Part 4

But we anticipate, as the artless novelist of another generation was used to remark, with a painful frequency. Before Winchester, Basingstoke. This morning, we took an early walk to Sherborne St. John, an outlying village, now suburban to Basingstoke, a village, as it proved, uninteresting. The church, as was to be expected at 8 a.m., was locked: our only reminiscence of the place, then, is this problematic inscription from the doorway. Returning, we made a nearer acquaintance with that ruined chapel--the chapel of the Holy Ghost--familiar to all travellers by the South-Western Railway, standing as it does beside the Station. Here was established the lay Fraternity of the Holy Ghost, founded at that late period when Gothic architecture began to feel the influence of the Renaissance. The mixed details are very interesting, though, unfortunately, much mutilated. Gilbert White, the historian of Selborne, says he was, when a schoolboy, “eye-witness, perhaps a party concerned”--observe the grace of later years that made him ashamed of the occasion, and willing to doubt his participance--“in the undermining a vast portion of that fine old ruin at the north end of Basingstoke town.” The motive for this destruction (he says) does not appear, save that boys love to destroy what men venerate and admire; the more danger the more honour, and the notion of doing some mischief gave a zest to the enterprise.

“It looked so like a sin it pleased the more.”

The Chapel stands within the cemetery known locally as the Liten. Within its walls are two mutilated effigies on altar-tombs, the sole remains of a building long preceding the present ruin, hacked and carven with many penknives.

Modern Basingstoke--“name of hidden and subtle meaning,” as Mr. Gilbert says in “Ruddigore”--is prosperous, cheerful with the ruddy mellowness of red-brick, and loyal with a lofty Jubilee belfry-tower to its Town Hall; and that is all the spirit moves me to set down here of the town.

IX.

No more dreary road than that sixteen miles between Basingstoke and Winchester; a road that goes in a remorseless straight line through insignificant scenery, passing never a village for twelve or more weary miles, a road upon which every turning leads to Micheldever. Sign-posts one and all conspire to lead you thither, with an unanimity perfectly surprising. We made certain that something entirely out of the common run was to be found at that place of the peculiar name, and so we were ill enough advised to visit it by turning aside for the matter of a mile.

And yet, when we were arrived at the place, there was nothing to be seen; nay, worse than that indeed: there is a church at Micheldever whose architectural enormities would make any sane ecclesiologist flee the neighbourhood on the instant. Of the scenery, I will remark only that the village is overhung with funereal pines and firs, a setting that depresses beyond the power of words to express.

We retraced our steps toward the high road to Winchester, with anathemas upon those sign-posts, varied by a consideration of Hampshire as a county prolific in what Mr. Gilbert calls, “that curious anomaly”--the lady novelist. For, look you, at Micheldever resides Mrs. Mona Caird, the heroine of the “Marriage a Failure” correspondence, and the authoress of the “Wing of Azrael”; and Sparkford, Haslemere, and the New Forest shelter respectively, Miss Yonge, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and Miss Braddon; others, doubtless, there be within these gates who help to swell the output of the familiar three volumes, for almost every woman of leisure and scribbling propensities writes romances nowadays. Hampshire, indeed, seems decidedly a literary county, for Tennyson and Tyndall and Kingsley (Keble, too) have lived and worked within its borders.

For the next five miles we passed, I think, but one house, Lunways Inn, and then came upon modified civilisation in the shape of the village of King’s Worthy. There is quite a cluster of villages here with the generic name of Worthy, with prefixes by which we can generally identify the old-time lords of the respective manors. There are beside King’s Worthy, Abbot’s Worthy, Martyr Worthy, and Headbourne Worthy, “Headbourne,” conjecturally from the brook that rises by the village churchyard. This village lies on the road to Winchester, directly after King’s Worthy is passed, and is about a mile and a half from the city.

The church is interesting for itself, but it contains a charming little monumental brass to a Winchester scholar that alone is worth journeying to see, both from its unique character and by reason of its technical excellence. It was formerly let into the flooring of the chancel, and was in danger of being trampled out of recognition, until the vicar caused it to be fixed on the north wall of the church, where it now remains.

The brass consists of the kneeling figure of a boy in the act of prayer, habited in the time-honoured Winchester College gown, of the same pattern, with slight modifications, as that worn to-day. He wears, suspended from his collar, a badge, probably that of a patron saint; his hair is short, and exhibits the small first tonsure customarily performed on scholars upon completing their first year. A scroll issuing from his mouth is inscribed “_Misericordias dni inetnū cantabo_”--The mercies of the Lord I will sing for ever. The curiously contracted Latin of the inscription beneath is, Englished, “Here lies John Kent, sometime scholar of the New College of Winchester, son of Simon Kent of Reading, whose soul God pardon.”

It is supposed that he was removed to Headbourne from the College by his parents, to escape an epidemic prevalent there in the year of his death, 1434, when several other scholars died. The “College Register” records the death of John Kent: “_Johēs Kent de Redyng de eadem com. adm. XXIII. die August obiit ulto die Augusti anno Regni Reg. H. VI. XIII._”

Within the space of another half-hour we had reached the city and discovered an hostelry after our own heart. We remained three whole days at Winchester.

X.

The ancient capital of all England lies in the quiet valley of the River Itchen, a small stream which, some twelve miles lower down, empties into Southampton Water. The naïve remark of the schoolboy upon the “coincidence” of great cities always being situated upon the banks of large rivers did not, when Winchester was the metropolis, have any application here, but in the light of subsequent history it may show the reason of the city’s decadence.

From the earliest times Winchester was a city of importance; Briton and Roman, Saxon, Dane, and Norman alike made it a place of strength. Under Cerdic, first king of the West Saxons, the city became the capital of that kingdom, and at the dissolution of the Heptarchy, capital of united England.

But it was under the rule of the early Plantagenet kings that Winchester attained the zenith of its prosperity as the seat of government and as a centre of the woollen trade. Now the court has departed, and the manufacture utterly died out; but Winchester is a prosperous city still--gay with the rubrical gaiety of a cathedral city--the centre of an agricultural district, and the capital of a diocese.

Of feudal Winchester much has been destroyed; but from the remains of its two great castles, and of the city gates and walls, one may conjure up the city of the two first Norman kings, held under stern repressive rule, when despotic power lay in the hands of alien king and noble. Then the New Forest lying near was a newly created desolation; and the country-side, now dotted with villages, a sparsely settled tract. And even in the city itself there were long hours when all was silent and lonely; for when the curfew rang out, who dared to disobey its warning note? Then the city was given up to darkness, the watchmen at the closed and guarded gates, and the sentinels pacing the walls; for though, mayhap, there were no danger threatening from without, it must perchance be watched for and combated from within.

The curfew bell has been sentimentally revived, and tolling nightly from the old Guildhall, awakens dim vistas of social history. The custom has, of course, lost all its harsh significance, but it is one not lost upon him who cares for tradition in an age that makes for novelty; when vaunting soaps affront the eye of the wayfarer in their garish advertisements, and the voice of the touter (commercial, social, political, and religious) is heard in the land crying new lamps (of the sorriest) for old.

But the word “lamps” reminds me that Winchester public lamps have long been lighted with oil, for the Corporation and the Gas Company have agreed to differ; so, pending wiser counsel in the Company’s ranks, the City Fathers, good souls, put back the clock of social history some sixty years by re-adopting paraffin as an illuminant.

Thus local history wags at Winchester, with but few excitements, and those magnified to things of greatest import, by reason of their rarity.

To attempt to give here the briefest outline of Winchester’s long and stirring story were indeed vain; but a succinct account of its Cathedral may be of interest, as therein lies in these days most of the charm of the place. It is an epitome of architectural history unsurpassed in England.

One might, as a stranger, wander through the city for some while without finding the Cathedral, and then, perhaps, be compelled to inquire the way, for it is not possessed of soaring spire nor lofty towers, to guide the pilgrim from afar.

The first impression one gets of the building is of its great length: it is, indeed, the longest cathedral in England. The exterior, seen from the north-west corner of the close, is, perhaps, disappointing, with its long, unbroken, roof-line and low central tower, showing an almost entire absence of that picturesque grouping which is the charm of many others. But Winchester Cathedral has an interior equalling, if not surpassing, all others in beauty and interest.

The present cathedral is not the first nor second building of its kind erected here. Even before the Christian era its site held buildings devoted to worship; for the old chroniclers, the monks, to whom we owe most of our early history, have stated that the temple to Dagon stood on this spot.

Up to the time of the Norman Conquest the history of the Cathedral is one long account of building, destruction, and rebuilding--for those were troublous times, and religious institutions fared no better than secular.

Walkelin, the first Bishop of Winchester after the Conquest, was appointed in 1070. In the year 1079 he began to rebuild the existing Saxon cathedral from its foundations; and in 1086, the king, for its completion granted him as much wood from a certain forest as his workmen could cut and carry in the space of four days and nights. But the wily bishop brought together an innumerable troop of workmen who, within the prescribed time, felled the entire wood and carried it off. For this piece of sharp practice Walkelin had to humbly implore pardon of the enraged William.

In 1093 the new building was completed, and was dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul.

The Cathedral is now (or, at least, part of it is) dedicated to Saint Swithun. Now, Swithun was a holy man who died in the odour of sanctity and the Saxon era. He was Bishop of Winchester, but lowly minded indeed, for he desired his body to be buried without the building, under the eaves, where the rain might always drip upon his grave; but disregarding the spirit of the saint’s injunctions, the monks “howked” his corpse up again, after first complying with the letter of them by burying him for awhile in the cathedral yard. They proposed to enshrine the body within the Cathedral, but the saint, who had apparently obtained in the meantime an appointment as a sort of celestial turncock, brought about a continuous rainfall of forty days and nights. After this manifestation, the monks concluded to leave Swithun alone, and he lies in the close to this day. Unfortunately, the saint seems to have ever after made an annual commemoration of the event, commencing with July 15th. This would be a comparatively small matter did he confine himself to that period alone; but unlike the gyrating turncocks of our water companies, he is constantly on duty, more particularly when holiday folk most do fare abroad. Perhaps Swithun is offended at his name being so continually spelled wrongly--Swithin: perhaps--but, no matter. Anyhow, he is more addicted to water than (if all tales be true) holy friars were wont to be, either for external or inward application. What does Ingoldsby say of one typical friar--I quote from memory (a shocking habit):--

“Still less had he time to change the hair shirt he Had worn the last twenty years, probably thirty, And which by this time had grown somewhat dirty.”

But no more frivolity: let us, pray, be serious.

XI.

Of Walkelin’s building we have preserved to us unaltered the transepts, tower, crypt, and exterior of the south aisle. The plan, like that of most Norman cathedrals, was cruciform, with an apsidal east end. This plan remains almost the same; but the apse has disappeared, and in its place we have the usual termination, with the addition of a thirteenth century Lady Chapel.

The tower, low and yet so massive, has a curious history. In the year 1110, William, the Red King, was killed in the New Forest, slain by the arrow of Walter Tyrrell. It is a familiar tale in history, how the body of the feared and hated king was carried to Winchester in a cart and buried in the choir, beneath the tower, mourned by none. Seven years later the tower fell in utter ruin, because, according to popular superstition, one had been buried there who had not received the last rites of the Church. The tower was rebuilt in its present form, and the result of the fall may be seen in the massive piers which now support it. The tomb of Rufus is here, covered with a slab of Purbeck marble, without inscription.

The first alteration to the plan of the Norman cathedral was made by De Lucy, commencing in 1202. His work may be seen in part of the Lady Chapel and in the retrochoir. The Norman choir was taken down by Edingdon, and replaced by him in the transitional style from Decorated to Perpendicular. But the greatest feat was the transformation of the Norman nave into one of the Perpendicular style. This was carried out by William of Wykeham, one of the greatest architects our country can boast. Succeeding Bishop Edingdon in 1367, he carried on the alteration of the nave which the late bishop had but begun.

What makes this work the more remarkable is that the Norman walls were not removed; the ashlar facing was stripped off them and replaced by masonry designed in the prevailing style.

Wykeham did not live to complete this his greatest work; but his will, still extant, gives instructions to that end. The good bishop died in 1404, and was buried in the chantry chapel he had had prepared in that portion of the Cathedral corresponding to the pierced side of the Saviour. Here a beautiful and elaborate altar tomb stands, bearing his effigy, habited in the bishop’s robes, with mitre and crozier. Angels support the head, and at the feet are figures of monks praying, while the bishop’s arms and his motto, “Manners makyth Man,” are shown below, with the arms of the See of Winchester.

The character of Wykeham shines out from the age in which he lived with great brilliancy. The statesman, prelate, and architect were united in him with a far-seeing benevolence surprising in those times. His foundations of Winchester College and New College, Oxford, have served as models for all the great public schools subsequently founded.

One of the most curious features of the Cathedral is the series of mortuary chests placed above the choir screens, and containing the bones of saints, bishops, and royal personages mixed indiscriminately. These chests were placed here by Bishop Fox on the completion of the screens, and are six in number, of wood, carved and painted in the Renaissance style, just then appearing in this country. The names of the persons whose bones are deposited in them appear on the sides, and amongst them are Canute, Egbert, Alwyn, and Edmund Ironside.

With the placing of the present side screens of the choir the architectural history of the Cathedral is practically ended.

The taste of the seventeenth century is, however, shown in the erection by Inigo Jones of an anachronism in the shape of a classic screen to the choir, which is now happily removed. Its fragments, piled up in remote corners and forgotten, may be seen by the curious who wander in the dim and dusty passages of the tower and transepts.

The Cathedral contains a long and splendid series of chantry chapels of surpassing beauty, commencing with Edingdon’s and ending with Gardiner’s. Of these and of the many beauties of detail to be seen, this short sketch cannot treat; but before leaving the building, one may notice a singularly beautiful memorial to Bishop Ethelmar, who died in 1261, and whose heart only is buried here, his body lying in Paris. He is represented in ecclesiastical vestments, and holds his heart in his hands.

Ethelmar, or Aymer de Lusignan, or Ethelmar de Valence, a half-brother of Henry the Third, was forced into the bishop’s throne against the will of the monks. He became bishop in 1249, but was eventually, through his rapacity, banished the kingdom, and forced to flee for France.

But the history of Winchester Cathedral shows many stirring episodes, foremost among them being that story, dim with the lapse of ages, in which Queen Emma, mother of Edward the Confessor, is said to have undergone the terrible ordeal of walking barefooted over red-hot ploughshares, and to have emerged from it unscathed. Then there is told also the shameful tale of how the miserable John, terrified by the fulminations of the Pope, did homage before the high altar to the papal legate for his kingdom. In later ages, Queen Mary and Philip of Spain were married here, and there is still shown the chair in which the queen sat on that occasion.

In the days of the Puritans, the Cathedral, in common with most other ecclesiastical edifices, suffered much, the stained and painted glass adorning the windows being almost entirely wrecked. But reverent hands collected the shattered fragments, and at the Restoration placed them in the great west window, where they are still, presenting a most perplexing combination of haphazard odds and ends of design.

Of the two great castles formerly standing in the city, but few fragments now remain. The royal castle, built by Henry III., was situated near West Gate. It was destroyed by Cromwell in his “slighting” process, by which so many fine specimens of military architecture were reduced to ashes.

Here, in 1603, the noble but unfortunate Raleigh was arraigned for high treason, and, notwithstanding his undoubted innocence, was found guilty and cast into the Tower, where he dragged out an existence of nearly thirteen weary years before the cupidity of James I. set him free, on a cruise to the New World, in search of a fabulous gold mine. The hall is the only remaining portion of the castle. It is now used as a court for transacting county business, and contains the famed Round Table.

West Gate adjoins Castle Hill. It is of thirteenth century date, with massive and frowning aspect, its machicolations overhanging the central arch, from which molten lead and other unpleasant missiles were launched upon besiegers.

The Bishop’s castle of Wolvesey is in ruins at the other end of the city; and amid the shattered, ivy-clad walls of that Norman stronghold, rises the seventeenth-century palace, built by Bishop Morley, and deserted long ago by his successors, who have retired to Farnham Castle, there to enjoy what state the rolling centuries have left the dignified clergy.

Of all days, Saturday is here the busiest. On others, the High Street is not distracted with commerce, but dozes continually in summer shine and winter snows, with the mediæval West Gate at one end of the steep roadway, and the Gothic City Cross midway between east and west, to give something of historic perspective even to the most unheeding eye. The Corporation of Winchester, at the beginning of the century, had neither taste for, nor admiration of, Gothic art, for about that time they sold the Cross, and it would have been duly carried off to adorn a neighbouring park, had not the citizens (who had a right appreciation of that relic of antiquity) interfered, and, with some violence, dispersed the workmen, who had commenced operations for removing it.

Winchester City is (excuse the clashing nomenclature) a garrison town and a military depôt. On the West Hill, in that prophetically barrack-like shell of a palace, begun but never finished by Charles II., the military have their habitation, and the red-coats (as the generalising writer might say) make lively the pavements of the High Street. But, seeing that the King’s Royal Rifles usually form the garrison, and that their tunics are dark green, almost black, it would be difficult to say where that lively feast of colour comes in. This is not to say that the Winchester Tommy is a sombre person, apart from his clothing. Not at all: the King’s Royal Rifles are youthful--mere striplings most of them; little men, not to say undersized, and full of spirit, as you shall see on Saturday evenings, when (if ever) Winchester is lively.

It is strange how little mark Winchester College makes on Winchester City. It lies away from the more frequented parts, to the southern outskirts--giving upon the juicy water-meadows of the River Itchen. At Eton, at Rugby, at Harrow you note immediately the scholars; at Winchester they are not so frequently met with beyond the walls of their old foundation that this year celebrates its five hundredth anniversary. Additions have been made to the old buildings, but practically the plan of the College remains the same as when it was inaugurated in 1394, and the place is full of old customs and curious survivals.

From here we climbed to the summit of Saint Catherine’s Hill, and viewed the city beneath. Up here is the curious maze cut in the turf (tradition says) by a Winchester scholar, compelled for punishment to forego his holidays and stay instead with _Alma Mater_. “Dulce Domum,” the well-known Winchester College chant, is ascribed to him.

XII.