Part 23

Mr. Dimock, in his book quoted above, gives an extract from a pamphlet, published about fifteen years ago, which starts as follows: “Who was less beloved in the north than my Lord Cardinal before he was amongst them? Who better beloved after he had been there awhile? He gave bishops a right good example how they might win men’s hearts.” On the eve of Corpus Christi he decided to sing high mass in the Minster on the following day, and ordered Cavendish to make all due preparations. Nor was he prevented of his purpose by the fact that during the night two gentlemen arrived from the King, and caused him to be roused, and after some private speech made him sign some paper. At the close of the summer, “at the latter end of grease time,” so Cavendish puts it, he removed to Scrooby, and by departing in the middle of the night disappointed many gentlemen lodging in Southwell, who came to accompany him on his journey through the forest, intending “to lodge a great stag or twain for him by the way.” But he dare not indulge in such honours, for he feared what his enemies would make of such doings with the King, and so departed by night to Welbeck abbey, and was in his bed continuing his night’s rest before his disappointed admirers at Southwell were awake. Greatly grieved were the people of Southwell when the Cardinal left them, for they had received nothing but kindness from him, as did all the people of the places in his dioceses where he stayed from that time till his arrest. From his behaviour during these few weeks it is abundantly evident what a good and wise bishop Wolsey would have made if he had served his God as well as he served his King.

It was not to be expected that the Reformation and the church spoliation indulged in by Henry VIII. and Cromwell would leave Southwell unharmed. The Chapter, perhaps wisely, surrendered their church and estates to the King in 1540. They possessed a kind friend in Cranmer, who was a Nottinghamshire man, and no doubt mainly through his influence Henry refounded the Chapter in 1541. Southwell also was mentioned as one of the fifteen new sees which Henry professed his desire to create out of the spoils of the monasteries and one of the prebendaries--a certain Dr. Cox--was even named as the first bishop. But Henry’s cupidity got the better of his zeal, and the fifteen new dioceses dwindled down to six, and Southwell was not among the chosen few.

But the restored Chapter did not enjoy uninterrupted peace, for at the end of the White Book are copies of three letters from Sir Edward North, Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations, in which he accuses the Chapter of disposing of some of their plate and ornaments, and after rebuking them for so doing, orders them to surrender the goods in question, and despatch them at once to London for the use of the King. Mr. A. F. Leach thinks these letters probably belong to the year 1546.[72] Southwell does not seem to have been affected by the first passing of the Chantries and Colleges Act. Mr. Dimock says: “The Court of Augmentations, to which was entrusted the alienation of the different estates, left Southwell alone, as the list of 1547 shows that the prebendaries and other clergy were in full enjoyment of their benefices.”[73] But this Act was renewed at the beginning of the reign of Edward VI., and the Chapter ceased to exist. “On the petition of the parishioners, the Minster was continued as the parish church; and the sacrist prebendary, John Adams, was made vicar of Southwell at a stipend of £20 a year, with his vicar-choral Matthew Fort, and the old parish vicar, Robert Salwyne, as ‘assistants to the cure,’ with £5 a year each.”[74] The lands of the Chapter, after changing hands once or twice, eventually remained in the possession of John Dudley, duke of Northumberland, and at his attainder lapsed to the Crown. This gave Queen Mary the opportunity she did not often get of restoring church lands to their original owners, and the Chapter was reinstated. No doubt the cause of the Chapter was greatly helped by the influence of Heath, archbishop of York, whom the Queen had appointed on the deprivation of Holgate.[75] But the position of the Chapter was still legally uncertain, because the Act of Suppression had not been repealed. But it was safe during Mary’s reign, and was left in possession by Elizabeth, who granted new statutes for the governance of the college which remained the foundation of its organisation until its dissolution in 1840. It was left to James I. to put the Chapter on a firm legal footing, during whose reign it was argued that the Chapter of St. Mary’s, Southwell, is vested in the Crown by statute of I Edward VI., “thus enabling James I. in 1604 to make the magnanimous grant and confirmation to the Chapter of the collegiate church of Southwell of the site and precinct of the church, and the possessions belonging thereto.”[76] James I.’s interest in the place may have been influenced by the fact that he passed through Southwell on his way to London to take possession of the throne. He was struck with surprise, we are told, at seeing such a church in so small a town. And when some of his Court remarked that York and Durham were far more magnificent structures, James replied rather peevishly in his Scotch accent, “Vare wele, vare wele, but, by my blude, this kirk shall justle with York or Durham, or ony kirk in Christendom.”

Once more the Chapter started on its quiet course, and again its history is for the most part a peaceful blank. We get just a glimpse of the condition of things in 1635 from some odd papers of answers to the visitation articles of the archbishop in that year. The old faults are prominent; canons neglect to keep their residence and let their houses fall into disrepair, and the due amount of sermons and lectures do not seem to have been delivered. One canon in his answers complains that the organist is very negligent in his duties and especially in the management of the choristers, often only correcting them in service time to the great disturbance of the worshippers. “And besides all this,” he goes on, “he is a great lyer as yr lordship knows if you please to remember him ... and as soon as he has made a boy fit for the quire he sells him to some gentleman and soe by this means the quire is impoverished.” The selling and even kidnapping of solo boys seems to have been not uncommon at this time. The same prebendary says that the church needs a “paire of good organs which I wish your Grace would be pleased to contribute something towards and divers other gentlemen would be ready to follow in so good a worke.” He also says that the chimes and clock are much neglected. Another says that he believes “Copes and a decent Corporall and a Bason for the offertory are required” and that “there have been writings taken out of the Treasury.” A third tells the archbishop that in the Treasury “are divers writings, but so laid up that they are in danger of wette, by raine or snowe, if the leads should happen to be faulty, and so confused that it will be hard to finde what the church may stand suddenly in need of. The letters patent of Queen Elizabeth, King James, the authentique copy of the statutes, with divers other evidences and muniments of the church are not there but in the keeping of the Residentiaries. How they were taken out, or what caution taken for the returning of them, he knoweth not.” After reading here how little care was taken for the preservation of the documents of the church it is a cause for thankfulness that as many remain as do.[77] This negligence amply accounts for the great losses the library has sustained, and there is no need to put the blame of their removal or destruction on the shoulders of Cromwell and his Ironsides, as is so commonly done, as if their shoulders had not enough to carry already. The Treasury was described in one of the papers of visitation answers, mentioned above, as “by the Chapter House,” and was probably the room now used as the library.

During the Civil War Southwell was the scene of much activity. King Charles stayed there on his way to hoist his standard at Nottingham, and he also spent some hours at “The Saracen’s Head” before he gave himself up to the Scottish Commissioners at Kelham. On one occasion he lodged at the palace, but it had been much damaged, for it had been occupied by the troops of both sides. The townspeople mostly favoured the Puritans. This may have been partly due to the fact that Mr. Edward Cludd, the most prominent layman in the town, was a great supporter of Cromwell. After the dispossession of the church he bought Norwood Park, close to Southwell, which had belonged to the archbishop, and built himself a house there. As a magistrate, it was his duty to perform marriages under the new regime, and there was a big oak in the park which was famous as the place where he had tied many couples together. Shilton, who published his history of Southwell in 1818, says the tree was still pointed out and was called Cludd’s Oak. After the Restoration Cludd continued to live at Norwood, leasing the property from the archbishop. Posterity owes a deep debt of gratitude to Mr. Cludd, for it is said to have been due to his influence with Cromwell that the latter did not damage the Church nor pull down the nave, which he certainly intended to do, as he thought the choir large enough for the needs of the parish.

A quotation from Thoroton’s _Nottinghamshire_ is interesting. It refers to a visit of King Charles I. to the town, which took place during the period between the battle of Naseby and his subsequent residence at Oxford. “The King with a few faithful followers took refuge at Southwell. The day after his arrival he walked about the town not known, and entered the shop of a shoemaker, whose name was Lee, who was a fanatic of the day. His Majesty, after some conversation with this man, bid him take measure for a pair of shoes. Lee, on taking the King’s foot in his hand and looking at him attentively, refused to proceed. The King, astonished at the man’s behaviour, desired him to do what he had requested; but the shoemaker actually refused, giving the reason that the King was the customer he had been warned against in a dream the night before, in which he (the customer) was doomed to destruction, and those who worked for him would never thrive. The forlorn monarch, whose misfortunes had opened his mind to the impressions of superstitions, uttered an ejaculation expressive of his resignation to the will of providence, and returned to the palace, which was the place of his abode.”[78]

There is also a story that during the Civil War a lady took refuge in the room over the north porch, and that during the time of her concealment she gave birth to a child. It is said that all the time she was hiding from the Puritans, a body of these men were camping in the church, and her terror at being discovered was not lessened by hearing their shouts and ribaldry so near at hand. She was kept alive by an old friend who crept in every night to bring her food and render her what other assistance was possible in her terrible predicament. The Commonwealth soldiers stayed for some time in Southwell, especially during the siege of Newark, and many skirmishes are reported to have taken place in the neighbourhood, but there seems to be no truth in the tradition that Cromwell bombarded the palace, although the so-called trenches which were made for his guns are pointed out on the neighbouring hill to the south. The unfortunate part of the story is that these trenches, which are really gravel pits, are situated at a much greater distance from the palace than any cannon of that period could carry; and also that part of the palace which faces these very pits is to-day the best preserved part of the ruins.

It may also be added that it would have been a marvellous thing that the church should have escaped if any considerable bombardment had taken place.

After the troubles of the Commonwealth a more profound peace than ever enveloped Southwell. Matters, of course, had to be put straight again, and there are extant two letters of Charles II. written just after the Restoration, one of which orders the Chapter to provide a sufficient maintenance for the ministers who officiate in the parochial churches appropriated to the Chapter, implying that the Chapter had rather starved such livings, and ordering them to increase the emoluments up to the value of £80 a year. The other letter is addressed to certain gentlemen directing them to “seize and secure into safe hands and places all the rents and revenues,” together with all the woods and other property belonging to the Chapter in Nottinghamshire.

Nothing much of interest happened during the last 180 years of the Chapter’s existence. On November 5, 1711, a fire, caused by lightning, broke out in the south-west tower of the nave and the flames destroyed the roof of the nave and the organ and melted the bells in the central tower. At the end of the eighteenth century the houses in the Vicars’ Court had grown so old and dilapidated that they had to be pulled down and the present ones were erected in their stead. At the beginning of the nineteenth century fears, quite unfounded, were felt as to the safety of the spires on the western towers, and so the towers were literally beheaded and the tops battlemented instead. The spires were restored about thirty years ago, but after comparing them with old pictures of the former ones they do not seem nearly so shapely, and are even thought to be grotesque by some people.

The Chapter Decree Books, which from 1661–1840 are fairly complete, contain nothing of great moment. There are mentions of organ repairs and the duties of the ringing men, the prohibition of fives playing against the walls of the church, the regular entry of a decree “that the Dogg-whipper shall have a new coat as usual.” This official was doubtless the man who wielded the dog-tongs, though such an instrument is not mentioned. His office is continued to this day in a certain verger who is on duty on Sundays and any special occasions, and marks his descent from the old dog-whipper by always carrying a long wand. In 1798 there is an entry that the tradesmen shall be paid £61, 9s. 2d. for putting up a new bed in the Residence House, which certainly seems a large sum for such an article. In 1820 it is decreed that an alteration be made in the wine cellars of the Residence House so as to furnish room for the accommodation of each prebendary. There were sixteen prebendaries supposed to keep a residence of three months each in turn, and it looks as if some of them did not wish their wines to get mixed up with those of their less fastidious colleagues. In 1805 the Chapter accepted the gift of the Brass-Eagle lectern, now in the choir, which had belonged to Newstead abbey, and had lain for more than 200 years at the bottom of the lake at Newstead, where it had been hidden by the monks at the dissolution of the monasteries.

There is one curious entry of which no explanation is given. On June 23, 1806, it is “decreed that the last seat in the South Side be allotted to the Prior of Thurgarton.” What this means it is impossible to say; this seat had always been given by courtesy to the Prior of Thurgarton, while such a dignitary existed, because he was head of the nearest important religious house.

In the history of the town itself there is nothing much to relate. Southwell seems to have been quite a gay little place at the beginning of the nineteenth century. There were archery meetings and a flourishing bachelors’ club and numerous dances--the Assembly Rooms being built in 1808 for this purpose--a theatre was built in 1816, and there was a billiard-room as well. Lord Byron, who lived with his mother during his school and college days in Burgage Manor House, described the place as being very pleasant and possessing “a very genteel society.”

At the accession of Queen Victoria the Chapter still continued, but the end was near. In 1835 a Royal Commission was appointed to look into the affairs of the church, for there was a general demand that the whole body ecclesiastical needed rousing to life. Reform was active in other branches of public life, and it was not possible, nor indeed desirable, that the church should go on in her old way and not stir herself to meet the changing needs of the ever-moving life around her. It was felt that there was a great waste of time and money, and especially was this the case among cathedral and collegiate bodies. The Chapter of Southwell did not escape the keen scrutiny that was fixed on all such bodies; it was not any more effete or lazy than other capitular bodies, and it was by no means as wealthy as some Chapters were at that time, but there seemed little need for it, and it appeared to fulfil no useful purpose in the Church at large, for Southwell was not a cathedral city nor was it the centre of a large population, and as there was nothing for its canons, as such, to do, it was thought that its revenues ought to be diverted into some more useful channel. We need here only mention the recommendations of the Commissioners so far as they affected Southwell. In 1837 Nottinghamshire, except the Peculiar of the Chapter of Southwell, was transferred from the diocese of York to that of Lincoln. For three years longer the Chapter was suffered to remain, but “in 1840 a clause or two in a bill (3 and 4 Vict. c. 113), supplemented the next year by a special Act (4 and 5 Vict. c. 30), destroyed the Chapter, after making allowance for vested interests, as a useless waste of ecclesiastical revenues. The canonries as vacancies occurred were not filled up, the minor canons were to be reduced to two (eventually to none at all), and the property was to go to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to help in founding Ripon and Manchester, although these two dioceses were quite wealthy enough to endow their own bishoprics.”[79] It is interesting to remember that Mr. Gladstone, then the young Tory member of Parliament for Newark (in which division Southwell lay), spoke very strongly in the House against the destruction of the Chapter.

In time Southwell became a simple rectory, with the Residence House as the official residence of the incumbent. The Commissioners pay the rector and two assistant curates, the organist, choir, and other officials of the church, and keep the fabric in repair.

The Chapter was not dissolved at once, the canons being allowed to keep their stalls and their incomes as long as they lived, but they were to have no successors; one of their number was to be appointed by themselves as perpetual residentiary. The Chapter thus died a lingering death. The policy which destroyed it was short-sighted, for it was evident that Nottinghamshire could not long remain in the diocese of Lincoln, for it was a district with a rapidly increasing population owing to the development of the coal trade. Indeed, the last prebendary of the old foundation was not dead before a project was on foot to make Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire a separate diocese in themselves. And that same last prebendary had scarcely been in his grave ten years when this project was carried out--the new see being constituted in 1884. But nothing had been done to stop the transference of the patronage of the old Chapter to the Bishops of Ripon and Manchester, to whom it was allotted by the Act of 1840. The last prebendary, the Rev. T. H. Shepherd, had exercised all the patronage until his death in 1873, and then each living as it became vacant went in turn to the Bishops of Ripon and Manchester. It was in vain that the first Bishop of Southwell, Dr. Ridding, tried to secure this patronage, which consists chiefly of livings just round Southwell.

It was principally due to Bishop Wordsworth, of Lincoln, that Southwell Minster was chosen as the cathedral of the new diocese, and he was also one of the largest subscribers to the funds needed to found the new bishopric, parting even with some of his official income. The Minster was a building worthy of the honour, and though by the foolishness and short-sighted policy of the previous generation the bishop found no Chapter at his cathedral church, yet this church possessed the advantage and privilege of two choral services daily, of the kind that rightly are expected to be found in cathedral churches, for the Commissioners had not discontinued the revenues which supported the choral services, which had thus been sung daily in the church from time immemorial under the regime or the old College of Canons. It was left to the present bishop of Southwell to make the Palace, which the archbishop never used after the Great Rebellion, owing to its ruinous condition, once more the home of a bishop, and a place of generous hospitality to all who are concerned in the affairs of the Church.

There is now a chapter of twenty-four honorary canons, of which body there is nothing to say except that perhaps its members are more honorary than is usually the case; sixteen of them have taken the names of the old prebends for their stalls, and the other eight are called after places in the diocese. It seems a pity, perhaps, that the old names have been taken, for there is really no connection whatever between the old body and the new.

The little town does not grow very fast, but it is in no sense old-fashioned, the advent twenty years ago of a lace factory giving the place a modern appearance and helping to keep it up to date. There is also a silk mill and a flour mill and large nursery gardens to give employment to the people.

It is impossible to close this chapter without one word of regret that Southwell, and indeed all Nottinghamshire, remain divorced from the ancient ties with the archbishopric of York. When the present archbishop visited Southwell, in June 1909, on the occasion of the commemoration of the 800th anniversary of the building of the nave, he expressed the same regret; for, as he said, in the very place where his long line of predecessors had worshipped and ruled and dwelt, he was himself only present by the sufferance, willingly granted, it was true, of his brother of Canterbury. He hoped that some day he would come again in his own right and not as a stranger, but as a metropolitan visiting one of the dioceses which formed part of the province over which he ruled. It is to be hoped that when Nottinghamshire is made into a separate diocese, as the needs of the Church will soon demand, that it will be restored to its old province of York and once more acknowledge the overlordship of the archbishop of the northern see.

NOTTINGHAMSHIRE SPIRES

BY HARRY GILL

“And O, ye swelling hills and spacious plains! Besprent from shore to shore with steeple towers, And spires whose silent finger points to heaven;”

--WORDSWORTH.

The word steeple is generally applied to a lofty tower intended to contain a peal of bells, and especially to a tower surmounted by a spire.

The origin of the word spire is obscure; presumably it is a survival of the Anglo-Saxon word “spir,” a spike or stalk, and it is now used to denote the upper portion of a steeple when it shoots up to a point.

It would be presumption to claim any special distinction for the spires of Nottinghamshire. They are not to be compared in size or grandeur with those of the neighbouring county of Lincoln, or with the beautiful spires to be found in the Nene valley, where the “tower roof” is said to have originated. Still they are not devoid of interest, and one example (Newark) is held to be one of the finest spires in the kingdom, while in no other district of equal area can the development from one type to another be traced more easily than in the hundred of Rushcliffe, in the south of the county.