368. Ruskin in Oxford, and Other Studies: A Series of Autobiographical, Literary, Historical and Arch- aeological Essays. By G. W. Kitchin, D.D., Dean of Durham. With 2 photogravure portraits and 6 other illustrations. Broad I2mo. Cloth, gilt top. London, 1903. $3.00 to 750. CONTENTS: Ruskin at Oxford, as Undergraduate and Slade Professor The Statesmen of West Cumberland Whitby Abbey, a Study of Celtic and Latin Monasticism Durham College, a Glimpse of Mediaeval Oxford Statues of Durham Cathedral The North in the Fifteenth Century: a Passage in the Life of Pope Pius II Dante and Virgil in the "Divina Commedia" Burial Place of Slavonians, North Stoneham, Church, Hampshire The Font in Winchester Cathedral An Address on Bishop Butler. RUSKIN IN OXFORD - X'yV // - >V //-.>/-///. ;RUSKIN IN OXFORD/ AND OTHER STUDIES BY G. W. KITCHIN, D.D., F.S.A. DEAN OP DURHAM, AND HONORARY STUDENT OP CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1904 PREFACE No connecting thread runs through this little volume of Papers on literary and historical sub- jects; neither unity is here, nor a moral. I can but offer it to an indulgent world as the work of my holiday times, and as being, in certain cases, autobiographical sketches, which the self-esteem of an old man ventures to place before the public. Indeed, my only reason for writing this preface at all, is to find a place in which to thank my friends who have allowed me to reproduce papers read before august societies, and so to gain their kindly smile for my effort. In a day in which newspapers and magazines have taught the world to read in scraps and vi PREFACE in "five minutes" with the best or the worst authors, no apology is perhaps needed for the disconnected elements of this little book. If it pleases any, if it lightens a tedious hour, it will have done the work fitted for it, and will also fulfil the chief object which the writer of these desultory pages had in view. DEANERY, DURHAM, July 1903. CONTENTS PAGE I. BUSKIN AT OXFORD, AS AN UNDERGRADUATE AND AS SLADE PROFESSOR ..... 1 A Lecture delivered at Birmingham, to the Ruskin Society, 5th December 1900, and reprinted by the kind permis- sion of the Editor of the " St George Magazine. " H. THE STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND . . 55 An Attempt to do honour to my Ancestors; reprinted by kind permission from the "Northern Counties Magazine " (A.D. 1901). IH. WHITBY ABBEY, A STUDY OF CELTIC AND LATIN MONASTICISM . . . . .96 A Lecture given before the Co-operative Home-Reading Union at Whitby {\.v. 1899). IV. DURHAM COLLEGE, A GLIMPSE OF MEDIEVAL OXFORD 155 A Lecture given before the University of Durham (A.D. 1898). V. THE STATUTES OF DURHAM CATHEDRAL . . 206 Read before the British Archceological Society at Durham, July 1901 ; and reprinted with their kind leave. vii viii CONTENTS PAGE VI. THE NORTH IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY : A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF POPE PIUS II. (A.D. 1901) . 225 A Visit of dSneas Sylvius Piccolomini (afterwards Pope Pius II.) in 1435-36; reprinted from the "County Monthly Magazine" by kind permission. VII. DANTE AND VIRGIL IN THE DIV1NA COMMEDIA . 255 An Address delivered at the College of Science, Newcastle- on-Tyne, on 20th January 1900. VIII. THE BURIAL-PLACE OF THE SLAVONIANS: NORTH STONE- HAM CHURCH, HAMPSHIRE . . . .283 Read before the London Society of Antiquaries, 1894 ; and reprinted by their kind permission. IX. THE FONT IN WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL . . 303 Head before the British Archaeological Society, 1st August 1893 ; and reprinted by their kind permission. X. AN ADDRESS ON BISHOP BUTLER . . . 325 Oivtn in Durham Cathedral at the Unveiling of his Memorial Tablet, March 1899. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS JOHN RUSKIN. From the portrait by Sir JOHN E. MILLAIS, Bt., RE,. A. (photogravure) . Frontispiece A STATESMAN'S FARM HOUSE IN CUMBERLAND (Hardingill, Gosforth) . . . To face page 68 WHITBY ABBEY . . . . . . 144 JENEAS PICCOLOMINI, Ambassador to the King of Scotland. From the fresco by PINTU- RICCHIO, in the Biblioteca at Siena . . 236 GRAVE SLAB OF A GUILD OF SLAVONIANS, 1491 . 284 THE FONT IN WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL . . 308 THE FONT AT ZEDELGHEM, NEAR BRUGES . 314 BISHOP BUTLER. From a portrait in the Cathedral Library at Durham (photogravure) . . 328 I JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD I AS AN UNDERGRADUATE (1837-1841) ; AND AS SLADE PROFESSOR OF FINE ARTS (1869-1879, AND 1883-1885). ABOUT twenty-five years ago I was asked to dine at the Deanery in Christ Church. On sitting down at table, 1 found, to my great gratification, that on Mrs Liddell's right hand sat Lord Selborne, and on her left Mr Gladstone, so that they could talk across the table. Mrs Liddell, an admirable hostess, knew how to promote good conversa- tion, and listened with good-will and sympathy. Happily, I sat near enough to hear what they said. When the conversation drifted to the changes lately introduced at College, I pricked up my ears ; for Mr Gladstone, with all the fervour of his strange Toryism, was launching out into a warm 2 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD denunciation of these measures of reform, much to Mrs Liddell's amusement and gratification ; while Lord Selborne, across the table, tried to hold a brief for the newer state of things. It was a curious and, to our critical Oxford eyes, a delightful spectacle the Liberal Prime Minister, lamenting over the lost old ways, while the ex-Lord Chancellor defended these tremendous changes. It was as if all Oxford were rocking to her foundations ; for the matter discussed was an order lately issued by the Dean, that in future all distinctive differences of dress, and all differences of fees, for Noblemen, Gentleman- Commoners, or Servitors, should cease, and that Undergraduates should be of two classes only; Scholars, wearing their comely gown, and Commoners, condemned to that sorry garment which all Undergraduates naturally despise. The great lawyer mildly defended this move ; it was with characteristic vehemence opposed by the statesman. Mr Gladstone held that the distinctions of the outer world should have their echo in Oxford; that it was a lesson in the structure of Society; that it protected poor men CHRIST CHURCH REFORM 3 from the temptations to high expenditure. He unconsciously repeated William Sewell's dictum about Radley, that " a public school ought to be a microcosm of the State " ; a dogma which that old Platonist tried to illustrate by a very funny scheme of Gentleman-Commoners in Radley College. On the other hand, Lord Selborne gently pleaded for the far nobler principle, that a University was a Republic of Letters, and that the world's distinctions would but confuse such a community, and should as far as possible be effaced in it : he did not argue ; for argument would have been out of place at the table ; he let himself be overborne by Mr Gladstone's eager eloquence. Presently, the talk, dinner- fashion, drifted away, and left us puzzled and amused. It is interesting to note that Ruskin himself, speaking of these changes, showed that he was in full sympathy with Mr Gladstone. " It had never dawned on my father's mind that there were two, fashionable and unfashionable, orders, or casts, of undergraduate life at Christ Church, one of these being called Gentleman- Commoners, the others Commoners ; and that 4 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD these last seemed to occupy an almost bisectional point between the Gentleman - Commoners and the Servitors. All these ' invidious ' distinctions are now done away with in our Reformed University. Nobody sets up for the special rank of a gentleman, but nobody will be set down as a commoner ; and though, of all people, anybody will beg or canvass for a place for their children in a charity school, everybody would be furious at the thought of his son's wearing at college the gown of a Servitor." So he speaks in his " Prasterita," l as to which work, of vast interest and beauty, a true successor, in a latter age and tone, to Goethe's Wahrheit und Dichtung, Mr Ruskin once said to me at Brantwood that he was very sorry that he wrote it when he did ; " for if," said he, " I were to write it now, it would be very different." He did not go on to say how his notions had altered ; or how it could be improved ; in truth he was failing in strength, and past all writing at the time. It shows how one may repent of one's best work, and feel that it lacks that divine something which one recognises in the best writing; and so we repent for having said our 1 " Praeterita," vol. i. 10, pp. 285-289. AS A GENTLEMAN-COMMONER 5 best sayings or for writing our purest English, and for having endowed the world with priceless treasures. But, you will say, what are the bearings of this tale ? It is this : it was strange that Mr Gladstone in making his case for these dis- tinctions, and in defending the old order of things, which emphasised classes far more than the outer world did, actually omitted the one argu- ment which Ruskin had seen and understood, namely, that the velvet cap and silk gown of a Gentleman - Commoner might sometimes be valuable as a protection to persons of original character, and not of the ordinary schoolboy and undergraduate form, persons who in the rough and tumble of school and college would have fared badly, and might have had all the sensitive beauty of their natures marred by the Philistine ignorance and rudeness of the upper classes. It is not too much to say that had Ruskin entered among the two hundred Commoners, instead of being one of the twenty or so Gentleman- Commoners, we should have been permanent losers. For he needed some sunshine to coax 6 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD out his gifts : the first flower of his genius might have been checked, if his angles had been rubbed down, as Tennyson has it, "in yonder social mill " ; his bright thought, and the nobility of his character might have withered away under the cutting blasts of stupid criticism. As it was, his father's ignorance of Oxford, and his anxiety to do the best he could for his only boy, a boy so clever, so affectionate, so dutiful, so full of promise, led him to blunder into the right thing, for his good and our gain. For what was John Ruskin in 1837, when he went up to Oxford ? l In the first place, you must remember that he knew absolutely nothing of that vestibule of university life, the public school. He brought thither no school friendships, a vast difficulty for a shy lad ; he knew nothing of those ancient traditions which weld school and college together so closely, that critics declare with truth that for most youths the university is nothing but school over again. For Ruskin, however, this very lack turned 1 His actual Matriculation is entered as on 20th October 1836 ; he did not go into residence till the January following. AS A GENTLEMAN-COMMONER 7 out well : the University became a real teacher to him, a new experience, a true " Alma Mater " : it opened a brilliant world before him. In these four years everything changed, and life was beau- tifully enlarged. As he says : l " the velvet and silk made a difference, not to my mother only, but to me ! " And in his enthusiasm for such small distinctions he declares that " none but duchesses should wear diamonds, that lords should be known from common people by their stars, a quarter of a mile off ; that every peasant girl should boast her country by some dainty cap or bodice ; and that in the towns a vintner should be known from a fishmonger by the cut of his jerkin." Well ; if so, Ruskin would never have been a Gentleman-Commoner, and his enthusiasm would have exploded himself! The vintner's son for that was what he really was en gros could never have worn velvet and silk. Ruskin then came up to Oxford almost without a friend ; he knew no school lore, hardly had his grammar in orthodox fashion ; worse still, he was helplessly defective in the important 1 "Prseterita," vol. i. p. 285. 8 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD science of games. Games in 1837 were not what they have since become ; yet the camaraderie of the playing-field, mother of many wholesome friendships, a stage for mimic play of life, existed already. Of all this he was shockingly ignorant and indifferent; I think his position was all but hopeless. Lastly, in the midst of a very aristo- cratic group of lads, how could he, with his relations in trade, large or small, with his baker cousins and all the rest of it, hold his own, and take his proper part in the daily life of Christ Church ? Again, how would his undergraduate friends tolerate the fearful fact that his mother came up to keep terms with him, living in a lodging in High Street, watching over his health, and expecting a dutiful visit from him every evening? Everything seemed against him. Still, somehow, he did make his way. The truth is that Christ Church is very like the House of Commons in temper ; a man, however plain of origin, however humble in position, is tolerated and listened to with respect, if he is sincere, honest, and " knows his subject." This is why the Christ Church Gentleman - Commoners accepted HIS FIRST TERM AT COLLEGE 9 Ruskin readily enough ; they found that the boy was full of ingenious and really genuine thought, and that he had travelled widely, and had profited by his travels ; they saw that he was in essentials a true gentleman. He was also fortunate in meeting on his first appearance at "the Long Table " in Hall, a pleasant young fellow, Mr Strangeways, with whom he had been detained at the Grimsel in a storm, and who had been interested in his clever drawing of rocks and snow. Let him give us his own account of his debut in College : * " As time went on, the aspect of my College Hall to me meant little more than the fear and shame of those examination days (i.e. the Terminal Collections) ; but even in the first surprise and sublimity of finding myself dining there, were many reasons for the qualification of my pleasure. The change from our front parlour at Herne Hill, some 15 feet by 18, and meat and pudding with my mother and Mary, to a hall about as big as the Nave of Canterbury Cathedral, with its extremity lost in mist, its roof in darkness, and its company, an innumerable, immeasurable vision of vanishing perspective, was in itself more appalling to me than 1 " Prseterita," vol. i. pp. 297-300. 10 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD appetizing ; but also, from first to last, I had the clownish feeling of having no business there." " In the Cathedral, however born or bred, I felt myself present by as good a right as its Bishop nay, that in some of its lessons and uses, the building was less his than mine. But at table, with this learned and lordly perspective of guests, and state of worldly service, I had nothing to do ; my own proper style of dining was for ever, I felt, divided from this impassably. With baked potatoes under the mutton, just out of the oven, in the little parlour off the shop in Market Street, or beside a gipsy's kettle on Addington Hill (not that I had ever been beside a gipsy's kettle, but often wanted to be) ; or with oat-cake and butter for I was always a gourmand in a Scotch shepherd's cottage, to be divided with his collie, I was myself and in my place ; but at the Gentleman - Commoners' table, in Cardinal Wolsey's dining-room, I was, in all sorts of ways at once, less than myself, and in all sorts of wrong places at once, out of my place." l And he adds just below, speaking of the Society to which he has just been added : " I had been received as a good-humoured and inoffensive little cur, contemptuously, yet kindly, among the dogs of the race at the table ; and my tutor, and the men who read in class with 1 Collingwood's "Ruskin," p. 94. HIS RECEPTION AT COLLEGE 11 me, were beginning to recognise that I had some little gift in reading with good accent, thinking of what I read, and even asking troublesome questions about it, to the extent of being one day eagerly and admiringly congratulated by the whole class the moment we got out into quad, on the con- summate manner in which I had floored our tutor." And this view of himself is just what they felt. I have seen a letter written by Mr Hughes Hughes, who was a contemporary of Mr Ruskin at Christ Church, in which he briefly says of him that " at this time (undergraduate days) Ruskin was only famous as a sort of butt, and not a genius." And Mr Aubrey Vere de Vere says of him, on the publication of vol. i. of " Modern Painters " : "I am told that the author's name is Ruskin, and that he was considered at College as an odd sort of man who would never do anything." Thus his Oxford life began, not unhappily; the Christ Church men, of that day and after, being, as he says, "contemptuous yet kindly" towards a man of gifts. I have known more than one who would not have escaped so well had it not been for the gilding of the position, which enabled them to hold their own. On the 12 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD other hand, Christ Church was less tolerant than the House of Commons in some things ; we could not stand mean fellows, who lacked manliness and straightforwardness ; for these we had our " Scalae Gemoniae " ready in the sacred " Mercury," whose waters received such offenders at dead of night. And by his innocence and harmless vanity, Mr Ruskin must have tried them badly. He tells us his adventure over a Saturday essay, which to a Christ Church man of the old world is very graphic. In our day (an excellent usage which had become bad with that exceeding bad- ness which marks the corruptio optimi, and was abolished by Dean Liddell) the Censor of Rhetoric posted in Hall every Saturday the subject for next week's essay, which all Undergraduates had to write and to send in to him in the course of the next week. From these the best was selected to be read out on the following Saturday, when the whole College met in Hall. 1 These essays were often a mere mock. Randall, the great hosier of the High, who afterwards 1 Gentleman-Commoners' Essays were looked at by the Sub- Dean, who acted as Censor for that august body under the Dean. HIS COLLEGE ESSAY 13 retired on a good fortune, or " Cicero " Cook, the learned scout of Christ Church, used to under- take, for a consideration, to compose the views of the haughty Undergraduate on the weekly subject, and the young man condescended to sign the same, and poke it into the box in the Tutor's oak. The rest usually aimed at rilling their regulation three pages with few words, long and well spread out ; we all came to regard the whole thing as a useless nuisance. Ruskin, however, at first took his new life and his new duties very seriously : and having plenty to say about every- thing, and being ambitious and eager for literary writing, set himself to make careful papers. " I wrote my weekly essay with all the sagacity and eloquence I possessed," he writes in " Praeterita." No wonder that ere long the message came that his essay was to be read in Hall, a most unheard- of incident, for which tradition had no remedy : that a Gentleman- Commoner should read in Hall ! They made some lively protest when they heard, as one sees from a letter printed by Mr Collingwood : " Going out (from the Sub-Dean's house) I met Strangeways, ' So you're going to " read out " 14 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD to-day, Ruskin! Do go it at a good rate, my good fellow.' Went a little further and met March, ' Mind you stand on the top of the desk, Ruskin, Gentleman-Commoners never stand on the steps.' I asked him whether it would look more dignified to stand head or heels uppermost? He advised heels. Then I met Dysart, 'We must have a grand supper after this, Ruskin, Gentleman- Commoners always have a flare-up after reading their essays.' I told him I supposed he wanted to poison my rum and water." On the Saturday the whole company seated on their benches sat through the ordeal without shrinking, and with well-bred indifference. The Order felt itself in danger ; still, if the thing was short it might be endured, remonstrance following after. But Ruskin's essay was not short; he developed it carefully, and read it with due emphasis, astonishment giving place to wrath in the gilded audience. And when the poor lad ended, and walked out with his fellows well, you shall hear it in his own words: 1 " Serenely, and on good grounds, confident in my powers of reading rightly, and with a decent gravity which I felt to be becoming on this my 1 " Prteterita," p. 301. HIS COLLEGE ESSAY 15 first occasion of public distinction, I read my essay, I have reason to believe, not ungracefully ; and descended from the rostrum to receive, as I doubted not, the thanks of the Gentleman-Commoners for this creditable presentment of the wisdom of that body. But poor Clara, after her first ball, receiving her cousin's compliments in the cloak- room, was less surprised than I by my welcome from my cousins of the long-table. Not in envy truly, but in fiery disdain, varied in expression through every form and manner of English language, from the Olympian sarcasm of Charteris to the level-delivered volley of Grimston, they explained to me that I had committed grossest lese-majeste against the order of Gentleman- Commoners ; that no Gentleman-Commoner's essay ought ever to contain more than twelve lines, with four words in each ; and that even indulging in my folly and conceit, and want of savoir-faire, the impropriety of writing an essay with any meaning in it, like vulgar Students, the thought- lessness and audacity of writing one that would take at least a quarter of an hour to read, and then reading it all, might for this once be forgiven to such a green-horn ; but that Coventry wasn't the word for the place I should be sent to, if ever I did such a thing again." I think they behaved beautifully, considering : he was let off very easily. In many ways in these young freshman days, 16 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD he was saved by his simplicity, good nature, total freedom from vulgarity ; while his quick intelli- gence, his quasi-philosophic way of bearing re- proofs and laughter, and his unfailing amiability of temper, carried him through. But the character- istic which helped him most was his command of an excellent and even curious sherry wine, coupled as it was with obvious and pleasing hospitality ; he loved to dispense his good things. They also found that he could keep his head, and was good company ; at the " initiation wine," which every new Gentleman- Commoner had to undergo early in his time, "Curious glances were directed to me under the ordeal of the necessary toasts, but it had not occurred to the hospitality of my entertainers that I probably knew as much about wine as they did. When we broke up at the small hours, I helped to carry the son of the head of my College downstairs, and walked across Peck- water to my own rooms, deliberating, as I went, whether there was any immediately practicable trigonometrical method of determining whether I was walking straight towards the lamp over the door." * 1 "Preterite," vol. i. pp. 320-321. HIS OXFORD FRIENDS 17 In all which you see the pleasure with which an old man recalls his little boyish triumphs so proud that he could "keep his head," while the stalwart Gaisford had to be helped home. Christ Church was then, and still was, when I, only five years after the close of Mr Ruskin's Oxford days, went up to College, a nest of little cliques of friends. It was not, like smaller Colleges, a general community, nor a mere aggregation of clubs ; it was a place in which, if a man happily got into a congenial set, his four years were the happiest and best of his life ; but if, through accident or by foolishness, he dropped into an idle or vicious set, his life was marred. I have known shy or stupid men who never made entry into any set, and who hardly had half-a-dozen acquaint- ances in their Undergraduate age. Ruskin, in this respect, was very fortunate ; he had two social chances. There were always good men among the Gentleman-Commoners, though the most of them were an idle lot, dressing, loafing, gambling, through the divinest years of their life ; yet others were of a good courage, of good nature, and good breeding, who have been afterwards very helpful 18 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD to their country : all these, in their way, did Ruskin a power of good, by rubbing off rust and innocent juvenilities. Still out of these he did not make his intimate friends ; that was the other chance, and he happily seized it ; they " set his head straight for life " ; these were a cultivated group of scholars and students, the antipodes of the exclusive Gentleman- Commoners. Yet they were men of good family also Liddell, nephew of Lord Ravensworth, Acland, son of a sturdy old Devonshire Baronet, and so on. The point of connection, electric and inspiring, was the pencil, which they all used well; and with it went the power of these young men to discern in Ruskin the germ of great gifts, and to encourage the tender flower to bud and blossom. The English world has much to thank Christ Church for : she has educated many of the Statesmen who have made their mark for the chief part of the nineteenth century ; her men of learning and devotion have altered the complexion of English thought. Among these, so far as Ruskin's influence goes, Liddell, Acland, Charles Newton, and Osborne Gordon, deserve an especial gratitude. Art is a new thing HIS OXFORD FRIENDS 19 since Ruskin has spoken ; and Economics will also ere long learn the lesson he has taught us, and will acknowledge his splendid service in wedding economics with morals, too shamefully divided before, and so making room for a nobler form of social life : to this our best workers are awaking, as they become aware of a newer, fuller, and more wholesome existence. Ruskin 's voice has had splendid influence already among working-men : the old bad economy of "making one's pile," the ethics of the screw, is giving place to the nobler principles of combined labour already seen in operation in Bournville, near Birmingham, and destined, if not marred by the forces of stupid selfishness from without, to recreate the "merry England " of our happier dreams. Of Ruskin's friends I will put Sir Henry Acland first. " Fortunately for me," he says, " beyond all words, fortunately Henry Acland, by about a year and a half my senior, chose me; saw what helpless possibilities were in me, and took me affectionately in hand. His rooms, next to the gate on the north side of Canterbury, were within fifty yards of mine, and became to me the only 20 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD place where I was happy. He quietly showed me the manner of life of English youth of good sense, good family, and enlarged education ; we both of us already lived in elements far external to the College Quadrangle. He told me of the Plains of Troy ; a year or two afterwards I showed him, on his marriage journey, the path up the Montanvert ; and the friendship between us has never changed, but by deepening, to this day." l Sir Henry was a capital draughtsman, and a man of large outlook and grasp of mind. His sympathetic friendship was as the life-blood of Ruskin's later and more important growth ; though perhaps Acland never quite outlived the quasi- paternal position he had assumed towards the quiet, sensitive lad in 1837. He was fatherly, kindly, cultivated. He enlarged Ruskin's little scholar- ship by taking it out of the grammar-grooves, and giving him glimpses of the life of antiquity ; the Plains of Troy made Homer vivid to the lad. The group was one of scholars who were also artists ; their friendship did for his character gener- ally what Turner's illustrations of Rogers' Italy did for his artistic faculty. 1 " Prseterita," vol. i. pp. 303, 304. DEAN LIDDELL 21 And the others helped too; thus, Charles Newton, who was afterwards one of the chief men of the British Museum, greatly inspired him by wakening his power of observation in classical antiquities, and in the study of the principles of architecture. And his highest praise is reserved for Henry Liddell, Olympian figure among men ; whose very nobility of soul kindled vast enthusiasm in Ruskin's greener life. After sketching with a firm hand the two tutors who were then at the head of College education (Kynaston, afterwards master of St Paul's School, and " Old Hussey," dryest of men, most " censorious of censors, a Christ Church Gorgon or Erinnys, whose passing cast a shadow on the air, as well as on the gravel ") l he proceeds to describe Liddell, not yet Dean, as " a tutor out of my sphere, who reached my ideal, but disappointed my hope, as perhaps his own, since ; a man sorrowfully under the dominion of the Greek Way/c^. He was one of the rarest types of nobly-presenced Englishmen ; but I fancy it was his adverse star that made him an Englishman at all the prosaic and practical element in him having prevailed over the sensitive one." 1 " Prseterita," vol. i. p. 309- 22 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD This is a fine intuition as to a man of noble nature whom we all revered. There never was a man so capable of making a splendid mark on classic art and learning, and on the severe surface of rigid good taste. No man have I ever known was so well equipped with learning and capacity ; none with so brave a grasp, so fair a judg- ment, so tolerant a spirit; none who ever so serenely bore with the impatiences, follies, im- pertinences of the young men, and resented none, forgot them all. Liddell was like a noble ship under reefed sail in a stormy sea; he came through the waves with imposing speed and move- ment, fearing not the dints and ^breakages of the tempest, always sure of his end. Still, had he determined to press on with his higher gifts in Art or Letters, he might have left behind him a great reputation as a critical scholar; instead, he gave himself to the advance of Christ Church, and has left a permanent mark on our ancient walls, fulfill- ing perhaps a narrow, but always a right ambition. Shy and difficult of access he was : so that Ruskin could only admire him from afar; still, one may believe that so stately an example of high character DEAN LIDDELL 23 and unselfish aims worked good on the lad's character, even though he may humbly write : " I suppose he did not see enough in me to make him take trouble with me ; and what was much more serious, he saw not enough in himself to take trouble, in that field, with himself." * Ruskin also names as one of his most helpful friends, that most characteristic of dignitaries, Dr Buckland, the geologist, father of the still more eccentric and lovable Frank Buckland, our college comrade, whom we loved even better than we loved his bear, and who, in the end, gave his life for his fishes. What a characteristic remark it was, with which Frank Buckland ended his life : " I suppose I shall see many strange creatures there." Dr Buckland, who was afterwards Dean of West- minster, encouraged Ruskin to draw rocks care- fully ; some of his drawings are still to be seen in the Oxford Geological Museum. It was Buck- land who turned the lad's gaze towards the history of metals and minerals, and led him to make his wonderful collection of rare and precious things. We must not omit a very characteristic man, 1 " Prseterita," vol. i. p. 312. 24 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD Osborne Gordon, who seemed to provide the opposites for Ruskin, and was of great service to him. He was Ruskin's tutor and valued friend ; a man who has had rather hard judgment dealt to him in Sir Algernon West's Memoirs. Osborne Gordon was a Shropshire student, lean and haggard, with bright eyes, long reddish nose, untidy air, odd voice, and uncertain aspirates. He was one of our most brilliant Salopian scholars and students; of quaint wit, exquisite scholarly tastes, extraordinaiy mathematical gifts, and of a very kind heart. He always depreciated what he knew, and pretended to take no interest in the subjects in which he excelled. After Christ Church he took a College living, Easthampton in Berkshire ; we all wondered how he would do as a country parson. When, however, after some years he died, one of his Berkshire farmers said at his funeral: " Well, we have lost a real friend ; we've had before parsons who could preach, and parsons who could varm ; but ne'er a one before who could both preach and varm as Mr Gordon did." For this work too he did manfully in his way. His pigs were famous. Ruskin says OSBORNE GORDON 25 of him that he was a " man of curious intellectual power and simple virtue," and " an entirely right- minded and accomplished scholar." 1 He was also a fine teacher, and helped the grateful and studious youth forward. His weaknesses, at which we used to laugh, counted for little in Ruskin's mind ; so completely did he trust him, that when, somewhat later, his father wished to express his gratitude for the good his John had got from Christ Church, he sent Gordon a cheque for 5000 to be given at the tutor's discretion for the augmentation of poor and needy parishes in the gift of the House. Last of all, as is proper, comes the Dean. Gaisford's Scholarship of the old times was already almost a survival. He ruled with vigour ; set the University Press on its feet, and gave it the needed impulse ; he despised all reforming fancies and infused a certain Spartan spirit into the College. To him Collections, much dreaded by Ruskin, were the most serious thing in an Under- graduate's career ; side by side with a good Collection, the University examinations seemed to 1 "Pneterita," vol. i. p. 304. 26 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD him to be unimportant ; he counted Class Lists to be a modern abomination. He gave the Student- ships which fell to him to the men who did best in their Collections, while he rarely condescended to take any notice of a First Class man. His manner of rule was the simple plan of making his own laws, and then appealing to them as unchangeable : it saved him so much trouble. To Ruskin he was a kind of " gloomy fate " ; his loud, fierce voice, his miraculous knowledge of Greek, made him seem awful to the lad, as " a rotundly progressive terror, or sternly en- throned and niched Anathema." 1 Ruskin could feel no sympathy with him ; he gave him a due meed of distant respect. This then was the company of the learned, who presided over our friend's University growth. He learned much from them, and was soon more than tolerated by his comrades ; they elected him a member of the exclusive and aristocratic Loder's Club (I think it was) ; and he seems in his way to have enjoyed his Oxford life. These were the factors, coupled with the ! " Prajterita," vol. i. p. 311. HIS OXFORD FRIENDS 27 exquisite beauty of old Oxford, which moulded these years. His love of Art grew more distinctly " Gothic," as the word was used he was fascinated by the constructive side of the science of Archi- tecture, and felt a passion for the splendid work diffused through all building and decoration in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. He saw where our mistake lies, in concentrating all knowledge, all art and skill, into an architect's office, where humble clerks, and indifferent work- men, make mechanical copies of their masters' copies of art which had been alive some centuries ago. In consequence, our modern Architecture is uninteresting; our towns dreadful. During his four years Ruskin's skill advanced, though the great and rapid improvement came rather later. The extraordinaiy delicacy of his handling became apparent. I have a little tale of him, bearing on this period, through the kindness of Dr Creighton, Bishop of London, which I will give here in the Bishop's own words ; it describes the first meeting of Ruskin with Turner, his true teacher in Art. " It was told me," he writes, " by old Ryman, the print-seller. He told me that Ruskin as an 28 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD undergraduate used to frequent his shop, and some- times would draw in his parlour from the prints. One day while he was so engaged, Turner came into the shop on business. Ryman told him that there was a young man drawing, and took him into the parlour. He looked over Ruskin's shoulder, and said, ' The young man draws very nicely.' This was the first meeting of the two." And Mr Hughes Hughes adds a pretty touch at this time : "I myself, on June 2, 1838, coming home from a late (or early) party, found Ruskin sitting near the central Basin in Tom Quad (we called it Mercury, from a fallen God) ; and, looking over his shoulder, was charmed at the sight of his beautiful water-colour sketch (in what was then called Prout's style) of Tom (i.e. of the Tower). From that time I always felt great respect for Ruskin, having found that he had some * talent.' " 1 In 1839 Ruskin won the Newdigate prize for a poem on Salsette and Elephanta, of which Mr Collingwood writes that " He ransacked all the sources of information, coached himself up in Eastern scenery and myth- ology, threw in the Aristotelian ingredients of terror and pity, and wound up with an appeal to 1 Letter by W. Hughes Hughes, Esq., 22nd October 1900, THE NEWDIGATE PRIZE 29 the orthodoxy of the Examiners, of whom Keble was the chief, by prophesying the prompt exter- mination of Brahminism under the teaching of the missionaries." No wonder that he won the Prize, though his prophetic powers have not yet been justified. His foreign travel gave him far more impulse than Oxford did. He had come at the close of the old period of scholarship at Oxford, and of travel abroad ; for he was one of the last of those who solemnly made the Grand Tour in a carriage, specially constructed by his father for it : the shorthand of railways was not yet ; they were days in which Cook's tickets and conducted parties had not been invented ; foreign travel was still an education for those whose eyes are opened : and whose eyes could have been more keen than Ruskin's ? " Hereby," says one, 1 " he escaped that fatal insularity of mind which blights an Englishman abroad," that ignorant arrogance which makes us so much beloved by the foreigner. Those of us who remember with affection and gratitude the old " vetturino " 1 A. H., iii " Labour Co-partnership," July 1900. 30 days will understand what is meant by saying that modern travel fails to give the old educa- tion : hi a bad sense, we are too much Americanised for that. One sees in all his work what fine breadths of intelligence entered into Ruskin's soul from his travels. Lastly, his steady ways of life, his regular chapel, his attention to lectures, his affection and honour for his teachers, enabled him to grasp, as few lads ever do grasp, the larger character of classical and mathematical knowledge. He is a wonderful example of the ennoblement of Pass work by a strong and ready intelligence. In my time I have known three men of whom this is true ; men on whom the old Pass education really had excellent effects ; these were : Lord Salisbury, Lord Dufferin and Ava, and Ruskin. They all brought to it a generosity of mind and breadth of experience which raised them above the work they had to do ; they had the power of getting good out of the dry bones of the Pass system. Ruskin at the end showed so much work and brilliancy in his final Examination, that he HIS DOUBLE HONORARY FOURTH 31 won a rare distinction (now altogether done away with) of being placed in the Class List on his Pass work ; his name appears in the List of 1841 as a Double Fourth Class-man, that is, an Honorary Class-man in both Classics and Mathematics. It was a very rare distinction, of which many a man would have been as proud as if he had won a Scholarship. After this he took his B.A. Degree, and this first period of his Oxford life ended. II. BUSKIN AS PROFESSOR OF ART AT OXFORD. A great contrast can be drawn between the Oxford of Mr Ruskin's undergraduate days, and the University in the time of his pro- fessoriate. It was but a few years, in which Oxford had changed even more than he : and he was a very different man. She had passed from the old world to the new ; he had de- veloped from youth into manhood, from Art for its own sake to Art as an ornament and a handmaid to morality. His undergraduate days were long before University Commissions and 32 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD Reports, and before the subsequent legislation, which aimed at enlarging the sphere of the Uni- versity's influence, and at bringing her education into closer relations with modern requirements. In those older days there was more elbow- room ; independent reading was as yet not dead ; we loved and valued the old English masterpieces we now pull them in pieces, and examine them in detail, and destroy their life, by a sort of vivisection of mind. In those days the better brains had the better chance. The average may be raised now; study is parcelled out into lines ; a narrowness follows specialisation ; courses of study are minutely marked out, and the opportunities of choice and personal liking are greatly restricted. The older Universities are still largely the servants of the older Public Schools. In " the forties " there were very few clubs : the "Exquisite" still "did the High," and showed off his fashion ; the " Grand Com- pounder," hallowed by wealth, still swept up to Convocation House with his whole College in attendance in full robes for his Degree; the nobleman was let off with shortened residence ; THE OLD OXFORD 33 education was genteel, if not very deep- searching. A distinct literary feeling pervaded the abler circles ; there was a " romantic school," born of the Lake Poets, with which Ruskin's tempera- ment and his poetic passion allied him. The world was not as yet altogether ruled by " Boards," those sure signs of old age in institu- tions ; we knew nothing of " Faculties," we tried to think widely on life and learning; indepen- dence was curbed by the Thirty-Nine Articles ; it ranged all the more freely elsewhere. Since the Commissions there is more red tape ; you cannot have an interest in anything, without having an examination paper thrust under your nose. Learn, not to know, but to pass. The courses of study are small canals through a level land : the old dear straying is im- possible ; we used to splash through bogs, and put up strange birds, and see wonderful effects, and live in a new world of hill and tumbled rock. Men have more to do ; there is perhaps less idle- ness ; the stages of learning are marked by mile- stones or tombstones of examination papers ; a thing once learned is forgotten as soon as c 34 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD possible. An old friend of mine, a distinguished Cambridge Professor, told me that he had a pupil who showed singular aptitude in Sanskrit. He urged him to carry on his linguistic work, as he had such gifts; but the immediate reply was : " Oh, thank you, sir, but I don't mean to attend your lectures any longer ; they tell me that I know quite enough to get through." So knowledge and capacity were nought; the door was narrow ; if a man had too much in his intellectual pockets he might stick in the door and not get through. In truth, what we proudly call "specialisation" is really only snippets, out of which no coat can be made, nor warmth to reach the heart. We now read newspapers, and live among lies ; or we sprawl over magazines, and take a sort of interest in second-rate stories ; there is no consecutive work. With all this goes the tendency towards Clubs ; there are now a hundred Clubs for one. I heard the other day of a College in which fifty men had more than fifty Clubs to belong to ; more than a Club a man. And Clubs are just like magazines : the human soul idles AS SLADE PROFESSOR 35 through them. I am told that now there are no Old Fogies what a misfortune ! But still the Colleges are better ventilated and sewered, and the fees are probably double. The dominance of the public school spirit yet prevails, for good or for evil ; and it is still the dearest old place in the world. Pardon this digression, only excusable as show- ing into how changed a world Mr Ruskin returned, as the first holder of the Slade Professorship of Art in 1869. He too was greatly changed : in his younger days his noblest energies were given to Art ; now, since his four Lectures in the Cornhill Magazine in 1860, which have since been frequently reprinted as " Unto this Last," his aims, style of writing, circle of adherents and admirers, were all changed. " ' Unto this Last ' ' (Frederick Harrison says in his volume of Essays) "was the central book of his life, as it is the turning - point of his career." Before, he had preached morality, honesty, truthfulness, as the soul of Art, for Art's sake; thenceforward he taught morality as the basis of men's lives. At first he appealed to the " cultivated classes," to the 36 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD University men, to Society : after 1860 he ad- dressed himself to the working world, and became at once the unpopular prophet and preacher of a world of hope, simplicity, fair dealing, and noble- ness of aim in common things. If the " Modern Painters " were by "an Oxford Graduate," and addressed to the polite world, "Unto this Last" was by a workman to workmen, on the true principles of social life, based on the Gospel. These four papers in the Cornhill Magazine raised such a storm, that Thackeray, the Editor, was frightened into closing his pages against such subversive Christianity : he had to obey the well- known rule of Christian Communities, which are always shocked when any one tells them what is the true following of Christ. Happily, "Unto this Last" has had a far wider sale than any other of Mr Ruskin's books ; happily, too, it is the vestibule of his later life, in which he steadily grew in power in the new world of social effort, and became the champion of the workers. He was the Peter Hermit of the new crusade against money and selfishness ; the leader of the revolt against the monetary Economists of the first halt HIS AIMS IN TEACHING 37 of the century ; not a Socialist, not in the least a Radical, no party man of any kind. He preached the newer relation of Englishmen to their State, a nobler patriotism ; and sowed seeds for a new view of party government, in which hereafter a love of social service shall replace the old discredited and selfish groupings of worn-out systems. He believed for his system was hopeful that the new group, made up of all those who were content to work honestly and to be the simple wealth of England, would one day defeat all partisan and selfish aims. The forces of moral life should revive Christianity; justice between man and man should be keen-eyed, not blinded ; work would fall more and more into co-operative forms ; the community would resist the drink- domination by cleansing the lives and the homes of the people. His utterances were often what is called extreme, extravagant ; still, they were always on the right side. One cannot make a party out of them, but something better, for they are " the little leaven which leaveneth the whole lump." Hoping to enlist Oxford in this crusade, Ruskin 38 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD accepted the Slade Professorship of Fine Art. You may see in "Fors" (iv. pp. 361, 362) what he says. In that striking appeal to the English artisan, we discern his high thoughts as to his new duties : "Now," he says, "my own special pleasure has lately been connected with a given duty. I have been ordered to endeavour to make our English youth care somewhat for the Arts, and must put my bettermost strength into that business." He appeals to young Oxford, as we all, some time or other in life, have dreamed of appealing. And then we find he hoped not only by Lectures, but by devoting 5000 to the founding of an Art Mastership to teach young men good drawing, and so to countervail something of the mischief that he thought South Kensington was daily doing. Lastly, he clearly thought that here was his ordained pulpit : to kindle in young hearts a love of noble and beautiful things. " For," says he, "no great Arts were practicable by any people, unless they were living contented lives, in pure HIS LECTURES 39 air, out of the way of unsightly objects, and emancipated from unnecessary mechanical occupa- tions," 1 and he adds, simply and rightly, " That the conditions necessary for the Arts of men are the best for their souls and bodies." In all this Ruskin preached the Greek ideal of moral life, ruling Art and Economics ; he tried, like eccentric William Sewell before him, to lift life up to that nobler level on which Plato de- scribed it in the heyday of Greek Art and Letters. He took very great pains with his Lectures ; giving of his best. Mr Collingwood tells me " that he cut up several books of Missals," intending to use exquisite illuminations, the miniature drawing of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as illustrations for his points. Some of these in- valuable MSS. have suffered hopelessly ; especially the famous so-called St Louis Missal, many leaves of which have been dispersed, it may be beyond hope of restoration. Too much reverence for Art may sometimes be as destructive as too little. 2 1 F.C.L 177. 2 One day at Brantwood I was looking through these lovely specimens of monastic skill, and finding the St Louis Missal in complete disorder, I turned to Mr Ruskin, who was sitting 40 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD With these thoughts ruling him, he set himself to teach and influence the lads. At the close of " Modern Painters " he had written that " Competition and Anarchy are laws of Death ; government and co-operation laws of life"; and this was his text throughout. His Lectures testify to the brightness and originality of his mind in this later time. No one can appreciate their effect, unless he was so fortunate as to hear them. One saw the strange afflatus coming and going in his eye, his gestures, his voice. The lectures were care- fully prepared ; but from time to time some key was struck which took his attention from the page, and then came an outburst. In the decorous atmosphere of a University lecture-room the strangest things befell : and, for example, in a splendid passage on the Psalms of David in his wonted chair in his library, and said: "This MSS. is in an awful state : could you not do something to get the pages right again?" and he replied with a sad smile, "Oh yes ; these old Books have in them an evil spirit, which is always throwing them into disorder" as if it were tlirough envy against anything so beautiful ; the fact was that he had played the "evil spirit" with them himself. HIS LECTURES 41 (in a lecture on Birds) he was reminded of an Anthem by Mendelssohn, lately rendered in one of the College chapels, in which the solemn dignity of the Psalms was lowered by the frivolous prettiness of the music. It was, " Oh ! for the wings," etc., that he had heard with disgust, and he suddenly began to dance and recite, with the strangest flappings of his M.A. gown, and the oddest look on his excited face. The Oxford musicians were furious ; though indeed his criticism was just enough. The Psalm deserved a more dignified treatment than Mendelssohn's drawing-room music could provide. On another occasion I was present at one of his strangest utterances. It was at the Taylor Institution ; a lecture on I forget what subject. Something brought up Evolution. Now, if there was one thing above another that roused his anger, it was Evolution ; and so he abandoned his subject, notes, professorial style; a new light of scorn and wrath gleamed, and he went like a terrier at the obnoxious theory. Amusement filled those who knew his ways ; amazement those who did not. It was such a marvellous theory, 42 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD he said, it could only be understood by an example. Far off in the aeons (I quote from ancient recollection) there was a hairbrush : as the world spun, the hairbrush somehow joined in the rotation, whirling round for ages. First she found her easiest axis along the greater length, and spun round incessant. By degrees that motion rounded the neck or handle of the brush, and the knob at the end of it elongated itself and, as the whole thing tended to become round, took shape of a head and a beak. At the same time, the bristles of the brush were all driven back by the air of the rotation, and grew soft and smooth ; out of them came slowly the rudiments of feathers, and after a time the rudiments of wings, and the bristles were stretched out, till they grew to be tail- feathers ; and the whole was so fined down by rotation, that in course of ages the hairbrush became a swallow and launched itself free in flight. You may ask how came the breath and life into it ? Here the evolutionist is silent : he has explained the material phenomena ; and the wind or the warmth of motion, or something HIS LECTURES 43 else, may have added the immaterial part : to the philosopher this seemed but a trifle; life is but a material function after all. One need hardly say that this grotesque explosion filled all our memories, while the brilliant lecture was forgotten. No wonder that critical Oxford came to laugh at what they called his "inspired nonsense." We may perhaps be right in saying that Mr Ruskin's personal influence over the grown-up University was not great; a few understood, many admired ; some sneered, many laughed ; the graver world was often angry. He tried strange things. I remember that he tried to make University society pause in its race for show and display of luxury ; he bade us cease from competing dinner-parties, and to take to simple symposia. A few tried it, but their mouton aux navets did not attract the Oxford Don more than once ; it might begin with simple eating and good talk : champagne and truffles were always lurking behind the door ready to rush in on a hint. Wordsworth's "Plain Living and High Thinking" was never 44 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD very popular even in Balliol ; and Ruskin's dinner of herbs with love had no greater success. On the undergraduate he had more influence, sometimes exerted in curious ways. The chief result of it has been a better aim in taste and reading, and in the creation of a modern school of thought, social and anti-monetary. Perhaps the oddest thing of all was his new Botley Road. He used to lament to his friends among the young men the misfortune of the waste of power in their games and amusements ; he held that all energy should have fruitful results; that they should find interest in some work which would unbend their minds and exercise their sinews. " Take pleasure in constructive work," he would say ; " you will soon discover the delight of feeling that your efforts are productive ; this is far better than the mere physical exercise of kicking a ball on a muddy field ; let your play be fruitful of good in some way." The practical outcome of this preaching was curious. On the " Seven Bridge Road " out of Oxford, a road made last century to secure a better approach to Cumnor and Abingdon, after the WORK VERSUS PLAY 45 last of the seven bridges is crossed, a lane runs off to the left, and passing some picturesque stone-built cottages of a good age, with gardens well cared for, drops into a track, through damp fields, along which a footpath runs to Ferry Hinksey, a favourite summer walk. Here Ruskin got leave to make a new road across the level fields ; thither a gang of under- graduates in flannels, with spades, picks, and barrows, went day by day, while the Professor came forth sometimes, and applauded them at their task. I do not think he ever handled a spade ; the lads worked with a will, but with small knowledge ; a mile or so of road was laid out ; it led to nowhere in particular, unless it had been intended to lead to a comely farm on the hillside ; and even that it did not reach. When I saw the road, about a year or so after, it showed obvious signs of decay. No prudent farmer would have brought his carts over it ; he would have stuck to the turf of the open meadow. The world naturally laughed at such undirected enthusiasm ; still it did good to the better men ; it was also invented in order to 46 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD weed out those feeble folk the Postlethwaites and Maudles who caricature the artistic man of genius, and try to make repartees, and are a compound of conceit and weakness. These men helped largely to convince Mr Ruskin that he must abandon his Oxford preaching, and turn towards the working world, in which the stubbornness of life begets a more serious type. Still it did the lads good. The road also expressed a valuable principle. It was an impractical protest against the tyranny of games. 1 cannot end without some reference to Mr Ruskin's singular liberality in those days. It was but the carrying out of his theory ; still, how rare it is to find a man having a theory about riches, and also acting on it. He set aside a tithe of his property, amounting at that time to about 7000, for the purchase of houses and fields for his Guild of St George ; it was to be the nucleus of a fund to save the unspoilt country for the country folk. He gave valuable treasures of Art to Sheffield and other places; he endowed the Art School of Oxford with 5000 for a Teacher of Drawing, and HIS MUNIFICENCE 47 also deposited in it his priceless Turner drawings, and some of his own beautiful work. He was at the same time giving stipends to secretaries in different parts of England, who were to work at Art, and send him letters on the advance of true artistic feeling in their districts. There is one touching story of this great liberality; it will give you a notion of the way in which he got rid of his capital, while at the same time it was a thanksgiving for his recovery from a serious illness. One day, walking near Radley, his attention was caught by a group of little girls playing in the road, and he went and talked to them. One of them attracted his special attention. He asked her why she was playing in the dust? Had she no garden at home ? Did she love flowers ? What her name was ? And she replied modestly, with wonder in her eyes. On reaching home, he gave orders to his solicitor to look out for, and buy a cottage with a garden in Radley, and have a deed of gift of it made out in the little girl's name, which was done accordingly ; and she, full of wonder, with her astonished parents, entered at 48 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD once into possession of it. I hope the cottage was well tied up, and that it has not already been turned into beer. During these years he was always yearning for signs of some response from the nobler minds of Oxford. Now, Oxford abhors all expression of affection or admiration. We are too philosophic to love; too wise to admire. He thought there was no response ; he did not know that many of the highest characters among the young men were already full of devotion for him ; he did not know that his words were already working their way in the outside world. " One sows and another reaps." He had little of this dull pastoral patience which sows and waits and wants. " During seven years," he says, 1 " I went on appealing to my fellow-scholars, in words clear enough to them, though not to you (the working- men), had they chosen to hear ; but no one cared nor listened, till that sign sternly given to me that my message to the learned and rich was given and ended." And that sign coming on grievous dejection, discouragement, and enfeebled health, was the 1 " Fors," c. iv. p. 362. WHY HE RESIGNED 49 conquest of Oxford, as he thought, by the malign powers of Materialism, which took a form most intensely repugnant to him, in the election of a vivisectionist Professor of Anatomy. This was, he thought, the defeat of all he had been fighting for ; the denial of all he had ever preached. The Vote of Convocation was aimed, he thought, straight at him that as for " the things true, honest, and whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise," instead of thinking of these things, Oxford scorned them all. To his mind the distinctions between God's creatures were but slight ; no creature could arrogate such dominion as to torture and sacrifice the meanest of them for curiosity or for some supposed scientific gain, or even to compel the weaker creature to minister to the life of the stronger. He hated a materialised life, a gross religion of the body; his love for Art made him exceeding jealous, lest the love of beauty should become the mother of sensuality. And so, as he thought that Oxford had turned her face away from him, and listened to him no more, in 1879 he D 50 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD sent in his resignation of the Slade Professorship, and withdrew. 1 Yet Oxford was not really ungrateful, though she would not understand or bear with his uncon- trolled vehemence, or endure a Toryism of spirit so opposite to that via media spirit which Oxford affects. He was honoured specially in two of her Colleges. They made him an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College ; and he took up his residence in College rooms within the walls of Bishop Fox's noble foundation ; (he gives one a lovely touch of his recollections of this time in his " Fors," vol. ii. p. 25), and his own College, Christ Church, elected him (in 1858) to the rare honour of a Honorary Studentship : a new distinction, seldom conferred, given to those who have done good work for their College by doing good work, in scholarship or research, or political greatness. Into this small body Mr Ruskin was introduced, at the beginning of this new order, together with i On his resignation (in 1879) the University voted him the D.C.L. Degree ; this, however, he was unable or unwilling to accept at the time, and it was for the time withdrawn on the score of his ill-health. It was finally conferred on him as late as 1893, 51 Mr Gladstone, Sir George Cornwall Lewis, Sir F. A. G. Ouseley, and Sir Henry Acland. A few days later were added Henry Hallam, Lord Stanhope, Lord Elgin, the Marquis of Dalhousie, and Lord Canning. Though Mr Ruskin's health was still sorely shaken, yet on Mr Richmond's withdrawal from the Slade Professorship, which he had accepted on his predecessor's resignation in 1871, Mr Ruskin reluctantly consented to attempt the work again, in 1883, as an experiment. He was very doubtful as to his health, and still more doubtful as to his audiences. He gave a few, often interrupted, lectures. In truth, he felt that his Oxford days were over, and ere long he finally resigned office and withdrew to Brantwood. He marked his sense of the uncongenial quality of Oxford by with- drawing from the School of Art there the valuable drawings which he had lent to it. His pride in the old University, and a pretty childish vanity going with it, peeps out in a letter at the end of 1887 i 1 " Yesterday I had two lovely services in my 1 Quoted from " Collingwood," p. 33. 52 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD own Cathedral. You know the Cathedral of Oxford is the Chapel of Christ Church, and I have my high seat in the chancel, as an Honorory Student, besides being bred there, and so one is ever so proud and ever so pious all at once, which is ever so nice, you know; and my own Dean, that's the Dean of Christ Church, who is as big as any Bishop, read the services, and the Psalms and Anthems were lovely." So ends, with a characteristic protest against the Oxford spirit of the time, John Ruskin's connection with the University ; and it is time we too should bid him farewell. The last of the great writers of the nineteenth century, in a noble company one of the noblest; there are gleams of Carlyle in him, without Carlyle's fierce bitter- ness. He is not so gorgeous as De Quincey, though quite as graphic and more varied. In his earlier writings he is splendid, with English of an exquisite rhythm and sweet melody ; here and there we come on gigantic organ passages, in which the splendour spreads and expands over all the page, long- sustained, infinite in variety, with illustrations hinted at rather than worked out ; enlivened with touches of true humour, and HIS STYLE 53 sometimes with angry sarcasm, and scorn, for he beheld meanness and dirt, where all should have been lovely as God gave it. He is gone from us now; but the immortal gift in him still prevails to resist the tyranny of the monetary measure of things. In all his life he testified that the Apostle is right in telling us that money is the root of all evil. The world, amazed at first, and abusive towards him, swings round, as the world always does. To the world, Cassandra is but a mad fool ; her prophecies of evil are laughed at, but never laughed down : a later time knows. And so too of Ruskin ; his writing, built on the old Bible, and on a reverent love and knowledge of it, are not merely gloomy; they are always hopeful; he leaves us a splendid heritage of hope. " His belief in God," says one, " led him to attack the luxury, the sin, and the waste, which rule in modern life ; a system born of the Devil, which has led to a few rich, and herds of poor " ; which has created a select society of consumers who provide nothing, and a nation of providers who often have not enough to eat; an aristocracy of the few, and a democracy of neglected millions. The keen notes 54 JOHN RUSKIN AT OXFORD of his voice still echo : the family, he says, " does not live by competition but by harmony " ; the economy of the state should therefore be really domestic, based not on conflict but on mutual help. Oxford, let us hope, will always feel the influ- ence of this singularly characteristic nature : let us hope that the College framed on his principles, and called by his name, Ruskin Hall, may grow into a great power for good, because it aims specially at bringing the working world into closer relations with the ancient Oxford ; and by so doing will enshrine, in faithful hearts, the name and principles of our honoured friend, in an institution worthy of him in every sense. If his noble nature and high principles can prevail in the hoary city which is indeed " the home of lost causes," we may know that a new day has dawned, and that our children will ever claim John Ruskin as one of their noblest teachers and friends in a true merry England. II THE STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND THE author of the "Annals of a Quiet Valley" is fully justified when he says that the States- men of the Dales are " one of the most interest- ing classes in the North the race of yeomen or Statesmen, a remnant only of which remains " ; nor is he wrong when he adds that "the history of the Northern yeoman has yet to be written " ; for it is very difficult to gather much about this most characteristic group of independent farmers. They tilled their own land ; it was freehold, and, if tradition speaks true, a customary freeholder has owned each of these little estates from time immemorial. We often hear much lamentation over the ex- 55 56 STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND tinction of the small farmers, the Statesmen ; we miss their independence, their sturdy battle with nature, their simplicity and traditional loyalty. They have passed away so rapidly, that in a few generations it will not be possible to gain a clear idea of their characteristic life. Let us, while we can, try to secure a view of the position, customs, manner of life, and set of opinions of these ancient Freemen of Cumberland. We are all talking about bringing the people back to the land ; and yet we see, unmoved, the disappearance of this most remarkable farmer-class in the country; men who with Tory instincts usually voted Whig, who were sturdy Democrats and natural Conservatives. They answer nearly to the free farmers of Switzer- land and Norway; they too keep alive, as the Norse and Swiss also do, the love of liberty and simple independence, bred in the blood of men of mountain regions. We must begin by enquiring, first, what are the geographical limits within which we find this body of Statesmen? and next, what is the origin of this special use of the term? It certainly is not understood in this northern LIMITS OF THE NAME 57 usage away from the little farms to which it specially belongs. The word can so be applied only in the north-western counties of England. It does not cross over into Scotland ; we do not find it in Northumberland ; in the Durham moorland the corresponding class of farmers were usually styled "Lairds." The Statesmen are chiefly to be met with in the cultivated lands of west Cumberland, their true home. The land between the fells and the seas is their ancient stronghold : there are still some of them in North Lancashire, in the Ulpha Valley, and down the coast towards Lancaster; they remain still about Penrith, and up the line of the North Western Railway ; there are still some in Westmoreland ; and the slopes of the mountains which form the north-west angle of West Riding, the valley of Dent and other valleys similarly placed, have always provided a goodly band of manful farmers, tilling their own freeholds. In the rest of Yorkshire, where the people are stalwart and independent, one might have expected to find many of them on the moors and fells : on the contrary, they do not appear to be there at all by 58 STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND the name of Statesmen : this characteristic name seems unknown. These then are the fairly marked geographical outlines of the class : we must next consider their name of Statesman. At first, tempted by the fact that this peculiar use of the term was limited to the most Scandinavian part of the island, one hoped that it might have come from a name akin to the Icelandic compound, Stadr-mann, which Dr Vigfusson gives as the name for " a possessor of a freehold church-property in Iceland"; so connecting it with the Icelandic stadr, an abode, a bit of freehold property. There is, however, no evidence for this ; and what we know of the use of the word is against such an origin. Through the kindness of Dr Murray, editor in chief of the magnificent English Dictionary, I have seen the slips containing this use of the word " Statesman." I learn from these that the word in this sense does not appear in literature before the beginning of the nineteenth century : before 1800, it existed only in popular usage, as no doubt it did for ages before any one thought it worthy of a place in print. The earliest example of it we find in the ORIGIN OF THE TERM 59 "Annals of Balliston," 1 by Mary Leadbeater, published in 1813. She says " Thomas Wilkin- son who is a Statesman, which means in Cumberland phrase one who owns the fee simple of his land, but works on it himself " ; a clear statement of the word and a correct definition of the local usage of it. Good Bishop Wilson, speaking of his ancestors, says : " They, so far as I can trace them, have neither been hewers of wood nor drawers of water, but tillers of their own ground in the idiom of the country Statesmen." And Wordsworth says in his " Scenery of the Lakes," published in 1823, "the family of each man, whether estatesman or farmer, formerly had a twofold support " ; and he adds, " the lands of the estatesman being mortgaged . . . fell into the hands of wealthy purchasers " ; so that the evil was already working. De Quincey 2 defines him thus : " A 'Statesman, elliptically for an Estates-man, a native dalesman, possessing and personally cultivating a patrimonial landed estate." And so great an authority as Sir Bernard 1 "Annals of Balliston," i. p. 128. 2 " Works," vol. ii. of " Autobiographic Sketches," p. 188, n. 60 STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND Burke 1 writes: " The Statesman the peculiar name given to those who live on and cultivate their own estates, being probably a corruption or abbrevia- tion of the compound estates-man." So that we may safely accept this as the origin of the term ; it is however not an abbreviation with an initial "e" lopped off. Though the use of the word cannot be traced back beyond the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was an ancient legal phrase which goes to show that the technical word used for freehold property was not " estate " but " state." Down to the middle of the sixteenth century the proper phrase in will-making was to " make a state " to a man and his heirs ; and the inheritor of one of these Cumberland farms would therefore naturally be styled a " states-man." Looking back for centuries we find Fortescue in his "De laudibus Angliae Legum" (c. xxix) contrasting England, as he knew it, with the kingdoms on the mainland, and pointing out that this country was in far better case than France, because it was notable for the large number of small landowners. For in this country, as 1 "Views of Families," Second Series, p. 151. A.D. 1860. DEFINITION OF THE STATESMAN 61 Waterhouse says, "the yeoman and country Corydon is a great proprietor of land " ; and he boasts that "only with us are men of the plough men of estate." This is the ancient and admirable condition from which we have now so unhappily fallen. Before passing from this branch of the subject let us record an early reference to this class of freeholders (though the special name is not used) in a letter addressed by Mr Ritter to Lord Burghley in 1589. "These people," he says, "situate among wild mountains and savage fells, are generally affected to religion, quiet and industrious, equall with Hallyfax in this, excelling them in civility and temper of lyfe, as well as in abstaining from drink as from other excesses." And Mr Ritter adds that these farmers are " customary tenants," holding, he says, direct from the Crown. It would be beyond me to enter upon the difficult questions of tenure which face any one who hopes, without any sure legal or literary authority, to place our Statesmen in a class by themselves. Blackstone's definition for Yeoman, 62 STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND as "he that hath free land of 40s. by the year; who was anciently thereby qualified to serve on juries, vote for knights of the shire, and do any other act, where the law requires one that is 'probus et legalis homo,'" 1 answers exactly* to our Cumberland Statesmen. These inde- pendent farmers with their well-marked qualities of persistence, industry, and suspicion, due to their retired position, are worth careful study. They represent a dying class, crushed out of life by the power of wealth, or allured away into a wider field of life and advancement. We must study them now: ere long there will be none of them left for the student. The tenure of these men may be traced back to high antiquity, though perhaps, through lack of documentary evidence, it would be hard to prove it. There are some Statesmen who claim that their ancestors tilled the same land before the Norman Conquest; such were the Fletchers of Wasdale, who parted with their ancestral home only a very few years ago. And the 1 Blackstone, "Commentaries," i. 407. (Kerr's Edition, p. 412.) THEIR TENURE OF LAND 63 Oliversons of Goosnargh also claimed great antiquity for their farm. This might indicate the handing down to our time of some part at least of that complete independence of tenure which was enjoyed by the land-holder in Anglo- Saxon times ; or it might only mean that these yeomen with their small holdings of toft and croft had been at some time enfranchised villeins, raised in this way either for some service per- formed, or, more usually, with a view to securing for the chief lord a trustworthy band of fighting men in troubled days. This need begot many freeholders or "tenants in socage, or possibly tenants in large honours and jurisdictions, customary tenants, that is, transmitting their estates by copy of Court Roll." l Such a growth of freeholders would naturally be most vigorous in the Marches, where the land was specially liable to attack. Cumberland, all down the Strath Clyde side of it, was just such a district ; here was a frontier difficult to protect 1 From a letter from Dr Stubbs, lately Bishop of Oxford, at the end of which, with commendable caution, he adds, " But extremely exact local knowledge is indispensable, and that I have not got. " 64, STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND against the Scots, and a long low sea coast, on which an enemy might land anywhere. Thus everything tended towards the growth of local independence ; and favoured the multiplication of small freehold farms, each with a stout man and his sons to defend it. In this way there grew up a landed middle class, holding lands under a kind of military tenure. When the pressure of danger of war died out, and security followed, these farmers continued as freeholders, with practically no service to perform, paying rent to no man, and enjoying an absolutely independent life. The Statesmen were formerly very numerous in Cumberland, and clung together very closely; there was very little difference in position ; in many parishes the " priest " and the schoolmaster formed a kind of upper class of two ; though even with them the lines of distinction were exceedingly faint. " In one such district," says Mr Parker, of Park Nook, who him- self lives in an ancient Statesman's house, " it was said that it had had within the memory of man no pauper in the parish, and no gentleman except the clergyman and the schoolmaster ; there THEIR NUMBERS 65 the richest was poor and poorest had abundance." A testimony which unfortunately cannot now be borne of any part of England. We are told that at the beginning of the nineteenth century there were about seven thousand Statesmen in Cumberland alone ; l their vote was therefore decisive. It is pleasant to think that it was often cast in favour of wholesome measures, as that for the abolition of slavery. In former days there were many " sma' men " reckoned among the Statesmen, men who tilled less than twenty acres ; Parson and White in their introduction say that " The yeomanry, who are here called States- men, are very numerous, and most of them occupy small estates of their own, worth from ten to fifty pounds a year, being either freehold, or held of the lord of the manor, by customary tenure, which differs but little from that by copyhold or copy of Court Roll." ... " They live meanly and labour hard, and many of them in the vicinity of Kendal, Carlisle, and other manufacturing towns, busy themselves in weaving stuffs, calico, etc., to make up a comfortable subsistence for their families." 1 So say Parson and White in their " History and Directory of Cumberland," p. 26, 1829. E 66 STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND In addition to their home farms, which lay mainly in the arable and pasture districts of the dales, they usually had large rights of free pasture on the fells, for as many as five or six hundred sheep ; sometimes even for more than this. The work was mostly done by the family the States- man, his wife, sons and daughters. Their life was almost as penurious as that of a French peasant farmer of old times, though in other respects happier ; for the Statesman had no need to hide away his hard-won savings ; he had no need to dress in rags, as the Frenchman thought it prudent to do, lest he should be suspected of wealth ; nor would he think a family of above three children a bit of culpable extravagance. On the contrary, fortunate was the Cumberland man, if he had a goodly family growing up around his table : he had plenty of work to give them all, sons or daughters : one observer grows quite romantic over the rough work done by the girls : " It is painful to one who has in his composition the smallest spark of knight-errantry," writes Mr Pringle, in 1794 (in his " View of the Agriculture of Westmoreland"), "to behold the beautiful THEIR WAY OF LIFE 67 servant - maids of this district toiling in the severe labours of the field ; they drive the harrows or the ploughs, when they are drawn by three horses ; nay, it is not uncommon to see sweat- ing at the dung-cart a girl with elegant features and delicate nicely -proportioned limbs, seemingly but ill in accord with such rough employ- ment." I fear that if this knight-errant had ventured on remonstrance, he might have been still more pained. These lads and damsels saw no disgrace or degradation in farm-work, following it with a due sense of the social unity involved in it, and with the native pride of an independent com- munity. For the farm was their common duty and common pleasure also ; the lands were very often called by the name of the family which had owned it, and had lived by it for centuries. The farmhouse was low and plain ; a door in the middle, the sitting-room on the one side, the kitchen on the other; all plainly and substantially furnished. I once asked an elderly farmer's wife, Mrs Stalker of Lawson Park, just above Brantwood on Coniston Water, how long her kitchen fire had been burning, and she replied that the fire-ilding had never been 68 STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND let die out in her memory, and that went back sixty years. This hearth-fire symbolised the per- manence of the Statesman's home life and had almost a religious significance ; on a later visit to Brantwood, I was very sorry to learn that the Stalkers were gone, and that the fire on the hearth had been quenched : it was like the snap- ping of an ancient string, which had vibrated long and tunefully. Behind these front rooms were the offices, the dairy and the cow-byre, and the "hemel"; upstairs were bedrooms, and a loft in the roof, which often covered stores of wool and other rougher goods. Nothing could have been more at one with the way of life and labour of a simple community. In the front rooms were always treasured heirlooms, part of the life of the family ; fine examples of black oak sideboards or cupboards, carved boldly and well by some long- forgotten hand, showing initials and a date of perhaps two centuries ago. Such may still be seen in Yewdale, in an old Statesman's house, now occupied by one of Mr Victor Marshall's tenants ; or in Mr Rigg's farm at Lindale, not far from Grange-over-sands, in Low Furness. In these THEIR HOME-LIFE 69 fine pieces of furniture were stored precious bits of china, antique glass, much well -woven linen, pewter plates and cups, and sometimes an ancient mazer-bowl. These things are very dear to the Statesman ; if you wish to offend him, offer to buy them ! you might as well try to persuade him to sell you one of the bairns. All this bravery typified the strength of the family coherence and permanence, now too often lost through the pressure of modern requirements and machine-gear. It carried these families through many generations of hard and penurious labour. It was not till this century that the invasion of new conditions broke into the dales and scattered them. Suspicious of the outer world, they went on in their ancestral way, shutting their eyes to these great changes, until they were forced to give up the unequal struggle, and to leave the much-loved dale, and seek fortune elsewhere. A writer in Macmillaris Magazine (January, 1893), well describes the characteristics of our friends : " You will often see three generations together, which for strength, fine physique, and comeliness, 70 STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND may have their equals, but hardly their superiors anywhere ; they are renowned for their strength and stature all over the world " : (many of them have found their way into the Guards). " Instead of landlord, farmer and labourer, there was there but one class the class of men." They had a high self-respect and self-reliance as of freemen, traditionally conservative in character, and of generous intelligence ; the Dent Statesmen voted as one man for William Wilberforce, and sent him to St Stephen's as champion of the cause of the slaves. A characteristic saying is recorded ; a Dalesman was talking of a youth then just going forth to seek his fortune in the world. " Eh I 'tis a deftly farrant lad ; he'll do weel ; he's weel-come fra Staetsmen o' baith sides." And Nicholson and Burn in 1777 say that "the inhabitants of this county are generally a sober, social, humane, civilised people ; owing in some measure to the institution of small schools in almost every village." They add that the district was populous ; " every man lives on his own small tenement, and the practice of accumulating farms hath not yet here made any considerable progress." Unhappily, this evil began directly after the Napoleonic period ; THEIR SIMPLE PROSPERITY 71 now wealth has seized on almost all these patriarchal farms. Let us add Adam Sedgwick's opinion about them : he was born and bred up in the valley of Dent, in the West Riding, though it geographically belongs to the Westmoreland district : " Each lived on his own paternal glebe : the estate was small ; but each had right to large tracts of mountain pasturage, and each Statesman had his flock and herd. It used to produce much wool, worked for home use, and also exported, as were gloves and stockings knit in the valley. Dent was then a land of rural opulence and glee. Children were God's blessed gift to a household, and happy the man who had his quiver full of them. Each Statesman's house had its garden and orchard, and other good signs of domestic comfort. These goodly tokens have passed out of sight, or are feebly traced by some aged crab -tree or the stump of an old plum-tree, which marks the site of the ancient family orchard." In this idyllic home of rustic happiness and self-contained prosperity, Sedgwick tells us that their manners paid "A striking allegiance to some of the external rules of courtesy: the Statesman and his family 72 STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND had no polish from rubbing up against the outer world : their manners were frank and cheerful, with native and homely courtesy, springing out of a feeling of independence and hearty good will, which were very charming. They never passed a neighbour or even a stranger without some words of kind greeting. . . . Among them- selves the salutations were at once simple, frank, and kind ; and they used only the Christian name to a Dalesman, no matter what his condition of life. To have used a more formal address would have been to treat him as a stranger, and unkindly thrust him out from the brotherhood of the Dale." 1 It is with a sad word that he ends his de- scription : "Dent will not again become the merry, industrious, independent little world it was in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, during the reign of the ancient resident Statesmen." 2 The destructive nineteenth century has been too much for them : when a true account of the material glories of the age comes to be written, the extinction of the Statesmen should 1 Sedgwick's "Memorial of the Trustees of Cowgill Chapel, 1868." 2 Supplement to " Memorial," etc., 1870. INFLUENCES AGAINST THEM 73 be set down as one of the serious evils, though on a small scale, which our overwhelming materialism and worship of size have brought on our country. For in this century the old world has slowly faded away ; coaches, carriages, railways, have reached the innocent valley ; and we must be grateful to Sedgwick for his faithful and graphic picture of the simple world. In his youth, letters had hardly penetrated into the Dales. They had in Dent no very regular postman ; he came in once or twice in the week, or he might send on the letters, if there were any, by some friendly Dalesman. Letters were so rare, that they were often set up on the chimney-piece, to indicate the importance of the family, which, maybe, had sons out in the world, patiently carving their fortunes in Manchester or even in London. Sedgwick had been driven back to the Dale in the gloomy days which preceded the great Peace, and he happily describes a scene, which we shall do well to borrow from his rare pages : " I had found," he writes, " a refuge in Dent after the University (of Cambridge) had been 74 STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND broken up by a fatal fever. . . . At that time we had a post three times a week, and each of these days, to the great comfort of the aged postman, I rode over to Sedbergh to bring back the newspapers and the letters to my country- men. Gloomy reports had reached us of a battle and a retreat ; but another and a greater battle was at hand : and on one of my anxious journeys, just as I passed over the Riggs, I heard the sound of the Sedbergh bells. Could it be, I said, the news of a victory ? No ! It was a full hour before the time of the postman's arrival. A minute afterwards I saw a countryman returning hastily from Sedbergh. * Pray, what means that ringing ? ' I said. ' News, sir, sich as niver was heard before : I kna lile aboot it, but t' Kendal postman had just come an hour before his time. He was all covered with ribbons, and his horse was all covered wi' froth.' Hear- ing this, I spurred my horse to the Kendal postman's speed ; and it was my joyful fortune to reach Sedbergh not many minutes after the arrival of the Gazette Extraordinary which told us of the great victory of Waterloo. After joining in the cheers and gratulations of my friends at Sedbergh, I returned to Dent with what speed I could : and such was the anxiety of the day that many scores of the Dalesmen met me on the way ; and no time was lost in our return to the market-place of Dent. They ran by my side as I urged on my horse : and then mounting on the great blocks of black THE NEWS OF WATERLOO 75 marble from the top of which my countrymen have so often heard the voice of the auctioneer and the town- crier, I read at the highest pitch of my voice the news from the Gazette Extra- ordinary to the anxious crowd which pressed around me. After the tumultuous cheers had somewhat subsided, I said, 'Let us thank God for this great victory, and let the six bells give us a merry peal.' As I spoke these words an old weather-beaten soldier who stood under me said, ' It is great news, and it is good news if it brings us peace. Yes, let the six bells ring merrily; but it has been a fearful struggle, and how many aching hearts there will be when the list of killed and wounded becomes known to the mothers, wives and daughters of those who fought and bled for us. But the news is good, and let the six bells ring." So wisely and thankfully the quiet Dale received the news of the Battle of Waterloo. Men had more ballast then : and it was only Waterloo, not Mafeking. The grave spirit with which the Dalesmen received the news of Waterloo was like the careful prudence of their character. They knew that even a victory brings loss in its disastrous train ; though they could not foresee that peace 76 STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND with bad years and heavy taxes would ruin their happy community. From this time on they began to be squeezed out of their little freeholds ; many sank into poverty and took wages; the younger men, and the more capable, migrated, and often prospered well in that greater world which had been fatal to their class ; even if they prospered ever so much they rarely returned to the sweet idyllic life of their childhood. The wealth of the Dales consisted not merely of agricultural produce, which was small. Their prescribed right, the so-called "right of heaf," gave each of them pasturage on the fells for a fine flock of sheep ; and in these, the sheep of the Herd wick breed, lay their main strength. The legend runs that an unknown ship (the story is also attached to the Spanish Armada) was wrecked on the coast ; from her a number of sheep swam ashore; these the Statesmen, who usually came down when there was a disaster to see what they might pick up, divided among themselves, and drove them off to their farms. There they found at once that these Herdwicks, as they THEIR HERDWICK SHEEP 77 are called, were hardy, quick, and apparently accustomed to mountains : for when there came down a great snowstorm, instead of following the other sheep and taking refuge in a water- course for shelter, and there being snowed up, the Herdwicks at once made their way upwards to the highest point and there bravely fought the storm, finding some browsing on the hill top, which was usually swept clear by the wind. They have what is sometimes called two fleeces, a longer one above and a warm waistcoat inside, which is the close fine wool of the next year's fleece, this enables them to defy the bitterness of mountain storms. No one can explain the special name of Herdwick ; the truth probably is, as Mr Ellwood has put it, that these sheep are of Norwegian origin, and may be derived from the Scandinavian settlers of the tenth and eleventh centuries. The Dalesmen had also a good breed of horses ; the Galloways of Dent were well-known. They had also cattle, hardy and rough ; they exported much butter. The women were active and thrifty ; intelligent housewives, famed for 78 STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND many a practical gift. A clever lass could do four things at once " She kuaws how to sing and knit, And she kuaws how to carry the kit, While she drives her kye to pasture." Their wool became famous in the towns ; and so did the produce of their clever fingers ; they knitted or wove all that was needful for clothing. In this way they were very like the corresponding farmers of Norway, who are entirely clad in the well-known " wadmal," the homespun and woven cloth, which in almost every cottage is made for the use of the family. Some of the more active men became middle- men, and rode to Manchester or even to London, to deal with the mercers of Cheapside. In the days of the Seven Years' War there were govern- ment agents at Kirkby Lonsdale, Kendal, and Kirkby Stephen, engaged in buying the produce of the Dales for the clothing of the soldiers in Germany ; and sound material and conscientious labour made their stockings famous, and created a profitable trade. It was knitting which formed the connection between work and entertainment A LAATIN' RAA 79 in the Dales. The knitters were always lively gossips ; and it was usual to find the whole " laatin' " l (a North-country word signifying the group of houses which were within distance for invitation, so that the laatin rd is simply the " inviting row," or " seeking row.") The entertain- ment was styled " ganging a sitting," which began with a kind of contest in speed of knitting gloves or stockings ; and all the time there was no lack of gossip and laughter. One girl would then be asked to read, and could do so quite comfortably, without stopping her work ; all sat silent, listening, as the reader gave them page after page of "Robinson Crusoe" or "The Pilgrim's Progress." After a bit, to give rest, the reading was suspended, and the women talked over what they had heard, or resumed the interesting threads of local talk and gossip. The Laatin 1 was also called together on great occasions for a birth or a funeral : if a birth, then the essential dish was "rum butter," a terrible 1 This is the old A.S. word ladung= a congregation or assembly, and so late as Bailey's "Dictionary," 1761, we find "Lathing, entreaty, invitation," compound of sugar and rum, with, I take it, a little flour, served up in a noble china bowl. I remember it well, it was given us to eat on bread or biscuit ; it appeared at the birth of my youngest brother in 1832. There were romps too; there was a relic of the old merry violence, when, at "an old wives' do," the lads would burst in on the women and steal, if they could, the bowl with the sweet butter off the table. And the women also had their own sport they set a can on the floor, with a brush broom in it, without a handle, and each of them had to jump over it, if she could ; the clumsy or the stiff got no mercy if they upset the can. There was a merry simplicity about it all. When a marriage came, the whole district far wider than the " Laatin' " was roused to the utmost excitement ; the men in their bravest homespun ; the women in bright blue, the bride's colour, or white or red ; no green was possible ; was it not the colour of the forsaken one, the willow green of disgrace ? After the marriage ceremony was over, after which the country priest gave them some homely good advice, instead of the " amazement," conclusion, they went into the MARRIAGE USAGES 81 Churchyard, where there was laughing and some kissing and play till the young fellows had pulled off their shoes and stockings, showing the varied coloured ribbons which crossed over their legs. Then at a signal they started for a race from the church to the bride's new home. The winner had the right to return, hot and breathless, to meet the bride and her party, who had meanwhile been leisurely walking to the house. And he returned to claim a kiss and a piece of ribbon as his prize. After that came merry feasting and often some dancing. Adam Sedgwick gives us one parting touch. In the end the girls of the party attended the bride to her chamber and helped her to undress. With the stocking off the left leg in her hand she climbed up into the bed, and sat down facing the pillow, and with her back to the lasses, who stood round ; then, without looking at them, she flung the stocking over her right shoulder, and the girl on whom it lighted, it was thought, would be the next bride. There were also peculiarities of burial usage. There was a lyke-way in every parish, along which the coffin must be brought to the Church- 82 STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND yard. In rainy weather the lane might be full of water, while the neighbouring meadows were dry ; still, the bearers must not swerve ; they waded through the flood, with the body on their shoulders, while mourners and friends escaped the ducking by leaving the path, and taking to the fields. After the burial there was a solemn "lyk-wake," open house with such hospitality as the people could afford ; and after that any one who came to the door would receive the " arval-bread," a word used in Mrs Lynn Linton's novel, "Lizzie Lorton " (1867), and scarcely to be treated as obsolete. This was a small loaf, a cake spiced and sweet, having in it cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar and raisins. The arval was a distinctly Scandinavian word ; we find it in the old Icelandic in erfi and erfi-ol, the ale of the inheritor, which meant a funeral feast. In the Danish word arveol, the thought of inheritance is prominent; it was the heir's act, a first-fruits of his new wealth offered to his neighbours. Another ancient usage of Cumber- land Statesmen was the keeping of Beltain-day; round which clustered a whole group of picturesque BELTAIN DAY 83 doings. The word is certainly Celtic, and not connected with any notion of the worship of Baal. It marked a festival which heralded the incoming of summer ; the joy of the bright season after long snow and fog and short days. Pennant (1774), says that " till of late years the superstition of the Beltain was kept up (in Cumberland) and in this rude sacrifice it was customary for the performers to bring with them boughs of the mountain ash " ; the sacred rowan-tree had a special religious significance. When Beltain was kept, and the time of it varied considerably, from llth May to St Peter's day (29th June), the young men lighted baal-fires on the hill-tops ; and Jameson says, " every member of the family is made to pass through the fire ... to ensure good fortune for the coming year " ; it is easy to see how readily the children would fall in with this superstition ; they are as much lured by a bright blaze as if they were moths. Neither Moloch, nor any of "the abominations of the heathen," had anything to do with it, it was but a natural outburst of human paganism. There was also a usage of visiting and decorating 84 STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND wells ; near Penrith there are four such wells which were visited and decked out on the four Sundays of May. This may be a relic of a far older religion ; these things are certainly not peculiar to the Dales. Such were the stout men who managed their own farms in spite of rough weather and un- productive soil, the old " Cumberland Grey Coats," with breeches made from their own wool, spun in the winter evenings, with woollen stockings and strong stout clogs which defied the wet. We have a description of that well-known parson of Seathwaite, " Wonderful Walker," from Wordsworth's pen, in his note on his Sonnets on Duddon Vale. Walker was a States- man's son, and himself a Statesman in heart. He tilled his glebe with skill and diligence ; he had but the small stipend from his church of about 43 a year, but then he ploughed and dug like a man, he spun the wool off his sheep, he knitted goodly stockings, and, being a scholar, drew his parishioners' wills, and wrote their letters for them ; he held his parish school in the Church, sitting inside the chancel rails, and WONDERFUL WALKER 85 using the holy table as he needed it; he was dressed in "A coarse blue frock, trimmed with black horn buttons, a check shirt, a leathern strap about his neck for a neck-cloth, a coarse apron, and a pair of big wooden soled shoes, shod with iron, on his feet. I confess," said the narrator, " myself astonished with the alacrity and the good humour that appeared in the clergyman and his wife ; still more, at the sense and ingenuity of the clergyman himself." 1 This stalwart old man ruled over his simple flock for a long life; and died at the age of ninety-three. His thrifty and canny dealings won him the respect of all, and in the end enabled him to leave behind him an accumula- tion of small sums, which had mounted up to two thousand pounds. If the description of this old man's simple way of doing his duty seems strange to modern ears, I should like to set over against it another illustration of the ways of the Dale parishes, which is a tradition from my own Statesman folk. In the beginning 1 From a letter printed in the "Annual Register" for 1760, and dated 1754. 86 STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND of the nineteenth century, about 1807 to 1808, the headmaster of the St Bees' Grammar School was also in charge of Haile, a little village in the upper country behind St Bees'. My father was educated under him at the Grammar School, and rose to the head of the top form. Not unfrequently, I have heard him tell, the Master would come in on a Saturday, and speaking in his broad Cumbrian, would say : "Laads, I'm let from going up to Haile t' morrow " ; and then turning to the two head boys, he would add, " and so you, Kitchin, and you , will go up for me to-morrow, and here is t' prayer-book for Kitchin, and t' sermon for you , and mind ye dinna laff." And the two boys went off gleefully, and took the duty again and again. I believe it set my father thinking about Orders, for he went that way as soon as he could, and after a few years began clerical life as curate at this very church of Haile at which he had sometimes officiated as a schoolboy. All such things have long ago passed away, as has also the peculiar dress of the " Cumberland THEIR COSTUME 87 Grey Coats." They might sometimes be seen some fifty or sixty years ago, but now never. In Professor Sedgwick's "Memorial," (1870), we find the old man regretting the decay : "Many times on a Sunday morning I have regretted that I would no longer see the old Statesman riding along the rough and rugged road with his wife behind him mounted upon a gorgeous family pillow, and his daughters walking briskly at his side, in their long, flowing, scarlet cloaks with silken hoods." I have seen (on a doll) a professed copy of a Statesman's daughter's full Sunday dress ; she was smart and comely, with a coif and a low hat over it, then a short jacket, showing a warm body, a short skirt, with a bright red petticoat well to be seen, then black knitted stockings, and a pair of strong country clogs with clasps. The ruthless incursion of what they call civilised life has altogether destroyed all these lovely varieties in dress, varieties which of old had eloquent meaning. It now remains for me only to trace, very poorly it must be, the gradual weakening, and indeed the approach of the obliteration of this sturdy yeoman- class, who for strength of character, caution, 88 STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND simplicity of habits, moderation and an open-air life, stood, one might have thought, a very fine chance of resisting outside influences, and of retaining their independence as a most valuable element in their country's well-being. For they have gone, not from their weaknesses, but from their strength. They were not at all, as a Statesman would have said, " o' tJi danet" that is, they were not the thistles and docks and rank-stuff of a neglected field-side ; there was less of " de'ils- grass " in their pasturage than elsewhere, but their qualities seemed all to turn against them, till it almost seemed as if the conservative tendencies of the old landholding men of England was a fatal bar to their continuance. A thousand pities ! The Statesmen then were an intermediate class between the body of larger landholders in the county, and tenant farmers beneath them. They are best described as customary freeholders, the oldest stock of free voters for Knights of the Shire. In the Reform days their candidate, Mr Blamire, carried Sir James Graham, who had no particular love for his comrade, into Parliament with him. Yet ere this, Blackstone, writing in the middle of THEIR GRADUAL DISAPPEARANCE 89 the eighteenth century saw that " in England alone a tendency to larger occupations may be noticed " ; the influences which were to pull the Statesmen down were already felt. It was not till after the peace of 1815 that bad years and high taxes brought many of them to the ground. Their numbers fell off; in Gosforth parish, for example, there were thirty- three Statesmen in 1800, and at the present time there are but ten. The causes of this loss are plain enough. The bad years and the growth of outside interests set the young people moving ; it was the beginning of the steady stream which has run ever since from land to town. Machinery made home industry difficult, and eased the way for locomotion. Dalesmen no longer spun and knitted at home ; the sons and daughters drifted away from the ancestral farm and sought fortunes in the world. Sedgwick tells us of one very characteristic example in Mr Dawson, a kindly and skilful surgeon, who was famous all over the country as a teacher of high mathematics. He was the son of a small Statesman of Garsdale, not far from Sedburgh ; he had no teacher, no books, no 90 STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND. encouragement. They opposed him and ridiculed his efforts. Yet he persevered and became so strong in mathematics that three undergraduates from Cambridge sought him out, and spent their summer near him in Garsdale. A surgeon at Lancaster heard of him, took him into his house, first as a pupil, then as assistant; books were accessible, and there was sympathy and help. He saved a hundred guineas, stitched them into the back of his waistcoat, shouldered a bundle of clothes, and trudged off to Edinburgh, where he entered the University, stayed there so long as his guineas lasted, and then returned to Sedburgh. Plenty of work now came to him, he saved more money, and walked to London where he took his degree. After this he finally settled in his beloved dale, and passed there a long and useful life as surgeon and friend of the whole district, and as a mathematical tutor. He is said to have trained as many as ten or eleven senior wranglers. To the end of his life he always wore the sober grey Dalesman dress. Other young men left the breezy freshness of the Dale and became shopmen. It seemed THEIR GRADUAL DISAPPEARANCE 91 singular that they should be specially attracted by the stuffy and unwholesome atmosphere of a draper's shop. Their Herdwick wool was the introduction. So the world came nearer to the Statesmen, and they to the world. Meanwhile the farm did not prosper ; what it could grow or make became less valuable, and the charges on the house and land were heavier. Life was now dearer, unknown necessities arose, and the honest farmer was drifting slowly and sadly into difficulties. While there was less and less hope of making a comfortable livelihood out of the land, and the farmer's heart failed him, the value of his freehold still tended to rise, not to fall as it should have done. So that, as the difficulty of living increased, the temptation to throw the whole thing up, and to try some other way of life increased also. There were rich people, iron-men, and others, who wanted to create an estate, and were glad to tempt the poor farmer, often encumbered with debts and mortgages incurred in the bringing up of his family, to relieve himself of all present anxiety by selling his land for a good round sum of ready money. This would clear off all embarrassments 92 STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND and leave him with a little capital, with which to make a fresh start in life. Or if the head of the family died young, leaving a poor widow with half-a-dozen bairns to bring up, the end would not be far off. Or a Statesman, roughing it in all weathers, drenched in mist or blinded with snow, contracted a fatal habit of spirit-drinking, the most ruinous of all the causes of extinction. A friendly watcher of these interesting farmers told me that when a Statesman took to spirits, at first he seemed to grow in bulk, became fatter and ruddy, and seem to be buoyant enough to ride through all troubles and that then his neighbours would shake their heads, and say, " I'm afeard Geordie is swelling and growing vera stout, it's a bad sign for him, puir lad " ; and it was so indeed ; after a year or two he would entirely break down ; the neglected land would come to the hammer, and the ancient home be broken up. And so the sad decay of a century at least, has ended in the reduction of the number of Statesmen to a mere handful. Have we reached the end of this melancholy period? I fear we have not. Nothing is done to give the small farmer a chance, and yet we THEIR PRESENT CONDITION 93 are often told that in these days it is only the small man who can weather the bad times. Everything seems to be against them ; there is no effort to replace the small agriculturist on his little farm ; no Banks like the German Landbanks, no facilities for creating markets, no combinations of machines, no special and proper education for them except at distant centres. Their land is burdened, men are impatient of poverty and unwilling to live simply. The land will never again make fortunes for the cultivator. He has an interesting calling and a healthy life ; but he must be careful, penurious, devoted to the soil. He might have a much worse fate; still, in these gambling days it is inevitable that men should refuse this quiet uneventful career and take instead the chances of a competition in which the prizes are brilliant and the failures forgotten. The remaining Statesmen are men who have survived by consolidating small holdings ; the old holdings of fifty or sixty acres are almost all gone, the old patriarchal conditions have disappeared. There is still much of the ancient 94 STATESMEN OF WEST CUMBERLAND shrewdness and of that natural suspicion which the authoress of " Lizzie Lorton " notices as a special quality of the Dalesmen. The old stuff survives ; one ever wishes that this conservative element of our race might return to the land, and continue to cultivate the wild fell-sides, and the beautiful green meadows of their lower land in a peaceful and useful life. It is, I fear, more than one can hope for; the set is too strong against this honest and wholesome life ; there is an ardent craving for excitement and motion, and a haste to get rich without trouble. The old thrifty and persistent qualities of the country- born people of England have mostly disappeared ; the town far outnumbers the country; and town habits, amusements, vices, have the lead every- where. We must surely look with uneasy doubt at the general result of it on the character of our people. Have we fallen back in the period ? Is the old sense of generosity, of truth, of honour as keen as it used to be? Are we bigger and worse than we were ? Have we reached the point at which Livy, 1 saw his fellow-countrymen with 1 Livii, Hist. Bk. I. Preefatio. THE FUTURE FOR THEM 95 sorrowful eyes, descending down the swift grade of Imperial corruption and vice ? " Ut magis magisque lapsi sint, turn ire coeperint praecipites : donee ad haec tempora quibus nee vitia nostra nee remedia pati possumus, perventum est." And, in truth, one cannot see that there is any hope for the restoration of the ancient rugged virtues of the Statesman class, or the return of them to the quiet and happy dales from which they have been driven out by the baleful power of money. Ill WHITBY ABBEY A STUDY OF CELTIC AND LATIN MONASTICISM THE materials for the history of the earlier Abbey are very scanty; he who interprets them under influences of modern ideas is certain to make mistakes. My aim has been simply to draw a contrast between the earlier and the later founda- tions of Streoneshalh, and thereby to bring before your eyes the forgotten phenomena of a very ancient Celtic community, which differs in many striking points from Benedictine monasteries. I am aware that I have, with eyes open, passed over many important matters in the history of Whitby. Thus, we might have spent an inter- esting hour dealing with the organisation of the Benedictine Abbey ; or we might have studied AN ANCIENT COMMUNITY 97 the effects of this well-marked corporate existence on the constitutional and social growth of England ; or we might have picked up fascinating details in the more modern story of Cleveland ; or we might easily have been engrossed by the beauties and the varied natural history of Whitby. It seemed better to bear in mind one thought only, and so to make this essay an account of the structure of a community which is now entirely forgotten among us, partly through antiquity, still more because, consciously or not, we are apt to deal with it in terms of a technical kind which are, in fact, so many anachronisms. It is by such unnoticed changes in thought and speech, from age to age, that our theology and our history are ever suffering distortion and degradation : our view of life is blurred ; the long perspectives, with all their sweet irregu- larities and far-off distances, are reduced by us, till they become a skilful bit of painting projected on a smooth level canvas a few feet from our eyes. Those whose aim is the discernment of truth will welcome any attempt to show the 98 WHITBY ABBEY true proportions of history. This is why I make this attempt to reconstruct a forgotten bit of early Church history, as it was developed by the poetic and affectionate nature of the Celts some twelve hundred years ago. An account of their endeavours in the young days of the Christianity of these islands is, I think, of special interest, because it shows that that warm-hearted and stubborn race were not then enslaved, nor indeed are they now enslaved, under the legal bondage of the Latin world. Their religion, their law and custom, their institutions, are little under- stood by others. We English have been hard, often unjust, stepmothers to this devoted and tenacious race, because we refuse to understand their clan feelings and usages, and therefore try to govern them under conditions, easy for us Anglo-Saxons, but painfully difficult for their imaginative and often unreasonable natures. Perhaps if we had more imagination and less common-sense we should understand them better and love them more. When Canon Atkinson in his "Memorials of Old Whitby," tells us that "this was the most THE DANISH WHITBY 99 Danish part of the Danish counties," he certainly does not go beyond the truth. 1 No one can visit the Parish Church without being struck by the odd arrangements of galleries on every side. If he has ever been in the churches of Denmark he will recognise at once the singular resemblance between these fantastic galleries, built up on the four sides of the nave, and entered, in some cases, even from the outside of the building. He will at once see the likeness of the Parish Church, in this respect, with the internal fittings of, say, St Olafs in Elsinore, or indeed of almost any considerable church in the Danish Isles. This resemblance is probably due to a kind of instinctive acceptance of some Scandinavian qualities. Some incumbent of the future, no doubt anxious to reduce Whitby Church to a Latin uniformity of dulness, and to make it as uninteresting as modern sham- Gothic buildings are, will piously set himself to obliterate the features of this most characteristic church ; so making it a servile copy of a thousand common and correct English places of worship ; he will 1 Canon J. C. Atkinson, D.C.L., "Memorials of Old Whitby," p. xiii. 100 WHITBY ABBEY pride himself on sweeping away these evidences of past feeling ; and the church will then cease to be an ancient and spontaneous expression of the old connection of the inhabitants of this district with the Scandinavian world. 1 Our subject, however, is not the influence or infusion of Scandinavian blood, but the contrast of the two successive abbeys which crowned the eastern hill above the red roofs of Whitby town. Of these the earlier, which lasted for about two centuries (A.D. 665-867), was chiefly of British or Celtic origin; the later (A.D. 1080-1541), Norman 1 The Scandinavian influence on language in these parts is testified to by the tradition that Norwegian and Danish ships used to call at Robin Hood's Bay in former days, because the sailors could make themselves understood by the inhabitants. A Danish officer once told me that in the time of the Dano- Prussian War an old deserter presented himself one morning at the headquarters of his regiment, begging to be readmitted as a volunteer, and saying that he had returned from the United States to fight for his country. When they asked him how he had made his way to America without knowing any English, he told them that his regiment was then quartered in Jutland ; that he got over in a friend's vessel to Newcastle, and thence walked across to Liverpool ; but that he had never met any one on his walk who did not know enough Danish to understand and help him. IMPORTANCE OF THE SITE 101 and Benedictine. I know no place where the contrast between these two types is seen so well. The Danish influence, powerful as it proved to be, fills the two centuries between the two abbeys. Indeed, it speaks volumes for the strength of the Scandinavian nature, that though the Danes came in as savage enemies, looting and destroying as they would, they still settled down to influence and control the destinies of the district, and in so doing to become an integral part of the nation. Whitby thus became a very important point, a place of safe and easy entry, for the system of the Danelagh l which occupied most of the eastern side of England. The Danes introduced their own special institutions, and gave to the town its modern name. All through this district Scandinavian names are very common. We find in the immediate neighbourhood a proper " Thingvalla," a Dingwall, or Thingwall, a place of Parliament of free Danes ; and villages and fields still wear their ancient Norwegian names. 1 The Danelagh, the northern and eastern side of England, in which Danish law prevailed. 102 WHITBY ABBEY The local dialect is to this day full of Northern idioms. We, however, have to look at this Scandinavian period, at first pagan, then slowly becoming Christian, as a time in which the older Christian world was hidden under the ruins of the fallen civilisation. And we must first sketch in as few brief lines as may be what can be learnt as to the earlier history of the place. Streoneshalh, 1 as it was then called, appears to have contained a Christian community even before the days of the first abbey. For, as Dr Atkinson points out, after the battle of Heathfield, while the head of King Edwin was carried to York, his body was carried to Streoneshalh. This battle took place in 633 ; so that there must have been some 1 The name Streoneshalh, which is said to have preceded even the foundation of the first religious house, and to be an English, or Anglo-Saxon word, is very hard of explanation. It is in two parts Streones, a genitive of Strdona and Tiaugh. In other words, it is the Hauyh of Streona. The best authorities venture on no positive statement. They think it most probable that Streona is a proper name name of some lost chief. The name comes from the A.-S. Streon, which is either bodily strength, strain, or vigour, and then, more usually, treasure, riches, and Haugh, which is a low-lying meadow. Bede (II. E. iii. c. xxv.) says THE EARLY HISTORY 103 church and a Christian settlement here some twenty-five years before the first foundation of the abbey. Long before this, indeed, the early missionaries of the Gospel had penetrated to the ultimate ends of the earth, and had made settle- ment in Ireland. About the year 450, Patrick, a Romano-Briton of the larger island, had established communities on the Irish coast ; and on each easy point of access, during the century following, bodies of this kind were planted. It is usual to speak of these communities as "monasteries," which is perhaps unfortunate, for it at once couples them on to the Latin form of monastic life, and obscures their true history. They were but communities, held together by the faith of Christ, finding defence and protection against the pagan the meaning of Streoneshalh is "sinus fari," so that he accepts, in "sinus," the haugh meaning a bay or lowland; but "fari" or " Phari " does not suit Strcones. " Bay of the beacon " it may be ; but it throws no light. It is curious that this ancient name was entirely swept away in the days of the Danish desolation; and the rough-and-ready seamen, finding there an abbey, full of many frocked people, dubbed it the "Prestebi," the town of priests : this name, in turn, did not hold ; when in the post-Norman days stone buildings began to rise here, the north- countrymen called it "The White Town," Whitby. 104 WHITBY ABBEY world communities consisting of men, their wives and children ; the bishops and priests also had their families within the enclosure. And these settle- ments were not merely places for protection of an early Christian civilisation ; they were emphatically places of education in the message of God contained in the Bible. As Neander rightly calls them, they were " Pflanzschulen fur Lehrer des Volkes," tran- quil nursery-grounds for the cultivation of those who would be the teachers of the people. Through these early mission-stations Ireland came to be called the " Insula Sanctorum," that is, the island full of those holy ones who gave themselves to study the Scriptures, who then took the Bible in hand, to preach out of it the knowledge of God's revelation of love to man. And so it came about that, in the twilight of these dark centuries, in which the old light of the civilisation of pagan Rome had gone out, and the new dawn of the Gospel shone but feebly ; in the days when, far off in the East, religion groping for light was becoming tinged by Egyptian or Assyrian faiths ; here in the "Utmost Thule," these simple com- munities stuck to the sacred books, and from the EARLY CHRISTIAN CIVILISATION 10,5 undefiled source of faith drew the revelation of a higher and purer world, and lived under a gospel of brotherhood, and of high if simple ideals. With these they converted pagans to the Gospel in a simple form. As yet Latin civilisation had not crossed the path of these new influences on the Irish and Scottish shores; the natural force of earlier beliefs, usages, superstitions, alone touched those who proclaimed the new message. For these Celtic communities had not passed through Roman influences ; of Rome fallen, yet still eternal, they heeded not; neither the old empire, nor that Latin Christianity which had absorbed so much of the older Roman life and thought, swayed their simple minds. And this directness of relation with the earlier spread of the Gospel made the Irish communities characteristic and original, so far as they were reflections of the true originals of the faith. We may see the influences of earlier faiths, as we study the relation of the ancient clan -system of the Celtic life, in the brotherly love and communion of the Celtic Christian community. Of the history of these early settlements we 106 WHITBY ABBEY have hardly a trace. Just after the middle of the sixth centuiy the Christianised Picts of Scotland certainly gave up to St Columba and his followers the island of Hi (or Hy), that is, the famous island of lona, as it afterwards came to be called. Thither they came, starting from the Irish coast, and made a new community in this western solitude ; it was an island central, safe, and suitable for men bent on their ancient simplicity in life and faith. The ruins of their primitive home stand still on lona as a historic monument, token of a form of Christianity which has unhappily passed away. As we contemplate it, we feel that we are at the daybreak of a new age of history. We look back on a gloomy past, mirrored in the sad wail of Gildas, with his broken spirit and his shocking Latin, crooning his dirge over the Celtic world of his day ; and we look forward also to the rise of the light of the Anglo-Saxon world, in the pages of that first prophet of ours, Bede, who was also brought up on the Bible in Jarrow, and was a teacher of the Word, and became the true father of English Church history. This community of lona was happily far from THE CHRISTIANS FROM IONA 107 content with a daily routine, cooped up in the narrow and rocky island ; the more eager spirits were ever for a move. With their boats, all was before them : they bravely launched forth to carry light to a whole world full of hostile spirits, and to men all filled, as they believed, with evil devils. All round the coast of Scotland they passed, sailing or rowing, till one day they discerned off the northernmost shores of North- umberland a group of little islands in the troubled sea : and thought well to come to land on the first of these. It was a long narrow island, near enough to the mainland for intercourse, yet far enough off for safety and independence ; large enough, also, to provide sustenance for their simple needs. Hither, then, to Lindisfarne which came after a while to be called in their honour the " Holy Island " came St Aidan, the apostle of Northumbria ; and here he settled down with a small community of Celtic disciples and followers in the year 635. In the next century Bede describes, as an eye-witness might, their establishments on the island. We may well listen to his voice ; though he, at this rather later time, 108 WHITBY ABBEY was full of the Latin element in religion, his description of the earliest commynity is that of a friendly spectator: "And when Aidan the Bishop came to King Oswald, that prince gave him an episcopal seat in the island of Lindisfarne. Thanks to the rising and falling tides, twice a day Lindisfarne is an island, and twice a day a peninsula. . . . Day after day more and more of the Scots [that is, of the Irish] came over into Oswald's kingdom, preaching the Word of God with great devotion, and baptizing the converted. Churches sprang up in many places ; the people thronged with joy to hear the Word ; royal gifts founded monasteries ; Anglian children under Scottish preceptors were taught the greater studies, and how to observe the 'regular' life." 1 The " Life of St Cuthbert " also tells us that Lindisfarne, though a little island, was the seat of a Bishop, of an Abbot, and of a body of monks. Here all, including the Bishop, followed the community rule of the far west, and were, so far forth, all subject to the authority of the Abbot. In this way Lindisfarne did but copy the usage of the mother-settlement of lona. 1 Bede, H.E. iii. 3. AT LINDISFARNE 109 Then, as time went on, and the natural desire of change began to make itself felt, and as the wish to see a larger world grew into shape, and restlessness quickened missionary zeal, they presently could sit still no longer, but took ship again and felt their way down the coast. They no doubt kept their eyes open for a spot where they might land, and, helped by the geographical features of the place, might entrench themselves against the hostile and pagan Anglians of the neighbourhood. They had then but little to fear from the sea-approach ; the Danish age had not begun ; there could be no panic from the seaboard. So they crept down the coast ; and when they came to the high land, where the lovely Cleveland hills run out into the sea with bold cliffs and rocks, bearing hidden promise of much future wealth and prosperity, they must have felt that the moment for decision as to their new home was drawing nigh. One can easily imagine them scanning the shore-line, noting where the rich valleys run away inland, with lovely trees and bright streams, making fresh green paradises amid the moors. Here there were but few natives 110 WHITBY ABBEY to be dreaded : the moors support little life ; and at the mouth of the pretty river Esk was a convenient landing-place, on which there was already a small Christian community to welcome them. Here they might make their settlement on an open sea, which as yet was nothing but an advantage for them : (" the Kelts fear not the fury of the waves," as Julian says of them) 1 ; and as there was a high promontory defended on the one side by the river, on another side by the sweep of the coast and cliffs, the place would be easily defensible, lending itself plainly for a good site of a colony. The story of their settlement lacks all those portents and miracles of guidance which one finds in the monastic chronicles of the foundations of later Houses ; of these stories the monks were so proud that they never failed to embroider the smallest incidents and enlarge them into a miraculous leading: the choice of Whitby has nothing in it but a common-sense judgment, using for decision just such materials as circumstance 1 2Elian, Var. Hist. xii. 23, also given in the Eudemian Ethics, iii. 1, 23, which go under the name of Aristotle. THE WHITBY SETTLEMENTS 111 provided, and entering on it in full faith that God would bless the new home. The adventurers saw the two high hills, one to the north, the other to the south of the little river, the Esk a name given to many streams in the British islands, and a chief element in names of places built by the side of running waters. Here was the door- way into a green and pleasant district; here too would be safe harbourage and easy landing. Here then they "applied to land," and landing, found the place good. By the waterside convenient room for storage of their few goods ; on the hills breezy levels, strong and safe for their churches and cells ; and, we may well imagine it, they found a hearty welcome from the inhabitants. They also learnt, or might have learnt, in passing down the coast, that a few miles to the north of Streoneshalh there was already an Anglian settlement, in the seaside village of Hereteu, a name which survives in the modern Hartlepools. Here was an early nunnery, 1 from 1 A few years ago, in building-work, foundations had to be dug out at Hartlepool ; the labourers flung up four or five small inscribed stones, which proved to be the tombstones of Anglian nuns of the Hereteu community. One of these stones is in the 412 WHITBY ABBEY which they either sent for, or brought away with them, a lady of royal blood, Hild by name, who had been baptized at the age of thirteen by St Paulinus at York, in the year 627 : her they placed at the head of the new settlement. History gives no clue to tell us by what way these settlers came to decide on taking a stranger, as she surely must have been, to be their Abbess. Women perhaps were more thought of in those days than now. She was then about forty-three years old, a strong character, fit to hold the reins prudently, and to rule with gentle and firm hand the settlers, men and women alike. The date of her appoint- ment to this office is given as about A.D. 656 or 657. Here she ruled as Abbess for twenty- four years, till her death in 680 ; her bones still rest somewhere in St Peter's great church at Whitby. During this quarter of a century St Hild ruled over all, both monks and nuns, if indeed they ever used those terms in her time ; her Cathedral Library of Durham, inscribed with an interesting cross, and above the two arms the A and ft, with the name Berchtgyd roughly cut beneath the arms of the cross. THE EARLY COMMUNITY 113 rule was not without difficulties, which some- times were even dangerous for the clan- community under her care. They were a mixed community, some married, some not ; there are no traces of vows, no sign of special or significant dress ; they all lived side by side, simple Christians, who brought their religious convictions into the daily current of their lives. The community must have been of considerable size ; for we read that there were, when the Benedictines entered, " full forty cells, with many vacant altars." Not in St Hild's time, but very soon after, we find that interesting Celtic peculiarity existing in Streoneshalh, the phenomenon of a Bishop with his followers contentedly settling down, and living peaceably under the command and control of the Abbess. We are not told that this was so in St Hild's days. She, both saint and hero, 1 and a constitutional queen among her people, showed true nobleness of character, and rose supreme above all the anxieties of , her age, steer- ing her way serenely between Latin and Celtic 1 The feminine " heroine " seems to me a bad form. The qualities which mark our heroes are common to both sexes. H 114 WHITBY ABBEY usages, bowing to the inevitable, and sheltering as best she could those whose toughness and obstinacy did not let them tamely submit to the Latin order. Round her have gathered some local legends, as was the use of those times. One or two of those survive to our days the wild geese still, as they come with heavy flight to land, bow themselves down, and do honour to their kindly saint. For she was far more their friend than are the womenkind of to-day, with their heartless bonnets adorned with the beautiful plumage of the birds. These wild geese, at any rate, recognised the fraternity of woman's nature, and knew that here was a human being who was a friend, not a foe. They were as dear to her as the tame St Cuthbert's birds, the Eider ducks on the rocks of the Fame Islands and of Lindisfarne itself, were to our famous Durham saint. Another legend there is which all visitors to Whitby ought to en- courage by going to the many curiosity shops. The whole district was infested by swarms of venomous snakes, till St Hild, with a touch of St Patrick's Celtic gift, ridded the whole country THE HEADSHIP OF ST HILD 115 of them ; for with a word she froze them all to stone. First, their heads fell off, then their venom was arrested, then they curled themselves up into pretty circles ; and so by thousands they lie in the beds of lias and other strata of the neighbourhood. The dealers in odds and ends get them out, large and small ; some they cut through and polish, others they leave complete ; they may be seen in almost every shop. Whitby has identified herself with them in a prominent and ceremonial way, for the coat-of-arms of the Abbey are three Ammonites on a shield. 1 Those very unimaginative people, the geologists, will not see the playful beauty of this dream of natural history, but point out to us the structure and habits of the great class of Ammonites ; they laugh at Hild's "frozen serpents," and tell us with truth that the Great Author of Nature in constructing these beautiful creatures of the deep did miracles far more marvellous and 1 " Mira res est videre serpentes apud Streneshale in orbe giratos, et in dementia cceli, vel (ut monachi ferunt) precibus divse Hildse in lapides concreti." Dugdale's Monasticon Angl. Yol. i. under " Whitby Abbey." 116 WHITBY ABBEY beautiful than any which, "ut monachi ferunt," have been imagined by the idle wit of man. Thus, then, we see that St Hild's work was that of the head of a Celtic community, which endeavoured, on this vigorous north-eastern coast of our island, to fashion the growth of the Christian religion according to Celtic ideas and principles of life. We cannot put this better than has been done by Mr. J. W. Willis Bund in his most interesting work on the Celtic Church in Wales. Though he speaks chiefly of the Welsh growth of the Christian faith, his remarks answer just as well to the parallel conditions of religious life in the Irish communities, or in those on the Scottish or the English coasts. " Let us not obscure," he begins by saying, "the true importance of the struggle between the two Churches, which was carried on in Wales for centuries, or represent this struggle as only a contest on some perfectly immaterial ritualistic details, such as the words of ceremonial at baptism, or the shape of the tonsure, instead of what it really was a contest, a vital contest, between tribal Christianity as represented by the Celt, and imperial Christianity as represented by the Latin." And again he says : " The real contest THE CELTIC COMMUNITY 117 was not on such minor matters, but on much greater issues, on subjects yet unsettled whether the Church is supreme over the State, or whether the clergy are supreme over the Church." In other words, he adds, the struggle was between tribal independence on the one side, and foreign supremacy on the other. For wherever Christianity may have been " introduced among the Celts in Wales, Scotland, or Ireland, it had one characteristic and dis- tinguishing feature. Its development was local, without any external aid, and without the exercise of or the pressure from any external authority." And again he says : " It was only among the Celts on the British Isles, and to a slight extent in Brittany, that from the force of local circumstances the Latin Church was unable to prevent the development of Christianity in accordance with tribal, as opposed to imperial ideas." This is a fair statement of the problem, so long obscured by the- dominance of Roman ideas ideas which subject us to that great supremacy which has long swayed the fortunes of the western world. We have got into the way of never looking beyond St Augustine 118 WHITBY ABBEY and his Latin supporters, making their attempt on the paganism as well as on the Celtic Christianity of England ; we refuse to notice the earlier times of feudalism, before the days of the bastard system brought into England by William I. with Hildebrand to bless and back him ; we study our Christianity hi Roman spectacles, and so miss these earlier local develop- ments of the faith of Christ. Again, we are unwilling to acknowledge that the evangelisation of the wild peoples always carried with it a large adoption and assimilation of their pagan usages, customs, superstitions ; we forget that the hunger of faith feeds greedily on that worship of the Unknown God, whose divinity is recognised in very different phases in different races. Much of our ceremonial, and indeed much of our theology, is deeply tinged with these earlier influences. And so it was that the settlement in the Cleveland district was marked by many Celtic characteristics, so making a distinct variety of Christian life in those early days, during which the Gospel was influencing and being influenced THE CELTIC COMMUNITY 119 by the old pagan ideas and customs : hence sprang many healthy differences among those who held the faith of Christ and lived in the love of Him ; and of these forms of Christ- life, it is unfortunate that the Celtic variety got so little hold on England. Mr J. R. Green, historian of the people of England, rejoices, speaking of these days, that we were saved by submission to the Latin dominance from the " confusions " of Irish liveliness : it would have been better for us had we had in us more of that bright and imaginative sense of religion which marks the Celtic race ; Anglo-Saxon " common-sense " stiffened by Roman law leaves much to be desired. The first point to be remembered is that this early Celtic Christianity was unaffected by the glamour of the Eternal City, that it had its own traditional customs, and escaped as yet the rule of the hard Roman law, and was not dazzled by the splendour of a Patriarch with imperial claims. This Celtic development, however, withered away very early, so early that there must always be great uncertainty as to its details, 120 WHITBY ABBEY so shadowy that the monkish historians, who had no sympathy for it, were able to colour it after their own colour, and thereby to make it very hard for us to discern the truth. To shut your eyes to unwelcome truths is the easiest way of confuting them ; and the monasteries held in their day the whole " power of the press," and shaped the story after their system. And thus one of the most interesting of our historical- religious problems has been lost sight of, hidden out of sight by the pen of the conqueror. Nowhere is this better shown than in the history of the Streoneshalh community. That body is a late expression of the Celtic system of polity and religion ; it lasted for about two centuries ; it was the mother of saints and learned men and women, and was a pattern home of simple Christian virtues ; then, swept away by the pagan Northman, it lay all desolate for another two centuries, till the Benedictine Order established on the spot a feudal monastery, the fine ruins of which still dominate the headland. That later House had in it no touch of the older Celtic body : it was a new beginning under very CELTIC CHRISTIANITY 121 different auspices, the study of which is fairly plain and easy, compared with that of the obscure institutions and usages of the older body. We must try to point out wherein these Celtic customs and laws entered into the incoming faith, and so modified the growth of Christianity in the eighth and ninth centuries. We may thus win a glimpse of the early colony on the east hiU of Whitby. Froude 1 tells us that Celtic Christianity was a compound of the ancient Jewish religion with the pagan usages of tribal relations. Most of our nineteenth-century notions of religion spring from Latin sources, with august forms of an imperial faith and the sharp control of a coherent system of law. If we study Celtic institutions by these, we shall come to no good. Many Irish writers, Romanists or Protestants, have worked out the conditions of the Irish Celtic Church, " describing as it was in fact, not as controversialists have thought it ought to be " ; 2 and we must bear in mind that our 1 Froude, " Short Studies on Great Subjects," Series I. p. 194. 2 J. W. Willis Bund, " The Celtic Church in Wales," p. 4. 122 WHITBY ABBEY Yorkshire settlement, though originally derived from Britain, passed first through Ireland, then through lona and Lindisfarne, before it finally took shape in the Streoneshalh community. By that time the Celtic mark had become fainter; we cannot trace at Whitby any distinct remains of these ancient tribal relations : the distinctions between the " Tribe of the Land " and the " Tribe of the Saint " are no longer clear. Still, we may try to summarise these Celtic qualities in the new community: the Latin influences very early entered in there, and took the upper hand ; it was only about twenty years after the first establishment that St Hild was present at the Synod of Streoneshalh, and apparently accepted the conclusions come to by King Oswiu and the foreign-speaking priests and prelates there assembled. As we have said, the Celtic form of Christianity was coloured by the determination to work in the clan system. This showed itself in the form of those quasi- monastic settlements into which the Celts invariably threw their religious communities. Not like modern efforts, which THE CLAN-SYSTEM 123 chiefly spring from strong individual convictions, and in which the heroic career of some young apostle, fervent in the faith, leads the way, the Celts clung all together, and acted as a social body: each move created a fresh hive in some sheltered corner, wherever the will and advice of some leader, or the stress of circumstances, directed their course, and pointed out the place for a new settlement. One is hardly willing to admit the use of the essentially Latin term (though Greek in origin) a "monastic establishment," in describing these little settlements. 1 For they presented an entirely different set of qualities ; at first they were complete communities, Christian bodies, 1 Unless indeed we take the liberty of deriving the phrase from povr), a place of settlement and repose, instead of {J.QVOS, the cell of the anchorite. In fact the terms "monastery" and " monachal vows " belong to a very different world ; they connote a very different state of things ; they indicate the progress from St Benedict of Nursia to communities of men alone, or of women alone, under strict vows and regulations, and depending on the head of the Latin Churches. These, as has been often said, were the " Pope's champions " ; and at a later time were so many fastnesses for that great foreign power in all the lands of the west. 124 WHITBY ABBEY in which all the faithful dwelt together, as a Church-clan, with wives and families included. The priests and the bishops formed no exception. One knows that after a while all this was changed, and a separation of the sexes took place ; still at the outset it was the other way. Indeed one seems to trace a similar condition of things in the history of the conversion to Christianity of the ancient villages of Southern India there no man would dare to make a move till the headman of the village was convinced ; he then led the way, came to the Christian evangelist, carrying in his hand the little rude figure of his god, who was probably his own ancestor of three or four generations before, and then and there presented the tiny image to the missionary, and pulled down the hut or chapel which had been the old village place of worship ; then all the inhabitants, men and women and children, came to be adopted into the new faith, and so to make a fresh start as a Christian- Indian clan. In that case the Englishman became the head of the Church-clan : the native headman continued still to be the head of the tribal-clan, THE CELTIC BISHOP 125 who ruled the village in all non-religious matters, as before, in accordance with rule and custom. The English missionary was like the Latin Church, no doubt : he could not help interfering by advice and example sometimes more or less helpful, sometimes mischievous. Thus these simple com- munities ran the course of change, whether in Indian villages of to-day or in these Celtic bodies of twelve centuries ago. The conversion, then, and establishment of the community as a whole, comes first. The second characteristic may be sought in the rela- tion of this community to property. At first there seem to have been no territorial rights or jurisdiction; it is, at any rate, certain that a Celtic bishop had no diocese, nor was he in any sense a territorial chief. The striking difference between these two types of bishop, the Celtic and the Latin, will be shown a little later. It is also clear that the community owned, under clan conditions, the land around ; and carried on tillage thereof for the general advan- tage. The clearest element in these combinations is, first, that they were banded together for mutual 126 WHITBY ABBEY protection ; and next, that they aimed at promot- ing Biblical knowledge and study among their company, for its own sake and with a view to future proclamation of the Gospel ; and thirdly (may we not add), they infused the spirit of the Gospel into all their home life, and tried to make the family, not the man, their unit of Christian goodness. They had their own traditional codes of law, which, committed to writing, have happily come down to us. Indeed, we have no better authority for what we learn about the Celtic civilisation than that of the Brehon and other codes, in which the tribal system was maintained. There we see that the whole institution is on the other side of Feudalism ; the whole sheaf of notions included under Feudalism must be kept out of our study of Celtic usages. 1 It would be too much, were we to draw out the special points of this ancient Celtic law, though it seems certain that St Hild's 1 It is a pity that Canon Atkinson in his learned work on Whitby uses so misleading a term as a "Manor," when speak- ing of St Hild's position as an Abbess, "Memorials of Old Whitby," p. 55. BUILT UP ON CELTIC LAW 127 community was built up on it. We do not even know how far strict Celtic clan-rules were enforced in Streoneshalh, before they were broken into by the so-called " Synod of Whitby " in 663 or 664. We do not even know on what principles the lady Hild was appointed from Hereteu to be their first head. One can only say that when the site was chosen, it was occupied by the whole community, and was made as strong as the situation and their rudimentary notions of defence could make it. The chronicler who tells us of the Ammonite miracle speaks in the same breath of it as a " situs paene inexpugnabilis " showing that the natural strength of the position was a vital element in the case. Protected as it was, Streoneshalh deserved the description of being " all but inexpugnable." And here in peace they set themselves to build their first Church, and gathered round it their simple little dwellings, their cells ; I take it they never built one big barrack of a monastery, but occupied these little cells with their wives and children. In this quiet little home came the first struggle in the North between Celt and Latin, Bede gives 128 WHITBY ABBEY us minute details of the Synod held at the Streoneshalh House. Bede was entirely on the Latin side, and had small sympathy for the Celts : his account of it, accordingly, is that of a man in whose mind the dispute was settled beforehand ; to him the course of it appears a serene and unanswerable argument on the one side, and a sulky Celtic obstinacy on the other. The con- clusions reached by Oswiu, selfish as they were, seemed to him inevitably true. It must be confessed that sturdy Colman, the Bishop of Lindisfarne, who stood out for the old Celtic usages, made but a poor fight of it. The argu- ment which seemed to Oswiu to be overwhelming has been used ever since by Roman partisans without a shade of hesitation. It is useless to fight this matter over again : the well-disposed are as easily disposed of now as in Oswiu's day ; Bede, at any rate, understood that the issue lay not in this or that minor usage, but in the vital question of independence, as against the claims of Rome. To his eyes the other questions were but small matters, while Colman's dogged obstinacy was a slight on the authority of St Peter through his THE SYNOD OF WHITBY 129 presumed representative and successor. By the ancient Celtic Church, on the other hand, it was felt to be a race-struggle ; and these customs, as one finds it always to be when the weaker race is struggling for independence against the more powerful arms of the stronger, were regarded as so many symbols of liberty and of free existence. No wonder that Bishop Colman withdrew with stern, sad heart, returning to those more distant parts which as yet the long arm of Rome had not reached. Bede does not make it quite clear what position St Hild held, either at the Synod itself, or afterwards, with respect to the decisions come to. We can only gather from slight indications that, while she acquiesced in the new order of things, she was left alone in full command of the community ; and also that her sympathies were with stubborn Colman, rather than with the papal side at Oswiu's Court. Her heart was at Lindisfarne, and with the band of men under Aidan first, and then under Colman. The monkish writers chide, as a rare defect in her character, her attachment to Celtic doctrines and uses. They also remember against her the 130 WHITBY ABBEY resistance with which she met their man, Wilfrid, the champion of the Latin cause. For, in a word, she was a statesman, prudent and capable, caught between two opposite forces of opinion, and obliged to balance. We may surely guess that her heart was with the more independent Celts, and that, like many a later Churchman, she had an instinctive love of freedom, and a patriotism of English life, which refused to bow beneath a Roman yoke. We cannot tell whether those " well-nigh forty oratories," the ruins of which were pointed out in the eleventh century to Reinfrith, were constructed during her rule as Abbess. Nor indeed can we say for certain what their exact use and position was. It might well be that these houses, after- wards styled "oratories," with their dismantled altars, were after all only the Christian households of this earliest period, in which the Celts, following still the most ancient and holiest tradition, still " brake their bread from house to house," and so held communion in the meal of Christian love. Anyhow, we must guard against letting our more modern ideas as to the nature of A CELTIC MONASTERY 131 a monastery mislead us as to St Hild's primitive community. As Canon Atkinson says well, it was "a group of persons who, originally solitary, had, through mutual association, come to band themselves together into a regular community. There would be among them clerical members. . . . The idea of a religious life which excluded the priestly order would indeed have been a strange one in those days ; but it would have been stranger still to think of a community of that nature embracing religious women as well as religious men as mainly clerical, or as containing more of the priestly order than were necessary for the spiritual advantage and welfare of the community at large." l That these " cots," or " oratories," were common in Celtic religious houses is made probable by one or two passages in Bede's Ecclesiastical History. Speaking of Coldingham, 2 in Berwick- shire, near the coast, he mentions the many " casas vel domunculse" of it, which "ad orandum vel legendum factas erant," for the benefit of the 1 Canon Atkinson, " Memorials of "Whitby," p. 249. 2 Coldingham, a few miles north of Berwick, was a cell after- wards of the Cathedral House of Durham. 132 WHITBY ABBEY inmates ; similarly he says that at lona and elsewhere "within the circuit of the walls was a close round which were the ' hospitia ' or lodgings of the community." Before we leave St Hild, we must say a word as to the intellectual activity of her days. For her work was clearly that of a luminous, many- sided woman : pure, simple, and strong she was ; to her falls the glory of having first kindled the never-dying flame of English verse. It was under her rule that the simple neatherd, or farm labourer, or whatever he was, " that Welshman " Caedmon, 1 suddenly broke out into sacred song. He had been a quiet, shy member of the young community, and had perhaps seemed, with his unusual ways and dreamy looks, to be a youth of no great promise ; then, to the amazement of all, he found himself possessed of the great gift of poesy, through visions of the night. The simple teaching of the community in Bible read- i "A few days after I met Mr York Powell (the Regius Professor of History at Oxford, and one of our chief authorities on early literatures), who, in answer to my question, ' What do you make of Csedmon ? ' replied immediately with the words, 'A Welshman.'" Canon Atkinson, " Memorials," p. 33. C^DMON'S LITERARY WORK 133 ings and the peep thereby given him of a far world beyond, with wonders unexplored, had touched his heart and brain, and kindled in him the divine gift of song. Thus the poet, the " maker," the " scop," or shaper of the higher speech of man, who fashioned the English tongue to immortal thoughts, appeared more than twelve hundred years ago in Whitby. His was a noble task, to wed the mysteries of the Bible story to the language of the people ; and so to give to our ancestors an entirely new reading of the divine message. In Csedmon we note the parentage of our present splendid inheritance of English religious poetry ; here begins the work, carried on by many a beloved singer, of every strain of character and thought. Of Milton or of John Bunyan, whose exquisite prose-poem should always be reckoned among the company of the bards, of Herbert, of John Keble, of the household names of English hymnology, Caedmon with his song of the Bible story is the worthy forerunner; he is the brightest jewel in the crown of Whitby's history. It is very well that at last we have awakened to the importance and meaning of Caedmon's gift, and have set up in 134 WHITBY ABBEY Whitby Churchyard, overlooking and blessing the beautiful scene, that tall Anglian cross, embroidered with ancient interlacing ornament, such as the early English loved, and bearing, in the niches of it, effigies of the sweet singers of old, into whose company Ceedmon entered when he received his gift of inspiration. St Hild's community was also famous in its day as a trainer of those who were called to spread the truths of the Gospel: it trained young men in the Gospel mysteries. Out from Streoneshalh came Bosa, Bishop, first of Deira, then of York ; then there was the famous St John of Beverley ; the three first Bishops of the See of York all came from Whitby; St Hedda also, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, was brought up there. The famed St Ninian has left his name to a little chapel at the foot of the bridge over the Esk, on the west side ; but we can trace no other connection between the Apostle to the Picts l and 1 Bede, H.E. iii. 4. The " Dictionary of National Biography," s.v. Niirian, does not indicate that he had anything to do with Whitby. Dr Fowler (Adamnan, 1894) finds no sign of any connection with Yorkshire. " The whole subject of Ninian and ABBESS JELYLJED 135 Streoneshalh : at all events, he belongs to the days before St Hild's house was built. After St Hild's death in 680, the community again accepted a woman as its head. Some time before, St Hild had taken charge of a daughter of King Oswiu, ^Elflged, a young maiden, who dwelt among them, and was educated with the rest. She, now about twenty- six years of age, had by her royal relationships and personal qualities greatly commended herself to the little Christian world in which she moved. So that, when a second Abbess was needed, she was at once chosen for the vacant throne ; and apparently (for we have no sure historical knowledge of her rule) governed the community peaceably and wisely from A.D. 680 to 713. To them, after she had been for some time at tb ; head of the House, there arrived from the North a fugitive band of men led by Bishop Trumwine, who had been dislodged from Abercorn by the inroads his work is one that requires- most careful investigation, far more than it has yet received. It would, if worked out, throw a flood of light on the early Christianity of these islands." J. W. Willis Bund, "Celtic Church," p. 153. 136 WHITBY ABBEY of Picts and Scots and other northern pagans. He claimed shelter and protection from the Abbess of Streoneshalh, and was welcomed in a true spirit of Christian brotherhood by the community ; for the Bishop's company brought a breath from the outer world, and indeed a considerable accession of strength to the House. So he settled in at once, and with his followers was accepted as an integral part of the Streoneshalh community. It may be that Abbess ^Elflsed welcomed the arrival of a Bishop, as the Celtic Houses in Ireland had apparently always had one or more Bishops attached to them ; and without a Bishop the House was shorn of much of its dignity. There was no question as to which of the two, the Bishop or the Abbess, should be the head of the House. ^Elflasd was not going to abdicate her authority ; no one dreamt of the refugee being anything except a subject under her authority. And so the Bishop contentedly took a subordinate position, in exactly the same place that we find St Bridget's Bishop at Kildare occupying as a matter of course ; for the royal lady was true head of the whole body, and POSITION OF A CELTIC BISHOP 137 Trumwine obeyed her voice in all things bearing on the well-being of Streoneshalh. Of course she did not invade his special duties ; nor did he interfere with her headship. These northern houses kept alive that wholesome diversity which always marks a vigorous natural growth. As historians have remarked, if " Augustine's mission had been successful, a dead uniformity would have spread over the country " ; much of our refreshing distinctions, still enjoying a precarious life in different parts of England, would have been obliterated long ago. The Roman custom would have been as merciless towards them as the modern schoolmaster seems inclined to be to-day towards provincial peculiarities. Thus then the permanence of the Celtic spirit in the North of England was a boon, the force of which long survived in these early monasteries. This humble position thus taken up by the fugitive Bishop gives us an opportunity for saying something about another peculiarity of these Celtic communities ; one which makes, perhaps, the most marked difference between a Celtic and a Latin House. This subordination of the Bishop 138 WHITBY ABBEY under the head of the clan, even when that head was a woman, was not peculiar to Streoneshalh. We have already mentioned the exact parallel to it in St Bridget's House at Kildare, where a Bishop, monks or priests, and nuns, were under the control of the Abbess. The Irish Houses, as is well known, had Bishops attached to them. At Holy Island we hear that even the Bishop " must keep the monastic rule." For a Celtic Bishop appears in these early times to have been a kind of adjunct to the saintly character of each House, the chief man among the clergy, entrusted with the proper functions of the episcopal order, but in no way allowed to interfere with the authority of the head .of the clan. His it was to ordain, to consecrate Bishops, to teach things sacred or secular, to ground the people in the faith of Christ, to be a chief pastor to the flock ; but a ruler of the clan never. The Abbot or Abbess was the recognised father or mother of the tribe, which in the outset was always regarded as a group of families connected together by blood-relation. And indeed no Celtic Bishop seems to have made any high-reaching or CELTIC BISHOPS 139 Cyprianic claim of power : he was content to be a respected member of the clan ; he followed Christ's rule that " whosoever will be chief among you let him be your servant " ; he held no territorial rights or rank : there seems to be no evidence that he even fulfilled those duties to which St Paul alludes in sketching his ideal of a Bishop : for he was not the overseer of the affairs of the community, nor their treasurer. His it was to walk humbly and prudently as a saint of God, as an example to the whole community. There is a very great interest in these traces of a Bishop so very unlike the Latin Bishops of our days. Among other things, the non-territorial position of a Bishop made a great overflow of Bishops possible. In St Patrick's life there were 350 Bishops, which, for the beginning of the Christian period, is a marvel. The titles of Saint and Bishop appear to have been almost convertible in Ireland. Mr Willis Bund also points out that if a Bishop in one of these early communities was superseded for misconduct, and had come under the Abbot's justice, the Lector of that community was to 140 WHITBY ABBEY step in and take his place, that is, in social and non-episcopal duties. Doubtless the Lector was chosen because he was also a teacher and reader of Scripture. We are also told of St Bridget that she saw that it was desirable that Kildare should have a man to lead in religious duties ; and therefore she set eyes on one Condlaed, a holy man in the neighbourhood, and came to terms with him ; he came and became the Bishop in her community, helping her to rule. She never apparently ceded one scrap of her authority to him, and seems to have kept him well in order; the legend runs that when he presumed to have an opinion of his own, and went forth for a visit to Rome in direct opposition to her wishes, he was punished by being attacked and torn to pieces by dogs. 1 And the few historic traces of Celtic Bishops which are left to us point the same way. Bede, with his Latin sympathies, says that "the Island had always as its ruler a Priest as Abbot, under whose rule both the * province' (the diocese) and the Bishops themselves it was an unusual order 1 J. W. Willis Bund, " Celtic Church in Wales," pp, 230, 231. CELTIC BISHOPS 141 of things ought to be subject." 1 Again, in a Charter of Honau near Strasburg we find that the Abbot Beatus signed first, then follow seven bishops or priests of eight churches, all tributary to the monastery. 2 This number seven may here be a chance coincidence ; in the Celtic com- munities we know that groups of seven bishops were not uncommon. These groups could not have been made to fit in with any diocesan arrangements. One may safely say that these ancient officials of Christian communities came much nearer to the Apostolic form of usage than did the Latinised Bishops, who represented in fact rather the feudal than the religious arrangements of dioceses. It is refreshing and bracing to come in sight of these Bishops, who had such close resemblances to the earliest Overseers of the infant Church. We are accustomed to one special mediaeval type, and fail to realise any other. Yet these others exist, 1 Bede, H.E. iii. c. 4. "Habere solet ipsa insula rectorem semper Abbatem presbyterum, cujus juri et omnis provincia et ipsi etiam episcopi ordine inusitato debeant esse subject!." 2 Quoted by J. Willis Bund, "Celtic Church in Wales," p. 220. 142 WHITBY ABBEY or have existed ; and it would be better to recognise the varieties : the Greek, the Oriental, the Coptic, the Celtic, the Anglican, the Roman, and many more, and compare them all with those who led the missionary churches of the first and second centuries. Well for us if our churches were always a Christ-clan, of which the Lord is the true Head, and under Him all officers of whatever duties and rank do their faithful work. It is only when we bow before this true Head of the Church, that we learn how these divers hierarchies fall into position, as members of the " new creation " under Jesus Christ our Lord. The very early form of Christian life which we have now described did not long remain un- changed. It was certainly never touched by those imperial rules of order, which were emphasised by the Normans, blessed by the Papacy, and then worked themselves into the modern world for good and evil, as we live in that world to-day : the Irish and Anglo-Saxon Churches had no terri- torial system of their own. In other respects these early communities developed themselves as circumstances pressed. At first we find GROWTH OF LATER MONASTICISM 143 a Christian brotherhood, within stout walls, in which the lay and clerical elements laboured in unity together, to sweeten the toil of life, and make their homes happy for their own good and for that of the community. After a time the stricter notion of a monastery came in ; and, as the ancient clan-life grew weaker, two chief thoughts led : first, the idea of self-dedication, and of a special holiness, which called for separation from family life, till the happy usages of home were by degrees forbidden or forgotten, and the Houses grew to be barracks on the one hand for men, on the other for women. And next came the thought of learning, and the monasteries kept alive some mental energy and thirst for knowledge. Then, thirdly, instead of the simple missionaries of the first period, comes another development, that of men thirsting for holiness and the selfish piety of seclusion, under which men entered on the life of anchorites, and ranged themselves along- side of the hermits in Egyptian cells, or those of the Greek rock- solitudes, the religion of the " Lauras " of old. These were also followed by the manning of the greater churches with groups 144 WHITBY ABBEY of canons, Churchmen who, often with their wives and families, tried to combine the territorial system with their religious duties ; men who showed so much neglect that they made the way for the incoming of the Benedictine monks, and the general subjection of monastic Church-life to the well-known rule of that order. Long before this the Celtic communities had disappeared. The Danes had destroyed that of Streoneshalh : attracted by the obvious "port of entry," and lured by hopes of wealth within the convent walls, they landed there in 867. The Abbey fell, and the strong pagans swept away the simple civilisation of the Celtic and Anglian settlers. What advances that faith had brought, what nobler ideas, what beauties of art, all these things perished at once. As one walks amid the ruins of the later Abbey, one feels that the old world must have been utterly destroyed by these masterful men. Almost the only trace of their skill and artistic taste which appears now above ground is a fragment of the stem of a churchyard cross with interesting carved work of the eighth century. This the ancient House . CELT AND ANGLICAN 145 had raised near their Abbey Church, the sign and proclamation of their faith in the Gospel ; it remains as, it may be, the only tangible relic of that older world, a slight connection for Whitby of this nineteenth century with the mother-house in lona. The place, so destroyed by pagan Norsemen, lay uncared for, with ruined cells, and church unroofed and desecrate, for over two hundred years, from 867 to 1080. The Celtic community had been entirely wiped away ; and during Viking times no one had heart to build anything attractive where it could be seen from the cruising ships. There must be a strong hand to defend the coasts before peace and prosperity again could settle down on them. The very traditions of that older world died out; so that Whitby, more than any other place, provides us with an example of the differences between the earlier and the modern manner of life in community. The days of the period during which Whitby went by the name of Prestebi passed over silently. That Danish settlement did absolutely nothing for the Church history of the time. The town by the river grew K 146 WHITBY ABBEY under their occupation ; in Domesday we read that it was comparatively wealthy at the close of this period ; after the usual way of the Scandinavian plunderer, he had become a settler where he had formerly made a ruin, and had infused into his new home a healthy, vigorous life. This Scandinavian strength brought in the end a fresh woe on the place : for it was in Cleveland that William the Conqueror met with almost the last serious resistance. This he crushed with his accustomed sternness and severity; and the horrible revenge he took, and the miserable destruction wrought among these brave folk, was the seed-corn of the new Abbey of Whitby. For among William's men-at-arms there was one into whose spirit this cruelty brought a great revulsion of feeling. Regnfrith (or Reinfrid) had been one of the Norman officers engaged in bringing down the stiff spirit of these Scandinavian settlers. Soon after 1070 he had retired to the Benedictine House of Evesham, to quiet his conscience as best he could. Happily his was an active spirit ; so that when he became familiar with the Benedictine Rule, then just at its prime, he began to yearn THE BENEDICTINE HOUSE 147 to extend the peaceful blessings of it into those northern regions far away where he had worked such woe a few years before. Two of the Evesham monks, kindled by his earnestness, went with him ; first they travelled farther north, till they came to Jarrow ; and after that, somewhere about 1078, they came south again to Whitby. The mesne- lord of the district, William of Percy, looked favourably on his ambition, and gave him leave to take the site and use the ruined buildings. Out ot these he built a first rough home, and gathered a small company of monks about him. They were organised into a convent by 1080, and Reinfrid became their first Prior. The buildings were mean, the revenues small ; still, here was the nucleus, and round an earnest and pious man, wealth and influence were sure to gather. He was supported by the chief laymen of the district ; monks came in, and with them supplies and means ; churches and carucates of land were given ; and the monastery sprang into full life. Over this Reinfrid ruled well and peacefully, until at last he came to his death as he should. He was turning his repentance and devotion to practical uses, and 148 WHITBY ABBEY was helping with his personal energy at the build- ing of a bridge over the river Derwent, an eager man putting his own hand to the work, when he met with an accident which brought his life to an end. The community then elected Serlo of Percy, brother of the founder of the monastery, as their Prior ; his value as a territorial magnate overbore the just claims of their most intelligent and capable monk, Stephen, who, doubtless hurt by this act of worldly prudence, withdrew from Whitby, retiring to York, where he became the first Abbot of St Mary's. Certain of the monks clave to him, and so made a serious secession ; it was a protest against that worship of wealth and rank which has often marred the better growth of the English Church. Still, the monastery prospered, from the practical and worldly side. William of Percy, the founder, gave more gifts, kinsmen and friends increased the endowment, till they could show that the Priory was important enough to be turned into an Abbey. About the year 1096 the protection of the Percys had brought its reward. But though Serlo had largely been THE PRIORS OF THE HOUSE 149 the cause of this promotion, for some reason unknown he was not allowed to be the first Abbot ; this preferment was granted to another of the family, William, nephew of the founder. We hear of Serlo in 1114 in a charter in which he is mentioned as Prior of the Cell of All Saints in the Fishergate at York, a little house created as a cell of Whitby Abbey. 1 There must have been an early Church for this Abbey. Canon Atkinson holds that before the now remaining ruins "there had been three, and even, in a certain sense, four" stone churches. One was certainly built in the days of William Rufus, under guidance of a certain Master Godfrey. More than once the Northerners ravaged the place again, and left it desolate : yet the brethren clung to the site, returning undismayed to live in the scanty buildings, and occupying themselves with the erection of the Parish Church, which still stands and shows their hand. The architecture of it is Early Norman, probably more than half a century older than the earliest parts of the present Abbey ruins. i Canon Atkinson, " Memorials of Old Whitby," pp. 110, 111. 150 WHITBY ABBEY This noble ruin of an abbey church, which still seems to lord it over the North Sea, was not begun till 1220 or thereabout; the main portion of it was completed by 1260. Then followed a pause for about half a century, till early in the fourteenth century the western part of the nave was completed in the beautiful and rich "decorated" manner, which had by that time grown out of the simpler " Early English Style." It is no part of my plan to describe the fine architectural features of the Abbey ; the character- istics of a full-grown Benedictine House are very well known, and Whitby showed no features differing from all the other well-known Houses of the Order. The Benedictines were, as we all know, a " Papal Militia " : they regarded the English Church from the Latin or Roman point of view ; they did not identify themselves with the natives ; they belonged to a vast institution in many lands alike, with interests and allegiance entirely distinct. They were admirably organised throughout ; their Obedien- tiaries managed the large concern, kept the accounts, were good landlords. These Houses THE BENEDICTINES 151 were a company or college of country gentlemen, territorial and feudal : they owned many churches, and used their revenues for the support of the House ; they troubled themselves little about the evangelisation of the people, leaving that to their vicars, and presently with some indifference saw this active side of religion pass over to the friars : they kept up some learning, had often a good library, with many copies of books. They aimed at freeing themselves from the burdens of their country, for they were no national patriots ; they appealed always from king or bishop to the Papacy ; that is, they interposed the Pope between themselves and the Crown. There could hardly have been any contrast more striking than that between the monks and their predecessors at Whitby. The first convent had been originally of both sexes alike the second of men alone ; the first had been a home of families, the other had no interest in such things ; the first had hardly been a possessor of lands, beyond what they required in the immediate neighbourhood for their support. The Benedictines were a feudal landed aristocracy ; the Celtic House had no 152 WHITBY ABBEY earthly head except the Abbot or Abbess; the Benedictine was the servant of a great foreign potentate. It was from this subjection to Rome, more than from lack of learning, small as Erasmus shows that this was, or from neglect of duty, or deadness of spiritual life, that the Benedictine Houses fell in the sixteenth century. Whitby Abbey lies in a lovely land, one, like many beautiful places, neither fertile nor rich. From the land-side it was hard of access ; and the Cleveland hills seemed to sever the little town and the monastery from the rest of England. When attacks from the sea ended there was a long time of peace, lasting for centuries ; all things went on placidly ; no name of note came forth from the Abbey in these days. They cherished some pet beliefs. We hear that there was in the Abbey Church a stained-glass window which portrayed the Scots, their old foes, us being *' even in the days of William the Bastard a set of cannibals " ! l In such a district as this the ancient course 1 Dugdale's Monasticon Angl., vol. i., " Whitby Abbey." " Vel ad Guilielmi Nothi tempora anthropofagos ! " THE BEAUTIES OF WHITBY 153 of affairs was rarely disturbed. They were natur- ally much offended by the new things of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In Cleveland the " Pilgrimage of Grace " in 1536 found many supporters. Even to our day the district shows a delightful, and indeed a wholesome conservatism, which has rendered it exceedingly interesting. Visitors ought to be happy in this ancient town. In antiquity, in picturesque confusion, in geological variety and interest, in the exquisite beauty of the flora of this land of moors and wooded dells ; in the sweet little rivers, the in- land walks, the charming beaches, the many points of interest along the varied coast, we have enough to make Whitby a very paradise for a contented soul. And from Whitby have come out the first beginnings of many things : hence we have the opening strains of English literature; and from Whitby Pier, last century, Captain Cook sailed forth into the world to begin that marvellous period of expansion which has marked our nation for many years. These many and very varied charms of Whitby will not only fill us with delightful memories, but 154 WHITBY ABBEY should also make us champions of the ancient place, determined that it shall not be ruined by the spoiler of to-day. Our Philistine may not be so openly destructive as the Norseman in his keel ; yet perhaps he is more ruinous to peace and serenity of life than even the fierce Viking was. His invasions swell year by year ; he tramples down the sweet paths of life, making them flat and flowerless. The old Viking, after all, had a great constructive force in him, and proved to be a splendid settler; the modern tripper leaves only desolation and dirty paper behind him. One is thankful to come to a lovely spot like this. It is only by growth of culture on whole- some lines, which quickens our power of enjoy- ment, and strengthens our reverence for God's works, and by man's earnest endeavour to do Him honour, that we can hope to save these beautiful corners of our dear English world from the thoughtless hand of ignorance. IV DURHAM COLLEGE A GLIMPSE OF MEDIAEVAL OXFORD IT is flattering to our North-country pride to see how important a part the Palatinate Bishopric of Durham took in the first beginnings of higher education in England, as it settled into its earliest shape at Oxford. The origin of the " Northern Nation" at that University can be traced home to the wealthy Cathedral Convent, so great that, though it was a Priory, it was always called " the Abbey." It was the leading Benedictine House of the North, on the "New Jerusalem," the famous hill protected by the one true Durham river, the Wear. I suppose there can be no doubt that, for nearly a century before my story begins, Oxford was a place of teaching; but Oxford as 155 156 DURHAM COLLEGE yet had no buildings, nor had even the thought of a College been conceived. It is to Durham that the world owes this step in the permanence of higher education. The end was noble and worthy, though, as you will see, the original impulses which led to it were not very dignified. The chief personages were a humiliated Baron and a jealous prior ; the one desiring to buy his peace with the powerful convent; the other, to get rid of a rival who had offended him. It may be prudent, in describ- ing the origin of Institutions, "ad Deos referre auctores " ; still, as a matter of fact, when we look into the past, we see that there has always been plenty of human nature at work, and that of no very exalted kind. Let us then sketch out the beginnings of the " Northern Nation " at Oxford. A strange sight was to be seen in 1260, at the gate of the Church of Durham ; probably at that northern entrance on which even then the strange bronze head was on the wooden door, as a refuge for hunted ill-doers. John of Balliol, a great lord among other JOHN OF BALLIOL 157 places, lord of Barnard Castle eager to strengthen himself in his fortresses, " had unjustly vexed," as Matthew Paris tells us, 1 " and enormously damni- fied the Churches of Tynemouth and Durham." We know not how, but so it was, that the Churchman in the end proved stronger than the powerful lay lord. This may have been due to the amazing authority exercised by the Palatine Bishop over everything between Tyne and Tees. At any rate, Walter of Kirkham, the Bishop, made common cause with his monks of Durham, and brought this haughty noble to his knees. And, as the Chronicler of Lanercost, with tantalising neglect of details, tells us, "as pride would rather be confounded than corrected, this man, John of Balliol, hastened to add contempt to rashness. Then the Bishop was greatly roused up, and with such sagacity brought his rebellious son to obedience that in the end, in sight of all the people, the haughty noble submitted to be flogged by the hand of a chief dignitary (probably the Prior) at the gate of the Church of Durham, and then and there promised that he would create, 1 Vol. v. p. 528, Ed. Luard. 158 DURHAM COLLEGE as a permanent endowment, a sum sufficient to support a group of scholars at Oxford." It was from this energetic action of Bishop Walter that Balliol College sprang, destined after- wards to outstrip the small foundation which Durham Monastery was soon to set up for itself by the side of it. This John of Balliol, thus flagellated at Durham, was father of the better known John Balliol, whom Edward I., acting as arbitrator, afterwards named King of Scotland. The earlier John must have had something of both the ambition and the softness which we can trace so clearly in his son. We do not know to what extent the "Antistes" laid it on his shoulders whether he was duly stripped for it, nor do they tell us where it was inflicted ; we must be content with pointing out the important fact that this struggle, and the consequent flagellation, did set going the College system at Oxford, and so greatly advanced the stability and efficiency of the Oxonian " Studium Generale," that place of general or liberal education, as it came to be styled in the next century. THE NORTH AND OXFORD 159 In fact, in the outset Oxford University seems to be connected in every way with our North- country world. Not only did Balliol College spring from Durham, but at a slightly earlier time University College owed its origin also to Durham. William of Durham, a man of note, who had studied in the University of Paris, and had returned to our northern parts to be Rector of Wearmouth, and who was afterwards Arch- bishop-Elect of Rouen, at his death in 1249 left a sum of 310 marks to be invested for the support of Masters in Arts in the University of Oxford. This money presently was used to buy the build- ing occupied by these Masters, which was called " The Great Hall of the University." From this beginning sprang University College, which has always claimed a still earlier and a royal origin, though in fact it began a little later than Balliol College. The years run closely together: William of Durham died in 1249 ; John of Balliol's whipping took place in 1260 ; Walter of Merton's scholars were set going in 1263, though the proper date of Merton College is 1266; and lastly, Durham College followed very soon after, 160 DURHAM COLLEGE beginning in 1286. And so it came about that Oxford from the beginning was divided into a northern and a southern nation ; and though this distinction died out after a time, it was very well marked at first. The " Boreales " were composed of North Englishmen and Scots, with a Northern Proctor as their representative ; the " Australes" were the Southern English, the Irish, Welsh, and the Men of the Marches, also with their own Proctor. At the outset the difference was very considerable, the Southerners being the kinsfolk of Walter of Merton, who held property, and were landlords corporate ; the Northerners, in the case of the men of Balliol, were merely pensioners, receiving pay from endowments not their own. Merton was not monastic in origin ; Balliol was largely such, at first. The Balliol students dwelt outside the walls of Oxford, to the north ; the Merton lads were inside the city walls, on the southern side of the town. Durham College was not long in following the example of Balliol, and at once ranged itself up with the "Northern Nation." If Balliol owes her first impulse to the somewhat discreditable ORIGIN OF THE COLLEGE 161 penitence of John of Balliol, it is to be feared that the first origin of Durham College also was not much to the honour of the North. We have the account of it from the hand of the ill-used Robert of Graystanes, who was afterwards so badly treated by Edward III. Graystanes is not master of a clear style: his Latin is very mediaeval. Still he gives a striking account of the origin of Durham College, marked probably by some personal feeling, and rather obscure on one or two leading points. I will give it, as well as I can, in a kind of shortened translation : " Hugh of Derlington was twice Prior of Durham. In the interval between the two periods of his office, while he had withdrawn into his old conditions of being a simple monk, Richard of Houghton, at that time Sub-Prior of Durham, following the use of his office, went down to Finchale, a cell of Durham Abbey, to hold his visitation. Hugh of Derlington being then there, Richard enquired of him, ' To whom did he make confession ? ' and Hugh, nettled at being treated as a subordinate, answered sharply, ' I know, my son, my duty, and can take care of my own soul just as well as you can of yours.' Hence sprang up a most unchristian hatred L 162 DURHAM COLLEGE between Hugh and Richard, and when, a short time later, Hugh was made Prior again, he let poor Richard feel what a mistake he had made by interfering in the matter of his duties. Richard, says good Graystanes the chronicler, was a juvenis gratiosus, a good-looking, popular young man, and Hugh was small enough to regard him as a rival; and so the chronicler goes on : Hugh appointed Richard of Houghton Prior of Lytham (to get him out of the way) ; and when he was doing well there (quum ipse ibi prospere se haberet), he shifted him to be ' Conventual of Coldingham ' out of mere spite ; and he also (probably before these two appoint- ments, while Richard was at home at Durham, and acting as Magister or tutor to the younger monks in the * primitive sciences,' i.e., in Grammar, Logic and Philosophy) made arrange- ments to send the younger monks to study at Oxford, and gave them good endowments there, in order that the influence of Richard should be lessened and the ground cut away from under his popularity by the removal of his best pupils to a distance." This, so far as we can interpret it, is the substance of Robert of Graystanes' story. It casts an unpleasant light on the condition of things within a great monastery, and also tells us how Durham came to have a settlement at THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 163 Oxford. This incident may easily have been a mere accident in the general movement going on at the time. The end of the thirteenth century was a time of awakened life; at such times men turn again and again with true instincts, and with a persistence unshaken by failure, to the belief that education alone can raise mankind to higher things. It was so in the days of the Renaissance and the Reformation ; it is notably so in our own stirring times ; it was equally so in the thirteenth century, in which, after the Crusades, men seemed to wake up to better aspirations, till they began to feel amid the darkness for the way towards knowledge. The life of Roger Bacon, rightly understood, gives us our clue. The awakened energies of the Franciscans and Dominicans fill this time : laymen and Churchmen alike set themselves to the work of education. Mr Rashdall, in his work on the Universities in the Middle Ages, speaks of the intervention of the monks in education as being a matter undertaken " only very tardily." It is perhaps more true to say that the great houses moved 164 DURHAM COLLEGE more slowly than their freer neighbours, the friars, the Franciscans and Dominicans ; and also that while the friars sought to influence the common folk, the monks cared only to do the best they could for their own brethren. And so while the Mendicants settled down in Oxford betimes (Dominicans in 1221 and Franciscans in 1224), and at once took a prominent part in University education, the Benedictines on their part looked round for convenient places in which to house a few of their young monks, and gave themselves little trouble about the general advance of thought. Only some forty to fifty years lay between the first arrival of the Mendicants and the beginnings of Gloucester Hall and Durham College. The University certainly did not spring from the monastic schools. Indeed, it may also be a question whether the intellectual life of the monastery at home was the better for the use made of Oxford. Instead of having a school at home, with an intelligent monk at the head of it, and a group of young men interested in the " Primitive Sciences," they transported these WHY SENT TO OXFORD 165 livelier elements to Oxford, whereby they left themselves, so far, deprived of life. Here and there a young monk returning to his cloister may have quickened them a bit; and it is interesting to know that many of the Oxford students were afterwards promoted to high office in Durham "Abbey." Here one might enter on a very interesting question Why these Northerners sent their young men to Oxford rather than to any other place ? It is a question which admits of a fair answer. (1) The importance in very early times of Oxford, mentioned in pre-Roman documents as on a par with London; (2) the selection of Oxford as a centre for great assemblies ; (3) the nearness of Dorchester, an ecclesiastical centre, and of Bensington, a military centre ; (4) the singular safeness of the place with London below it, on the Thames, blocking the water- way against the Danes ; a town standing, as Oxford does, on a thin tongue of healthy gravel at the junction-point of two rivers rivers run- ning through clay marshes, and often impassable for months ; and lastly (5) being on the 166 DURHAM COLLEGE border stream between Mercia and Wessex, and thereby attainable from both divisions of England. These were the chief points, which I forbear to draw out simply remarking, as I pass by, that it is clear that the Durham authorities did not for some time look on Oxford as the necessary place for their men ; they had also a cell at Stamford ; and would at one time have wel- comed Northampton as a convenient and excellent place for their students. Durham College was in fact nothing more than a cell of the great monastery at home. For divers reasons the larger houses usually had such annexes ; and St Cuthbert's headquarters had no less than eight of them. These were : Durham College at Oxford ; the Priory of Finchale ; that of Holy Island ; Coldingham ; Jarrow, so glorious through the great name of Bede ; Wearmouth, where Bede also was ; Lytham ; and lastly, St Leonard's by Stamford. These cells were useful to the mother-house in various ways ; Durham College and St Leonard's were helpful for education. When the monastery woke up to the needs of teaching, it knew no A CELL OF THE "ABBEY" 167 better way of meeting the case than by such subsidiary institutions. So Hugh of Darlington, and Richard of Houghton, priors of energy and sense, saw that if the monastic system was to retain any hold on the thought of the age, it must not shrink from the arena of intellectual life. It speaks well for their sagacity that they saw clearly that a college system of some definite form was wanted. In fact they led the way towards such a system, which has lasted ever since, with, on the whole, notable results on English higher education. We must, then, in spite of all the evidence as to monastic idleness and indifference, give them full credit for this effort. It may be true, as our Durham Bishop, the famous " Philobiblon," Richard (of Aungerville) of Bury (A.D. 1333-45), says in his pungent way, that the monks were " more intent on toasts than on texts " ; still we have in Durham College a tribute to their sense of the worth of learning, and an effort, perhaps far more strenuous than would be attempted now, to provide means by which the newer 168 DURHAM COLLEGE knowledge should reach the well-to-do classes of the day, and so countervail to some extent the dangers of wealthy sloth and self-content. In the year 1279 a chapter general of the Benedictine Order imposed a tax of two pence in the Mark on the revenues of all their houses in the province of Canterbury in order to maintain a Hall in Oxford as a " Studium Generale," in which their monks should be lodged. This may have roused the Durham community to act. They made their first purchase of land at Oxford in 1286, when Mabel, Abbess of Godstow, granted them a site outside the city walls on the north side ; this, with two other plots obtained from the Prior and Convent of St Frideswide, made up a piece of ground of from five to six acres, adjoining the site on which Balliol College was soon to be built. It is an interesting example of the persistence of English institutions, that the present Trinity College at Oxford, which stands on the site of Durham College, and incorporates some of the old buildings, still pays yearly to Christ Church a quit rent of five shillings, which represents certain small sums WHEN ESTABLISHED 169 due from the old Durham College to the monasteries of Godstow and St Frideswide as rents arising out of these transactions ; and this continues though the three original institutions are swept away and are inherited by Trinity and Christ Church, standing on their sites. When Richard of Houghton became Prior of Durham, in 1290, he completed this purchase of land, and began building on it. It was, no doubt, a plain house, standing on the north side of the town ditch (Candich), to the east of the Balliol site. These two bodies had much in common, in their origin and their Northern connections. Somewhat later than the time we are now speaking of, Balliol, receiving a new constitution, had (instead of a regular visitor) a Commission on which Durham was strongly represented, for, beside the Vice- Chancellor of the University, two of the four members of it were the Bishop of Durham and the Prior or Warden of Durham College. Durham College, throughout monastic, soon reached its full growth, and made no further 170 DURHAM COLLEGE advances. It never, like Balliol, grew to celebrity. It was always small and poor in income. Mr Rashdall is justified by the facts when he says severely that " only very tardily were they (the monks) shamed by the intellectual activity and consequent fame and influence of the Mendicants into some- what feeble efforts to rescue their orders from the reproach of entire ignorance" (vol. ii. p. 476); and again (vol. ii. p. 480) he says, " These monastic colleges possess very little importance in the history either of learning or of education." For they proved valueless in the presence of either Philosophy or Theology. They aimed only at something like the Church training of to-day for clergymen. They wanted a select few of their younger monks, not to be great theo- logians, not to be leaders of thought, but men instructed sufficiently to pick up a fair general theological knowledge, and to continue in a state in which they were " as little interested in the controversies of the age as in the practical work of the Church " all which things were still left to the friars. At first the Bishops of Durham did not BISHOP RICHARD OF BURY 171 interfere with the Oxford College : but before the plan of sending the young monks to Oxford was fifty years old, there came to the see a new kind of Bishop, one who had been brought up among the learned; had been tutor to the boy who was afterwards Edward III., and had been rewarded for his help by the wealthy Bishopric of Durham, snatched by royal hands from the excellent Robert of Graystanes, whom the monks had elected, and who had been installed and actually consecrated in 1333. Richard d'Aunger- ville, of Bury, at once took an interest in the College and contemplated a permanent endow- ment for it ; he certainly meant to leave his fine library of MSS. to it. It seems from the catalogues existing that his wishes never found fulfilment ; his books never found their way to Oxford, nor did his endowment take place. He persuaded Edward III. to promise the College the valuable rectory of Simondsburn, to be given under the condition that the College should support a Prior and twelve monks of Durham, so about doubling their number. But this grant never took place, and Simondsburn, by strange 172 DURHAM COLLEGE twist of fortune, came at last to be among the forfeited possessions of Lord Derwentwater, and so passed into the hands of Greenwich Hospital, to which it still belongs. And Bury's Library "MSS. more than all the Bishops of England had then in their keeping" never went to Oxford. We have full lists of the Durham College books, and there are no traces of Bishop Bury's collection ; indeed (it is sad to say it of so great a personage) he died overwhelmed with debt, and some of his books were sold, as valuable assets, to St Alban's Abbey. He had stated his intentions clearly in his great work, the " Philobiblon," chap, xviii. : " Nos autem ab olim in praecordiis mentis nostrae propositum gessimus radicatum, quatenus opportunitate temporibus expectatis divinitus aulam quandam in reverenda universitate Oxoniensi, omnium artium liberalium nutrice praecipua, in perpetuam eleemosynam fundare- mus necessariisque redditibus dotaremus ; quam numerosis scholaribus occupatam, nostrorum librorum jocalibus ditaremus ut ipsi libri et singuli eorundem communes fierent, quantum ad usum et studium non solum scholaribus aulae dictae sed per eos omnibus Universitatis praedictae studentibus in aeternum." BURY'S "PHILOBIBLON" 173 And, indeed, Bury's fame must rest, not on what he did, in which he was not successful, but on the library that he had, and on his love for books and encouragement of learning, also on what he wrote in his sarcastic " Philobiblon." He entered cheerfully into the permanent struggle between monks and friars, denouncing the tricks by which the latter attracted adherents : " Uncinis pomorum, ut populus fabulatur, puerulos ad religionem attrahitis." 1 And did he not also hate women, calling them " two-legged beasts " ? This we may see from his chap. iv. : " We used to have some quiet lockers in our inner chamber, but alas ! in these wicked days we are sent out into exile outside the gates. Our places are taken now by dogs and paupers, now by a two-legged beast, sc., a woman, whose living with clerks was formerly forbidden, and of whom we always used to teach our pupils that they must shun them more than asps or basilisks. And therefore this beast is always envious of our studies, never to be appeased ; we are driven into some corner protected only by spiders' webs ; she scolds us and scowls on us, and abuses us with virulent speeches, and shows us to be unnecessary and idle guests in 1 " Philobiblon," chap. vi. 174 DURHAM COLLEGE the household, and in the end advises that we should be bartered away for costly bonnets, for silk and satin, for cloth twice dipped, for garments, for wool and linen." So Bury waxes eloquent on the wrongs of MSS., like holy Job sitting in the dust. For more than a century after the beginning of Durham College, it was nothing but a decent house, a "mansus proprius, in quo degebant octo monachi Dunelmenses, aut semper ad minus quinque vel quatuor," under a Gustos, a Warden or Prior, set over them by the Prior of Durham. And even this decent house, with its chapel, and book-room, and dining-hall, was not secured to them without a struggle. In 1316, Gilbert Elwyk, the first Prior of Durham College whose name has been handed down to us, is found appealing to Durham for advice and help under difficult circumstances. The Chancellor of Oxford and his suite, it appears, were living in Durham College without paying any rent. When asked for rent by the monks (in the Chancellor's absence) the suite refused, packed up their goods, and migrated elsewhere, which was mean enough. QUARRELS WITH THE CHANCELLOR 175 Gilbert adds that the Chancellor on his return declared that the monks had treated him badly, had turned him out of house and home, and he claimed, like an Irish tenant, full reinstatement; and this, says poor Gilbert, would mean the establishment of a complete free right of residence without any payment, and this the Hall, vexed by damage from the Scots, whose incursions far away in the North had cut off their supplies, and burdened by the heavy expenses of the principal at his appointment, could not endure. Gilbert adds that all men feared to support his claim against two such powerful men as the head of the University and the Archbishop, till one graduate in Civil Law, Master Simon of Stanes, was found willing to face the danger and to protect the Durham Monastery. And Gilbert adds a hint of worse: "This," he says, "is the matter at large, but there are many things which cannot be set down in writing, and so I have sent you the best man I have, who will tell you, and you may trust him for the truth." How the difficulty was surmounted we do 176 DURHAM COLLEGE not know. In later days we find the Chancellor still living in Durham College. 1 About this time efforts were being made to quicken monastic indifference by organising the Benedictine members of the University ; a general statute of the order directed that every monastery of any size should keep a master to teach the monks Grammar, Logic and Philosophy. This was passed in 1335 ; it clearly pointed towards the University connection, for it aimed at fitting young men for Oxford. But nothing serious was attempted till Hatfield's time (A.D. 1380); he, a great prelate, left a legacy of 280 marks, say 3000 2 a large sum for those days in the hands of trustees, one of whom was William Walworth, the famous Mayor of London (this dates the bequest as having been made in 1380), for the benefit of Durham College. Another of the trustees was Utred Bolton, a very interesting 1 On 20th March, 1448-49, an Assize of Victuals was held before Gilbert Kymer the Chancellor, in his chamber in Durham College. 2 We may reckon this 280 marks as equal in our day to about 3000 a year; though these calculations are very uncertain. ENDOWMENT OF THE COLLEGE 177 member of the Durham House. This bequest was laid out presently in the advowsons of three or four livings, and certain land in Durham Bishopric. Bishop Hatfield also framed a definite con- stitution for the College. There should be eight student monks, " to give their attention chiefly to Philosophy and Theology " ; one of these to be Warden ; and with them eight secular students in Grammar and Philosophy, to be selected by the Prior of Durham or the five senior monks ; of these seculars four should be from Durham County, two from Allertonshire, two from Howdenshire ; these were practically servitors, older lads educated free of cost and doing all " honesta ministeria " for the College. They could continue at Oxford for seven years, and were throughout called " pueri " ; their condition was completely lay, even if now and then one of them was permitted to take the vows. The revenue of the College eventually stood at 280 marks. The manner of selection is described for us in the " Rites of Durham," chap, xlix., a work written by a man who had seen the last of it all with his own eyes. M 178 DURHAM COLLEGE "There was alwayes vi novices, which went daly to schoule within the House, for the space of vii yere ; and one of the oldest Mounckes, that was lernede, was appoynted to be there tuter. The sayd novices had no wages, but meite, drinke, and clothe, for that space. The maister or tuteres office was to se that they lacked nothing, as cowles, frocks, stammyne, beddinge, bootes and socks. . . . And yf the maister dyd see that any of theme weare apte to lernyng, and dyd applie his booke, and had a pregnant wyt withall, then the maister dyd lett the Prior have intellygence. Then, streighteway after, he was sent to Oxforde to schoole, and there dyd lerne to study Devinity." 1 Thus then stood the humble College, head- quarters of the Northern Benedictines, who used it (as the York monks did also) as a well-organised lodging-house. There it stood, a solid outpost of monasticism in the hostile land of learning, to protect the young monks against secular teaching, and to give them such training as might make them better fit to cope with the rising forces of opinion, or with such new institutions as, for 1 MSS. Roll. "Paid to four Novices goiug to Oxford for carriage 6s. 8d., and courtesy 6s. 8d." THE CHAPEL AND LIBRARY 179 example, the definitely secular College of Merton. They got help in 1407 from Durham to build for themselves a Chapel. 1 The Durham monastery gave them 22 in that year, 2 and 5, 18s. 4d. in the following year, for it. And hi the years between 1417 and 1436 they built a library for their supply of MSS. ; a building which still stands, the one connecting link between this ancient monastic house and the modern Trinity College. It was during the time of this building that the College had a sharp tussle to secure its rights and liberties. In 1337 Pope Benedict XII., in his constitution for the order, had laid it down that, in order to secure discipline among the monastic ^lakiston, in "Collectanea, O.H.S.," vol. iii. p. 71, gives the MS. account of the Aedificatio Capellae 1406-1408. This Chapel is figured in Logan's view of Trinity College, taken before it was replaced by the present Chapel a building with three bays, each with a good perpendicular window, and no doubt an east window of the same type and at the west end, instead of an Ante-Chapel, a passage through, into the Quad- rangle behind, with rooms over. 2 Dona et Exennia. Et ad aedificationem Capellae Oxoniae %2li., and in 1408 (with a similar entry), 118s. 4d. 180 DURHAM COLLEGE students, there should be appointed in the chapters of the different provinces in which such University life existed one Abbot or Prior to look after all the young monks ; and the Prior of the Black monks at Oxford claimed this power over Durham College. The College rose up in arms against this invasion of its liberties ; it made haste to show that it had its own privileges from ancient days ; in 1422 the Durham College Benedictines drew up an able paper, to show that the College had existed independently long before Pope Benedict XII.'s statutes and constitutions. In fact they resisted the attempt to bring them under more control ; they wanted no outside monitor. They ended, however, by saying that the common Prior might be a useful person, and that, as he could be regarded as a representative or Proctor of the order, they therefore of their free good-will, if not compelled thereto, would be willing to bear their pro rata share in providing his yearly salary. The College accounts, however, do not betray any payment for such a purpose ; and it is probable that they escaped all charges on this score. The Papal Constitution of 1337 had ordered each THE MONASTIC ARRANGEMENTS 181 Benedictine House to send five per cent, of their total number of monks to Oxford, under the Prior's charge. Hitherto the Northern houses had sent, as they thought well, one or two young monks to Durham College ; and the Southerners the same to Gloucester Hall. We have, I fear, no trustworthy information as to the numbers so sent. The great Durham House sent six, which was much above five per cent., and sometimes as many as eight were there ; as to the others there are few data. Throughout the fourteenth century the story of the College runs smoothly. There are few signs of discomfort or disorder within the walls ; the MS. rolls are numerous for this period, and would inevitably have betrayed it, had there been troubles. There were clearly difficulties about finance; the College had never enough to be easy and the efforts of patrons do not seem to have been very successful; the impoverishment of the mother-house through the Scottish invasions in the middle of the fourteenth century doubtless drained away much of their resources. 182 DURHAM COLLEGE In the middle of that century, also, came the great trouble of the St Scolastica's riot in Oxford, a disturbance largely directed against monastic students. The University had but just returned from the suspension caused by the epidemic usually styled "the Black Death," and was both weak and disorderly. The Mayor and Sheriffs of the town undertook the charge of discipline ; many of the Halls, formerly occupied by students, were resumed by citizens. There were many matters of irritation. And thus it was that on St Scolastica's Day (10th Feb., 135f) there broke out in a tavern, where such things usually do begin, a huge "town and gown row," in which we are told that the monkish students were especially maltreated. We hear that forty scholars or masters were slain; and many wounds inflicted. The contemporary low Latin poems are full of curious touches : one I cannot resist quoting. 1 The mixture of Latin and English is quite Macaronic. " Urebat portas agrestis plebs populosa : Post res distortas videas quae sunt viciosa, 1 " Collectanea," vol. iii. p. 185. THE ST SCOLASTICA RIOT 183 Vexillum geritur nigrum, sle, sle, recitatur. Credunt quod moritur rex, vel quod sic simulatur. Clamant havak. havok, non sit qui salvificetur : Smygt faste, gyf good knok, post hoc nullns dominetur ; Cornua sumpserunt, et in illis owt resonantes, Clericulos quaerunt." l Much mischief was done, many books destroyed ; it was a revolt against learning, against leisure, against lordship. The numbers in the University fell lower and lower: Wood tells us that "out of two hundred schools only twenty were in use a century after." The whole force of the University henceforth centred in its colleges, easy and safe, a sedate oligarchical government which lasted till long after I became a Don at Oxford. And not only did this fine sedative process affect the constitutional life of Oxford, but it also showed itself in the way in which the old-fashioned education resisted, and, for a time, beat out of the field the heralds of 1 A singular echo of this we find in two ancient Oxford usages : the horn-blowing on May morning, and the curious survivals of Town and Gown Rows on the 5th of November, in which I can remember how the agrestis plebs populosa used to stream into Oxford from the neighbouring villages for the fun of the row. 184 DURHAM COLLEGE the new learning. It was the scene of a hard tussle between the friars and the outer world (to which, to their credit be it said, the monkish houses were not altogether hostile), when the voice of John Wycliffe proclaimed a return to a more reasonable faith and a more reasonable theology based on Holy Scripture and a simpler view of the Eucharist, which should replace the scholastic mysteries of faith and language. In the forefront of this Oxford strife stood a man of whom not much is known, but who must have been a fine specimen of a Northumbrian, Owtred of Bolton (or Boldon), a Durham man, one of the monks living at Oxford, and a man of repute. Wycliffe "represents admirably that specu- lative ferment of which fourteenth - century Oxford was the centre." It showed us "the last effort of expiring scholasticism ; it proved that the schools could not effect either the intellectual or the religious emancipation at which Wycliffe aimed." The failure of Wycliffe's reformation was a real misfortune to learning ; while the triumph of Archbishop Arundel was 185 the death-knell of the old Oxford scholasticism ; it created nothing instead, and left Oxford intellectually bankrupt. It is not quite easy to understand Owtred's position : the Benedictine pride, joined with a desire for some higher steps in education, and with a great contempt for the popular and ignorant position of the friars, made him not so much an adherent of Wycliffe, but an eclectic supporter of his views. One knows many an Oxford man of this day who faces the ignorant fervour of our nine- teenth-century curates with something of Owtred's spirit, with a revolt against mysticism and the priestly spirit, and yet with a mind disdaining to condescend to that simplicity of faith which marked Wycliffe's work : Wycliffe's position corresponded to that frank love of truth which characterises the best minds of our times. Probably Owtred sympathised with Wycliffe enough to see how far more noble he was than his adversaries, though the monastic mould in which he was himself cast would not let him accept the strong personal and Biblical develop- ment of Wycliffe's faith. 186 DURHAM COLLEGE There has lately been reprinted a curious poem of this time entitled Tryvytlam de Laude Universitatis Oxonice. Tryvytlam was a friar, probably a Franciscan, and his "praises" largely take the form of a violent attack on three men, of whom Utred is abused with the utmost virulence : " Ab Aquilone malum," he says, " evil comes from the North," re-echoing Jeremiah. Utred (or Owtred) had written treatises against the friars, and being " one of the most learned of the Benedictines of his time," was naturally abused with the strongest language. So he is called "a well-armed beast with double horns," and again "improvidus et sine consilio"; for the poet does not disdain to use the ancient weapon of making puns and jokes on the adversary's name. And so Utred is out of rede, a man without counsel or wisdom, as the two words signify. " Hie Owtrede dicitur apto vocabulo, Ut pnefert nominis interpretacio ; Cum sit improvidus et sine consilio, Quern magis dirigit Velle quam Racio." l i Collectanea," vol. iii. p. 208. UTRED OF BOLDON 187 Tryvytlam hurries on : " His writings are fantastic ; his syllogisms have no middle ; he is all abstractions till nothing solid remains ; he stammers out his syllables ; he vomits forth dregs of poison. Above all the other beasts, he has the foulest mouth, full of blasphemies. If he goes on, Oxford will be done for." And this was a friar's account of one of the best monks ever sent up to Oxford. 1 He was probably Warden of Durham College in 1360, but did not stay long there, for we find him Prior of Finchale in 1367-72, and again in 1377- 97. It was during this period, in 1380, that Bishop Hatfield made him one of his trustees for the endowment of Durham College. This is the meagre history of this "pura bestia," as Tryvytlam calls him : and even the foul-mouth friar does not breathe a word against his moral character. Many, no doubt, of the young Oxford scholars sympathised with Utred, and with the great master, Wycliffe; still in 1 In 1359 Utred received two shillings from the Sacrist at Durham for his expenses (Domino Uthredo versus Oxoniam, 2s.); and in the same year help from Jarrow for his degree. 188 DURHAM COLLEGE every way the doom was on the University; it could not accept reform, and settled down to quiet slumber for a century and more. As one has written, " In the councils of the fifteenth century, the voice of Oxford is never heard." The earlier excitements and questions of the Renaissance on the religious side seem to have passed unnoticed by Oxford. Under the surface, no doubt, something of Wycliffe's pure faith and bible-study continued ; and when the great movement of reformation followed after Luther's disturbance of the monastic slumbers of Germany, there was, as Mr Rashdall says, " A tradition of practical piety, of love for Scripture, and of discontent with the prevailing ecclesiastical system, which had lingered long after the days of Wycliffe in the hearts of the English people, and not least in obscure corners of the two University towns." The Register of Bishop Fox, at Winchester, bears striking testimony to the truth of this ; on the eve of the Reformation, Fox sets himself to crush humble Wycliffites, as an ordinary matter of course. Great movements in England are usually FROM DURHAM TO OXFORD 189 carried through by obscure and unconsidered persons. For England is, after all, the land of the people, and their voice, if roused for what is pure and true, will in the end prevail. We have still to sketch, as briefly as possible, from such old sources as still remain, the manner of life in this monastic college. When the picked youths had been selected, some as junior monks, others as "seculars," or lads picking up learning and paying for it by service, it was obviously the first business to get them from Durham to Oxford. We have, unfortunately, no itinerary, but we may make sure that they moved from one monastery to another, following the lines, well marked, and fairly safe, which had been made by the local traffic. They went first, no doubt, - to the great house at York, thence through Selby. We do not, for example, know whether they kept on due south, after leaving York, and so straight for Oxford, or whether they slanted eastwards, so as to pass through Stamford, with which place the monks of Durham had much communication, not merely at the time of the 190 DURHAM COLLEGE secession (A.D. 1334), but generally, because they had a cell there, St Lawrence's, at which the travellers would be among friends. Anyhow, the communications followed well-known lines, for there was perpetual coming and going. 1 The young men travelled on horseback, 2 going in fair-sized parties, for company and safety. The Cellarer's Roll of 1456-57 shows that the horses were hired usually, not bought for that roll contains a simple little tragedy for it tells us that the Cellarer had to pay 5s. 7d. for one horse hired from John Coken to go to Oxford, and it had died on arriving there, from fatigue and over-work. A fat young monk, indifferent as to his beast, had ridden the poor creature too hard. " Pro uno equo conducto de Job. Coken versus Oxoniam et ibidem pro nimio labore mortuo, 5s. 7d." To each student was given a sum of money, usually 3s. 4d., for 1 The itinerary of a Bede Roll, rf. that of Priors Burnaby and Ebchester in the Durham Library, shows how they moved from House to House. 2 See Roll of 1501, 1502 : Henrico Thees equitanti versus Oxoniam, 2s. 4d. et de 6s. 8d. solutis d'no W. Berkley, d'no Hugoni Whitehede et d'no Joh. Halywell equitantibus versus Oxoniam. THE JOURNEY TO OXFORD 191 travelling expenses : l they could not have had many hotel bills to pay. When they reached Oxford at last, probably after a fortnight's journey, and many small adventures, the " pueri " or secular scholars had to appear before a notary (who got Is. for 'each) to take an oath of allegiance to the College and University. 2 Then they were settled into their rooms. The College had a chapel and a hall, a buttery and a kitchen, a common room or parlour for all the members of the upper rank (the seculars or servitors lived in the kitchen and their large bedroom), a room sitting-room and bedroom in one for the Warden, and twelve chambers for the inmates, with twenty beds in them ; two of these chambers had but one bed each ; that is, that adjoining the library, and doubtless occupied by the librarian, and that over the gate or entrance into the College, 3 in which the porter slept. The chambers for the monks had each two beds ; and the " boys " had three rooms, with five 1 1516-17, et solutum Willelmo Wylome, domino Wyllelmo Hulme et domino Stephano Merlay versus Oxoniam, 10s. 2 Raine, Hist. Dun. App. clxxxviij. 8 Near where Kettell Hall now stands. 192 DURHAM COLLEGE wooden beds and some press-beds so that there was no great crowding anywhere, as the seculars were usually only seven or eight in number. Thus there were about fifteen beds for the six or eight monks ; so that the community could very well accommodate a friend or two, and might have let chambers to monks from other houses. We can learn how these rooms were furnished. On the walls of the Warden's chambers there were tapestries hung ; the other rooms had bare walls. For the chapel were plenty of vestments, embroidery and altar trappings, and such silver as was needed ; also a fair collection of service books. The hall was almost unfurnished, four tables, three forms, fire-irons, silver or brass vessels, and knives and forks. The house had some fine pieces of plate, not many, but heavy and good ; also two-and-twenty spoons. The common room had beautiful tapestries, used on the back of the great bench as bench- covers, with birds inwoven, and three cushions therewith ; an arm-chair, a long-settle, a cup- board, a little form, nine " skips " or rush hassocks under their feet; two tables, a pair FURNITURE AT THE COLLEGE of trestles, andirons, and an iron candelabra fastened to the wall. The Warden's chamber had much the same furnishing there were in it two beds with handsome canopies and curtains ; an arm - chair, a long - settle, two cupboards, a little bench, a table, poker and tongs, and in his study a real good bed, with tapestry embroidered with the names of Jesus Christ and a star, washing materials, and towels. The others all washed at the common trough. They had a stable and harness-room, and three horses stand- ing there for their use. 1 It will be seen that the furniture was simple and scanty, beautiful as we might think it now ; and modern requirements, with their innocent or foolish luxuries, were altogether unknown. It was a common life, in a small and limited society, with few excitements, un- eventful, and fit for lads of narrow minds. It is rather difficult to describe what these . i According to the Bull of Urban VI. (1374-89) there were eight monk students and eight seculars, to have among them five horses and two vehicles ; they had also four big pigs and ten half-sized, fourteen little pigs of three months, and five sucking-pigs. N 194 DURHAM COLLEGE young men learnt. It was a scholastic divinity not at all touched by renaissance or new ideas. A careful account of it is given by Anstey in his " Munimenta Oxon.," vol. i. chap. Ixii. There was no special academic dress, no organised system of lectures. There were M.A.'s licensed to teach, who kept rooms, commonly called schools. Grammar was taught from " Priscian " or "Donatus." 1 This was for the "pueri," the eight seculars at the College ; the eight monks had a higher course. Then, as to-day, Grammar and Arithmetic were the foundation of study for Responsions, though in our time they are no longer taught by the University. Then followed Rhetoric, Music, and Logic, and lastly, the course of Philosophy natural, moral, and metaphysical with translations into Latin of Aristotle and the Arabian thinkers. After that, those monks who showed aptitude went on to work at Theology, the Scientia Scientiarum; finally they returned again to Dur- ham, where their education and savoir faire was 1 The text-book iu Latin; the lads' work to be done in English and French. THE COLLEGE LIBRARY 195 often rewarded by high office in the Monastery. In the fifteenth century, several Priors of Durham had held office in the Oxford College ; these were Wm. Ebchester, John Burnaby, R. Ebchester, John Auckland, T. Castel, and Hugh Whitehead, who was the last Prior of Durham, and became the first Dean of Durham in 1541. With a view to the advance of study, the College had a small collection of books in their library. Fortunately we have an early account of these MSS., in a " Status Collegii," drawn up, it does not say by whom, in the year 1315. 1 This 1 The Catalogue of books lent to Durham College in 1315 (Blakiston, " Collectanea," vol. iii. pp. 36, 37) : I, 2. Four Gospels (2 vols.). 3. Scolastica Historia. 4. Enchiridion cum aliis . . . libris et Epistolis B. Augustini. 5. B. Augustinus de Natura Boni, &c. 6. B. Augustinus super Genesim " ad litteram." 7. B. Augustini Retractationes. 8. St Paul's Epistles, glossed. 9. Henry of Ghent "medietas scripti," with certain disputations. 10. Thomae de Aquino scripti, Pars I. II. Do. do. Pars III. 12. De malo et potentia cum aliis quaestionibus. 13.-15. Quatuor Expo[sitiones, R. Graystayns]. 16. Mauri cii Angli Distinctiones. 196 DURHAM COLLEGE document, Mr Blakiston tells us, " contains probably the earliest Catalogue of books pro- vided for the use of a society of students at Oxford." Seven of these MSS. still exist among the interesting treasures of the Cathedral Library at 17. S. Gregorii, Moralia, Pars II. 18. S. Gregorii, Orneliae, &c. 19. Liber Naturalium. 20 Postillae super Job super librum Salomonis. 21. Postillae super xii Prophetas et super Canonicas Epistolas. 22. Vita St Cuthberti. 23. Brito super dictiones difficiles Bibliae. 24. S. Augustini de Moribus Ecclesiae. 25. Par Institutorum Apparatum. 26. S. Augustini de Trinitate. 27. Enchiridion, et quaestiones ad Orosium, S. Augustini Meditationes, &c. 28. Anselmus, Cur Deus Homo, &c. 29. Quaestiones super Logicalia et naturalia. 30. Notulae super libruin de plautis, et super librum celi et mundi. 31. S. Augustini de Discipliua Christiana et libri Damaceni "cum multis tabulis." 32. Boetius super Logicam, &c. 33. Thomae Aquinae Expositio super libros physicorum, de anima, et metaphysica. 34. Grost6te (Bp. of Lincoln) super librum Posteriorum et expositio super metaphisica. 35. Avicenuae et Algazel Libri Naturales. 36. Beda super Genesim, &c. 37. Ysidori Ethimologiarum. 38. Postillae super Ysaiam, Jeremiam, Ezekielem. 39. S. Augustini Sermones., &c. THE COLLEGE LIBRARY 197 Durham. 1 They were never given to the Oxford College, only lent : and so when the College fell at the Dissolution they happily returned such of them as had not been stolen in the chaos-time to their true owners. In this collection there were 35 volumes. Of these it will be noticed that the first-named was a copy of the Four Gospels. We must give the monks credit for remembering what the true foundation of the Christian religion was. It included also half-a-dozen MSS. of works on different books of Holy Writ, and an annotated copy of the Epistles of St Paul. There were several portions of Augustine, two volumes of the erudite St Thomas Aquinas, two of St Gregory the Great, a Life of St Cuthbert, St Anselm's famous work, " Cur Deus Homo," and other pieces ; Logic and Natural Science also appear, as given by the great Arabians, Avicenna and Algazel. 1 One of these is a MS. "Omelie Gregorii [cum] aliis multis Omeliis diversorum doctorum in uno volumine," which was originally written under the eye of Bishop Carileph, the builder of Durham Cathedral ; among the illuminations there is one which appears to be a portrait of that distinguished prelate, for under the figure of the Bishop we read " Willelmus Epus." 198 DURHAM COLLEGE In 1400 and 1409 we have lists of books sent to Oxford ; in 1400, nineteen MSS. ; in 1407, fourteen these were devoted mostly to the study of Scripture. These MSS. mark the great interest which Prior Wessington always took in the welfare of the College, although it does not appear that he ever presided over it. While speaking of the books of Durham College, I should like to call attention to a fine volume with a history. It is a Latin Bible, printed A.D. 1543 at Zurich, 1 and may have been bought originally by the College (though it was printed at the critical moment of change), for use in chapel. For on the fly-leaf at the beginning is a copy of the two prayers ordered specially to be used by the College, which show that it was intended for the Oxford chapel. And then, written across the title - page, is the name of an Oxford bookseller, Garbrand Hartenius, Bibliopola, 1567, who doubtless bought it on the Dissolution. Through whose kind care 1 Printed by Christopher Froschover, with a picture of a child on the back of a frog a pun on the printer's name ; it has a lovely little background of the Lake of Zurich. DISCIPLINE IN COLLEGE 199 it left Oxford and travelled to Durham, we know not. It is singular that the dissolution of the larger houses, in 1539, did not appear at first to have affected the College. We know that G. Clyffe was Rector there in 1542, and was struggling to keep the College standing and it probably lasted nearly to the King's death. Or there may have been some notion of a new reformed college at first. There was a certain care of discipline and morals. It was understood that the Warden should report any idle or dissolute students to headquarters at Durham. And two examples of unsatisfactory life, and perhaps more, appear in the Rolls. One of these was in the year 1464, when the College, in defence of its rights, had to give gifts, fees, and refreshers, to the lawyers, and to pay expenses of men " laborantium versus Dunelmiam," in the case of an appeal from certain rebellious scholars of the house. We know no more. 1 1 This " ordinatio " was framed while Thomas of Hatfield was Bishop of Durham, in 1380, i.e. the College had been going 200 DURHAM COLLEGE And again in 1467, only three years later, we have a grave and very serious charge against one of the young monks, that he was in the habit of frequenting "loca suspecta" until "there scarce remained to him any covering for his body or coverlet for his bed." A wild youth this, and, doubtless, sharply dealt with by the Prior, for a loose and abandoned life. The secular lads had a flogging held over them ; the young monks apparently not. As Mr Rashdall says : " The prolongation of the whipping age to the verge of manhood is, perhaps, peculiar to the English Universities " ; and he adds, in a note, that at Durham College, in the fifteenth century, the monks thought that "castigatio" was a suit- able punishment for them. We may, in passing, take note of the signs nearly a century. [Oath. Libr. MSS. B. IV. 41, 22] : "Quod si quis eorum se habuerit inhoneste, vel brigam aliquam infra vel contra collegium vel exterius in territorio Univ. Oxon. moverit vel procuraverit, aut vagabundus die vel nocte repertus fuerit, aut in doctrina ex culpa sua vel negligentia non profecerit, aut contentiosus extiterit aut tabernas exercuerit sen alia joca inhonesta," these were to be warned twice, and on a third offence expelled. And that this was not unnecessary we see in 14G7. THE COLLEGE REVENUES 201 of English self-government even inside a small institution like this. The Chest of the College was kept with three keys one held by the Prior, the second and third by two of the monks, elected by the rest. The College was often in difficulties, and it is not altogether easy to say what the amounts represented in modern money. Some authorities reckon a fifteenth-century shilling as worth a pound of our money, others put it as low as 12s. or 13s. The sources of income were these : The College had the great tithes and advowsons of the livings of Frampton, Ruddington, Fishlake, Bossall and Northallerton, and some small receipts from other sources. They received from these livings (in the net) over ,76 in money of that time, which may come to about 1100 of our money ; this, was after the vicars of these parishes had been paid their stipends, which were liberal, amounting to something between one-third and one-fifth of the gross value of the livings. In addition to this certain officers (obedientiaries) of the monastery paid small sums to the College. Thus the Almoner paid 20s. (say 15 or 16) for students 202 DURHAM COLLEGE at "Oxford and Stamford" in 1352-53, and gave monks pocket-money when travelling. The Sacrist paid 20s. for the clerks studying at Oxford, and sent 6s. 8d. to a novice when he celebrated his first Mass. The Cellarer paid Robert of Ebchester 13s. 4d. towards the costs of his " inception " on taking his Degree of S.T.P., and in 1407-8 there is a curious entry : 30s. 8d. " pro concordia," which looks as if some quarrel had to be patched up. Besides these smaller sums, the different cells sent money : Finchale sent 53s. 4d. ; Coldingham, 6s. 8d. to 10s. ; Jarrow, 20s. 4d. " in pensione studentium Oxoniae et Stamford" (1364); Wear- mouth sent 32s. ; in all some 5 15s. 8d., say some 80 of our money ; so that the sum total of their income (omitting the out-goings on the livings) was something like 1200 a year in our money. 1 This went to support the Gustos or Prior of the College, who had an income (in our money) of about 180, with board and lodging. And the monks had among them about 800 ; the secular 1 145, 4s. 4d. valor in the King's books at the Dissolution. Durham College is named as a monastic house. This at about ls. = 20s. =2900. THE END OF THE COLLEGE 203 scholars, the poor, and servants, used up all the rest. I have failed to draw out a true picture of this early Oxford ; it requires more sight and more insight than I have. It remains for me now to trace the end of it all. When Durham College woke up after a hundred and fifty sleeping years, it found alarm- ing signs of unwonted movement. In 1542, when G. Clyffe was Rector there (a new title), two members of the College were sent to London "on private affairs, and things likely to be very fruitful to your College," and received 8s. lOd. for their journey ; and in the same roll, Master G. Clyffe himself went up to town also for " peace and the decorous and honourable estate and order of this College," and received xvs. for this. 1 But all in vain. Durham College fell soon after the great Benedictine house (the Abbey, as people still call it) was dissolved by Henry VIII. at that time. And as Mr Hutton says in his monograph on St John's College at Oxford : 1 1542 : " Usque Londinum circa res proprias ac in primis isti Collegio vestro non infrugiferas, viiis. xd." : and " In expensis meis versus Londinum pro quietudine et pro decenti honestoque statu ac ordine istius Collegii, xvs." 204 DURHAM COLLEGE " Oxford at the middle of the sixteenth century was strewn with the religious houses dissolved and decayed. ... It was not easy to know what to do with the old monastic buildings. They were practically useless to private owners, who had no taste for an arrangement of bed-chambers, as extensive and as intricate as a rabbit-warren, and less inclination to live in public in a large hall, or to say their prayers with dignity in a private chapel." And these old institutions would have perished entirely had not the public spirit of the wealthy British merchants of the time stepped in to save them, and to set them tardily to work on the Renaissance studies, which now, a century after their rise, were beginning to penetrate within the walls of Oxford. To these practical men of busi- ness, who did so much to found grammar schools throughout the country, we also owe such Oxford colleges as St John's and Trinity, where Sir Thomas Pope, Henry VIII.'s trusted lawyer, set up his new buildings (1556) on the ruins of Durham College. There the library building in- tended for the treasures of Bishop Bury, which never came, still stands in our modern Oxford, a connecting link between the old and new : like TRINITY COLLEGE 205 a venerable MS. side by side with a book of to-day. And so we reach the end of this episode of monastic Durham and mediaeval Oxford. Oxford lagged sadly behind, as the " home of lost causes " has always resisted the rise of modern learning, clinging fondly to her old mediaeval systems ; and Durham, with her, missed a fine chance of riding into the awakened world on the bright breeze of those modern studies, which were already filling the sails of men who care to know the truth. THE STATUTES OF DURHAM CATHEDRAL THE Cathedral Chapter of Durham was founded in 1541 on the ruins of a great Benedictine House. The deed of surrender by Hugh Whitehead, the last Prior of Durham, is dated on the 31st of December 1540, in the thirty-first year of the reign of Henry VIII. ; and this was followed by a Foundation Charter, 12th May 1541, making Hugh Whitehead the first Dean, and creating the first twelve Prebendaries. Thus was estab- lished the Cathedral Church of " St Mary the Virgin and St Cuthbert the Bishop." Durham is one of the Cathedrals of the New Foundation, with, as it will be seen, certain specialities of its m KING HENRY'S CHARTERS 207 own, which distinguish it from all other Cathedral Churches. The Foundation Charter was succeeded by a Charter of Endowment, which was signed only four days later (16th May 1541). This grant created a wealth which in the end exceeded that of any religious body in England. Henry VIII. seems to have desired to make his Dean great and rich, for he endowed him with the large amount (by the ancient valor) of 284, 4s. 8d. ; while each Prebendary had only 32, 5s. lOd. so that the Dean was more than eight (nearly nine) times as well paid as any of the Prebendaries. It is not known whether Henry drew up any body of Statutes for the governance of this body ; perhaps he trusted in vain to the terms of his Charter. In this he says that he is now seized of the possessions of the Monastery, and desires to turn them to better account. " Because we are filled with the desire that true religion and worship of God shall be re- stored in the Cathedral, and reformed to the primitive or genuine rule of sincerity, instead of the monastic abuses lately and unhappily prevail- ing; and we have, therefore, taken such care as man can take and foresee, that hereafter the teaching of Holy Writ, and the sacraments of our redemption, be purely and rightly administered ; good moral life be encouraged ; the young be instructed in liberal letters ; the old be supported in their infirmity (especially if they have been in Our service), and the poor in Christ helped by alms : that the ' trinode necessity ' be supported (roads, bridges, fortifications, service of warriors) and all to the glory of God, and the welfare of the neighbourhood." For this purpose he makes the Abbey Church the seat of the Bishop, to be managed by a Dean and twelve Prebendaries, all named ; he grants them the privileges of a body corporate, with possessions and powers befitting. The King en- trusts the appointment, correction, and deposition of all inferior officers to the Dean. All this is fairly vague. Nothing whatever is said about rules of residence, etc., such matters apparently being taken for granted. Under these two documents the new body corporate lived for a short while, probably with but little change of service or usage ; also with a somewhat slack attendance to duty; so that, about twelve years later, Cardinal Pole, advising LAY DEANS 209 Queen Mary, proposed to create bodies of Statutes, first for Durham and then for all other cathedrals. That Deans did not necessarily live much on their deaneries is illustrated, I may say in passing, by the history of Sir John Mason, the second Dean of Winchester, who was also Henry VIII.'s Master of Requests. He was appointed in 1549, being a layman, " with no pretention to an ecclesiastical benefice." He was chiefly employed abroad in almost every European country a married man, a Roman Catholic and a Dean " a pliant Roman Catholic " " and one of such service to all parties, and observing such moderation, that every one thought him his own." He was also M.P., and Chancellor of Oxford University. Burns, " Ecclesiastical Law," quoting Godolphin (p. 367), says : " The Dean may be a layman ; as was the Dean of Durham, by special licence and dis- pensation from the king; but this is rare, and a special case, and is not common and general, and therefore not to be brought as an example." This layman was probably Andrew Newton, Knight and Baronet ; he made the canon of the o twelfth stall his proxy, A.D. 1606-20; or perhaps it was W. Whittingham, who was in Genevan Orders only. And Dr Watson (chap, xiv.) says : " Though in former days a layman might have taken a title to a deanery, yet now, by 13 and 14 Chas. II. 2, cap. 4, a person must have priest's orders to qualify him." In the Commission issued by Philip and Mary under Pole's influence, for the revision of Cathedral Statutes, much doubt is thrown on this earlier foundation by Henry VIII. " Seeing that the Cathedral Church of Durham is as yet very scantily established on Laws and Statutes, without which no house or city can stand long. . . . We have appointed, for the making of Statutes therein, Nicholas (Heath), Archbishop of York elect, Edmund (Bonner), Bishop of London, Cuthbert (Tonstall), Bishop of Durham, Thomas (Thirlby), Bishop of Ely, and Wm. Ermysted [Armitstead], the King's Chaplain, to undertake the task." And then he adds : "We have given them power by our letters patent to supervise, change, correct, and edit the old Statutes of this Cathedral, if there are any extant'' QUEEN MARY'S COMMISSION 211 It seems clear from this that there was even then great doubt as to the existence of any proper Statutes. All this was undertaken under the terms of an Act of Parliament (2nd April, 1554), giving Queen Mary the power to make Statutes and Ordinances for the governance of all collegiate churches and cathedrals. This Act declares that Henry VIII. 's Charters or Statutes were not duly indented, and that consequently they were without authority ; also that the late King gave them for his own life- time and no more ; so that there was a doubt whether they would be valid in the next reign. Queen Mary, therefore, declares that an Act of Parliament is needed to confirm them all. She was not so masterful as her father. These were the reasons alleged by Parliament for an Act to be passed for confirmation of Statutes. There was, however, underneath it a feeling that the Cathedral bodies were not doing their duty faithfully. Cardinal Pole gives us to under- stand that residence at Durham was much 212 STATUTES OF DURHAM CATHEDRAL neglected ; and that he felt it his duty to do what he could to remedy such slackness. He tells us in his "Reformatio Anglian" (1562), fol. 11, 12, Decretum III.: De residentia Episcoporum et aliorum inferioris ordinis clericorum : "As we see that there are many who, being in charge of churches, are the cause of a great abuse; for they leave the care of their churches to mercenaries, and take no trouble about them, to the mighty damage of these churches ; so, to compel them to do their duty, we order, by stricter Statutes of such churches and colleges, that henceforward all Deans, Provosts, and other dignitaries of cathedral and collegiate churches shall be present and do their proper duty in the same." He adds that the churches are all but reduced to a solitude : canons, too, are ordered to keep residence in future. Hence came the creation of that body of Statutes, under which the Dean and Chapter of Durham are still ruled. These Statutes are dated 20th March, 1555. In them we have the only Statutes of an English Cathedral issued by a Roman Catholic Queen, and still in force. It is obvious that Queen THE REASONS FOR THEM 213 Mary intended to issue Statutes at any rate for all the Cathedrals of the New Foundation. Her life, however, was drawing fast to an end ; and there are indications that these Durham Statutes were not altogether satisfactory to their authors : probably it was felt that some delay was proper, before this Durham body of Statutes was taken as the pattern, mutatis mutandis, for the rest. The list of " Loca in Statutis reformata," etc., to be found at the end of the Code, is evidently unfinished ; it is probable that this was never sanctioned by any competent authority; and it is certainly the case that the Queen never issued any further commission for Statutes, and that the Durham Statutes are unique. In fact, we are the only Protestant Cathedral community which is ruled by distinctly Roman Catholic Statutes. At the opening of Convocation, Pole gave the following instruction : "Deinde voluit rev sshnus statuta ecclesiarum noviter erectarum et mutatarum a regularibus ad seculares expendi (? expandi) per Episcopos Lincolniensem, Cicestrensem, etc., et quae con- 214 STATUTES OF DURHAM CATHEDRAL sideranda sunt referri Rev quam primum commode poterunt. " But the Queen died, and nothing more was done." 1 And how do we get over this difficulty, and fulfil our engagements to obey these Statutes ? In the first place, the blessed rule of custom comes in ; men have dropped inconvenient usages. I am not a lover of ceremony, nor do I want to be treated with excess of honour. Still, it would be nice to feel that my brethren recognised, in the words of the Statutes, that " The Dean's power and jurisdiction is supreme, touching the government of the Church. He shall hear all causes relative to the Chapter, and, assisted by their opinions, determine therein ; he shall correct excesses, and reprehend all obstinate offenders. He shall invest the Prebendaries, and take their oaths. Being superior in authority, all shall rise up when he enters or departs from the choir or Chapter House. He is first in place and voice. The ringing of bells must wait on him, morning and evening, or on festivals, when he is to perform the offices ; not at other times, unless he takes the Mass. On such days he is to chant the anthems, or such of the canons 1 Burns, "Ecclesiastical Law," vol. i. p. 456. ANCIENT USAGES 215 as he shall appoint therefor. In reading the service he shall not quit his seat. . . . All the ministers of the Church shall bow to him in his stall, as they enter the choir or depart from it." It would be too painful for me to have to say how far these beautiful usages have gone out. And it is the same with many another and more important instruction. Next, we have the Act of Queen Anne, cap. 6, " for avoiding doubts and questions touching the Statutes of divers cathedrals and collegiate churches." It has at the end a restrictive clause " Nevertheless, so far forth only as the same or any of them are in no manner repugnant to, or inconsistent with, the constitutions of the Church of England, as it is now by law established, or the laws of the land." So that here peep in the Thirty-nine Articles, and the Act of Uniformity ; the order to perform certain Masses, and to do certain things in special honour of the Virgin Mary, are hereby ruled out. Our Statutes are said to have been duly signed by the four Commissioners, but were never issued under the Great Seal. Still, the 216 STATUTES OF DURHAM CATHEDRAL usage of three hundred and fifty years has, no doubt, made them in every way valid and binding. The most remarkable thing about these Statutes is the fact that, not only has the original been lost, but, till quite lately, the oldest copy known to be in existence was that belonging to the Deanery, transcribed by Mr Viner between the years 1774-77 ; this date being fixed by the dedica- tion to Dean Dampier, who was Dean only for those three years. There appears to have been at that time an earlier copy in the Dean's possession, for the title of Mr Viner's transcript says : " Hoc exemplar Statutorum ejusdem Ecclesiae cum authentico Decani manuscripto fideliter collatum." He unfortunately adds nothing respecting this "authentic MS." of the Dean. Anyhow, when in 1894 I entered on my duties as Dean of Durham, this copy made by Mr Viner was the oldest known MS. of these unique Statutes. Nor have we any MS. or copy of any kind of any Statutes of King Henry VIII. If there THE SEARCH FOR THEM 217 were any, they probably did not differ much from Queen Mary's, except that Pole was more anxious than Henry had been for the reading of Scripture, the preaching of sermons, and the education of youth. Some even think that they never took the form of Statutes. One thing is quite certain : neither the original of Henry VIII.'s Statutes, nor of those of Queen Mary, can now be found. I have searched carefully for them, with but partial success. About three years ago, when I was on my way to visit friends in a house on the Embankment in London, I found myself with an idle half- hour on my hands. It occurred to me, as I was close to Lambeth Palace, to pay a visit to the Archiepiscopal Library, and enquire whether it contained any documents bearing on Durham, and more particularly as to the Statutes. My kind friend the librarian, Mr Kershaw, brought me a volume of " Collectanea," and in this I soon found myself looking at a MS. which turned out to be a copy of the Marian Statutes of Durham, made for Cardinal Pole at Lambeth, in July 1556. 218 STATUTES OF DURHAM CATHEDRAL At the end of it we read : " Facta collatione concordat cum original! libro apud reverendissimum dominum Reginaldum Cardinalem Legatum a latere et archiepiscopum Cantuariensem totius Angliae primatem rema- nente." And after that : " Considerantes tempora ultimi seismatis omni- bus ornamentis spoliatam ecclesiam stipendium parvum admodum ministris hujus Ecclesiae per statuta assignari, in cujus rei aliquantulum sublevamen nos Decanus et Capitulum communi et universali consensu, . . . 20(?) Julii a. s. MDLVI in general! capitulo nostro Dunelmensi statuimus et decrevimus, ut quicunque," etc. This early copy of 1556 is the first trace we have of the original MS. ; and a note in Hutchinson, " History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham," 1787, vol. ii. p. 139, throws a dim light on this point ; he says : "Anthony Salvyn, one of the prebendaries, was sent up as proxy for the Chapter of Durham, to appear before Cardinal Pole and the Queen's Commissioners, the 30th of October, 3 and 4 Philip and Mary, when the corrective Statutes were made. Tis said the originals were kept by the Cardinal, and by him sent to THE SEARCH FOR THEM 219 Rome ; for they never came back again, and in all probability are now in the Vatican." And Bishop Cosin and the Dean and Chapter, in 1665, agreed to make enquiries at the Rolls office, or the Tower, or any of the King's Courts, "within a twelvemonth after it hath pleased God to cease the present pestilence." And Dr Basire presently replied to the Chapter, as follows : " I took the pain to cause a search to be made in the rolls, out found nothing. The like I did with Mr Dugdale, when he was searching the records of the dioceses, and the records of St Paul's Church ; and to encourage him I gave him a gratuity from the Dean and Chapter, but sped no better. What may be found in the Tower 1 know not, having had neither time nor opportunity to search there ; Mr Wm. Prynn (no great friend to cathedrals) being the keeper of these records." When I was in Rome in the spring of 1899, I took advantage of an old acquaintance with Mr Wm. Bliss, who is engaged in the Vatican Library, copying from the Rolls, and so a habitue of that Library, to get an introduction to the inner world of that marvellous collection 220 STATUTES OF DURHAM CATHEDRAL of MSS. I found much courtesy, and, what was worth still more, some admirable catalogues, which, so far as they went, convinced me that my desired MS. did not lie on the surface of the Vatican stores. No one who desires to write on Durham can do it worthily without a good stay at Rome. There is one heading of those catalogues, " Ecclesia Dunelmensis," which makes the mouth water! There are mines of information there about the pre-Reformational Bishops, etc., but of Pole's MSS. no trace. An English Jesuit gentleman, whom I met there, kindly took an interest in the subject. He told me that, in all probability, those docu- ments were sent to Italy by the hand of Niccolo Ormaneto, then Pole's secretary, after- wards a bishop in Italy, and a channel of communication with Rome ; and also that Ormaneto might have left the papers either at Padua or Verona. These two interesting cities I also visited, and searched the three libraries of Padua, and also the Cathedral Library of V r erona all in vain. The only thing 1 could do was to beseech THE CORRECTIONS OF THEM 221 Mr Bliss to keep an open eye, in his work in the Manuscript Rooms of the Vatican, for anything bearing on Durham or the lost MS. And with this slender hope remaining, I desisted. The MS. I discovered at Lambeth is all that brings us near the origin of the matter. It is therefore valuable, though but a rather careless copy of the original. At the end of the Statutes we have a list of " Corrigenda et Emendanda " ; as to which it is hard to say whether or not they ever secured authority. They look as if Pole had been anxious to make these Durham Statutes as perfect as he could, before issuing them as patterns for all other cathedrals. At any rate, the discovery of the Lambeth MS. proves that the Queen and Pole were still at work on the document close to the end of their lives. When they were swept away, almost at the same time, their work stood still. "The corrections and additions were made 30th December, 1556, but by what authority is not known." Here, then, we stand at the present with no STATUTES OF DURHAM CATHEDRAL prospect of more knowledge on the subject. The Marian Statutes were, in accordance with Pole's wishes, a striking advance on their pre- decessors, whether we look at Henry's Charter or at his supposed Statutes. The present code recognises the authority of Parliament, and is not solely based on the royal prerogative. Mary significantly omits the oath of the King's supremacy ; by which she seems to show a wish to undo what Henry had done against the Papal supremacy. The whole tendency of her Statutes is strongly in the direction of a reformed Romanism. One sees the influence of Cardinal Pole everywhere. Henry exalted in every way the Dean's power: the Marian Statutes limit it, in a wholesome way, giving less chances for tyranny, though more for inaction thereby ; these Statutes also insist on the duty of preaching the Gospel, and making the dignities and wealth of the body a reality. They also, in the paper of corrections, direct that the scholars in the Grammar School should be chosen according to their progress in learning, and not merely on eleemosynary grounds, THE DEAN'S RESIDENCE Residence was put on a surer footing: the neglect of this was the scandal of early capitular government; the great churches were as deserts, and no spiritual work went on. The new Statutes insist, with an unanswerable argu- ment, on residence. And, singularly enough, the Dean (who in no other cathedral is so limited) is held to be bound to keep three weeks of '* close residence " in each year. It is nowhere distinctly ordered ; but in one passage of the Statutes, cap. xvi., he is referred to as being " present " ; and in this " Residentes " are described : "qui ad minimum dies xxi continues quotannis in ecclesia Cathedrali divinis officiis juxta normam statutorum intersunt et familias ibidem alunt " ; and then, at the close of cap. xvi., after giving the Dean leave of absence for Bearpark, it goes on : " dummodo illic (sc. Bearpark) hospitalitatem more residentium servet, et pro singulis diebus illis uni horae canonicae vel missae majori ac tractandis in capitulo intersit negotiis ; ac etiam ante vel post dies xxi continues in ecclesia Cathedrali residentiam servaverit." The Dean is now bound by Act of Parlia- STATUTES OF DURHAM CATHEDRAL ment to reside for eight months, leaving the manner of residence quite open. In these matters our present Statutes deserve much praise. They contain many things quite obsolete; they cannot solve the great questions What is the value of such institutions? And what do they achieve by way of furthering simple religion and godliness in a diocese? Or we may ask : How far do they help the Bishop in his efforts for good ? And what do they contribute towards a learned clergy? And are they refuges in which irregular yet pious minds have shelter? There are many such questions, to which I can give no answer. The efficiency of religion has not always been much advanced by such bodies. On the other hand, we have known cases in which a Cathedral Chapter has stood for an advance, in the midst of a reluctant world. At least, let me end by saying, that in such havens men have some shelter from the wild competitions and hurrying rush of modern life : houses let them be of grave meditation, of peace and good-will, and of a recognition of the blessed message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, VI THE NORTH IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY A Visit of jEneas Sylvius Piccolomini (afterwards Pope Pius II.) in 1435-36. POPE Pius II. has been well called "the first modern man in history," * a forerunner of the coming world. This keen-witted, bright-eyed youth, happily for us, while yet in observant years, was sent to Scotland in the winter of 1435-36 ; and on his return traversed England from Berwick to Dover, whence he set sail for France. His fortunes untried, his future all dreamy as yet, he, a layman thirty years old, was entrusted with an informal mission to the Court of James I. of Scotland. In his amusing letters, in his 1 "Burckhardt," vol. ii. p. 32. 226 NORTH IN FIFTEENTH CENTURY Commentaries and in his " Cosmographia," he bequeaths to us a vivid picture of the North, as he saw it with Italian wondering eyes. Enea Silvio Bartolomeo de' Piccolomini was the eldest son of the head of that ruined family of nobles, and was born at Corsignano, in the year 1405, whither his parents had withdrawn for peace and refuge after a revolution at Siena a revolution which was an echo of many similar disturbances in Italian cities; it had given triumph to the popular party and had brought about the exile of the nobles. In Corsignano the Piccolomini took up their abode, being made suddenly poor, living a simple life, scarce allaying their poverty with their pride. Yet, in due time, they made a strong effort for their eldest son, and sent him out to study the law. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, there had sprung up a resounding strife between the stiff medievalism and barbarous Latinity of the Church and the Law on the one side, and on the other, the warm life and beauty of the new studies, new, though in truth they were far older than the dried-up methods of the current CLASSICAL STUDIES AND LAW 227 education. Men woke up to feel the nobleness of classic masterpieces; they were eager to live among the thoughts of their kinsfolk of old time who formed the cultured world before Christianity; the ambition of literary culture, the honour due to the graceful writings of Rome's best period of letters, which touched with gold the decaying pinnacles of her imperial fortress : all these things appealed, as noble things still appeal, to the young and generous. jEneas certainly learned from his legal in- structors the useful arts of quibbling and balanc- ing, acquirements only too useful for a quick- witted Italian, and only too convenient for one who fell very short in moral principle. Other- wise the form in which his education was carried on was repulsive to him ; ere long he deserted his pedantic masters, and abandoned himself to the delights of a well-balanced style of shallow thought. Ciceronian it was, no doubt, with something of the Roman's learned skill and intellectual thinness ; the new school could faintly echo Cicero's inimitable style and grace ; they all tried to write Epistles, after the master's 228 NORTH IN FIFTEENTH CENTURY manner; they ventured on neat copies of verses in classical measures, they composed moral, or it might be, immoral treatises ; they learnt to write, with happy knack, well-sounding periods of Latin prose. Compared with the half-barbarous condition of mediaeval literature, these graceful compositions shone as with a glitter of light in a dark world. Their classical Latinity seemed like another tongue, so clear, so bright, so con- vincing; one could feel that it was in some way parallel to the relation between the contemporary cinquecento architecture and the ancient classical style. In those days, days of awakening to discovery, to ingenious invention, to literary adventure, a man on wings of Latin prose might rise to any height. It was through this light and superficial gift that ^Eneas Sylvius rose in about thirty years to the Papacy as Pius II. In these early days, however, no thought of clerical career or advancement had crossed his mind. He himself says so; he tells us he was of a worldly spirit, had a hungry ambition hindered by no scruples, and a self-indulgence bounded by no moral restraint : these were the THE COUNCIL OF BASLE 229 principles of his young manhood. Master of this pure Latinity, the vehicle of command for all the world, the speech first of the dominant Imperial State, and then of the Imperial Church, ^Eneas was already equipped, with mother-wit and quickness of interest, for the difficult task of carving out for himself a career, and of securing a firm footing in the turmoil of the world. He was twenty-six years old when he obtained his first post, that of secretary to Domenico Capranica, Bishop of Fermo, in whose retinue he set out to join the conciliar revolt against the Papacy of Eugenius IV. For the Council of Basle was a revolt against the past, and ^Eneas, full of high hopes and dreams, rejoiced to feel himself in the stream of modern ideas. Then, as now, the self-seeker begins with noble phrases, and, as ambition corrupts him and the worse world unfolds itself before him, abandons the Liberal ranks and rallies to reaction. For all reaction keeps itself alive by tempting new recruits from the vainer spirits among its antagonists. 230 NORTH IN FIFTEENTH CENTURY To Mneas, in whose eyes at this time a Churchman was nearly as retrograde as a Lawyer, the Council of Basle was full of hopes. All men saw the corruption of the times, all hoped for wholesome change. And ^Eneas rode in, a handsome, lively little man, on the crest of the liberal movement of the day. To erect national Churches, to proclaim local independence, to stir the entranced world with eloquent Ciceronian speeches, these were the high things towards which young Piccolomini was hastening. Meanwhile, behind the back of the Council, the secular Princes pulled their strings to direct the movements of the age so as to secure their own selfish interests. The Congress of Arras, to which ^Eneas went with his master, seemed to be little more than the secular echo of the Council of Basle : the one was to settle the difficulties round the Papacy, the other to arrange the claims of the monarchs of Europe, and to settle the nations, now in their growing strength, within their proper limits. In the course of the Congress France made THE CONGRESS OF ARRAS 231 a proposal to England, to the effect that, if France ceded Normandy and Aquitaine as fiefs of the English Crown, Henry VI. of England should entirely drop the English claim to the throne of France. The English king, guided apparently by Cardinal Beaufort the Church- man, after the manner of such, throwing his weight into the scale against peace refused these reasonable terms, and the work of the Congress seemed to have come to an empty end. Thereupon, Philip of Burgundy, till that time the counterpoise-power, went over to the French side, made his terms with Charles VII., and did homage to him as his king. And Bedford, the most prominent Englishman of the age, at this moment died at Rouen. Things now looked bad for England, and the fortunes of France rose to a level never before reached. All things seemed possible to her. It was thought that the English king would make an effort to break up the new combina- tion between France and Burgundy. And these two powers saw that if they could persuade Scotland, the permanent rival of England, to NORTH IN FIFTEENTH CENTURY worry the northern frontier, it would give them a fair opportunity for taking the offensive ; while Henry VI. was engaged at home they hoped to sweep the English garrisons out of Normandy. Thus they would win a triumph and consolidate France, and teach the English king that his advisers had given him bad counsel; at any rate, a threat by King James on the Tweed would make it impossible for Henry to attempt to disturb the new-born continental peace. How then could the allies get at James ? They must send a suitable envoy ; and yet this must be an obscure person ; no man of noble rank or note could slip unnoticed through England ; let them find a man of good sense, ready wit, resource and discretion; let him be eloquent, secretive, resolute, unscrupulous ; he must be (as Mr Horsburgh well says of Pius II.) one "brilliant, clever, astute, worldly, and utterly un-Christ-like, he must face a service of risk fearlessly, and should display rather the cunning of the fox than any more generous qualities." And who then could fulfil these requirements so well as ^Eneas Sylvius ? Here THE QUALITIES OF .ENEAS 233 was a young man, yearning for a vocation and to see the world ; one who knew the ways of Courts, was a ready writer and speaker, had courage and capacity, and yet, as he held no office of importance, and, as he came with no high-sounding credentials, would not attract the attention of the suspicious English. His first plan was to travel through England ; and, to prepare the way, it was given out that an envoy was being sent North to intercede with James I. for a certain Scottish prelate, who had fallen out of favour ; it was also rumoured that there was a noble in prison in Scotland whom ^Eneas' master, Cardinal Albergata, wanted to deliver from his bonds. And when these pretexts had been duly set floating, the young secretary, eager to see new worlds and take part in adventures full of un- certain perils, crossed over from Calais (where he had been detained for some time by the English Governor) to Dover, and began his travels in the autumn of 1435. He reached London without difficulty ; here, however, he was stopped by the vigilance of the English 234- NORTH IN FIFTEENTH CENTURY king; after some little delay he was refused a safe-conduct, and was told that no one would guarantee him or give him any help on his way. He was in the end obliged to return to Dover and thence to Calais. From Calais he hastened on, passing through the old entrepdt of Bruges, to the famous harbour of Sluys, in those days the most crowded port in the western world. Here lay a ship preparing for a voyage to Leith ; he took passage in her. It was wintry weather, but the delicate Italian had no choice ; there was no other way open for him. No sooner had he got out into the North Sea than a strong south-westerly gale caught his lumbering ship, and drove her helpless northwards towards the Norse coast. Happily for him, the weather abated, and the vessel was not cast away on the cruel reefs, which fringe the whole shore of Norway; a change of wind enabled the captain, after twelve days' tossing in the wintry deep, to make the Firth of Forth. Here ^Eneas landed, shaken but safe, in Leith harbour. During the stress of weather, he had vowed a pilgrimage to Our Lady at the most renowned place of pilgrimage in the East of AENEAS IN SCOTLAND 235 Scotland, and this he found to be at Whitekirk, where was a famous statue of Our Lady. This " Casa Albula," a common name enough in the North for a stone-built church, still stands in Haddingtonshire, near the sea-coast, some twelve miles south-east of Edinburgh. The late Bishop Creighton described it to me in these words : " The ' Ecclesia quag vocatur Alba ' of ^Eneas is Whitekirk. It is a splendid old church, with a stone roof rising directly from the walls without any string-course to mark the difference, no aisles, all one span." For this landmark ^Eneas set off barefoot, over snow and ice, and so fulfilled his vow with difficulty. For when he reached Whitekirk his tender feet were wounded and frozen by the cold, and he was obliged to return to Edinburgh in a litter, suffering badly ; indeed, he always attributed to this pilgrimage the infirmities of his feet through- out his life. It certainly was one of the argu- ments against his election as Pope in 1458, that he was a cripple, and could not walk straight, or show himself with dignity in grand proces- sions and ceremonies. 236 NORTH IN FIFTEENTH CENTURY As soon as he had recovered from the worst of his fatigues by sea and land, ^Eneas applied to the Scottish Court for an audience, which seems to have been readily granted. There re- mains still, as an almost contemporary record of this journey, one of the famous frescoes by Pinturicchio on the walls of the Library of Siena Cathedral. Unfortunately for historical truth, this fresco is not to be trusted, if indeed it represents the Scottish scene ; there never was any such building as this cinquecento hall of audience ; no such landscape meets the eye as is seen through the arcade as a background to the scene; no such city towers of German type have ever adorned Edinburgh. The trees are all in summer leaf, and we know that the meeting took place in the coldest time of winter; the Court is sitting or standing in the open air, whereas, I fear, they were in a stuffy room, carefully sealed up without a breath of air. Still more difficult it is to believe that the personages depicted were in any case such as one would have seen round the wild court of a Scottish king. There are no kilts, there ^Eneas Piccolomini, Ambassador to the King of Scotland (Pinturgcchio). [To face page 23G. AENEAS HAS AUDIENCE WITH JAMES I. 237 is no sign of a Scots plaid ; the Court is combed and fine, there's not a bare leg any- where. And, lastly, ^Eneas stands, taller than the average of his hearers, addressing the king, and we know that he had the hereditary short- ness of stature of the Piccolomini he tells us so himself; and the monarch seated on his throne is no portrait, only an old greybeard of sixty years. It is, however, contended that the picture represents not the Edinburgh audience, but the appearance of ^Eneas before the Council of Basle on his return ; in which case the landscape would be a view of the Rhine just above Basle. The figure on the throne is very puzzling, whichever view is right. The upshot of his embassy, if we may believe ^Eneas' account of it, was such a success as diplomatic affairs are usually claimed to be. He declares that his mission had been perfectly suc- cessful, that the bishop in disgrace had been taken back into favour, and the man who had been robbed and imprisoned had had justice done to him. These were the two original pretexts ; but the real business of the embassage was " to 238 NORTH IN FIFTEENTH CENTURY solicit (as Campanus writes in his life of Pope Pius) the king against those 'citerior Britons' (i.e. the English) who were opposed to peace," which fine words meant that ^Eneas was to stir up strife, in order to keep Henry VI. amused, and so to prevent him from breaking up the Franco- Burgundian compact of Arras. This they called a movement on behalf of peace ; a direct incitement to war it was. King James' advisers gave him wise advice. His reply to ^Eneas was that in fact he refused the quasi-alliance with France and would stir up no bad blood. Like his descendant, James VI., he would not fight if he could be neutral ; instead of mustering the clans on the Northumbrian border, he offered to enter into alliance with both the contracting parties of Arras, with a view to the permanent preservation of peace. And so far Henry VI. escaped the penalty due to his folly in refusing the terms offered him in 1435. This eminently sensible and prosaic view of the irritable situation did not suit our young ambassador: he made ready to return to the mainland ; his pocket was full for the Scottish HE DESCRIBES SCOTLAND 239 king was liberal of gifts ; he was eager to escape from this hard northern climate. Happily, ./Eneas was not so deeply engrossed in vain diplomacy as to neglect the use of his eyes ; he has, in his interesting " Cosmographia," the first intelligent modern work on geography, left us an account of his impression of these "further Britons," these fifteenth-century Scots. He describes Scotland as a cold and treeless land, the towns as mean and unwalled, the houses mud-built, without mortar, and roofed with turf, while their doors were boards clad in oxhide. The inhabitants were poor and rough in appearance, the men small of stature, though brave ; the women were light in colour, fair of face, comely, blue-eyed, with flaxen hair, slight of build, and fragile in form and character. He noted the shivery clothing of the men, their unkempt look, as of wild creatures, caught and half-tamed. He was amazed by the daily life led by both sexes in common ; and he duly remarks on the difference in language between Lowlander and Highlander. He also informs us that the wild Highlander subsisted on the 240 NORTH IN FIFTEENTH CENTURY bark of trees. Their winter daylight lasted but a little over three hours, and the weather was always keen. There is a curious remark which I must quote in his words. "When," he says, "the poor, half-naked creatures came up to the churches to beg for bread, people (in defiance of the Biblical pre- cept) gave them a stone instead of a loaf. But the poor things accepted it with joy, and went off with thanks ; for in that country they have a curious kind of sulphurous stone which, as they have no wood in that land, they burn instead." This shows that the Lothian pits were in work- ing nearly five centuries ago, and that the Italian apparently had never seen coal before. Finally, ^Eneas closes his remarks with the statement "that the greatest pleasure of the Scots is to abuse the English." It would not be fair, after praising the modern spirit of our envoy, to omit his mediaeval descrip- tion of the Barnacle goose. While still in Edinburgh, he had projected a visit to the Orkney Islands though, when he reflected on the wild journey among the rude THE BARNACLE GOOSE 241 natives, and the angry winter sea, his courage failed him, and he went no further north than the capital. His curiosity had made him anxious to see a wonderful tree, which, he was assured, could be seen only in the Orkneys " We had heard long ago that there could be seen in Scotland a tree, which, springing up over the river's bank, produces fruit in the form of ducks (anetarum formam habentes), and that these when they grow ripe, fall off of themselves from the tree : of these some drop on dry land, some into the water ; the unlucky ones dropped on land die and stink ; those plunged in the water soon show life, and swim about under the water, till their wings and feathers grow strong enough to let them fly abroad in the air." 1 This admirable phenomenon is figured in one least of the early herbals, where one sees some spoiled and smashed little ducks dead on the shore, and others gaily swimming in the stream. Though ^Eneas had failed in his effort to stir up strife between neighbours, we certainly owe him thanks for a very vivid picture of these islands, as seen for the first time by an intelligent modern traveller. Voigt, in his painstaking life of Pius II., 1 .ZEneas Sylvius, " Cosmographia," vol. ii. cap. 46. Q NORTH IN FIFTEENTH CENTURY does not hesitate to say that "many a touch re- minds one of the strong and true pictures of the North which we have from Sir Walter Scott's hand." These, the impressions chiefly of his journey back from Scotland to Dover, are found almost entirely in the envoy's "Commentaries." This account we owe to his vivid remembrance of the misery of the long sea-voyage. The captain of his ship, who seems to have waited for him in Leith harbour, hoping for his company on the way back, begged him to entrust himself once more aboard, and assured him of safety the captain himself, poor fellow, was going to make all speed on his return, and would take no needless risks, because he was looking forward to being married, if all went well. JEneas, fortunately for him, could not pluck up courage again to face the North Sea. And besides this, he had done all he could at the Scottish Court, and the English would now have no excuse for detaining him. So he would, with money to spare, enjoy the sight of England, which he might never be able to visit again, and there- fore bade his shipmates farewell. He tells us that he stood on a hill to see the vessel set forth ; and HIS JOURNEY SOUTHWARDS 243 while it was still in the Firth of Forth, even before his eyes, it was caught by a sudden storm, and dashed on the rocks. The ship sank; only four of the sailors struggled ashore; the poor damsel, who was awaiting the return of the captain, saw him no more, for he too was among the drowned. With a thankful heart ^Eneas now set out on the southern journey. As far as the border all was easy. He had disguised himself as a merchant, with three servants at his heels ; and no doubt travelled with a safe-conduct from the Scottish Court. When, however, he had crossed the bonny Tweed, he entered into a troubled and harried country. The rich and prosperous North- umberland of to-day would not recognise the uncultivated and rude lands, in which every house had a peel tower, and where men wrought, or tended their cattle, with sword at their side. No one knew when some reiving Scot or ill-disposed neighbour might come on them. Into this country ^Eneas now penetrated. " Towards evening," he tells us, " after he had crossed the boundary river the Tweed 244 NORTH IN FIFTEENTH CENTURY found himself, with but a scanty retinue, and with none of the protection of an ambassador, at a large open village of this rude, uncultivated world. Here there was no inn, but the country folk were friendly and found him quarters in a farm-house. He was hungry, and they busied themselves to provide a meal. They had neither white bread nor wine, so that a messenger had to be despatched to the nearest monastery to obtain these rare delicacies. Other food was plentiful ; there was no lack of vegetables, of poultry and geese ; and hospitable preparations went on merrily. The news of travellers spread through the place ; all the women, curious to see the stranger, crowded round, and stared at him as if he had been an ^Ethiopian or an Indian. The parish priest, who had been invited to come in and sup with the traveller and to act as interpreter, through the medium of his small acquirements in Latin, was besieged by his people for information. Who was it ? Where had he come from ? What did he want ? Was he a Christian or a heathen ? Their curiosity invaded the table even. /Eneas had to give them a taste of his white bread : they had never had such a chance before ; to each a sip of wine : no such fare had ever been theirs ! And so the feast went on, with clumsy conversation, and time no object. It was not till two in the morning that the priest gave the sign for breaking up the entertainment. Then the men all rose, with the priest at their head, to bid farewell. They prayed /Eneas to come with them ; he IN NORTHUMBERLAND 245 would be safer with them, for they were going to shut themselves up in a peel tower, for fear of the Scots. But ^Eneas was content to stay with the rest of the company, being mostly the women of the party, several of them comely young lasses ; he liked their company, and doubtless thought that where they were there would not be much risk." So there, in some barn or farmer's "lathe," they settled down for the night ; and all was quiet for a while. Presently, however, the dogs began barking angrily, and geese cried ; all was in up- roar in a moment, the women screamed, rushed out, and disappeared in the darkness. ^Eneas himself with his followers hid in a stable. After a bit some of the women came back and told him that it was no band of Scot reivers, only a party of their own people returning ; and so they settled down again, and got such sleep as they might. In the morning, the party set out for Newcastle ; and after a long journey through Northumberland they discerned the walls and church towers of the town ; here, as he says, he felt that civilisation began again : he saw the ancient castle, " the grand tower which 246 NORTH IN FIFTEENTH CENTURY Caesar had built " he calls it ; and the broad river with the keels plying up and down, using the tides in their season. When ^Eneas had first been in London he specially noticed that in the Thames the water " ran up hill," not towards the sea ! It was a marvel to an untravelled man, who knew only the tideless, or almost tideless, Mediterranean ; he does not notice the same thing on the Tyne. At Newcastle he took a short rest, then crossed the river, and made his way to Durham. Robert Hegge, writing in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, describes Durham by saying that "he that hath scene the situation of this citty hath scene the map of Sion, and may save a journey to Jerusalem " ; the treeless rocks, hard and grand, on which the noble buildings stand, with cathedral and castle rising over against each other, just like the temple and the Roman castle at Jerusalem with the mountains again encircling the whole city, even as "the hills stand about Jerusalem," and the Wear taking the place of the valley of the brook Kidron 1 here was a curious and interesting AT DURHAM 247 parallel. To this splendid pile ^Eneas drew near by the north road. He passed the handsome " Neville's Cross " which had been set up after the battle of 1346 against the Scots; the name now given to the battle seems to have been an afterthought. He had already crossed the stream called the Browney, by the Relley bridge, under which poor King David had bootlessly hidden himself in the rout of that disastrous day. Then ^Eneas descended through the deep " peth," as such glens are still called in Durham county, and passing through Crossgate reached the Framwellgate Bridge over the Wear, standing between the two weirs which drove the Abbey mill and the town mill ; then he climbed the hill to the market-place, and along the North Bailey, till he reached the great gate leading into the precincts of the Benedictine House. Here he was duly directed by the gate porter to the Guest House of the monastery, a building still standing and overlooking the river. Though the genteel taste of the eighteenth century has given this house a modern front, castellated stucco, and sham battlements, it still has in 248 NORTH IN FIFTEENTH CENTURY it the ancient chambers in which the guests assembled, just as they were when ^Eneas Sylvius rested there, and was fed and lodged for several days at the charges of the convent. The guest- house food was cooked in the magnificent kitchen, now the kitchen of the Deanery ; in those days it had but lately been erected, having been built by the monastery nearly a century before ; it is still in use, and is, I believe, the only old monastic kitchen still remaining in England. In those days it cooked the food for the whole establishment, the Prior, the monks, the servants and dependents, as well as the numerous strangers who from time to time claimed the hospitality of the convent. The Guest House is described in that most interesting book, the "Rites of Durham," written some time after the beginning of the Reformation with a view of describing, for those whose eyes looked longingly back on the old ways, the manner of life in a large monastery. " This was a famouse house of hospitallitie, called the Geste Haule, within the Abbey garth on the weste syde, towardes the water, the Terrer THE GUEST HALL AT DURHAM 249 of the house being master thereof, as one appoynted to geve intertaynment to all staits, both noble, gentle, and what degree so ever that came thether as strangers, ther intertaynment not being inferior to any place in Ingland, both for the goodnes of ther diett, the sweete and daintie furneture of ther lodging, and generally all things necessarie for traveillers. . . . The victualls that served the said geists came from the great kitching of the Prior, the bread and beare from his pantrie and seller. Yf they weare of honour they weare served as honorably as the Prior himselfe, other- wise, according to their severall callinges . . . for ther better intertaynment he had evermore a hogsheade or two of wynes lying in a seller appertayninge to the said halle, to serve his geists withall." 1 While thus lodged in the College, JEneas was taken to see all matters of interest. It is worth noticing that he appears to have had some previous knowledge of Bede, for he tells us that he went to see his tomb, lying then, as now, in the Galilee; on the other hand, there is no sign that he had ever heard of or cared for St Cuthbert, whose shrine was then magnificent with pious gifts, being still the aim of all devout pilgrims ; for Cuthbert had no literary 1 "Kites of Durham," Surtees Society, chap, xlvii. 250 NORTH IN FIFTEENTH CENTURY fame ; he was but a wonder-working saint, one of a roll of men who had been a fine source of income to monasteries throughout England. This type of Saint was, in a sense, a manu- facture of the early Benedictines, in the tenth and eleventh century; but now, under the effect of the new lights, those freshly-discovered classical gems, on which the eyes of all who were advanced persons in the fifteenth century were fastened, and by which they all were dazzled, these saints had paled sadly, and were treated with neglect. An eloquent testimony to the downfall of their repute is found in the way in which the receipts of their special exchequers fell off all through this period. And ^Eneas was, above all things, a downright modern man, full of warm literary enthusiasms. No doubt he had had in his hands Bede's " Historia Anglorum," the first true bit of English history ; and this interested him when he came to Durham. St Cuthbert, who had no gift of the pen, was to him only one of a common crowd of convenient thaumaturges, useful in keeping the machine of conventual life going. HE PASSES THROUGH ENGLAND 251 Here then, in ancient Durham, ^Eneas took grateful rest, and probably with reluctance set forth once more on the south road, through Darlington to York. At York he came across one of the itinerant judges, and his old law- training having qualified him to talk agreeably to a lawyer, and his Latinity being a perpetual recommendation, he was allowed to attach him- self to the great man's suite. With so safe an escort, he made his way southward without incident. His native subtilty led him to be very agreeable ; nor did he ever dream of com- mitting himself, as when his patron the judge, as talk turned on the late proceedings at Basle, called ^Eneas' master, the Cardinal di Santa Croce, a "wolf in sheep's clothing." Little did the straightforward Englishman dream that he had by his side, in the "sheep's clothing" of a merchant-man, a very cunning and dangerous fox. The judge's escort served him well as far as London ; there the handsome young Italian had to consider how he might get out of England safely. Here, however, came a serious difficulty. The Government of Henry VI. had lately issued a fresh order, with strict command, that no foreigner might leave the country with- out a special permit should he then apply for leave, with the possibility that the Court might actually be on the look-out for him, and might have heard of his proceedings at Edinburgh ? In that case he would be refused his permit, and might be put in durance. Anyhow, he would have had to make explanations he, the young Italian envoy, masquerading through England in a merchant's robe, no doubt personating one of the agents of those wine merchants of Italy, who just then were driving a capital trade in English monasteries and cities. On consideration of all this he decided to take his risks on himself. He still had a good balance of gold in his wallet. " Aurum per medios ire satellites" he doubtless said to him- self Horace was well known to the cinquecento people and he quietly continued his journey. In the account of his first attempt, at the end of the year before, he has given us a graphic account of his earlier journey to London from HE RETURNS TO BASLE 253 Dover; but our task is to describe his visit to the North, and not his sight of Thames river running up hill, and London " Bridge like a city " ; and the men of Stroud said to be blessed with tails, and St Thomas' shrine decked with marvellous splendours at Canterbury. It is enough to say that with judicious and liberal bribes, he unlocked the harbour gates, and sailed away to sunny France. From Calais, where he landed, he travelled direct to Basle, where the Council was still sitting, and gave them his report. His later life interests the North in no way. From 1436 the flexible Secretary threaded his fortuitous way through the tangled mess of European politics, first as a layman attached to Amadeus of Savoy, the Conciliar Pope Felix V. ; then he hung on to the German Court and became Secretary and Poet Laureate to "Frederick the Caesar" in 1442. Frederick was posing as a member of the "neutral party"; the head of the Holy Roman Empire could well take this commanding position. As envoy of Frederick he presently got himself reconciled 254 NORTH IN FIFTEENTH CENTURY to the Italian Curia. Pope Eugenius sagaciously shut his eyes to the past, and treated ^Bneas as a valuable envoy and tool. At the end of 1456, Calixtus III., who was the founder of the splendidly lurid race of the Borgia Popes, named him a Cardinal, and in 1458 he became Pope, becoming "phis ^Eneas," after the fashion of the time, as Pope Pius II. And finally on 18th June, 1464, he took the cross at St Peter's, as he himself says, "an aged man, with head of snow and trembling limbs," though in truth he was only fifty-nine years old, and in August of that same year, died at Ancona. A life, which had been full of meannesses, active, clever, and dishonest, was over. The halo of a great emprise touches all with splendid light, and ditches and fens look golden in such a setting sun. VII I HOLD it a high honour to be asked to open this course of study in the Divina Commedia. It is something to be called on to sound the depths of Dante's genius, and to win inspiration from his words. The common- sense of the eighteenth century could take no pleasure in Dante. Voltaire had a cheap sarcasm for him : " The reputation of Dante will steadily grow parce qu'on ne le lit gueres." And we at the opening of the twentieth century reply that we at least will not pretend to admire what we have not read, any more than we will commit the crime, so common in the theological world, of criticising and con- demning books of which all we know is that 255 256 DANTE AND VIRGIL some religious journal has told us they are shocking. Nothing perhaps shows us better the tone of the eighteenth century, than a passage in Goethe's Italienische Reise, in which he tells us that at Assisi he and his friend were so busy studying some bits of ruined Latin classical work, that they had no time to pay attention to Giotto, or the other Italian glories of the place. The Roman work was correct and according to rule; the Italian art seemed barbarous to them. Goethe himself compared Dante with Milton, condemning both ; and Horace Walpole says of Dante that he was "a Wesleyan parson in Bedlam." Mr C. L. Shadwell, in his fine translation of the Purgatorio, tells us that Dante had qualities which repelled that century, while they attract our age. This is singularly true : " To the age of Samuel Johnson abstraction, general- isation, seemed to be of the essence of art and poetry ; the taste of our day has reversed this in favour of that circumstantial manner of which every canto could afford illustration." DAWN OF RENAISSANCE 257 And hence springs a hope that we may be allowed by our masters the critics to approach with marvel and reverence the difficulties and the amazing beauties of the Divina Commedia. It is a fine phrase of Professor Villari, in which he says, that " We stand at the moment the moment of the composing of the Commedia at which not only an Art, a Literature, and a New Society begins ; it is a moment in which the old medieval world is going, and decomposing, while a new world, that of the Renaissance, begins to fall into shape. And in the midst of these great move- ments rises the giant form of Dante, who com- mands all our attention, and sheds a marvellous light over all the world around." 1 For at this moment "meet all the elements that compose an age, in which one society is dying, while another appears and takes shape.' "But while from such a conflict an immortal Poem could, and did emerge, no practical system of politics did, nor could be born in it." 2 For 1 P. Villari, "Prime due Secoli," vol. ii. 113, of his "History of Florence," 1894. 2 Villari, vol. ii. 179. R 258 DANTE AND VIRGIL here collides the local society with the eternal elements. It was largely out of the strifes, the un- worthy and selfish strifes, of Cities and Nobles that this great Poem sprang. The independence of each town, joined with the turbulence of a second-rate feudalism, clashed with the dying tradition of the Cassars, and the corrupted con- dition of the imperial Papacy, now going down into a "Babylonian Captivity" at Avignon. " From the midst of this conflict in his soul sprang the Divina Commedia, in which two worlds are face to face, yea, even in actual conflict ; while a new spirit passes over the chaos, reviving the past, and transforming it, until it can give birth to the brilliant future, the new age of Art and Letters." : Dante lived through the worst of this turmoil, and, to our mind, took the wrong side. He was on the side of the Foreign Power; he was against the development of the Italian People ; he was specially hostile to any notion of a National life; he hung on to Princes and Courts; he hoped for a cataclysm which might 1 Villari, ii. 179. CAN GRANDE BELLA SCALA 259 restore the dying Empire, and give the Ghibellines their triumph, and withal bring him, the exile, back to his beloved Florence. And if we regard the poet in this attitude, there is perhaps no stranger prophecy than that with which he opens his great work : "... infin che il Veltro Verra, che la far& morir con doglia. Questi non ciberk terra n& peltro, Ma sapienza e amore e virtute, E sua nazion sark tra Feltro e Feltro." 1 Benvenuto da Imola declares that in these lines the greyhound is Jesus Christ, who alone could resist the wolf of Rome ; he tells us that his home his rule is between Feltro e Feltro, that is, " inter coelum et terram ! " or, as he puts it elsewhere, "inter coelum et coelum," the heavens above and the heavens below the firmament. In all this he does but ignore the obvious. The " Dog " is Can Grande della Scala, the head of the great house of the Scaligers, who ruled in Verona from 1312 to 1329, "with a splen- dour surpassing all Italian Princes. Brave and 1 Inferno, c. i. 101. 260 fortunate in war, wise in council, he gained a name for generosity, even for probity." He gave Dante an asylum, and was the greatest of the later Ghibellines ; he died, however, at the age of forty-one, fulfilling none of Dante's courtier prophecies. The real meaning of "tra Feltro e Feltro" is that at that time Verona ruled from Feltro in the North, on the south slopes of the Alps, to another Feltro in the South, not far from Urbino in the Romagna. The truth is that Dante was no prophet of the future. He is throughout mediaeval, orthodox ; he expresses the embodiment of the very spirit of the Middle Ages. Even when he transgresses into the earlier worlds he does so with an apology ; when he brings in Trajan, or Ripheus, or Cato, or Virgil, or Statius, he does it with an assurance that they either were, or were to be, saved souls. And this makes it needful for us to ask why at the outset Dante chose Virgil as guide and leader in the darker world ? Why the Roman Poet, and not some heaven-sent Angel, as Milton would have feigned, to be his friend and bright protector ? VIRGIL AN 7 D STATIUS 261 This is the subject of my address. Dante, as all allow, is a poet of the fullest individuality ; no Epic writer comes near him in this aspect ; he dominates the whole scene ; in no other Epic does the creator of the poem move personally throughout the whole action as he does. How then comes he to turn to Virgil as friend and master ? Virgil was never a Christian ; they did not even traditionally feign that, as the mediaeval writers made Statius to be, he was a baptised Christian ; and yet it is made out that through Virgil's influence Statius was converted. "Per te poeta fui, per te cristiano," he says, in the fine passage in which he describes the power of Virgil over his soul. 1 True, Statius was a contemporary of St John, while 1 ". . . Tu prima m'inviasti Verso Parnaso, a ber nelle sue grotte, E poi, appresso Dio, m'alluminasti. Facesti come quei che va di notte, Che porta il lume retro, et se non giova, Ma dopo se fa le persone dotte, Quando dicesti : Secol si rinnuova, Torna giustizia, e primo tempo umano, E progenie discende dal ciel nuova. Per te poeta fui, per te cristiano." Purgatwio, xxii. 64. 262 DANTE AND VIRGIL Virgil was dead ere Christ was come. He was, in the Middle Ages, claimed as a quasi-Christian by a special revelation from the Sibyl. In Dante's days Virgil oscillates between the noblest part of a Prophet, of an inspired fore- runner of Christ, and, on the other hand, the base part of a Conjurer, a dabbler in the black arts. " Virgil," says George Long, 1 " was the great poet of the Middle Ages. To him Dante paid the homage of his superior genius, and owned him for his master and his model. Among the vulgar he had the reputation of a Conjuror, a Necromancer, a worker of miracles ; it is the fate of a great name to be embalmed in fable." This vulgar repute of him seems to have been unknown to Dante, unless perhaps there is a reference to magical gifts when he makes the Latin Poet describe himself as having gone before those days into the unknown world, and as having there had converse with Erichtho, 2 in 1 "Smith's Diet, of Greek and Roman Biography," .v. Virgil. 2 Erichtho, or Eriton, was a Thessalian sorceress who (Lucan, Phars. vi. 508) conjured up the spirits of the dead. (Inferno, c. ix. 22-24). THE MEDIEVAL VIRGIL 263 order to draw a soul out of the circle of Guidecca, the nethermost pit. Virgil is also pourtrayed as wise and dignified. His name was attached to a crowd of current legends, and he is the subject of many mediaeval poems, some hortatory, some amatory, in many languages. To him is given the role of Merlin when tricked by Vivian ; he was caught not in the oak, but in a basket, hung out of a window, to the derision of the crowd. " Une femme par ses engins ne trompa-elle aussi Virgile, quant a uns panier il fiit prins Et puis pendu emmy la ville ? " l What must wise men endure, when mocked by lively beauties ! Let us be patient, remembering Virgil. There was also a desire to enrol him among the saints. This led to a marvellous legend, one so popular that it actually found a place in a Hymn sung at the Mass on St Paul's day in Mantua. It runs that St Paul when he landed in Italy turned aside to see Virgil's tomb at 1 Comparetti, " Virgilio nel medio evo," vol, ii. p. 116, 264 DANTE AND VIRGIL Parthenope (now Naples) ; there he lamented that he had come too late to find him still living, for then he would have taught him the faith. " Ad Maronis Mausoleum Ductus fudit super eum Piae rorem lacrimae : Si te vivum invenissem Quam te vivum reddidissem Poetarum maxume ! " which is turned by Matthew Arnold as follows : " Brought to Maro's tomb he cried O'er the flower of Mantua's pride, Shedding many a pious tear ; Living if I could have found thee, How would I have loved and crown'd thee, Chief of poets, ever dear ! " Medieval romance, however, wanted stronger food than this ; and so in the fourteenth century there was spun out a weird tale instead of this poetical fiction. St Paul, on landing in Italy, was taken to see the tomb of Virgil ; he found the entrance to it in the side of a steep hill, by a subterranean passage. Here he boldly went in, full of curiosity A MEDIEVAL ROMANCE 265 and reverence for the poet. First he was en- countered by a furious gale of wind, with thunder and lightning; then, as he made his way towards the middle of the mound, he heard reverberating in the hollow way the clash of steel and din of hammers. When he came to an inner door, he found on either side of it a grim, hideous figure in bronze, who wielded a steel hammer: the two flung their hammers round, so that none could pass between. Through the entrance St Paul was able to see, by the light of a lamp hung from the vault above, the poet seated on a throne, with a great wax taper alight stand- ing on either hand ; around him were strewn books, all open. Over against him stood another bronze figure, armed, in the attitude of one about to shoot from a bow. By some unex- plained power, St Paul quieted the two club- men, and stepped within the doorway. Then in a moment the figure drew bow and shot. The pellet struck the lamp and shattered it, the whole vault was wrapped in darkness and dust, and all seemed to fall in together. St Paul found himself again in the open air, and, 266 DANTE AND VIRGIL seeing that no more could be done, went on his way in sorrow. 1 Yet all this wonder-world would never have secured to Virgil his place as guide to Dante in his wonderful journey through the unknown world : nor perhaps would it have been enough for Dante to have recognised both the descent of ^Eneas into the realms of Dis in the sixth book of the Mneid, or the splendour of prophetic inspiration in the Sibylline picture of the new heaven and the new earth in the fourth Eclogue though the descent to the realm of Dis qualified him as a guide, and the Eclogue was held in the Middle Ages to be the utterance of a true Prophet. What was needed more than this was Dante's faith in the imperial unity of Rome, his Ghibelline belief in the persistence of the world- authority of the Caesars. To him Virgil was the John Baptist of the Latin world : "Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regiia," he cries, an age of Peace and reformed life, with Utopian gleams; he even seems to hint at the 1 Comparetti, vol. ii. pp. 94, 95. DANTE THE GHIBELLINE 267 coming of the Blessed Child. Virgil was also herald of the Roman world-empire ; a rule under which the earth should be blessed with sweet fertility, and all should go well under the happy rule of the Benevolent Despot. One heard the same song again in the eighteenth century. To Dante the lay-empire was older and more august than the Church-empire, the Papacy; yet both of them were God's vicegerents to rule the world. This high conception of the perfect ruler has tinged men's thoughts from the beginning: the dream of one removed above the meaner turmoil of selfish daily politics has ever been the delight of the hopeful. Dante's Prince, the perfect man in strength and virtue, in purity and noble conduct of life, large-minded, firm of grasp, though unlike the men of our modern Utopias, was very like Carlyle's " strong man " ; all is staked on one man's personal goodness and firmness. Yet to Dante the central figure of all the concentric rings of rulers is not a Priest but a layman, not a Pope but a Caesar. Not to the august Papacy, nor to the self-contained mediaeval city, but to the universal empire his 268 DANTE AND VIRGIL mind turned ; and of this Empire Virgil was the Prophet, the inspired Seer "in persona di Dio parlando," l as he exclaimed : " Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento Hae tibi erunt artes ; pacisque imponere morem ; Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos." ^En., vi. 852-4. So sang the "divinus poeta noster," as Dante styled him ; rejoicing that the Italians of his day were the true heirs of ancient glories. The destiny transferred by him to the Germanic Emperor was superb in theory ; to rule the whole world ; to be God-gifted with the power of seeing truth and science ; to compel the world to peace, to be a mighty avenger of wrong, to punish the turbulent. And this was Virgil's highest flight. Dante quotes him as on a level with Holy Writ. In his mind there were two Revelations ; of equal authority with the rule of the vicegerent of the divine authority was the Caesar sung by the prophet Virgil. In the Inferno he sets on the same level, as the greatest of sinners, those who 1 "De Monarchia," Bookii. 3. THE POSITION OF VIRGIL 269 were traitors against Caesar, and those who betrayed Christ. This we discern at the very outset of the Inferno ; there Dante is amazed to learn that under Virgil's guidance he is to visit the unseen world. Twice only had there been such a marvel, first, in the person of ^Eneas, as founder of the Roman Empire, and then in the person of St Paul, as founder of the Roman Church. The parallel runs all through. Nothing shows it better than Dante's treatment of the legend about Statius, the Roman poet, who lived in the time of our Lord. " ' Thou showedst me first/ he answered, 'where To taste Parnassus' fountains fair ; Afterwards on the road Didst light that leads to God. " ' 'Twas thine to be as one at night, Behind his back who bears a light, Whence others may be taught, Though him it profits naught. " ' So didst thou sing the world's new birth And justice lighting on the earth, And a new progeny Descending from the sky. 270 DANTE AND VIRGIL " ' And understand that by thy aid Poet was I and Christian made, And now the outline faint My hand shall reach to paint. " ' Then was the world impregnate all The seed of true belief withal, The seed of message sown From the eternal throne. " ' So well thy late-repeated word Did with the preacher's new accord, That oft I made resort To hear of their report. " ' So holy grew to me their band That, when Domitian reached his hand To persecute, my tears Flowed to unite with theirs. " 'And ere my verse to Thebes had brought The Greeks, to Baptism I had sought, But stayed for fear of ill A hidden Christian still.' " l Thus Virgil is presented as the Evangelist for Christ, and as converting Statius. This is why Dante takes him as guide and friend ; this is why Virgil never withdraws from 1 From Mr Shadwell's spirited translation of the Purgatorio, c. xxii. 64. WHY HE IS DANTE'S GUIDE 271 his task, till at the end of Purgatory the Divine Wisdom in form of Beatrice replaces him, and leads the poet to the last awful journey through the heavenly courts. From the very beginning the influence of this more divine Beatrice is visible : Virgil tells Dante that "Donna mi chiam6 beata e bella " l to be an Ambassador for this high wisdom "with eyes more bright than Venus' star." So Virgil is the link between the old world and the new. This then is the meaning of Dante's choice of Virgil : he represents to him the Divine purpose, as he conceived it, in the Ghibelline domination of the Germanic Csesars of the Holy Roman Empire. He has not the heavenly wisdom of Beatrice, and when she appears he fades away : he has, however, knowledge and moral wisdom, and is a protector in the most awful moments, drawn by the poet's vivid imagination. If we now briefly trace the outline of the beginning of Virgil's guidance, we shall see 1 Inferno, c. ii. 53. 272 DANTE AND VIRGIL with what skill the Roman poet is made to take the foremost part in the marvellous work. When in the opening canto, Dante is stopped by the Panther, the Lion, and the She-wolf, 1 he discerns a figure not far away ; to this human being he at once appeals : " ' Have pity, whatsoe'er thou be,' I cried, ' Or living man, or melancholy ghost.' ' No man,' he answered, ' though I once was man ; My parents were of Lombardy ; and they In Mantua both their mortal journey ran. " ' Late in great Julius' reign I had my birth, And lived at Rome 'neath good Augustus' sway, When false and lying Gods prevailed on earth. A bard was I ; and sang that just one's fame Anchises' son who left the Trojan shore, When fell proud Ilion, wrapt in hostile flame. " ' But why returnest thou to such annoy ? Why dost thou climb yon pleasant mount no more, The origin and cause of every joy ? ' With looks abashed I answered, bending low : ' Art thou that Virgil then that fountain clear Whence streams of eloquence so richly flow ? 1 That is, the Panther represents the black and white Florentine factions chi di pel maculato era coperta, while the Lion gives us the fierceness of France and of Philip le Bel ; and the She-wolf is the proper symbol of Rome. THEIR MEETING 273 '"0 thou, of bards the honour and the light, Let my long study of thy volume dear And mighty love find favour in thy sight ! My master thou ; my author most admired, To thee alone that beauteous style I owe, Which for my name such honour hath acquired.' " l Yet Dante still hesitates, unworthy of so great a grace as the protection of Virgil : who ends by promising to guide him, till he seeks to rise higher than Purgatory ; further he cannot go, but he will leave Dante in charge of her who treads those courts, and will retire. A little later he encourages Dante to persevere, and tells him he has been commissioned for this object to join him, and to lead him forward to the happiness of meeting the heavenly Beatrice. And so we find that he pilots Dante through Inferno and Purgatorio. There is perhaps no place in which Dante's poetic skill is so finely shown as in the scene of the close of these relations with Virgil. 2 At the head of the stair to Paradise, after the great wall of flame, comes 1 Inferno, c. i. in Gary's translation. 2 It is interesting to note that in Purgatorio, c. xxii. 127, Dante walks humbly behind Virgil and Statius (the latter being the more S 274 DANTE AND VIRGIL the parting. I quote this from Mr Shadwell's remarkable and exact translation of the Purga- torio, c. xxx. : " And soon as on my sight there broke That excellence supreme, whose stroke Already I had known Ere boyhood was outgrown, " To the left turned I in such wise As child unto his mother flies, Running to her, whene'er In trouble or in fear, " And spake to Virgil, ' In my veins No drachm that trembleth not remains ; By token well I know The flame of long ago.' " But we had been by Virgil left, Of Virgil, father sweet, bereft, Virgil, to whom I gave me, And turned to him to save me. " Not all the vision of that place Our ancient mother lost, had grace My dew-cleansed cheeks to guard From tears their hue that marred. sure guide for these higher regions) ; then in Purgatorio, c. xxvii. 46, he walks with Virgil on one side and Statius on the other ; and lastly, at the end of the Puryatorio, Dante walks before them both. THEIR PARTING 275 " ' Dante, weep not : though Virgil be Departed, weep not yet : for thee Behoves thy tears be poured At stroke of other sword.' "As Admiral his fleet re views From poop, from prow, and bids his crews, On all his ships about Stir them to courage stout ; " So on that car's left edge appeared, Even as I turned me, when I heard My name pronounced, that here Perforce I register, " That lady, who before had been Enveiled 'mid angels' greeting seen On me her eyes now bending, Across the river sending. " And though the veil her head beneath Encircled with Minerva's wreath, Hung down, nor left confessed Her semblance manifest ; " In royal wise, but haughty still, Continued she, as one that will Speak, yet within him stored Keeps back the sharper word. " 'Look well, 'tis Beatris, 'tis I.' " And so the Latin seer goes : not without a last and remarkable word ; 276 DANTE AND VIRGIL " No longer on my word abide, Nor look for sign from me to guide : Now hast thou judgment found Free and upright and sound. " Henceforth in thee it were offence Not to be guided by thy sense : Now o'er thyself I set Mitre and Coronet." This famous passage ending with the mysterious "Perch'io te sopra te corono e mitrio" has been greatly debated, though it has a magnificent interpretation. From this moment Dante is no more a timid wayfarer: he has reached the height of true manhood ; lord of himself, he is crowned with the temporal and spiritual crown, as with divine and human wisdom, fit to tread the courts of heaven. Indeed, in this farewell the splendid picture whirls round to that which we are ever im- pressing on mankind that is, to the personal strength, independence, uprightness, purity, wisdom of will, of one made in God's image. No aim less dignified should be ours : for this is the true Coronation, the true Tiara, to open heaven's gates. Let there be no slavery, no MEDIEVAL PICTURES OF VIRGIL 277 falsehood, no sinking under evil or vice. He who has passed through the dark valley un- scathed may hope to attain to this height of nature. No cloistral virtue is enough : a man must be strong, to descend willingly to see the evil festering underneath, and, from the cruel evils of the world, to gain purity and deter- mination ; this is the man whom wisdom will crown and mitre; it is he who, with a true liberty and a gentle independence, will bring blessings of the world. The essential thing is that the strengthened human soul will rise and raise. Thus then we bid farewell to Dante's Virgil ; that fascinating figure of the Middle Ages, a being unknown to the myriads of English lads who spell their way through the sEneid. This fascination is gone from us : he is now only the text-book of weary schoolboys. Yet in those times he was imagined sometimes as a Latin gentleman, sometimes as a half Oriental sage. In John the Monk's dull " Dolopathos," a mediaeval romance, the hero comes to Rome, and betakes himself to Virgil's school. There he finds the Poet in his chair, wearing a rich cope or cape lined with fur, without sleeves, with a fine skin- cap on his head, with the hood drawn back. Around him stand the sons of the bravest nobles of Rome, being taught, let us hope, with more success than Charles the Great secured for his young German nobles two centuries earlier than the days of John the Monk. This was the ideal Virgil of days more than a century before Dante ; in days not long after Dante we have an admirable presentment of the Poet in the pages of 'Sandro Botticelli's illustrations of the Commedia. 1 For 'Sandro presents us Virgil in colour and form of dress : he wears a kind of Jewish mitre in fur ; his hair is long and venerable, with a heavy beard and moustache ; he carries a solemn and weary look of wisdom. The mitre is plum-coloured, or perhaps dark crimson, with a lining or trimming of lamb's wool. He wears a blue under- coat with sleeves, and a dark crimson cape with white linings. 1 This remarkable series of illustrations has been admirably reproduced at Berlin by the German Government. VIRGIL A ROMAN PROPHET 279 This is of course a fancy dress, yet it is carefully adhered to, far more so than we find in the delineations of the early editions, such as the Vellutello Edition of 1544, in which the letters D and V are sometimes set over the figures, to secure them from being confused together. Thus then Virgil is marked out by Dante as the prophet of his ideal Roman world- empire, which stands side by side with Christ's empire, of which the Papacy was in his days the representative. Dante stood at the part- ing of the ways ; a poetic spirit of the old world, he ever looks back. Hence comes this characteristic of the Commedia, that Dante, essentially a theological writer, never deals with the coming times, or if he does touch on prophecy, does it in an obscure and narrow way. He knew nothing of all those movements in which the Commedia formed a literary epoch. For though our poet's mind was full of empires, he nevertheless gave a far more important impulse to the germinant growth of national life. While the civilised world was still under the influence of the " Universal Language," the 280 DANTE AND VIRGIL Latin, he impressed a permanent literary character on the "vulgare eloquium," the speech of the people. In the Commedia, and still more in his prose writings, he opened the way for a great national literature ; and what can be a stronger element than this in a nation's growth? It is not clear whether the Church gained or lost on the whole by her strict and narrow adherence to the Latin language, which she endeavoured to impose on the world as the universal speech of mankind ; certain it is that those who threw off their allegiance to her, made at the same time vast advances in their national languages and letters. To clothe glow- ing thoughts in words "in which even women can converse," as was said of Dante's Italian writings, was a great step in the right direction ; to make that speech instinct with life, and so far superior to the dead tongue it rivalled, was another huge gain ; for this too Dante has the praise. He lived in Florence while Art was working miracles around him : he saw the splendour of the Palazzo Vecchio (1298), the building of the Loggia, the growth of Santa INFLUENCES AFFECTING DANTE 281 Croce, and of Santa Maria del Fiore, with its beautiful dome. While a pure taste ruled every branch of Art, and he could drink in inspiration from fresh public monuments like the Baptistery gates, from the creations of Cimabue or Giotto, from the tuneful strains of Casella, from the marvels of Niccolo da Pisa and Arnolfo, while these glories were alive around him, he too was fired to create splendid monuments of poetry or prose. Let us hope that this priceless inheritance of Dante's genius will ever dignify and refine that new and noble national history, a history of peace and plenty, in which Italy will come to be a leader and an inspiration to the smaller states of Europe, centre of a group national, not imperial a group invaluable, in which all diversities and all liberties are kept alive and protected from the crushing wheels of an imperial carroccio. When Italy can say triumphantly " Italia fara da se," we shall feel that we are past the worst perils which threaten the liberties of the modern world. Every generous soul must pray for and help towards the independence of these characteristic 282 DANTE AND VIRGIL states, these homes of freedom, these happy refuges of delicate arts and simple life. Lands are these, in which the iron heel of militarism is not felt, where social and civic life can grow in wholesome freedom. Switzerland, Holland, and the Scan- dinavian Kingdoms are free lands which must be cherished. If Italy will cast in her lot with these, she need no longer deplore with Filicaia that "fatal don di bellezza" which has been so often her ruin, and has hindered the natural and proper , plendour of her free national life. Great gifts do not die. And Dante's genius, his inheritance left to Italy, will still work marvels for the land he loved so warmly, and which buffeted him so cruelly while he lived. VIII THE BURIAL-PLACE OF THE SLAV- ONIANS : NORTH STONEHAM CHURCH, HAMPSHIRE (Read before the London Society of Antiquaries, 1894.) NORTH STONEHAM, a pretty village lying about four miles north of Southampton, stands, as the name denotes, "Ad Lapidem," at one of the milestones on the Roman road from Winchester to the waterside at Clausentum. The parish church has somewhat higher archi- tectural pretensions than is usual in simple Hampshire village churches ; it has a nave and two aisles running the whole length of the build- ing, but no structural chancel ; it is almost a square, with a low fifteenth-century tower at the west end. In the north aisle of this church, says Mr 2S3 284 BURIAL-PLACE OF SLAVONIANS Duthy, 1 was the original burying-place of these Slavonian strangers ; for the great ledger-stone, " a slab of polished foreign stone," as Mr Shore of the Hartley Institute calls it, which covers their remains, seems to have lain in that aisle in his time (1839). Since the date of Mr Duthy's book, it appears to have been removed to the middle of the church, just in front of the altar-rails. The north aisle had been given up to the Fleming family, the squires of the parish. The rector, needing space for his choir, has lately boarded over with a wooden floor the area in which the stone rests ; he has, however, kindly enabled me to get a rubbing of it, after the planks of the floor had been removed for the purpose. 2 1 The passage in Duthy runs thus : " On the pavement of the north aisle is a large stone, having round an eagle displayed the words SEPVLTURA DE LA SCHOLA DE SCLAVONI ATO DNI MCCCCLXXXXI. The import of the inscription has not been ascertained. It has been suggested, however, that it may point out the burial-place of a Slavonian named De La Schole, and that the arms may have been intended to designate his nation." " Sketches of Hampshire," p. 396. 2 By permission of the rector, the Rev. E. K. Browne, M.A., the wooden flooring has now been cut through and hinged, so making it possible to see the stone, at the expense of the Hamp- 8 4 QQ o '5 CJ c8 o THE LEDGER-STONE AT STONEHAM 285 The stone is 6 feet 8 inches by 3 feet 7 inches, and so incised as to imitate a brass ; round the edge runs an inscription, bordered by parallel lines ; and at the angles are quatre foils with the symbols of the four Evangelists ; in the middle of the stone is a well-designed shield, charged with a double-headed eagle. The inscription runs thus : SEPVLTVRA DE LA SCHOLA DE SOLA VON I ANO DNI M OCCC LXXXXI- These Italian words, for they appear to be mediaeval Italian rather than Latin, may safely be rendered as " The burial-place of the gild (or fraternity) of the Sclavonians, A.D. 1491." Duthy, who at any rate saw that there was something interesting here, goes altogether astray in his rendering; for he thinks that "De la Schola" is the name of a person interred, and explains the spread-eagle as the badge of his nationality, the Slavonian. The words " Schola de Sclavoni," however, carry us at once to Venice ; for there, as Mol- shire Field Club. The accompanying plate of the slab is from a rubbing made by Mr W. H. St John Hope. 286 BURIAL-PLACE OF SLAVONIANS menti tells us in his interesting volume, 1 "these Scuole were a number of small but powerful republics (guilds, rather, or societies), which put themselves under the protection of some saint, erected buildings of their own, and adorned their churches with pictures by the best artists." These words may be only a generalisation from the one example at Venice ; at any rate, it is known that a company or gild of Slavonian seamen had a settlement there, which still bears their name ; that district being styled " la riva de' Schiavoni" to this day. Here they had their quay and landing-place, buildings for business, and a little behind the remarkable Church or Chapel of St George, adorned at their cost with a fine scheme of wall-paintings by Carpaccio. This chapel was finished in 150 1. 2 It is said, and I believe rightly, that this Scuola was composed of Illyrian or Dalmatian sailors, brought over to Venice at a time when a large 1 " La vie prive'e a Venise " (Ven. 1882). 2 A very interesting and complete account of St George's Chapel is to be found in Mr J. R. Anderson's Paper on Carpaccio's works, in the "St Mark's Rest," THE VENETIAN SLAVONIANS 287 part of the Adriatic seaboard was under the dominion of the Republic : they manned the galleys which carried the commerce and the products of the East to all parts of the western world. Flaminio Cornerio 1 says that the Slav- onians crossed the Adriatic "in 1451, many being sailors, and determined to found (in Venice) a charitable brotherhood under St George and St Tryphon, for the succour of poor seamen and others of their nation, and to conduct their bodies religiously to burial." We have also their own declaration on the subject, under date 1452, the year of their arrival in Venice, and the year before the world's catastrophe at Constanti- nople. Their aim, they say, is "to hold united in sacred bonds men of Dalmatian blood, to render homage to God and His saints by chari- table endeavours and by religious ceremonies, and by holy sacrifices to help the souls of the brethren alive or dead." Both these passages point to the same anxiety for the welfare of those of their people who died in foreign lands. This then is the starting-point of our 1 "NotizieStoriche" (Ven. 1758), 167, 288 BURIAL-PLACE OF SLAVONIANS Slavonians : and our records show that it is just after this time that they appear at Southampton. These Illyrians and Dalmatians have ever been famous seamen : to this day, I believe, they furnish the best of the crews for the Austrian navy. They were not Ragusans, for these were Latins, and their " argosies " were not manned with Slavonian crews ; on the contrary, a bitter hostility ruled between them and the native people of Illyria and Dalmatia. Venice, on the other hand, had no such feeling, but recruited her ships from every quarter, much as our English merchant- navy is largely manned with Norwegians or with Lascars. It was therefore perfectly natural that when the eastern shores of the Adriatic fell under Venetian control, the Slavonian seamen should be transferred in large numbers to the City on the Lagunes. The next point is, how did these Slavonians come to leave traces of themselves in a quiet Hampshire village ? We must, to answer the query, look first into the records of Venetian trade with England ; it is plain that if we find a connection between the Venetian galleys at Southampton and Winchester we THE VENETIAN TRADERS 289 shall be on our way towards a solution of the problem. Now, there is plenty of evidence that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Venetian traders, though they dealt mainly with the wealthy cities of the Low Countries (the convoys were usuaUy styled "the Flanders fleets"), were also in frequent communication with England, through London or Southampton. We find that merchandise sometimes passed up the Thames, and sometimes was landed at Southampton. This commerce was so great that it enabled the Venetians to send out fleets of considerable size, and the ships acted as a protection to one another. Each vessel, we learn, besides her 180 oarsmen, mostly Slavonians, her pilots, scribes, and craftsmen, musicians and physicians, carried a body of thirty archers for defence ; the archers were commanded by four youths of the patrician rank, told off specially for this duty, " in order that the noble youth of Venice may see the world." For the oligarchy knew that their position could not be sustained unless their sons were trained to become familiar with the conditions under 290 BURIAL-PLACE OF SLAVONIANS which their trade was carried on. The Venetian State Papers show that there was also a need for these skilled righting men. Almost on every occasion on which they make mention of visits to Southampton they tell us of unfriendly relations between the crews and the townsfolk. Thus, in 1323, a serious affray occurred. The patrons, merchants, masters, and seamen of five Venetian galleys fought the Southampton men, and there was bloodshed as well as much destruction of goods. Again, in 1384, there came a Decree from the Senate, replying to a communication from the captain of the fleet, who had asked leave to run over to Southampton to complete his cargo. The Senate tell him that if his council (the masters of all the galleys with the merchants) think good to go to Hampton, he may go ; only they beg him earnestly not to let his rowers land, lest there should ensue bad blood and affrays. And, in 1386, we find that " should the captain and the shipmasters deem it too perilous to touch at Hampton, they might forbear." Even when, as in the fifteenth century in 1451, a Venetian ship is ordered to put ashore QUARRELS WITH THE LONDONERS 291 at Southampton goods for the Venetian merchants in London, a similar anxiety is shown. So that a state of ill-will and angry jealousy seems to have existed all through these two centuries. After the middle of the fifteenth century the resort of the galleys to Southampton became far more frequent. For troubles in London, political and commercial, made that city very unsafe for the Italians. Sir James Ramsey, in his valuable historical work on "Lancaster and York" (vol. ii. p. 104), refers to these London disturbances, and their effect on Italian trade. These troubles, in fact, caused the transfer to Southampton and Winchester of the whole commercial business between London and Venice. This took place in 1456, 1457. "About the end of April (1456)," he writes, " serious disturbances broke out in London, prob- ably in connection with the attempt to prohibit the sale of foreign silks. The servant of a mercer picked a quarrel with an Italian and assaulted him. The Mayor next day, having committed the offender to prison, the entire * mercery ' of the city rose and released their fellow. The houses of several Italians were sacked ; foreigners hid themselves, or fled to 292 BURIAL-PLACE OF SLAVONIANS Winchester and Southampton. The Duke of Buckingham was sent into the city with a commission of Oyer et Terminer . . . even the king (Henry VI.) was brought into the city to appease the people. On the 5th of May the disturbances rose to such a height that the king was taken back to Westminster. . . . By 10th May order was restored, two or three men having been hung. * The Lombards to occupie the merchandizes as thei dide till the Counsail or Parliament have otherwise determined. ' " J These troubles brought matters to a head. The Italian traders appealed for protection against the intolerable arrogance and violence of the Londoners ; and the Senate, after some delay, issued a decree that " in consequence of insults by artificers and shopkeepers of London " the Venetians, Genoese, Florentines, and Lucchese should henceforth have nothing more to do with the capital. Their trade, however, was too valuable and their spirit too high to be crushed by the unmannerly behaviour of the islanders, "toto disjunctos orbe Britannos" even in the fifteenth century. They therefore selected Winchester us their headquarters and emporium, * "Fabian," 630; also "Paston Letters," i. 386, 387. TRANSFERRED TO WINCHESTER 293 with orders that "no Venetian ship should go to London so long as the merchants remain absent " ; and, remembering how badly the Italians had fared before the justices in the capital, they added "that the merchants should insist on having at Winchester a judge for all law-suits between English and Italians, and between the Italians themselves, so that they may not have to go to London to the Courts." 23rd August, 1457. This transference of the merchants, with all the machinery of their commerce, to Winchester, brings us close to the point of our enquiry, why the Slavonians should have made North Stoneham Church their place of sepulture. For Southampton was the harbour and Piraeus of Winchester; and the Italian galleys for half a century regarded that town as the true com- mercial gate and port of entry for all England. A lively traffic at once converged on that sheltered harbourage ; and as a necessary conse- quence, the twelve miles of Roman road, which in those days were the only land connection between the two towns (the river being too shallow for anything except boats), were thronged with 294 BURIAL-PLACE OF SLAVONIANS travellers and the rich store of goods from the eastern world. This Roman street issuing forth from the south gate of Winchester follows a straight course southward, through the villages of Compton and Otterbourne ; and to this latter place the modern high-road runs along the ancient line, as may be seen from its inflexible directness. At Otterbourne, the present highway, bearing slightly to the right, climbs a steep gravel hill, while the Roman street, now almost entirely obliterated, continued in a straight course, passing midway between the present railway and the high-road, till it reached the two Stonehams, villages a Roman mile apart. Up and down this street passed the foreign seamen with their loads of merchandise; the Slavonians being as handy and as regularly employed in this work as in that of navigating the Venetian galleys. They even appear to have ventured, more boldly than prudently, to penetrate into the country districts with packs of goods, acting as hawkers and traders on their own account. For we find in 1499 1 1 Venetian State Papers, No. 782. AND TO SOUTHAMPTON 295 " that a few days before some of the galley- crews were travelling through the country hawking their wares, when about twenty miles from South- ampton three of them were attacked by high- waymen, who killed two of the three. The king of England [Henry VII., who was friendly towards the foreign traders, as befitted a prince who had a head on his shoulders], on hearing of the mishap from the captain of the galleys, promptly inquired of it, captured two of the robbers, and sent them to Southampton, where they were forthwith hanged." It was for the sake of those who had perished in such a manner, or who might have died from natural causes, that the " Slavonian School " set itself to make due provision for a burial-place, according to their declared duty, " to succour the living, and find an honourable resting-place for their dead." And this they appear to have done by getting leave either to build or to take possession of this north aisle of North Stoneham Church, at the first halting-ground of their con- voys after issuing from Southampton Bargate. Why should they have pitched on this, rather than on some one of the many churches, apparently so much more handy for them, within 296 BURIAL-PLACE OF SLAVONIANS the town walls? Clearly because relations were so strained between the Venetians and the townsmen of Southampton, and the dislike felt for the foreigners was so strong, that it would have been very difficult for them to get possession of a church, or even of a portion of a church, inside the walls. And even had they been able to get such a chantry chapel of their own, their tenure of it would have been always most insecure ; during their long absences no one would have been left behind to protect their Campo Santo; their dead would have been exposed to insult and plunder from the rude islanders. They had no factory at Southampton ; it is true that in 1495 one Thomas Oare was their consul in the town ; for we learn that he was elected to and confirmed in that office in 1495 ; but there is no trace of more than this : we know that in the orders given from headquarters the shipmen were often forbidden even to land there. Such narrow jealousy on the part of the English, whether in London or Southampton, against men who brought in their train prosperity and plenty, was unreasonable WHY THEY CHOSE N. STONEHAM 297 and shortsighted, and did much to quicken the steady loss of wealth and trade which the records of the time deplore in plaintive terms, as if our people were not to a very large extent the causes of their own depression. This jealousy perhaps also explains the fact that no traces of these Slavonians or of the Venetian traffic have as yet been found in the somewhat abundant records of the town of Southampton. Thus debarred from having their chapel in the town, the seamen naturally looked out for some quiet place on their line of route at which they might find a fitting cemetery for their dead. South Stoneham, through which they passed after leaving the town, was probably not avail- able, as it was in the hands of the monks of St Denys in the suburbs ; and they therefore went on a Roman mile, and paused at the other Stoneham. Here they secured what they wanted. It may be that the rector of the parish, who about this time appears to have been engaged in the work of restoration or enlargement of his church, was glad of the substantial aid which the foreigners could give; he may too have 298 BURIAL-PLACE OF SLAVONIANS made friends with them as they passed through, for Englishmen, I suppose, are not all brutes ; and this offer, in accordance with the rules of their guild, to build or beautify at their own charges the north aisle of the church, was no doubt willingly accepted by the good priest. And so the " Sepultura de la Schola de Sclavoni " was established at North Stoneham. The aisle has in it, though much changed since that time, touches of a higher art than is commonly to be met with in Hampshire village churches. Thus, the little figures which stop the mouldings round the head of the east window of the north aisle (if, indeed, they are in their original position, which does not seem to be quite certain) are full of life and vigour of treatment. The work done by the Slavonians, whatever it may have been, in the interior of this aisle, has all disappeared. Still, we may be sure they gave much heed to it. They may have brought over, in those brightest days of Venetian art, some rich picture as an altar-piece, from which as they worshipped they drew sweet memories of the sunny mistress of the Adriatic, their adopted home. THE PERILS THEY UNDERWENT 299 The records of North Stoneham make no reference to these picturesque strangers ; they have vanished as completely as the Roman road along which they passed. That they really needed some such burying- place is clear; many were the perils they faced in coming to England. They had to bear the ill-will of Southampton ; in the open country there were hungry and savage highwaymen ; the Wars of the Roses had filled the land with lawless folk ; maladies, engendered by rough living aboard and ashore, were rife, and went under the con- venient general name of the Plague; even the sea-coasts were infested with freebooters. Only three years before the date of our ledger-stone, the Venetian State Papers (No. 547) provide us with an example of these dangers : " On Christmas Day (1488) while the Doge and the Ambassadors were at session in St Mark's, came letters from London addressed to Giovanni Frescobaldi, the Florentine money-changer and usurer, under date of Nov. 3rd, wherein it was set forth that the Flanders Galleys, Piero Malepiero, captain, which had sailed out from Antwerp for Hampton on Oct. 26, when off St 300 BURIAL-PLACE OF SLAVONIANS Helen's were accosted by three ships, which bade them strike sail. The galleys, seeing they were English, drew nigh, saying they were friends ; whereon the English tried to board the galleys ; but Piero blew his whistle and beat to quarters, and so drave off the assailants, slaying eighteen of them. The English however chased them into Hampton harbourage. Then Piero wrote to the King of England to deprecate his anger; and Henry sent down to him my Lord of Winchester (Bishop Peter Courtenay), who bade him not fear, saying that those who had been killed must bear their own loss ; and that of a truth a pot de vin (a gratuity) would settle the whole affair." One thing about the ledger-stone is a puzzle, the very thing which ought to have thrown light on the Slavonians. What is the meaning of the shield with a double-headed eagle? It is altogether uncertain to whom it points. The cognisance perhaps makes us think of the Holy Roman Empire and Maximilian the Penniless. In the Nuremberg Chronicle, then just printed, there are plenty of these uncanny birds. In fact, in 1491 it might, in point of time, indicate allegiance to the empire ; on the other hand, it is certain that no Slavonians would have at that THE TWO-HEADED EAGLE 301 day acknowledged any such lordship. And besides, the double-headed eagle was then more properly Slavonic than Germanic. "This eagle," says Mr T. Graham Jackson, R.A., in a letter in reply to a question I asked him, " was the badge of the Nemagna dynasty of Servia, who usurped the throne in 1150, and ruled till the fatal day of Kossovo in 1389. The Servians never had a fleet, because, like the King of Bohemia with the seven castles, they never had a seaboard. The double-headed eagle is now borne by the Prince of Montenegro, who aspires to represent the old empire of Stephen Dushan. But they only date from Kossovo, or rather from 1516, so far as the present dynasty is concerned, and of course they never had any seaport till the treaty of Berlin the other day. Austria cannot have any- thing to do with it. She had no footing in Dalmatia till the treaty of Campo Formio, and never even appears in Dalmatian history." I cannot help thinking that these poor sea- men, feeling quite unprotected in England, knowing that this eagle was a true Slavonian badge, though not properly theirs, and finding that in those days it was very much respected in England, as connoting in English minds the 302 BURIAL-PLACE OF SLAVONIANS empire under Frederick IV., boldly carved it on their ledger-stone as a protecting symbol. The use of this little campo santo by the Slavonians cannot have lasted long. Changes in the commercial routes, new relations between East and West, the steady downfall of the prosperity of Southampton and Winchester, made it less and less tempting for the Venetians to visit England. Ere long the unfriendly shores of Southampton saw the last of our Slavonians. Their fleet set sail thence for the last time on 22nd of May, 1532 ; and, though single ships put in from time to time, by the days of Edward VI. " the galleys of Venice and the carreckes of Jeane (Genoa) had altogether ceased to visit that port." Thus the Slavonians made use of their "sepultura" for only about forty years. After that time this " burying-place to bury strangers in" remained deserted, till in the days after the Reformation, we know not when, it was thrown into the church, and the separate chantry with its altar and ornaments disappeared. And so ends this dim little episode in the mediaeval trade relations between England and the East. IX THE FONT IN WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL THERE is, strictly speaking, no evidence as to the history of this font. It has long exer- cised the ingenuity of antiquaries; many have been the conjectures and suggestions respecting it. In the absence of direct proof, documentary or other, I fear that after all this paper can only deal with the probabilities of the case, and the conclu- sions drawn cannot boast of scientific certainty. I have been so fortunate as to receive most generous help from Miss Swann, niece and heiress of that learned archaeologist, Professor Westwood. Acting on his suggestion, Miss Swann had collected materials for a monograph on the group of fonts of which ours is the most remarkable example. The Professor's 303 304 FONT IN WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL death obliged her to lay aside, for a time at least, her projected work; and with a liberality for which I cannot be too grateful, she has allowed me to see and use her papers and drawings : these have given me the clue to the origin of the font, and have enabled me to work out the subject. It is not too much to say that without her help this paper could not have been written. As we know of no documentary evidence, we must fall back on such data as the font itself supplies. These may be enumerated under the following heads: (1) The material of which it is made; (2) the shape and form of it; (3) the subjects carved on it; (4) details of the sculpture ; (5) comparison with other fonts belonging to the same group. (1) What is the stone of which the Winchester font is made ? It is clear that if we can trace it to the quarry we shall have made a long step towards the solution of our problem. The material is a very dark stone, almost black, with a bluish tinge about it. It is very hard and close-grained. It used to be OF WHAT STONE IS IT? 305 called " basaltic." This, however, is a mistake. There is no basaltic character about it. It has also been pronounced, by a learned geologist, to be slate-stone from Derbyshire. That dangerous man worked at a fracture with his knife, and before I could interfere with him, succeeded in detaching a small piece about the size of a child's finger-nail. He discovered evidence of lamination in it, and concluded that it was "a hard black slate." Another scientific person applied the test of acid to the Southampton font, and, seeing effervescence, declared it to be " a very hard limestone-rock." Others call it " a black marble " ; and, as geologists define marble as "any kind of lime- stone which will readily take a polish," and our font is susceptible of a high polish, the last two suggestions may be regarded as one and the same. Messrs Farmer and Brindley were consulted on the point, and their kind reply was that " Mr Brindley " (who is one of our chief authorities on stones) "thinks it probably is one of the picked beds of black marble which are 306 FONT IN W-INCHESTER CATHEDRAL found in Ireland and Belgium." " He does not think it at all likely that the material is slate " ; and referring to the point of lamination, he adds that "a great deal of the old paving of London, usually called slate, comes from the thin beds of black marble found in Belgium, which are somewhat laminated." Finally, I ventured to apply a little acetic acid to one of the unrubbed portions of the surface (where it could do no harm), with the result that a slight effervescence at once took place. The bubbles which came up and burst may be safely taken as confirmation of the belief that there is lime in the stone. We may, therefore, lay it down as certain that it is a black or bluish -black marble. Now beds of this kind of marble are still being won from the quarries at Tournay in Hainault. These quarries lie in the hills along the course of the river Scheldt, which is navigable for craft of a fair size all the way from Tournay to Ghent, and thence to the sea below Antwerp. (2) As to the form of the font, which is the THE SUBJECTS CARVED ON IT 307 general shape of the group, it consists of a nearly square block of stone supported on a massive central column, with four smaller dis- engaged columns at the angles. (3) The subjects carved on it will help us materially towards the approximate date. On the spandrils of the top are carved symbolic subjects ; on two sides, leaves and flowers, or grapes ; on the other two sides, two doves drinking out of a vase, from which issues a cross subjects denoting baptism. These, and the medallions on the east and north faces, tend to give an impression of high antiquity to the font, and are clearly traditional, indicating that at the place where the stone was worked certain well-defined types of symbols were in use. This symbolism agrees perfectly well with the develop- ment of sculptural art at Tournay, where, we are told by M. L. Cloquet (in his admirable guide-book, "Tournai et le Tournaisis," p. 41) the carved work of the twelfth century is remark- able for " des sculptures toutes conventionelles et plus ou moins bizarres dans leur mysterieux symbolisme," 308 FONT IN WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL The bas-reliefs on the west and south faces of our font are far more helpful. Bishop Milner, over a century ago, pointed out that they depict the miracles of St Nicolas of Myra ; but it did not occur to him to connect this dis- covery, as he might well have done, with the date of the work. It so happens that the subject of St Nicolas limits the period somewhat closely, and shows that the old view as to the high Byzantine antiquity of the font is untenable. In 1087 Italian merchants trading with the East brought over to Bari, on the South Adriatic coast of Italy, beside their ordinary merchandise, the bones of St Nicolas. Bari received the holy visitor with great devotion, and the Cathedral became at once a noted thaumaturgic centre. As it lay in the world's highway, the Saint's fame spread rapidly across Europe, and he at once became the fashion as a popular subject of legend and of art, the kinsman of legend. Churches also in considerable numbers were dedicated to him in the West in the twelfth and following centuries. In England alone there ST NICOLAS OF MYRA 309 were three hundred and sixty-two churches of St Nicolas. Presently this enthusiasm for the Saint found place in literature, and we find the story of the raising of the three youths (one of the subjects portrayed on this font) taken as the groundwork of a " Mystery " written by an English Benedictine monk, named Hilary, in the year 1125. 1 Wace also, the Anglo-Norman poet (who flourished about the middle of the twelfth century), composed a Life of St Nicolas in old French and old English. The tale thus having spread with evident signs of popularity, it is natural that attempts to express the incidents of it in stone should speedily follow ; and one of these efforts we find on the font. We may say with some confidence that this development of the legend cannot have been earlier than the middle of the twelfth century, and there is good ground for thinking that it does not belong to a later time than the year 1200. (4) I have already hinted that our font was 1 "Hilarii Versus et ludi." Lut. Paris. Techener, 1838. " Origines latines du theatre moderne," Paris, 1849. " Molanus de imaginibus, cum notis Paquot," p. 388. 310 FONT IN WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL carved in Hainault. Now Count Robert of Flanders, with his Belgian followers, returned from Crusade at the very end of the eleventh century. They, no doubt, brought with them details as to the wonder-worker of Bari ; and this may also be a date-indication. Another point in the proof is this : the archi- tecture on this font and on that at Zedelghem is the " florid Romance " ( " le Roman fleure " ) which flourished in the transition between the severer Norman and the " ogival Gothic " which followed it. This also points to the twelfth century. On the Zedelghem font (on which there are distinct post-Norman architectural features) a knight stands at each angle, bearing a shield emblazoned with a coat of arms; and these emblazonments did not come into use till after the first Crusade, at the beginning of the twelfth century. The Norman gentleman, with hawk in hand, who stands on the south face of the Winchester font, also belongs to about the same period. The mitre worn by St Nicolas provides us THE BISHOP'S MITRE 311 with by far the best evidence of date. Mabillon points out that the mitre, as part of a bishop's official dress, was not recognised till the very end of the eleventh century. It sprang out of a flat kind of cap, and was at first very low. In the earliest examples extant (as that of Bishop Ulger of Angers, A.D. 1149) the mitre is depressed in the middle, over the brows, and rises into two low horns over the ears. This is the "mitra corniculata." After a time fashion changed, and the mitre was worn with one peak directly over the nose, and the lowest part over the ears. This change shows itself in the latter half of the twelfth century, and is the mark of transi- tion from the low to the high mitre, from the " corniculata " to the " bifida " ; and the tall mitre is found in use early in the thirteenth century. On this font, though the carving leaves a little doubt on the point, it will, I think, be generally agreed that the three mitres all have the blunt point over the nose, and therefore belong to the close of the twelfth century. We are thus brought, in another way, to the same result. 312 FONT IN WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL If it is urged that the sculpture wears too archaic a look for that period, we may reply that the hardness of the material helps largely to give this look of age to the work; and also, that in the district in which the font was carved, certain art-traditions may have still been strong ; also, that forms of art and symbols of an archaic character may have been introduced there by the Crusaders. (5) We may now pass on to consider the school or class of fonts, and see whether we can extract any useful hints from others of the series. They are all made of the same black marble, and all present marked similarities of subject and workmanship. M. Paul Saintenoy, in his Prolegomenes a I'etude de ^affiliation des formes des fonts baptismaux, has provided us with a good list of this class. Of this stone are made the following fonts, which form the group of which this is the most interesting example: I. In Belgium . . (1) Zedelghem, near Bruges . . (2) Termonde (Dendermonde), not far from Ghent THE BLACK MARBLE FONTS 313 II. In Northern France (3) Noiron le Vineaux, near Laon . (4) St Just in the " Oise," on the Rail- way between Amiens and Paris III. In England . . (5) Winchester Cathedral -\ . . (6) East Meon . . (7) St Michael's, Southampton j Hants 1 . . (8) St Mary Bourne . . (9) Lincoln Cathedral I Lincolnshire . (10) Thornton Curtis f . . (11) St Peter's, Ipswich In the first place, the dispersion of these black fonts two in Northern France, two in Belgium, and several near the sea in England seems to indicate a point neither English nor French but Belgian for their origin ; and with this the evidence of the Tournay quarries agrees. This dark limestone-marble is a rare stone, and is known to have been early exported to England from that place. It still exists, we are told, as pavement in the streets of London. Through the kindness of Miss Swann I am able to reproduce a careful drawing of the font at Zedelghem, near Bruges, from which we 1 It appears that the original font in Romsey Abbey Church, Hants, was also one of this series. When that Church was unfortunately "restored," about half a century ago, the old font, being in a bad state, was broken up and thrown away. 314 FONT IN WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL see clearly how close is the relation between it and that at Winchester. We see at once how correct is M. Saintenoy when he says that " Les fonts baptismaux de Lincoln et de Winchester ont la meme origine beige et tournaisienne. Pour ceux de Winchester, c'est incontestable " ; and again, " Les fonts de Winchester . . . presentent avec ceux de Zedelghem et de Termonde des analogies telles qu'il n'est pas possible de douter de leur origine commune. C'est frappant." Let us for a moment compare the two, Winchester and Zedelghem. It will be seen that they are not mere copies of one another, but independent works ; carved, however, at the same time and by the same hand. In the Zedelghem font all the four short columns at the angles are carved with spiral ribs or twists : so are two of the Winchester columns. It looks as if the other two had been replaced at some time by two plain and uncarved pillars. The large central column is identical in both. The line-ornament on the bases is the same, though the Zedelghem font has also heads at the four The Font at Zedelghem, near Bruges. [To face page 314. THEZEDELGHEM FONT 315 angles, these having no parallels at Winchester. The bas-reliefs offer the nearest resemblance. Both portray St Nicolas ; both treat his legend m the same way, though with interesting varia- tions of detail and arrangement. The two ships, with those in them, are almost identical in shape, rigging, and ornament, with the same heads of beasts at bow and stern. But while the Zedel- ghem ship shows no steering gear, ours has a very interesting and modern-looking rudder, over the tiller of which the steerman has his arm. The ships seem to indicate that the carver had before him some drawing or model of a ship which he, in the inland town, copied with exactitude; but, being unfamiliar with shipping, in one case forgot the rudder. The king's son, at the bottom of the sea, is seen on both fonts. At Zedelghem he throws his arms out ; at Winchester he clasps the fatal cup of gold. There are strong resemblances between the buildings shown on both fonts ; they are said to be meant for the cathedral church at Myra in Lycia. The legend of the three young men is very similarly treated, though the arrangement 316 FONT IN WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL of the figures is different. The executioner with his axe, and the female figure behind him, have most minute resemblances in dress. The Zedelghem font places this incident in a remark- able late Norman architectural setting, which is altogether wanting at Winchester. And lastly, the dowering of the three poor virgins, though differently treated, is on both. The conclusion is irresistible, the two fonts came out of the same workshop, and were probably both carved by the same hand. There is a similar striking resemblance between the font at St Michael's, Southampton, and that at Dendermonde, not far from Ghent, the ornamentation of the two being almost identical. Where then were these fonts, so remarkable and so interesting a group, carved ? Everything points to one spot Tournay in Hainault. The stone can certainly be traced to the beds of dark, calcareous marble still quarried along the banks of the Scheldt, above and below Tournay. The lines of distribution agree with Tournay as a centre ; and the artistic and THE TOURNAY QUARRIES 317 commercial history of that city strongly confirms our contention. At Tournay there was a very remarkable early school of stone carving, the influence of which can be traced far and wide. "Les monu- ments de Tournay" (says a writer in the Messager des Sciences, etc., de la Belgique, the Belgian archaeological journal) "sont les incun- ables de 1'archeologie de 1'ouest de 1'Europe. Us sont k la Gaule septentrionale et a la Germanie ce que sont les monuments de Byzance a 1'empire de 1'Orient." And M. Cloquet tells us that as early as the eleventh century there was well established at Tournay "a school of art which taught the Lombard style, and became renowned far and wide." l The new choir of Tournay Cathedral was begun in the bluestone of the district in the year 1110, and was not completed till eighty years later. The transepts were built about the same time, and remain still, though the choir has given place to a fine specimen of later archi- tecture. The Cathedral, a noble structure with 1 " Tournai et le Tournaisis," p. 37. 318 FONT IN WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL five Romanesque towers, shows everywhere that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Tournay had a very vigorous school of sculptors in the hard stone of the district. Their work takes mainly the form of bassi-relievi, executed in a somewhat naive and simple style. In the decoration of doorways, etc. (mainly twelfth- century work), we find many points of artistic work like that of the carvings on the Winchester font. There is yet another way in which we can with much probability attach this font to Tournay : the point has already been touched on in this paper. This is the distribution of Tournay work, and the way by which it reached England. The chief period of vigorous art-life at Tournay may be said to begin from A.D. 1146, when Pope Eugenius III. reconstituted the bishopric, disconnecting the city and territory from the diocese of Noyon in France. The place had a full share of those troubles which were inevitable for a city standing on the very frontier-line between France and the Provinces, DISTRIBUTION OF THESE WORKS 319 This precarious position, however, was favourable to the distribution of Tournaisian art. The Scheldt at Tournay, a considerable river, navigable for small ships, was the roadway by which the bulky products of the marble quarries were transported north and south. There are many proofs of the extension of Tournay art and architecture : wherever works of skill and delicacy were needed, Tournay men were sent for, and the Tournay artisans seem to have liked to travel with their own materials. This is strikingly illustrated at Bruges, where even the streets were paved with the black stone from the quarries ; and where, a little later than our period, the Tournay brothers Van Boghem came with their skill and their marble to build the apsidal chapels of the Church of St Saviour. A certain type of window, not uncommon at Bruges, was styled "la fenetre tournaisienne." The stone was brought from the Scheldt to Ghent, and carried thence by road or canal in different directions. Thus the blue marble fonts were distributed, one at Dendermonde eastward, the other at Zedelghem westward, from Ghent; 320 FONT IN 7 WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL and from Ghent down the Scheldt to the sea went those fonts which were destined for England. One such shipment we can trace to the Lincolnshire coast (probably some point on the Wash), whence it was forwarded inland by water. In this way the font at Thornton Curtis (not far from the coast) and that in Lincoln Cathedral, both of them specimens of this twelfth century art in Tournay stone, arrived on our coasts. Another shipment took a more southerly line, and reached Southampton, along the trade- route followed by the Venetian galleys. This consignment of fonts was probably bought in the lump by one of the Bishops of Winchester, for there are four of the series in Hampshire, all placed in churches closely connected with the Bishop, viz., the cathedral church, and the three twelfth-century churches of St Michael, Southampton, East Meon, and St Mary Bourne, all in the Bishop's gift. Commercial relations between Belgium and England had been much quickened by the first Crusade. It had infused new qualities into art; new subjects became popular, new fashions of WHO GAVE IT? 321 work arose. Our earlier Norman architecture had been severe, almost devoid of ornament. In the twelfth century much elaborate carving was introduced, as different from the finer art of the Early English (or First Pointed) churches as it was from the rude sculpture of the earlier Norman. If it be urged against Tournay that these fonts are not now found there and in the Tournaisis, there is an easy reply. There is hardly a church in the district which has not been rebuilt in modern times. We cannot tell whether these Tournay fonts in Hampshire were wrought to order, or whether they were brought round, after the manner of the commerce of that day, by itinerant merchants. They were very bulky for the average trader. But we may venture to guess at the name of the person who gave these four fonts. It can only be a guess. I have shown that it apparently was one of the Bishops of Winchester. Now between 1150 and 1200 there were only three Bishops of Winchester : Henry of Blois, A.D. 1129-71; Richard Toclive, 1174-88; x 322 FONT IN WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL and Godfrey Lucy, 1189 - 1204. Of these, Godfrey Lucy may be omitted, as we know that he was "a modern man," devoted to the new "Early English" style then coming in. He would not have cared for these archaic-looking pieces of sculpture. It lies, then, between Henry of Blois and Richard Toclive. Toclive left behind him St Mary Magdalene Hospital, which (though now unhappily swept away) is known to have been profusely ornamented in the late Norman style of art ; and the shape and position of the mitres on our fonts point to a time late in the twelfth century. So that the donor may well have been Richard of Ilchester, 1174-88. On the other hand, Henry of Blois is known to have been a very munificent lover of foreign art. He collected things ancient and modern ; he enriched his churches, notably the Cathedral. "Nemo . . . in rebus ecclesiasticis augendis vel decorandis sollicitior." 1 We must, therefore, conclude that either this splendid Prelate, King Stephen's brother, or his successor, Bishop Richard, has the 1 Winchester Annak, 8. a. 1171. PERHAPS HENRY OF BLOIS 323 credit of having recognised the beauty of these black stone fonts, and of having placed them in our midst. We may venture now to sum up these in- dications. Our black marble font is of Belgian origin, coming from the Tournay quarries. It was carved at Tournay somewhere between the years 1150 and 1200, probably between 1170- 1200. It has its twin-brother at Zedelghem, near Bruges ; and we owe it, with the others of the group, either to Henry of Blois or Richard (Toclive) of Ilchester. Few fonts have done so little work. In monastic days baptisms were naturally a matter of no great interest to the Benedictines in charge of a Cathedral Church. They had no use for it themselves, and would scarcely have allowed the common folk of the city to have their babes christened in it ; while, on the other hand, great personages, as we see in the account of the baptism of Prince Arthur in 1486, did not condescend to make use of it. Since the Refor- mation it has been used by a few families living in or connected with the Close; even so, the use 324 FONT IN WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL of it has been very rare. It is, therefore, doubt- ful whether before this present font the Cathedral had one at all. At the west end of the nave, against the last pier on the north side, where the holy water-stoup stood, may still be seen the base- stone of a small font of early date. The displaced earlier font, if there was one at all, may have been put here afterwards, and used as the holy water-basin. The subject of these blue marble fonts is one of considerable interest, which would well repay further investigation. These pages, inconclusive perhaps, and circumstantial only, are written as an attempt to clear up, if not completely, at least in great part, the puzzles which have so long surrounded that well-known "crux anti- quariorum," the font of Winchester Cathedral. X AN ADDRESS ON BISHOP BUTLER (Given in Durham Cathedral at the Unveiling of his Memorial Tablet, March 1899) IN my young days there was a story current in the North, to the effect that once Dr Chalmers, attended by a zealous young minister, came to visit Durham. And as he passed from point to point, his friend was moved to inveigh sharply against the wealth, splendour, and unapostolic pomp of the Bishopric. Chalmers turned to him, and stopped his flow of words with the simple remark that "if by such wealth the English Church could produce so great a man as Butler, and so great a work as the 'Analogy,' the money was very well laid out." No doubt the rejoinder was not conclusive ; for Butler published the " Analogy " in 1736, and Mf 326 AN ADDRESS ON BISHOP BUTLER did not become Bishop of Durham till 1750. During his episcopacy he published nothing save one Charge, which gave occasion to a foolish assertion that in heart at least he died a Roman Catholic. One thing is quite certain, that the Bishop in his failing health, during these last twenty months of his life (for this was the whole extent of his tenure of the Durham Bishopric), was as little a Romanist as he was a sort of eighteenth-century classical demigod, "wafted to that See," as Sir Horace Walpole absurdly said, "in a cloud of metaphysics, and remained absorbed in it." He was indeed a simple and modest gentleman, retired, and en- joying simple hospitalities his "joint and single pudding," to which he would set his guests down ; generous towards the Durham people : a man of a simple and devout life, caring nought for wealth, save that it let him help a friend, or gave him the means to rebuild some tottering front of his ancient castle on Durham hill, or in the open glades of Auckland ; and caring still less for show and pomp, a disappointment to the Walpoles, and the procession-loving starers of these Northern parts. THE "ANALOGY" WHERE WRITTEN 327 Though the " Analogy," then, did not spring out of the Bishopric, it certainly had its birth in the County of Durham. You may still see at Stanhope, across the valley, and just over against the Rectory, a house to which Butler often retired, to think and to write. After the mental strain of Queen Caroline's suppers, where most religious problems of the time were freely dis- cussed from every side with a due and pleasing toleration, Stanhope seemed to Butler the very place for the solution of the many difficulties of the time ; here he had means and leisure, and time to work out his problems. And here it was that his great work was thought out. The most striking element in the " Analogy " is the coherent distinctness with which one leading thought is developed into a system. Whether we accept the "Analogy" as a masterpiece, or, as is now too often the case, pounce only on the open and obvious faults of it, all must recognise the strength and compact- ness of this somewhat low-levelled theory of man, this pallid reflection of the nobler forms of Christianity, as they are seen through the 328 AN ADDRESS ON BISHOP BUTLER dim light of uncertain probabilities and misty guides of life. Butler's critics fall into the usual fault of those who make no allowances for the different circumstances in which a man lived. They treat him as if he lived in our unthinking days, they forget the colour of his own age. They count nothing of the fact that he had passed from the Nonconformist influence to the Deist, nor do they realise the vast mass of indifferent Churchmanship which filled the first half of the eighteenth century. Consequently, Butler's thoughts and arguments do not touch our problems ; they deal with the then current level of thought and enquiry. He heard, and took part in, many a discussion which would now not be possible. While preaching at the Rolls, he faced a materialistic world with the hard facts of human nature. To those who had no spirit- world, he brought no arguments from that higher sphere. His sermons, which for shrewdness, power of observation, application of common- sense, have never been surpassed, have often been hailed as his true masterpieces. And, te/&i ',//, ' ' ^ /,//.>/!'/>