Part 10

The sports in old Milton were badger-baiting under the cedar trees in the Abbey churchyard; cock-squailing, cock-fighting, and “fives,” outside the west end of the church; bowls were played on the bowling green, and ringing was very popular. The ringers only claimed “bread and beare” for their services each year—on the Restoration Day of Charles II. (May 29th), on Guy Fawkes’ Day (November 5th), and on Christmas Day. They were also paid on special occasions, such as “for ringing ye Bishope throu Towne”; but episcopal visits were rare. During Lent the children went “shroving” and “Lent crocking.” On Shrove Tuesday the children, carrying sticks, knocked at the doors of the principal residents and repeated this doggerel verse:

Please I’ve come a-shroving For a piece of pancake, Or a little ruckle cheese Of your own making. If you don’t give me some, If you don’t give me none, I’ll knock down your door With a great marrow bone And a-way I’ll run.

The result of this threat was that the children were given hot half-pence, apples, eggs, a piece of pancake, or a hunch of ruckle-cheese. A ruckle-cheese was a small sour-milk home-made cheese, weighing about one pound. It could be ruckled—_i.e._, rolled along the ground. Hence its name. In the evening the “Lent-crocking” began. Those people who had not given the children anything when they came “a-shroving” were then punished by having pieces of crockery and pans and other missiles thrown at their doors. In this way real damage was often done, and the two parish constables do not seem to have interfered. The practice of shroving is still continued in the present village of Milton: it is one of the customs that have survived the demolition of the old town. It obtains in other Dorset parishes, but is gradually dying out.

The Abbey churchyard was a very large one. Its area was about three times the area of the Abbey Church. The sports which took place therein have been already mentioned. It was also used as a public flogging-place for offenders against the law. Lord Milton, when he decided to pull down the old town, had all the headstones in the churchyard removed, broken up, or buried. In converting the churchyard into lawns, many bones of parishioners were turned up and irreverently treated; and the superstitious tradition in the present village is that, in consequence of this, Lord Milton died of a gruesome disease. There was an ancient cross in the churchyard called the “Druid’s Cross,” and also a preaching cross.[41] It is hardly necessary to add that these perished with the churchyard.

The old Grammar School, founded by Abbot Middleton in 1521, was also pulled down. It was one of the chief public schools in the south-west of England, and was known as “the Eton of the West.”[42] It had, as a rule, between eighty to one hundred boys, mostly boarders, sons of the leading county families. There were several boarding-houses for the boys in Milton, and the existence of the school helped on the prosperity of the town. Two of its most distinguished _alumni_ were Thomas Masterman Hardy, Nelson’s favourite captain, who in after life did not forget his old friends at Milton[43]; and Thomas Beach, a native of Milton, the famous Dorset portrait painter, who from 1772 to 1800 “limned the features of everybody who was anybody.”

It must be admitted, reluctantly, that the Grammar School boys were an undoubted nuisance to Lord Milton. They lived within a stone’s throw of his mansion, they broke into his privacy and seclusion, they scoured his gardens and plantations in every direction, stole his fruit, and disturbed his game. Records exist of the expulsion of some boys bearing the most honoured of Dorset names for persistent stone-throwing down chimneys, and for stealing cucumbers from the Abbey gardens, and game-fowl eggs for the purpose of rearing birds to compete in fighting. In the Abbey Church the Grammar School boys sat in a large gallery which stretched from the rood-loft to the west wall. This gallery was pulled down by Lord Milton’s orders as soon as he had removed the school. The headmaster and assistant-masters of the school, being in Holy Orders, frequently held the position of Vicar or Curate of the Abbey Church. Among them was John Hutchins, the Dorset historian, who was Curate of the Abbey and “usher” of the school.[44]

It must not be thought that Lord Milton’s “fine quarter-deck high-handedness” aroused no outcry. The parishioners regarded his action as a cruel piece of tyranny, and they resisted it with stubborn and obstinate opposition.[45] For over twenty years his lordship was involved in considerable trouble and expense while gradually getting all the houses into his possession, in order that he might raze them to the ground. Mr. Harrison, a resident solicitor, refused to sell his lease, although he was offered three times its value; so Lord Milton let the water from the “Abbot’s Pond” (a small pond which then lay just below the Abbey Church) creep around the premises. Mr. Harrison at once entered an action against his lordship for flooding his house, and the lawyer won the case. A few days afterwards Lord Milton went to London, and on his way to Blandford he heard the Abbey bells ringing. This he interpreted as a sign of parochial joy at his defeat and departure; and nothing would satisfy him but the sale of the offending bells. The bells were really ringing to commemorate Guy Fawkes’ Day: it was November 5th. But the bells had to go: “the autocrat” had spoken. And his friend, the Dean of Norwich, had said that “bell-ringing caused much idleness and drinking.” There is a record that, when the parishioners saw their bells carted away, they stood at their house-doors weeping, even though two of the bells were saved for the new Church of St. James.

In pulling down the old town Lord Milton preserved the Abbey Church, and employed James Wyatt to restore it. Much havoc was then wrought in the interior, but at the same time the vast building underwent a thorough repair, which it needed very badly. There is a tradition that this restoration cost Lord Milton no less than £60,000; but this seems a fabulous sum.

With the materials from the demolished buildings of the old town Lord Milton built the present village of Milton (he also built some ecclesiastical-looking sham “ruins” in the park, which are still standing);[46] and the stone and timber from the old Abbey tithe-barn were used to construct a new church in the new village. The few interesting things in this church, which is dedicated to St. James the Great, were originally possessions of the Abbey—two bells of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries respectively, a thirteenth century Purbeck marble octagonal font, an old pulpit, two pewter plates, two oak coffin-stools, and three elaborately-bound volumes, in black letter, of Fox’s _Acts and Monuments of the Christian Martyrs_ (1632), which aforetime were chained in the Abbey to a desk covered with “red shagg” and studded with 200 brass nails.

But although St. James’ Church suffers loss by comparison with the other more ancient churches in the parish, its churchyard is remarkable in that it is higher than the church itself. The dead are buried not below the level of the church, but above the level of its roof. This is certainly unusual.

Yet it may be regarded as a fitting _finale_ for the inhabitants of a parish that has been described truly as “a curiosity, surprising, and remarkable.”

WIMBORNE MINSTER

BY THE REV. THOMAS PERKINS, M.A.

Wimborne Minster, as it is called to distinguish it from the village of Wimborne St. Giles and Monkton-up-Wimborne, is at the present day a bright, clean, prosperous-looking little market town, showing few remains of olden times save in its church. There is no doubt that its name is connected with the little river or “bourne” on which it stands, for the two villages mentioned above, bearing names of which Wimborne forms a part, stand on the same stream, which, like some other Dorset rivers—the Var or Frome, the Piddle or Trent—bears two names, the Wim or the Allen.

And yet it is an ancient place. Here, early in the eighth century, Cudburh, or Cuthberga, sister of Ine, the famous King of the West Saxons, whose laws were the foundation of the liberties of his subjects, and show a spirit of tolerance hitherto unknown towards the conquered Celts, founded a nunnery. Here, in 851, the then Earl of Devon is said to have defeated the Danes; here Æthelred, the brother and immediate predecessor of Ælfred on the West Saxon throne, having died of a wound received in battle with the Danes, we know not where, was buried in 871. Hither came the Danes again, plundering the town and destroying the convent. Hither, too, after the death of Ælfred, in 901, came Æthelwold, the Ætheling (son of Ælfred’s brother, Æthelred, who had been passed over as too young to rule when his father died) rebelling against the new King, Ælfred’s son, Eadward the Unconquered, and possessed himself of Wimborne. Eadward marched from the south against him, and encamped within the rampart of Badbury Rings, a few miles to the west of Wimborne; hence he sent a message to Æthelwold, bidding him surrender. To this Æthelwold returned stout answer that he would either live or die in Wimborne. But after the messenger had gone back he took counsel with himself, and decided that as the first alternative was impossible, and the second unpleasant, he would see if a third course were not open to him—namely, to live elsewhere. So he fled to Normandy, and thence to Northumberland, which was then under Danish rule, and, throwing in his lot with the enemies of Wessex, he collected a band of freebooters from beyond the sea, and received some assistance from the East Anglian Danes. But all to no purpose, for the “Unconquered” King overthrew him and his Danish allies in many fights, and recovered all the booty they had carried off.

But it is the church that is the centre of interest of Wimborne. Ine, King of the West Saxons, had two sisters, perhaps more, but only two are connected with Wimborne. Cuthberga was betrothed to the Northumbrian King, Æcgfred, or Osric, as he is often called, but when she met him she found his rough northern manners and his intemperate habits little in harmony with her more refined disposition and mode of life. Therefore, she persuaded him to allow her to devote herself to a religious life, and retired to the nunnery at Barking; and afterwards, at what exact date we do not know, but probably not later than 705, she founded a nunnery at Wimborne, her sister being associated with her in the work. Both of these royal ladies were buried within the precincts, and in due time canonised as St. Cuthberga and St. Cwenberga; the former was commemorated as a virgin on August 31st. A special service appointed for the day may still be read in a Missal kept in the Cathedral Library at Salisbury.

The convent of Wimborne can boast of another illustrious lady among those who took the veil within its walls—St. Walburga, or Walpurgis. Somewhere about the end of the seventh or beginning of the eighth century, she was born in Sussex, and was educated at the newly-founded nunnery at Wimborne, and became in due course a nun; here she stayed for yet another twenty-seven years. Then, by the desire of her uncle, St. Boniface, and her brother Wilibald, she set out with thirty other nuns to found religious houses in Germany. She first settled at Bischofsheim, in the diocese of Maintz, and in 754 became Abbess of the Benedictine house at Heidenheim, which was situated within the diocese of Eichstädt, in Bavaria, of which her brother, Wilibald, was Bishop. Another brother, Winebald, was head of the Benedictine monastery in the same place; and when he died, in 760, Walburga received the charge of this house in addition to her own, and continued to rule both until her death in 779. She was buried in a hollow rock at Eichstädt, from which a bituminous oil, afterwards called Walpurgis’ oil, exuded. This was supposed to possess miraculous powers of healing, so that her grave was much visited by pilgrims, and a church was built over it. She is commemorated at different times in different places, but chiefly on May 1st, a day originally celebrated with heathen ceremonies, emblematical of the birth of Summer. Hence some of the heathen rites still lingered on, just as certain of our Christmas customs are of heathen origin. The readers of Göethe’s _Faust_ cannot help remembering the revels of the witches on the Brocken on Walpurgis’ night.

The nunnery at Wimborne perished in some plundering raid of the Danes some time during the ninth century. Whether Ælfred did anything to restore it we do not know, but a king of the name of Eadward, either Ælfred’s son, the “Unconquered,” or the Confessor, founded a college of secular priests at Wimborne. Again, we know not whether the church of this college occupied the site of the old convent church or not. The names of the deans from 1224 until the Dissolution, in 1547, have come down to us. The only one of these whose name is known in history is the last but one—Cardinal Pole, who held this position from 1517 till 1537, being only seventeen years of age at the time of his appointment. When the deanery was abolished, Wimborne Minster became a Royal Peculiar, under the administration of three priest-vicars. The arrangement was a somewhat unusual one; each of the three was responsible for the services for one week, one of the other two acted as his curate in the Minster, and the other took charge of the chapelry of Holt. The next week they changed places; and so on continually. This curious arrangement continued in force till 1876, when one vicar retired on a pension, another removed to Holt, where a parsonage had been built for him, and the third became sole vicar of the Minster and the parish attached to it.

The history of the church is best read in its stones; written records are scanty. The central part, all in Norman style, the work of the twelfth century, is the oldest; from this the building gradually extended north, south, east, and west, as well as upwards, in the course of the next three centuries; but the builders who enlarged did not wantonly destroy the work of their predecessors. Probably the chief cause of this was lack of funds; there was no shrine of saint, nor tomb of martyr, nor wonder-waking relic to attract pilgrims, whose alms, had they come, would have enriched the church, as many another church was enriched, and had to pay the penalty of over-much wealth in the form of demolition and reconstruction. Wimborne Minster was simply enlarged; the outer walls, of course, had sometimes to be pulled down. Thus in the thirteenth century the Norman east end, which was probably apsidal, had to be demolished to afford space for eastward extension, and the date of this extension is determined by the character of the east window; the windows of the aisles proclaim themselves to be of fourteenth century date; the western tower is a century later. The church is one of the few that possess two towers, set tandem fashion, one at the crossing, the other at the west end. It is not a very satisfactory arrangement from an artistic point of view, and has in the few instances in which it has been introduced been unfortunate. Hereford had two towers thus placed, but the western one fell; Wymondham, in Norfolk, has two still standing, but the east end of the church is a ruin; Wimborne central tower was once surmounted by a spire, but this fell. Exeter and Ottery have two towers, but these are placed in a different manner, their bases forming the north and south ends of the transept.

The central tower at Wimborne is the older. It is supported on four massive Norman piers; the east and west arches beneath it are wider than the other two; to bring the capitals from which they spring all into one horizontal plane and the crowns of the four arches all into another horizontal plane, the builders made the wider arches segments of a circle less than semi-circles, and the narrower ones segments greater than semi-circles, giving them the shape of horse-shoes. Above this lower stage are three others—the triforium stage, with a gallery in the thickness of the wall; above this comes the clerestory, added later; and above it another stage, still later, because here, in place of the simple arches seen on the outside of the lower stages, we find interesting arches forming lancet-headed openings; above this is a heavy, ugly parapet and set of pinnacles, erected in 1608 after the fall of the central spire. The western tower is higher than the central one, contains the bells, and, just outside the easternmost window, on the north side of the belfry stage, there stands the wooden figure of a soldier, who strikes the quarter-hours on two bells, one on each side of him, and is known as the “Quarter Jack.”

Inside this western tower, on the face of the south wall, is a curious clock made by Peter Lightfoot, a monk of Glastonbury, in the early part of the fourteenth century. It tells not only the time of day, but the day of the month and the age of the moon. The earth is represented by a globe in the centre; the sun by a ball on a disc, which travels round it in twenty-four hours, showing the time of day; the moon as a globe on another disc, which revolves once in a lunar month. Half of this globe is painted black, the other half is gilt, and the age of the moon is indicated by the respective proportions of black and gilt shown, for the ball itself rotates on its axis; when the moon is full the gilt half is entirely visible; when new, the black half. The clock is still in working order. A screen separates the lower stage of the tower from the nave, and forms a baptistry, in which stands an octagonal font of Norman character, large enough for baptising an infant by immersion.

From the west end, the church presents a very imposing appearance. The nearer pillars, it is true, are rather mean; they are of fourteenth century date, and very plain. It has been, with some probability, conjectured that they were brought from some other church which had been pulled down just before the time when this church was extended westward, possibly when the western tower was built. The pillars of the original nave are cylindrical and massive, the arches of the main arcading resting upon them are pointed; above is a plain wall; the division between the original and the added work is shown by the different character of the mouldings of the arches, and of the string-course above them, and by the fact that to the east there are the original Norman clerestory windows, while the walls to the west are not broken by any openings whatever.

The floor of the presbytery is raised considerably above that of the choir, and this is itself higher than the floor of the nave, so that the altar stands at a considerable elevation. One peculiarity is noteworthy—there are no altar rails, but their place is taken by three massive oaken benches, covered at all times with the “houseling linen,” fair white cloths—the use of which goes back to very early times. The benches which now stand across the presbytery floor, close to the topmost of the flight of steps leading up to it, are the remains of ten such benches, which were made in Puritan times for communicants to sit on as they received the sacred elements. When the custom of kneeling was revived, these benches were placed on the steps; and on “Sacrament Sundays,” the clerk, after morning prayer, went to the lectern and bade those who were prepared to receive the Holy Communion to draw near, whereupon intending communicants left the nave and knelt at the benches, or in the choir stalls, until the officiating clergy brought them the sacramental bread and wine. In 1852, when sundry changes were being made in the arrangements of the church, all these benches except three were removed—the three which were in use as altar-rails.

The beautiful triplet of windows, over the altar, end the long vista seen from the west. Beneath the presbytery floor is a vaulted crypt. This is not, as many crypts are, dark and gloomy, but well lit by triangular windows, which from the outside are seen to be just above the level of the churchyard. This crypt does not retain its original altar, but its place is marked by a piscina on the southern side; two arches open out into the choir aisles, through which those kneeling in the aisles might look down on the priest officiating at the altar of the crypt.