Part 34

Proceeding southward into Somersetshire, we arrive at the cathedral city of Wells, which is united with Bath in the well-known bishopric of Bath and Wells, and is considered the most completely representative ecclesiastical city in England. It gets its name from its numerous springs, taking their rise from the wells in the Bishop's Garden, where they form a lake of great beauty, while bright, clear water runs through various streets of the town. After leaving the edge of the Bristol Channel the plain of the Somersetshire lowlands is bordered by rocky uplands, of which the most important is the elevated plateau known as the Mendip Hills, carved on the outside with winding valleys having precipitous sides. Wells nestles in a wide grassy basin at the foot of the Mendips, its entire history being ecclesiastical, and that not very eventful. It never had a castle, and no defensive works beyond the wall and moat enclosing the bishop's palace. It seems to have had its origin from the Romans, who worked lead-mines among the Mendips, but the first fact actually known about it is that the Saxon king Ina established here a house of secular canons "near a spring dedicated to St. Andrew." It grew in importance and privileges until it became a bishopric, there having been fifteen bishops prior to the Norman Conquest. The double title of Bishop of Bath and Wells was first assumed in the days of King Stephen. In looking at the town from a distance two buildings rise conspicuously--the belfry of St. Cuthbert's Church and the group of triple towers crowning the cathedral. There are few aggregations of ecclesiastical buildings in England that surpass those of Wells, with the attractive gateways and antique houses of the close, the grand façade of the cathedral, and the episcopal palace with its ruined banquet-hall and surrounding moat. From the ancient market-square of the city, stone gateways surmounted by gray towers give access, one to the close and the other to the enclosure of the palace. Entering the close, the western front of the cathedral is seen, the most beautiful façade of its kind in Britain--an exquisite piece of Early English architecture, with Perpendicular towers and unrivalled sculptures rising tier upon tier, with architectural accompaniments such as are only to be found at Chartres or Rheims. The old Saxon cathedral lasted until Bishop Jocelyn's time in the thirteenth century, when he began a systematic rebuilding, which was not finished until the days of Bishop Beckington in the fifteenth century, who completed the gateways and cloisters. Entering the cathedral, the strange spectacle is at once seen of singular inverted arches under the central tower, forming a cross of St. Andrew, to whom the building is dedicated. These arches were inserted subsequently to the erection of the tower to strengthen its supports--an ingenious contrivance not without a certain beauty. The choir is peculiar and beautiful, and produces a wonderful effect, due to its groups of arches, the Lady Chapel and retro-choir, and the rich splendors of the stained glass. The chapter-house, north-east of the northern transept, is built over a crypt, and is octagonal in plan, the roof supported by a central column, while the crypt beneath has an additional ring of columns. The cloisters are south of the cathedral, having three walks, with galleries above the eastern and western walks, the former being the library. Through the eastern wall of the cloisters a door leads to a private garden, in which and in the Bishop's Garden adjoining are the wells that name the city. The most important of these is St. Andrew's Well, whence a spring issues into a large pool. The water from the wells falls by two cascades into the surrounding moat, and a conduit also takes away some of it to supply the town. From the edge of the pool is the most striking view of the cathedral.

The close is surrounded by various ancient houses, and the embattled wall with its bastioned towers and moat encloses about fifteen acres. Here is the gateway known as the "Bishop's Eye," and another called the "Dean's Eye," the deanery where Henry VII. was entertained in 1497, the archdeanery, coming down from the thirteenth century, and the beautiful Chain Gate in the north-east corner that connects the cathedral with the Vicar's Close. The latter, one of the most peculiar features of Wells, is a long and narrow court entered through an archway, and having ancient houses with modernized fittings on either hand. Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury erected this close in the fourteenth century, and his monumental inscription in the cathedral tells us he was a great sportsman, who "destroyed by hunting all the wild beasts of the great forest of Cheddar." The moat and wall completely surround the bishop's palace, and its northern front overhangs the moat, where an oriel window is pointed out as the room where Bishop Kidder and his wife were killed by the falling of a stack of chimneys upon their bed, blown down by the terrible gale of 1703 that swept away the Eddystone Lighthouse. It was Bishop Ralph who made the walls and moat as a defence against the monks of Bath, who had threatened to kill him; Bishop Jocelyn built the palace. Adjoining it is the great banquet-hall, of which only the northern and western walls remain, in ruins. It was a magnificent hall, destroyed from mere greed. After the alienation of the monasteries it fell into the hands of Sir John Gates, who tore it partly down to sell the materials; but happily, as the antiquarian relates, Gates was beheaded in 1553 for complicity in Lady Jane Grey's attempt to reach the throne, and the desecration was stopped. Afterwards, Parliament sold Wells for a nominal price to Dr. Burgess, and he renewed the spoliation, but, fortunately again, the Restoration came; he had to give up his spoils, and died in jail. Thus was the remnant of the ruin saved. It was in this hall that Whiting, the last abbot of Glastonbury, was condemned, and hanged on Tor Hill above his own abbey. The great bishops of Wells were the episcopal Nimrod Ralph, and Beckington, who left his mark so strongly on the cathedral and town. He was a weaver's son, born at the village of Beckington, near the town of Frome, and from it got his name. Hadrian de Castello, who had a romantic history, became Bishop of Wells in 1504. Pope Alexander VI. made him a cardinal, and afterwards tried to poison him with some others at a banquet; by mistake the pope himself drank of the poisoned wine, and died. The bishop afterwards entered into a conspiracy against Leo X., but, being detected, escaped from Rome in disguise and disappeared. Wolsey was Bishop of Wells at one time, but the most illustrious prelate who held the see after the Reformation was Thomas Ken. He was educated at Winchester, and afterwards became a prebend of the cathedral there. Charles II. paid a visit to Winchester, and, bringing Nell Gwynne with him, Ken was asked to allow her to occupy his house. He flatly refused, which had just the opposite effect upon the king to that which would be supposed, for he actually respected Ken for it, and when the see of Wells became vacant he offered it to "the little fellow who would not give poor Nelly a lodging." Ken attended the king's deathbed shortly afterwards. He was very popular in the diocese, and after the Sedgemoor battle he succored the fugitives, and with the Bishop of Ely gave spiritual consolation to the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth on the scaffold. Ken was one of the six bishops committed by James II. to the Tower, but, strangely enough, he declined to take the oaths of allegiance to William III., and, being deprived of preferment, retired to the home of his nephew, Izaak Walton. All reverence his sanctity and courage, and admire his morning and evening hymns, written in a summer-house in the Bishop's Garden.

The Mendip Hills, with their picturesque gorges and winding valleys, were formerly a royal forest. It was here that King Edmund was hunting the red deer when his horse took fright and galloped towards the brow of the highest part of the Cheddar Cliffs. Shortly before, the king had quarrelled with Dunstan, and expelled the holy man from his court. As the horse galloped with him to destruction, he vowed if preserved to make amends. The horse halted on the brink as if checked by an unseen hand, and the king immediately sought Dunstan and made him abbot of Glastonbury. These hills were the haunt of the fiercest wild beasts in England, and their caves still furnish relics of lions to a larger extent than any other part of the kingdom. The most remarkable deposit of these bones is in the Wookey Hole, on the southern edge of the Mendips, about two miles from Wells. At the head of a short and picturesque glen, beneath an ivy-festooned cliff, is a cavern whence the river Axe issues and flows down the glen. The cave that disclosed the animal bones is on the left bank of the glen, and was but recently discovered in making a mill-race. It also contained about three hundred old Roman coins, rude flint implements, and skeletons of a mammoth and woolly rhinoceros. The larger cave, which is hung with fine stalactites, can be explored for some distance. Near the entrance is a mass of rock known as the Witch of Wookey, who was turned into stone there by a timely prayer from a monk who opportunely arrived from Glastonbury. The underground course of the Axe in and beyond this cave is traced for at least two miles. The Mendips contain other pretty glens and gorges, and from the summit of their cliffs can be seen the valley of the Axe winding away southward, while to the westward the scene broadens into the level plains that border the Bristol Channel, guarded on either side by the hills of Exmoor and of Wales. Little villages cluster around the bases of the hills, the most noted being Cheddar, famous for its cheese, straggling about the entrance to a gorge in which caves are numerous, each closed by a door, where an admission-fee is charged. Some of them are lighted with gas and entered upon paved paths. Lead-and zinc-mines are worked in the glens, and above Cheddar rises the Black Down to a height of eleven hundred feet, the most elevated summit of the Mendips.

GLASTONBURY.

About six miles south-west of Wells is the ancient Isle of Avelon, where St. Patrick is said to have spent the closing years of his life, and where are the ruins of one of the earliest and most extensive religious houses in England--Glastonbury Abbey. A sixpence is charged to visit the ruins, which adjoin the chief street, but the remnants of the vast church, that was nearly six hundred feet long, are scanty. Of the attendant buildings there only remain the abbot's kitchen and an adjoining gateway, now converted into an inn. This kitchen is about thirty-four feet square within the walls and seventy-two feet high. The church ruins include some of the walls and tower-foundations, with a well-preserved and exceedingly rich chapel dedicated to St. Joseph. On the High Street is the old George Inn, which was the hostelrie for the pilgrims, built in the reign of Edward IV. and still used. It is fronted by a splendid mass of panelling, and the central gateway has a bay-window alongside rising the entire height of the house. The church of St. John the Baptist in Glastonbury has a fine tower, elevated one hundred and forty feet and richly adorned with canopied niches, being crowned by an open-work parapet and slender pinnacles. Almost the entire town of Glastonbury is either constructed from spoils of the abbey or else is made up of parts of its buildings. One of the most characteristic of the preserved buildings is the Tribunal, now a suite of lawyers' offices. Its deeply-recessed lower windows and the oriel above have a venerable appearance, while beyond rises the tower of St. John the Baptist. Behind the town is the "Weary-all Hill," from which arose the foundation of the monastery. Tradition tells that Joseph of Arimathea, toiling up the steep ascent, drove his thorn staff into the ground and said to his followers that they would rest there. The thorn budded, and still flowers, it is said, in winter. This was regarded as an omen, and they constructed the abbey there around the chapel of St. Joseph. The ponderous abbot's kitchen, we are told, was built by the last abbot, who boasted, when Henry VIII. threatened to burn the monastery, that he would have a kitchen that all the wood in Mendip Forest could not burn down. King Arthur was buried at Glastonbury, and a veracious historian in the twelfth century wrote that he was present at the disinterment of the remains of the king and his wife. "The shin-bone of the king," he says, "when placed side by side with that of a tall man, reached three fingers above his knee, and his skull was fearfully wounded." The remains of King Arthur's wife, which were quite perfect, fell into dust upon exposure to the air.

SEDGEMOOR BATTLEFIELD.

Proceeding westward towards the Bristol Channel, the low and marshy plain of Sedgemoor is reached. Much of it is reclaimed from the sea, and here and there the surface is broken by isolated knolls, there being some two hundred square miles of this region, with the range of Polden Hills extending through it and rising in some places three hundred feet high. In earlier times this was an exact reproduction of the Cambridgeshire fenland, and then, we are told,

"The flood of the Severn Sea flowed over half the plain, And a hundred capes, with huts and trees, above the flood remain; 'Tis water here and water there, and the lordly Parrett's way Hath never a trace on its pathless face, as in the former day."

It is changed now, being thoroughly drained, but in the days of the Saxons the river Parrett was the frontier of Wessex, and one of its districts sheltered Alfred from the first onset of the Danish invasion when he retreated to the fastnesses of the Isle of Athelney. In the epoch of the Normans and in the Civil War there was fighting all along the Parrett. After the defeat at Naseby the Royalists, under Lord Goring, on July 10, 1645, met their foes on the bank of the Parrett, near Langport, were defeated and put to flight, losing fourteen thousand prisoners, and the king's troops never made a stand afterwards. Bridgwater is a quiet town of about twelve thousand people on the Parrett, a half dozen miles from the sea, and in its churchyard reposes Oldmixon, who was made collector of customs here as a reward for his abusive writings, in the course of which he virulently attacked Pope. The poet retorted by giving Oldmixon a prominent place in the _Dunciad_, where at a diving-match in the putrid waters of Fleet Ditch, which "rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to the Thames," the heroes are bidden to "prove who best can dash through thick and thin, and who the most in love of dirt excel." And thus the Bridgwater collector:

"In naked majesty Oldmixon stands, And Milo-like surveys his arms and hands, Then sighing thus, 'And am I now threescore? And why ye gods should two and two make four?' He said, and climbed a stranded lighter's height. Shot to the black abyss, and plunged downright."

In the Market Inn at Bridgwater Admiral Blake was born, who never held a naval command until past the age of fifty, and then triumphed over the Dutch and the Spaniards, disputing Van Tromp's right to hoist a broom at his masthead, and burned the Spanish fleet in the harbor of Santa Cruz. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, but Charles II. ejected his bones. Bridgwater is now chiefly noted for its bath bricks, made of a mixture of clay and sand deposited near there by the tidal currents.

It was from the Bridgwater church tower that the unfortunate son of Charles II. and Lucy Walters, who had been proclaimed "King Monmouth," looked out upon the grassy plains towards the eastward before venturing the last contest for the kingdom. This view is over Sedgemoor, the scene of the last fight deserving the name of a battle that has been fought on British ground. It is a long tract of morass lying between the foot of the Polden Hills and the Parrett River, but with a fringe of somewhat higher ground along the latter, where are Weston Zoyland, Chedzoy, and Middlezoy, each a hamlet clustering around its old church, that at Weston Zoyland being surmounted by an attractive square tower over one hundred feet high. Monmouth had been proclaimed king by the mayor and corporation of Bridgwater June 21, 1685, but had been checked at Bath, and fell back again to Bridgwater, where his army was encamped on the Castle Field. He had been three weeks in the kingdom without marked success, and the royal army was closing in upon him. Four thousand troops under Lord Feversham marched westward, and on the Sunday evening of July 5th, when Monmouth looked out from the tower, had encamped upon Sedgemoor about three miles from Bridgwater. Monmouth had seven thousand men to oppose them, but his forces were mostly undisciplined and badly armed, some having only scythes fastened on poles. The moor was then partly reclaimed and intersected by trenches, and Feversham's headquarters was at Weston Zoyland, where the royal cavalry were encamped, with the other troops at Middlezoy and Chedzoy beyond. Monmouth saw that their divisions were somewhat separated, and that his only hope was a night-attack. At midnight he started, marching his army by a circuitous route to the royal camp, strict silence being observed and not a drum beaten or a shot fired. Three ditches had to be crossed to reach the camp, two of which Monmouth knew of, but he was unfortunately ignorant of the third, called the Bussex Rhine, behind which the camp had been made. A fog came down over the moor; the first ditch was crossed successfully, but the guide missing his way caused some confusion before the second was reached, during which a pistol was discharged that aroused a sentinel, who rode off and gave the alarm. As the royal drums beat to arms Monmouth rapidly advanced, when he suddenly found himself checked by the Bussex Rhine, behind which the royal army was forming in line of battle in the fog. "For whom are you?" demanded a royal officer. "For the king," replied a voice from the rebel cavalry. "For what king?" was demanded. The answer was a shout for "King Monmouth," mingled with Cromwell's old war-cry of "God with us!" Immediately the royal troops replied with a terrific volley of musketry that sent the rebel cavalry flying in all directions. Monmouth, then coming up with the infantry, was startled to find the broad ditch in front of him. His troops halted on the edge, and for three quarters of an hour the opposing forces fired volleys at each other across the ditch. But the end was not far off. John Churchill was a subordinate in the royal army and formed its line of battle, thus indicating the future triumphs of the Duke of Marlborough. Then the royal cavalry came up, and in a few minutes the rebels were routed, and Monmouth, seeing all was lost, rode from the field. His foot-soldiers, with their scythes and butt-ends of muskets, made a gallant stand, fighting like old soldiers, though their ammunition was all gone. To conquer them the artillery were brought up, for which service the Bishop of Winchester loaned his coach-horses. The cannon were ill served, but routed the rebels, and then the infantry poured over the ditch and put them to flight. The king lost three hundred killed and wounded; the rebel loss was at least a thousand slain, while there was little mercy for the survivors. The sun rose over a field of carnage, with the king's cavalry hacking and hewing among their fleeing foes. Monmouth, with one or two followers, was by this time far away among the hills, but was afterwards captured in the New Forest, and ended his life on the scaffold. The Sedgemoor carnage went on all the morning; the fugitives poured into Bridgwater with the pursuers at their heels; five hundred prisoners were crowded into Weston Zoyland Church, and the next day a long row of gibbets appeared on the road between the town and the church. Bridgwater suffered under a reign of terror from Colonel Kirke and his "Lambs," who put a hundred prisoners to death during the week following the battle, and treated the others with great cruelty. Then Judge Jeffreys came there to execute judicial tortures, and by his harsh and terrible administration of the law, and his horrible cruelties and injustice, gained the reputation that has ever since been execrated.

Six miles south-east of Bridgwater is the Isle of Athelney, a peninsula in the marsh between the Parrett and the Tone. Here King Alfred sought refuge from the Danes until he could get time to mature the plans that ultimately drove them from his kingdom. It was while here that the incident of the burned cakes occurred. The king was disguised as a peasant, and, living in a swineherd's cottage, performed various menial offices. The good wife left him in charge of some cakes that were baking, with instructions to turn them at the proper time. His mind wandered in thought and he forgot his trust. The good wife returned, found the cakes burning, and the guest dreaming by the fireside; she lost her temper, and expressed a decided opinion about the lazy lout who was ready enough to eat, but less ready to work. In the seventeenth century there was found in the marshes here a jewel that Alfred had lost: it is of gold and enamel, bearing words signifying, "Alfred had me wrought." The following spring (878) he sallied forth, defeated the Danes in Wiltshire, and captured their king Guthram, who was afterwards baptized near Athelney by the name of Æthelstan; they still show his baptismal font in Aller Church, near by.

SHERBORNE.

Crossing over from Somersetshire into Dorsetshire, we arrive in the northern part of that county at Sherborne, which was one of the earliest religious establishments in this part of England, having been founded by King Ina in the eighth century. Here was the see that was removed to Old Sarum in the eleventh century, and subsequently to Salisbury. After the removal, Sherborne became an abbey, and its remains are to be seen in the parish church, which still exists, of Norman architecture, and having a low central tower supported by massive piers. The porch is almost all that survives of the original structure, the remainder having been burned in 1436, but afterwards restored. Within this church are buried the Saxon kings, Æthelbald and Æthelbert, the brothers of King Alfred. Such of the domestic buildings of the abbey as have been preserved are now the well-known Sherborne Grammar-School. The great bell of the abbey was given it by Cardinal Wolsey, and weighed sixty thousand pounds. It bears this motto:

"By Wolsey's gift I measure time for all; To mirth, to grief, to church, I serve to call."