the evening the sacristan rings the bell for
compline.
About five and three-quarter hours after compline the great
night service begins — matins (10.45 P.M.).
This service, the longest and most remarkable in their usual
routine, rarely lasts less than two hours, often on festal days three
and over. The fathers of the Chartreuse say this is their happiest
time, singing, praying, reading, in God's holy sanctuary, in the
deep hush and awful shadows of night, a time when the world forgets
God, or too often sins against Him. They say these solemn hours
win for the soul a joy indescribable, a peace for the soul so pro-
found that no price is too great to pay for it. They tell us how
quickly the night hours pass when they are thus busied.
The monks get back to their cells soon after one o'clock or
two o'clock A.M., according to the service, festal or otherwise.
Prime is rung at six A.M., and the night of prayers and repose is
over.
The regular hours are slightly modified on Sundays and festal
days.
The ordinary day of a monk of the Grande Chartreuse is passed
thus :
It begins at prime and ends at compline, roughly speaking
about twelve and a half hours. It is divided into three divi-
sions: —
Prime to Sext. — Six A.M. to 10 A.M. (four hours) is passed in
spiritual exercises, viz., visit to the holy sacrament, chanting
mass, meditation, reading the Scriptures.
Sext to Vespers. — Ten A.M. to 2.30 p.m. (four and a half hours).
With the exception of the short time required to say the office of
nones, and to eat a very simple meal, these hours are left to the
discretion of the father himself. He may work in his garden, or
take exercise in his private corridor or little garden, or chop his
wood, or even paint, or model,* or carve, if he have any taste for
these occupations, or he may pass these four hours in quiet reading.
At 2.45 vespers are sung (and often after vespers les veprcs ct les
viatiiies des morts).
They return to their cells generally from 4 to 4.15, then, save on
fast days, they sup ; on fast days this meal is entirely dispensed
G G
2 26 APPENDIX.
with. They then read or pray or study, and retire when they please
to their brief night's rest, the first part of which is over, it must be
remembered, between lo and ii P.M. The night's rest is resumed
shortly after i A.M. or 2 A.M., and the new day formally begins at
6 A.M.
It is without doubt a very solitary life, that of a Carthusian
father. On ordinary days he only leaves his cell three times —
at iiighf (10.30) for the great night service, in. the morning for high
mass, in. the afternoon for vespers, and on these three occasions
the cell is exchanged for the chapel of the monastery. At those
hours you would see the white-robed monk with his white cowl
shading his face, noiselessly coming from his house or cell into
the cloister, passing silently into his stall in the chapel, and then
without a word to any mortal, only the whispered or chanted
words to God, returning after service all silent to the solitude of
his cell. Is he ever weary of this strange, prayer-filled, lonely
life ? What thoughts occupy him, as day after day, year after
year, after that brief visit to the chapel, he comes back to that
silent home of his? Does he regret the movement and stir of the
life he has left behind ? Does this solitude and silence pall upon
him, weary him ?
They say not. The general of the order speaks of the serene,
quiet happiness of the fathers in the Grande Chartreuse. There
are many we know waiting for a chance to fill one of these
strange, silent homes. The writers on the " order" bear the same
testimony. The happiness of these silent, praying men is deep,
unbroken, real.
No brother-monk, no friend in the cloistered community ever
passes through the close-barred door of the Chartreuse father's
house. The monk comes through it to certain of the daily services,
and on Sundays and festival days to the common refectory, and
once in the week to the general walk [spacimcntum), but when once,
after the service or the silent Sunday meal or the weekly walk, he
crosses his threshold, he is absolutely alone. Each "father" of
the Grande Chartreuse occupies a little house which opens into
the great cloister ; within on the ground lioor is a small gallery
or exercise hall, where the solitary paces up and down during the
long months of winter and of snow, when his own patch of garden
APPENDIX. 227
ground is inaccessible. The garden, which he cultivates hin;self,
is very small and cramped ; in some cases it is exquisitely neat,
in others comparatively neglected ; it is often the Chartreuse
father's sole recreation. Another room on the ground floor he
uses to chop his wood in. The wood is abundantly supplied to
each monk in large, rough logs. This he prepares for his fire as
he pleases. Up a rough flight of stairs, or rather of steps, the
real dwelling-place is reached — the " home " where the Chartreuse
father spends so many lonely hours. It is divided generally into
two chambers. The one is little more than an ante-room, with
usually a very small study-room cut off from it. The second
chamber contains a kind of cupboard which holds the comfortless-
looking bed, with the rough blanket-rugs which form the bedding
of this austere order. By the bedside is a little chair and prie
dicu and crucifix, where so many of the Church's offices are said
by the lonely monk — for it is only three of the services that are
attended by the father in the great chapel of the monastery. His
silent room is really his chapel. The recess of the window is his
refectory, and is partly filled by a little table. The great refectory
is only used by the monks on Sundays and on certain festival
days. The study is a small room taken from the ante-chamber.
Again in this little corner of his quiet home the furnitare is of the
scantiest, simplest description — a table, a rough desk, and a few
shelves against the wall filled with the books for daily use and
the volumes borrowed from the noble library of the house.
Into these secluded cells within cells no servant is jjermitted to
enter, the fathers do all that is to be done themselves — la solitude
dans la solitude, as one of the Chartreuse fathers has called the
little quiet house — in which no voice is ever heard, save his own,
into which enters neither friend or foe.
The solitude is only broken on Sundays and festal days, when
the fathers of the house take their principal meal together in the
refectory, but on these occasions they never speak.
The silence is only broken once a week when the daily routine
is interrupted by a long general walk {spaciincntuin) which the
fathers take together among the romantic pine woods and lofty
cliffs of their valley. This walk lasts generally three to four
hours.
2 28 APPENDIX.
The fare of these solitaries is of the simplest. Never — not even
in illness — does a Carthusian father eat animal food. Soup,
vegetables, eggs, bread, dried fruits, with a small measure of
Avine, constitute most of the daily portion. The service of the
table is of the plainest — a fork, spoon, egg-cup, plates, all of
ivood ; two modest pewter vessels, one for wine, one for water,
and a small two-handled pewter cup.
During many months of the year the fathers have but one meal
in the day : should they, however, specially desire it, during this
prolonged fast, three or four ounces of bread with a little wine is
allowed in addition to the one formal repast. The long fast
commences September 14th, and lasts until Easter. Sundays
and certain festal days are excepted from this long-protracted
period of abstinence.
The question as to whether the life led in the IMiddle Ages in a
Benedictine house like that of the great Gloucester abbey was
endurable, is thus answered.
The Carthusian rule is stricter, the way of life generally far more
austere, than ever was the rule of S. Benedict.
The night-service of the Carthusian fathers was longer than the
corresponding night-service enjoined on the Benedictines ; the
fasts were more prolonged, the usual dietary more rigidly simple.
The rule of silence, too, so rarely to be broken by the Carthusian,
was in the case of the Benedictine a very much lighter burden.
In the Benedictine ranks the ordinary pursuits were much more
varied, literature and art, writing, architecture, painting, &c., were
cultivated and encouraged, as well as outdoor occupations con-
nected with husbandry.
Yet in spite of the extreme severity of the Carthusian rule, there
are men now waiting for the chance of a vacant cell in the Grande
Chartreuse, while a large Carthusian house has been very lately
built after the model of the famous Savoy monastery in our own
Sussex.
PRINTED BY J. S. VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, CITY ROAD, LONDON.
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