Part 10
After the Monasteries come the Colleges, so called, by which we must not understand seats of learning, but colleges of priests. There were several of these:
First, that of St. Thomas of Acon. The college was founded by Agnes, sister of Thomas à Becket. She endowed it with her father's property in London. It stood on the site of the present Mercers' Chapel, and was built on the spot where the new saint was born. The Mercers' Chapel, however, occupies only a portion of the splendid church which was destroyed in the Great Fire. The Foundation received many endowments, and at the Dissolution its income was nearly £300 a year, equal to twenty times as much of modern money. The City, naturally proud of its saint, observed a curious annual function in connection with this college. On the afternoon of the day when he was sworn at the Exchequer, the new Lord Mayor, with the Aldermen, met at this chapel and thence proceeded to St. Paul's, where first they prayed for the soul of Bishop William--who had been Bishop of London in the time of William the Conqueror. This done, they repaired to the tomb of Gilbert à Becket, in Pardon Church-yard, and there prayed for all faithful souls departed. Then they returned to St. Thomas Acon and made an offering. Nothing is said about the evening, but one hopes that the day was concluded in the cheerful manner common at all times with London citizens.
Next, the College of Whittington.
This noble and wealthy merchant rebuilt the Church of St. Michael, called Paternoster in the Royal, and attached to it a College of St. Spirit and St. Mary for a master, from fellows, clerks, conducts, and choristers, together with an almshouse for thirteen poor men. They were all bound to pray for the soul of Sir Richard Whittington and his wife, Dame Alice; also for those of Sir William Whittington and Dame Joan, his wife, the parents of the founder. The college was swept away at the Dissolution; the almshouse remained and was rebuilt after the Fire. They are now removed to Highgate, but a conventual feeling still lingers about the buildings at the back of the church.
Then follows St. Michael's College, Crooked Lane.
Sir William Walworth, the valiant Mayor who killed Wat Tyler, founded a college of one master and nine chaplains to say mass in St. Michael's Church, the choir and the aisles of which he rebuilt.
And there was also Jesus Commons.
This Foundation seems to have resembled that of All-Souls, Oxford, in that its fellows had no duties to perform except the services of their chapel. It is described as a fair house in Dowgate (no doubt built round a small quadrangle), well furnished with everything and containing a good library, all for the use of those who lived there--a peaceful, quiet place, without any history. One thinks of the day when it had to be dissolved, and the poor old priests, who had lived so long in the house, were driven forth into the streets. Not even submission to the king's supremacy could save the tenants of Jesus Commons. The house itself was pulled down and tenements built in its place.
A somewhat similar House was a small and very interesting Foundation called the Papey. It was a college for poor and aged priests. In any old map the church called St. Augustine Papey may be seen at the north end of St. Mary Axe nestled under the wall, with a piece of ground adjoining, which may have been a garden and may have been a burial-ground. We find the poor old priests taking part in funerals, and, I daresay, in any other function by which their slender provision might be augmented.
Next to the Colleges come the Hospitals. St. Bartholomew's, most ancient and richest, belongs to Norman London.
One who walks along the street called London Wall will chance upon a church-yard, on the north side of which still stands a fragment of the old wall. This church-yard, narrow and small, is surrounded on three sides by warehouses; on the fourth side it looks upon the street. On the other side of the street is a large block of warehouses, the monument of a most disgraceful and shameful act of vandalism. On this spot stood Elsing Spital. It was founded in the year 1329 as a priory and hospital for the maintenance of a hundred blind men by one William Elsing, its first Prior. On the dissolution of the religious houses, Elsing's Spital surrendered with the rest, and was dissolved. What became of the blind men is not known. Then they took the fine Priory Church, and having pulled down the north aisle--on the site of which houses were built--they converted the rest of the church into the parish church of St. Alphege, which had previously stood in Cripplegate. The site of the old church was turned into a carpenter's yard. The porch of St. Alphege remains of the ancient buildings. Of Sion College, which in course of time succeeded Elsing's Spital, we will speak in another place.
That splendid Foundation which rears its wards on the south of the Thames, over against the Houses of Parliament, St. Thomas's Hospital, was founded in 1313 as an almery, or house of alms for converts and poor children; but two years later the House was refounded on a much larger scale. After the Dissolution, its site, then in Southwark, was purchased by the citizens of London. To sum up, London was as well provided with hospitals in the fourteenth century as it was with convents and religious houses. They were St. Bartholomew's, Elsing Spital, St. Giles Cripplegate, St. Mary Spital, St. Mary of Bethlehem, St. Thomas Southwark, and the Lazar House of Southwark.
These hospitals, it must be borne in mind, were all religious Foundations governed by brethren of some Order. Religion ruled all. From the birth of the child to the death of the man religion, the forms, duties, and obedience due to religion, attended every one. No one thought it possible that it could be otherwise. The emancipation of mankind from the thrall of the Church, incomplete to the present day, had then hardly yet begun. All learning, all science, all the arts, all the professions, were in the hands of the Church. It is very easy to congratulate ourselves upon the removal of these chains. Yet they were certainly a necessary part of human development. Order, love of law, respect for human life, education in the power of self-government, such material advance as prepared the way--all these things had to be taught. No one could teach them or enforce them but the priest, by the authority and in the wisdom of the Church. On the whole, he did his best. At the darkest time the Church was always a little in advance of the people; the Church at the lowest preserved some standard of morals, and of conduct; and even if the standard was low, why, it was higher than that of the laity.
When we see the Franciscans preaching to the people; the Carthusians cowering silent and gloomy in their cells; the Dominicans insisting on the letter of the Faith; kings and queens and great lords trying to get buried in the holy soil of a monastery church--let us recognize that, out of this discipline emerged the Londoner of Queen Bess, eager for adventure and for enterprise; the Londoner who was so stout for liberty that he drove out one king and then another king, and set aside a dynasty for the sacred cause; the Londoner of our own time, who is no whit inferior to his forefathers.
One other form of religious society must be mentioned--that of the Fraternity. There were Fraternities attached to every church. Those of the same trade in a parish--those of the same trade in many parishes--united together in a Fraternity--of the Blessed Virgin, of the Holy Trinity, of the Corpus Christi, of Saint this or that. All the Danes in London joined together to make a Fraternity--or all the Dutch. All the fish-mongers, or all the pepperers; they formed Fraternities--not yet trades-unions or companies--which had masses sung for the souls of their brethren; met in the churches on their Saint's Day; had solemn service and a procession and a feast. It is only by such a bond as this that any calling or trade can become dignified, self-respecting, and independent. The Fraternities were founded, for the most part, before the Companies. These could not have existed at all but for the impetus to union given by the Fraternities. Common action--the most important discovery ever made for the common welfare--was made possible, among those who would otherwise have been torn asunder by rivalries and trade jealousies, by the Fraternities.
Among the thirty-one who formed the goodly company which pilgrimized to Canterbury with Chaucer, twelve belonged to the Church. Was this proportion accidental? I think not. Chaucer placed in his company such a proportion of ecclesiastics as would be expected on such an occasion. The portraits of Chaucer are taken from the life: he saw them in the streets of London; in the houses; in the churches. It helps us to understand the City, only to read those portraits over again. Are they so well known that it is superfluous to do more than refer to them? Perhaps not. Let us take them briefly. There is the Prioress, who has with her a nun for chaplain and three priests. She is a gentlewoman, smiling, coy, dainty in her habits and in her dress; she is tender-hearted and fond of pets; the nun's wimple is plaited; on her arm she wears beads with a gold brooch--
On whiche was first y-written a crowned A, And after Amor vincit omnia.
She is lively, affectionate, and amiable, but she affects dignity as a Prioress should. Clearly the superior of an Order whose vows are not too strict, and whose austerities respect the weakness of the sex. Who does not know, at the present day, hundreds of gentle maiden ladies who might sit for the portrait of the Prioress?
Then comes the Limitour, one who held the Bishop's license to hear confessions, and to officiate within a certain district. This fellow is everybody's friend so long as he gets paid: the country gentlemen like him, and the good wives like him, because he hears confessions sweetly, and enjoins easy penance; he could sing and play; he could drink; he knew all the taverns; he was to appearance a merry, careless toper; in reality, he was courteous only to the rich, and thought continually about his gains. He kept his district to himself, buying off those who tried to practise within his limits. A natural product, the Limitour, of a time when outward forms make up all the religion that is demanded.
The Oxford Clerk has no benefice because he has no interest. All the money that he got he spent in books; his horse was lean; he himself was lean and hollow. He travels to foreign universities in order to converse with scholars.
The Monk was a big, brawny man, bald-headed, and his robe was trimmed with fur; a great hunter who kept greyhounds and had many horses. He was fat and in good point; he loved a fat swan best of any roast; he wore a gold pin with a love knot. Obedience to the Rules of his Order is not, it seems, ever expected of such a man.
The Town Parson, of low origin, a learned man who loved his people, and was content with poverty, and gave all to the poor, and was ever at their service in all weathers. The picture of the good clergyman might serve for to-day. His parish was wide, but he went about
Upon his feet, and in his hand a staf. This noble ensaumple unto his scheep he yaf, That first he wrought, and after that he taughte Out of the gospel he the wordes caughte, And this figùre he added yet thereto, That if gold rustë, what scholde yren do?
The Sompnour, or Summoner, an officer of the Ecclesiastical courts, is only half an ecclesiastic. His portrait is pure farce.
Lastly, there is the Pardoner. He is the hypocrite. He carried sham relics about with him, and sold pigs' bones for precious and holy remains warranted to heal sheep and cattle, to bring good harvests, to prolong life, to bring increase of sowing.
Of avarice and of swiche cursednesse Is al my preching, for to make hem free To yeve hir pense, and namely unto me.
. . . . . . . .
I wol non of the Apostles counterfete, I wol have money, wollë, chese, and whete. Al were it yeven of the pourest page, Or of the pourest widewe in a village, Al schulde hire children sterven for famine.
If such pictures as these could be drawn and freely circulated, the first step was taken towards the Reformation. Only the first step. Before Reformation comes there must be more than the clear eyes of the prophets able to see and to proclaim the truth. The eyes of the people must be washed so that they, too, can discern the truth behind these splendid vestments and this gorgeous structure of authority.
Such, so great, was the power and the wealth of the Church from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. Every street had its parish church with charities and Fraternities and endowments; colleges, Houses for priests, almeries, hospitals, were scattered all about the City; within and without the wall there were fifteen great Houses, whose splendor can only be understood by the ruins of Tintern, Glastonbury, Fountains, or Whitby. Every House was possessed of rich manors and broad lands; every House had its treasury filled with title-deeds as well as with heaps of gold and silver plate; every House had its church crowded with marble monuments, adorned with rich shrines and blazing altars and painted glass, such as we can no longer make. Outside, the humblest parish church showed on its frescoed walls the warnings of Death and Judgment, the certainty of Heaven and Hell. And they thought--priest and people alike--that it was all going to last forever. Humanity had no other earthly hope than a continuance of the bells of _l'Ile Sonnante_.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] A kind of woollen shirt.
[9] The concluding psalms of the matin service.
[10] The Horæ, or canonical services, were matins, primes, tierce, sexts, nones, vespers, and complines.
[11] The Ambrosian ritual prevailed pretty generally till the time of Charlemagne, who adopted the Gregorian.
IV
PLANTAGENET--_continued_
II. PRINCE AND MERCHANT
It is never safe to adopt in blind confidence the conclusions of the antiquary. He works with fragments; here it is a passage in an old deed; here a few lines of poetry; here a broken vase; here the capital of a column; here a drawing, cramped, and out of proportion, and dwarfed, from an illuminated manuscript. This kind of work tends to belittle everything; the splendid city becomes a mean, small town; King Solomon's Temple, glorious and vast, shrinks to the dimensions of a village conventicle; Behemoth himself becomes an alligator; Leviathan, a porpoise; history, read by this reducing lens, becomes a series of patriotic exaggerations. For instance, the late Dr. Brewer, a true antiquary, if ever there was one, could see in mediæval London nothing but a collection of mean and low tenements standing among squalid streets and filthy lanes. That this estimate of the City is wholly incorrect we shall now proceed to show. Any city, ancient or modern, might be described as consisting of mean and squalid houses, because in every city the poor outnumber the rich, and the small houses of the poor are more frequent than the mansions of the wealthy.
When one who wishes to reconstruct a city of the past has obtained from the antiquary all he has discovered, and from the historian all he has to tell, there is yet another field of research open to him before he begins his task. It is the place itself--the _terrain_--the site of the town, or the modern town upon the site of the old. He must examine that; prowl about it; search into it; consider the neglected corners of it. I will give an example. Fifty years ago a certain learned antiquary and scholar visited the site of an ancient Syrian city, now sadly reduced, and little more than a village. He looked at the place--he did not explore it, he looked at it--he then read whatever history has found to say of it; he proceeded to prove that the place could never have been more than a small and insignificant town composed of huts and inhabited by fishermen. Those who spoke of it as a magnificent city he called enthusiasts or liars. Forty years passed; then another man came; he not only visited the site, but examined it, surveyed it, and explored it. This man discovered that the place had formerly possessed a wall--the remains still existing--two miles and more in length; an acropolis, strong and well situated--the ruins still standing--protecting a noble city with splendid buildings. The antiquary, you see, dealing with little fragments, could not rise above them; his fragments seemed to belong to a whole which was puny and insignificant. This antiquary was Dr. Robinson, and the place was the once famous city of Tiberias, by the shores of the Galilean lake.
In exactly the same manner, he who would understand mediæval London must walk about modern London, but after _he has read his historian and his antiquary_, not before. Then he will be astonished to find how much is left, in spite of fires, reconstructions and demolitions, to illustrate the past.
Here a quaint little square, accessible only to foot-passengers, shut in, surrounded by merchants' offices, still preserves its ancient form of a court in a suppressed monastery. Since the church is close by, one ought to be able to assign the court to its proper purpose. The hall, the chapter-house, the kitchens and buttery, the abbot's residence, may have been built around this court.
Again, another little square set with trees, like a Place in Toulon or Marseilles, shows the former court of a royal palace. And here a venerable name survives telling what once stood on the site; here a dingy little church-yard marks the former position of a church as ancient as any in the City.
London is full of such survivals, which are known only to one who prowls about its streets, note-book in hand, remembering what he has read. Not one of them can be got from the book antiquary, or from the guide-book. As one after the other is recovered the ancient city grows not only more vivid, but more picturesque and more splendid. London a city of low mean tenements? Dr. Brewer--Dr. Brewer! Why, I see great palaces along the river-bank between the quays and ports and warehouses. In the narrow lanes that rise steeply from the river I see other houses fair and stately, each with its gate-way, its square court, and its noble hall, high roofed, with its oriel-windows and its lantern. Beyond these narrow lanes, north of Watling Street and Budge Row, more of those houses--and still more, till we reach the northern part where the houses are nearly all small, because here the meaner sort and those who carry on the least desirable trades have those dwellings.
You have seen that London was full of rich monasteries, nunneries, colleges, and parish churches, in so much that it might be likened unto the _Ile Sonnante_ of Rabelais. You have now to learn, what I believe no one has ever yet pointed out, that if it could be called a city of churches it was much more a city of palaces. This shall immediately be made clear. There were, in fact, in London itself more palaces than in Verona and Florence and Venice and Genoa all together. There was not, it is true, a line of marble _palazzi_ along the banks of a Grande Canale; there was no Piazza della Signoria, no Piazza della Erbe to show these buildings. They were scattered about all over the City; they were built without regard to general effect and with no idea of decoration or picturesqueness; they lay hidden in narrow winding labyrinthine streets; the warehouses stood beside and between them; the common people dwelt in narrow courts around them; they faced each other on opposite sides of the lanes.
These palaces belonged to the great nobles and were their town houses; they were capacious enough to accommodate the whole of a baron's retinue, consisting sometimes of four, six, or even eight hundred men. Let us remark that the continual presence of these lords and their following did much more for the City than merely to add to its splendor by the erecting of great houses. By their residence they prevented the place from becoming merely a trading centre or an aggregate of merchants; they kept the citizens in touch with the rest of the kingdom; they made the people of London understand that they belonged to the Realm of England. When Warwick, the King-maker, rode through the streets to his town-house, followed by five hundred retainers in his livery; when King Edward the Fourth brought wife and children to the City and left them there under the protection of the Londoners while he rode out to fight for his crown; when a royal tournament was held in Chepe--the Queen and her ladies looking on--then the very school-boys learned and understood that there was more in the world than mere buying and selling, importing and exporting; that everything must not be measured by profit; that they were traders indeed, and yet subjects of an ancient crown; that their own prosperity stood or fell with the well-doing of the country. This it was which made the Londoners ardent politicians from very early times; they knew the party leaders who had lived among them; the City was compelled to take a side, and the citizens quickly perceived that their own side always won--a thing which gratified their pride. In a word, the presence in their midst of king and nobles made them look beyond their walls. London was never a Ghent; nor was it a Venice. It was never London for itself against the world, but always London for England first, and for its own interests next.