Part 9

High in front of us under the eastern gable stands the glorious window erected by Bishop Fox, in the reign of Henry VII., when the staining of glass reached a supreme excellence never before or afterwards attained. It would appear from the fragments in the aisle windows that they were all at one time coloured, but the Roundheads smashed them, and the pieces collected were placed in the west window, where they form a sort of farrago or confusion--an edifying emblem of the destructive results of revolution.[74]

On either side just within the main entrance stands the figure of a king. They have a somewhat Ethiopian appearance and I took them for the sovereigns of Arabia and Saba. But they really represent the First James and Charles. They seem to be handling their sceptres in a very formidable manner, as if they had still Waller’s rabble in front of them; and we read that they had swords, which were broken off by the rebels. These figures have a family likeness to that at Charing Cross, which was by the same man, Le Soeur. They were placed by Charles I. in front of the rood screen of Inigo Jones. That monarch “of blessed memory” also moved the organ to the side, so that an uninterrupted view could be obtained up the Cathedral.

[Sidenote: The Font.]

On the right-hand side stands the celebrated font--a heavy mass of black basalt, supposed to be Byzantine, and of the same character as that at East Meon. The figures on it have a little the appearance of marionettes, and there is, in truth, some unreality about the representation which records the miracles of St. Nicholas. A monk has written an account of the events here brought before us--how St. Nicholas saved three virgins from disgrace, stilled a storm, restored a sailor to life, healed the sick, and saved three condemned men. Death itself could not stop the saint’s beneficence, for after his decease he restored a child who had fallen overboard with a golden cup. Behind the font on the wall of the north aisle are memorials to two remarkable women. Miss Austen is still thought by some of the old school to be the queen of novelists, and the fact that her works are still published proves their merit.

“I like ‘Pride and Prejudice’ very much,” said Miss Hertford.

The other lady here commemorated, Mrs. Montagu, was a Shakspearian, lived among the learned and eminent, and founded the Blue Stocking Club.

“I remember well the house she built,” replied Mr. Hertford; “it stood like a respectable old country house in its garden in Portman Square, and has been enlarged into Lord Portman’s mansion. She covered her drawing-room walls with feathers, as Cowper writes:--

“‘The birds put off their every hue To dress a house for Montagu.’

What a gay May-day the sweeps had with their ribbons, flowers, and feasting in the good lady’s time! We read on this tablet that she had ‘the united advantages of beauty, wit, judgment, reputation, and riches.’”

“What a happy woman!” exclaimed Miss Hertford. “I once heard a girl asked which she would rather be--handsome, clever, or rich. The questioner never imagined that any one could be all three.”

Higher up on the same side, near the stairs, is a memorial to Boles, the Royalist “Collonell of a Ridgment of Foot who did _wounders_ at the Battle of Edgehill.” No doubt he did, for when finally he was, with eighty men, surrounded by five thousand rebels in the church at Alton, he held out for six hours, and after killing six or seven with his own sword was himself slain with sixty of his men.

“Winchester is rich in monuments,” I said. “It preceded Westminster as the burial-place of the great and has, with that exception, more human interest than any other sacred edifice in England.”

[Sidenote: Wykeham’s Chantry.]

On the opposite side of the Nave stands the Chantry of Wykeham, of great height and beautiful elaboration.[75] It happens by design or accident that if we supposed our Lord’s body to be lying on the cross of the original Cathedral, the site of this monument would correspond with the wound in His side. This was the favourite spot at which Wykeham prayed when a boy, before an altar to the Virgin; and here he built his tomb, on which his figure has reposed for nearly five hundred years, and where it may remain for five hundred more. The good he did was not destined to be “interred with his bones,” and the line on the resting-place of Wren, whose truth impresses the reader, might without impropriety have been also engraved here--

“Si monumentum quæras, circumspice.”

It is the rare privilege of Winchester to have here, face to face in the Palace and Cathedral, two of the most important works of these great master builders.

Higher up the nave is the Chantry of Bishop Edington, earlier and less ornamental than that of Wykeham. He is the prelate who was offered the Archbishopric of Canterbury and made the shrewd and sportive reply, “If Canterbury is the higher rank, Winchester is the better manger.” The date is placed in a fanciful way at the end of the inscription “M thrice C with LXV and I.”

On the bishop’s vestment there is a curious emblem of a cruciform shape, called a Fylfot or Suastika. It is stated to signify submission to the will of God, and to have been a symbol prior to Christianity.

[Sidenote: Tomb of Rufus.]

From this point we wander into the Choir, and admire the tall carved spires of oak, blackened by the airs of six centuries. A verger turns up the seats to show us the quaint carvings of an age when humour did not seem distasteful in churches--here is a pig playing the fiddle, another chanting, and a third blowing the trumpet. In the centre of the pavement lies the sphinx of the Cathedral--rude, archaic, enigmatical. It has been surmised to be the tomb of some royal Saxon, or of Bishop de Blois. Winchester men continue to swear it is that of Rufus, who was “buried in the choir,” but that king’s bones seem, from an inscription on one of the neighbouring coffers, to have been chested and perched up by Fox. Everything about it is a puzzle. The rebels in the Civil War broke it open and found a silver chalice, a gold ring, and pieces of cloth of gold, within it. This has led to the supposition that De Blois rested here. In 1868 it was again opened, and one of the vergers told me he had handled the bones, had seen beside them the arrow-head with which the king was killed, and had remarked what an excellent set of teeth he possessed. Remains of cloth of gold and other tissues were discovered, and seven gold Norman braids finely worked, as we can see in the library, where they are preserved.[76]

The altar screen must have been most effective when the figures remained. Dean Kitchin has given a tantalizing account of it, and during the Civil War a wall was built before it. But throughout the last century, the niches were filled with modern vases, the gift of an excellent prebendary, Master Harris, whose zeal was greater than his taste.

Leaving the learned to fight the dusty battle of Rufus and De Blois, we make our way to the iron gate, and each deposit the silver obolus to admit us to the realms of the departed. Here a group of visitors is waiting, and we look up at the interesting Norman work in the south transept. There are good reasons for supposing that the transepts were not built continuously--a change of plan can be traced--and it would seem that there was at one time an intention of placing a couple of towers at the end of each transept. The great central tower also was erected later--after Walkelin’s death.

[Sidenote: Isaak Walton.]

Just before me stands an old oak settle, perhaps nearly coeval with the transept. How many generations of monks have sat on it and warmed their withered hands over a pan of charcoal! I could almost imagine that on certain days their ghosts may perambulate their old haunts, and seat themselves here again. In the centre of the transept lies Bishop Wilberforce. On the east side is Prior Silkstede’s Chapel, as it is called. It is now a vestry, and here Isaak Walton is literally trodden under foot. In answer to my inquiries, the verger pulled up the matting and showed his slab inscribed with Bishop Ken’s[77] verses. They are not worthy of the author of the morning and evening hymns. They inform us that he lived--

“Full ninety years and past But now he hath begun That which will ne’er be done. Crowned with eternal Blisse We wish our souls with his.”

Isaak was an erect, hale old man to the last. He was a theologian, and we hear that to atone for long neglect, a statue to him is about to be placed on the screen, beside the saintly Fishermen.

“I wish that Andrews, Bishop of Winchester, had been buried here,” said Mr. Hertford, “and that we had an epitaph on him by Milton. The elegiacs he wrote on his death were as beautiful as ‘Lycidas.’”

And now all are ready, and we advance along the aisle behind the choir, and come in sight of the “presbytery screen,” some arches surmounted by coffers, which look like small locomotives on a railway viaduct. All this was the work of Fox, who was bishop in the reigns of the Henrys (VII. and VIII.). He built the clerestory and vaulting of this part. We look up at the roof and remark the bosses exhibiting the Tudor arms and other heraldic emblems dear to Fox; while beyond, in the vaulting of Bishop Lucy, the devices are more scriptural, including not only the instruments of the Passion, but the faces of Pilate and his better half, and Peter’s sword with Malchus’ ear upon it.

The bones of the Saxon kings and bishops buried in the Cathedral, had been well dried and preserved, having been placed in stone coffins pierced with holes. Fox piously collected them into these chests, on which he inscribed the venerated names of their owners.[78] He hoisted them up, having great confidence in the safety gained by elevation, and his trust was justified, with regard to his window in the gable and his statue above it, but in respect of these chests, he did not rightly measure the height to which mob violence might attain. After the storm had passed away, the bones were collected and replaced, but no one knew what remains were stored in any particular chest. A small set of bones has been thought to have belonged to Queen Emma. There are twelve names, and as late as 1845, the confused contents were all safe; but by 1873, one of the twelve skulls was gone.

“Purloined, perchance, by some over-zealous phrenologist, whose principles were not more sound than his theories,” said Mr. Hertford.

[Sidenote: Fox’s Chantry.]

We now come to Fox’s Chantry, and admire the diversified stone carving of the exterior. It is most refined and in the best taste, while the figure of Death stretched beneath it is in the worst, and reminds us of the skull and cross-bones, with which headstones were formerly adorned. We enter, and think we can see the dark ascetic bishop kneeling in his little stone study, for hither when blind, in his old age, he was led daily for prayer. His memory will ever be cherished lovingly here, and in Oxford, where he founded Corpus Christi College. Through this chantry, we reach the Feretory (from _feretra_, biers). Here, in ancient times, the gold and silver shrines of Birinus, Swithun, and other saints, the head of St. Just, and one of the feet of St. Philip, stood upon a platform higher than the present one, and reflected a holy light upon the worshippers in the choir. The contents of the feretory are now not so brilliant, though interesting. Here lies a prostrate giant--a figure of Bishop Edington--which was once perched up over the west front, but becoming dilapidated, was replaced by that of Wykeham. Here is the lid, or side of a reliquary chest (1309) with sacred subjects painted on its panels. The other remains are melancholy to behold, heads and portions of the bodies of statues found about the Cathedral.

“It looks like an old curiosity shop, or a sculptor’s studio,” observed Miss Hertford.

“And it reminds me,” chimed in her father, “of a story I heard about some country labourers, who had been visiting the British Museum. When asked how they liked it, they said, ‘Very much, but some had no arms, some had no legs, and some had no heads. The butler, however, was very kind, and told us it was intended to represent a railway accident.’”

On the other side of this feretory is Gardiner’s Chantry. He is generally associated in our minds with fire and faggot, but when we first read of him, he was a young man at Paris, chiefly remarkable for his skill in mixing salads. How unfortunate that he did not confine himself to this cooler occupation!--he would at least have received the blessings of epicures. Why should we recall the ghastly past? Gardiner’s violent Catholicism was partly from jealousy of Cranmer. Had he been made archbishop, he might have been a reformer; for there was a time when he was in Rome brow-beating the Pope, on behalf of Anne Boleyn.

[Sidenote: Death’s Effigy.]

The only good act the rebels did in the Cathedral was done here; they knocked the head off the wretched figure of Death, which had been placed, I suppose, as a companion in misery for that in Fox’s Chantry opposite. Perhaps the poet Young, had these scarecrows, which he knew well, in his mind, when he wrote--

“Who can take Death’s portrait true? The tyrant never sat.”

The mob would, doubtless, have turned out Gardiner’s remains had not some pious Catholics put a skull and bones above them, which were mistaken for the bishop’s. They would have been glad to have put him again to destructive work, not indeed, destroying heretics, but breaking to pieces the saints in the stained-glass windows. In this chantry there is still to be seen a portion of one of the round pillars of the Norman apse.

Returning through Fox’s Chantry, and proceeding eastward, we enter the large retro-choir built in the beautiful Early English style by Bishop de Lucy about seventy years after Walkelin’s time. It is erected on piles, so we may be thankful it has stood so long. Immediately at the back of the feretory, we see an arch leading to “the holy hole”--or, as some of our companions called it, “the ’oly ’ole”--in which interments formerly took place. An attempt was made to enter it in 1789, but the masonry had fallen down and the enterprise was relinquished. The Edwardian canopies over it are charming. The area in which we stand is studded with tombs. There are two splendid chantries here--one of Bishop Wayneflete, the founder of Magdalen College, Oxford; and the other, of Cardinal Beaufort. Wayneflete is represented as grasping his heart.[79] Both monuments have suffered. Wayneflete’s head was so much damaged that a new one was lately given him. Beaufort’s figure is supposed not to be original, and “a horse-load of pinnacles” had by Milner’s time[80] fallen or been knocked off this canopy of “bewildering” embellishment.

An old gentleman of our company inquired whether Cardinal Beaufort was a Roman Catholic, and I could see by his countenance that the affirmative answer he received greatly altered his opinion of that eminent man.

[Sidenote: Altar Tombs.]

The other monuments are “altar tombs,” comparatively insignificant, being only two or three feet above the pavement. But to our eyes they seemed a promising array, and proved disappointing. We had read that among others Prior William of Basynge, Sir Arnald de Gaveston, Prior Silkstede and Bishop Courtenay were lying here. On the first we came to, that of Basynge, I deciphered the pleasant announcement that whoever prays for him shall obtain a hundred and forty-five days’ indulgence.

“That seems,” observed Mr. Hertford, “as if he was not so anxious about the souls of others as about his own.”

The ledger-stone which bears this inscription is the only genuine part of the tomb.

Then we come to the line of four tombs extending from the Edwardian Arcade to the Lady Chapel. First, there is the goodly figure of Bishop Sumner, whose snow-white marble looks out of place among the dark tones of distant centuries; he is not buried here. Next to this is a tomb of some bishop of the fifteenth century, not that of Silkstede--a nearly perfect skeleton in black serge and funeral boots was found in it. Then we come to the only ancient knight who makes a figure in the Cathedral. He is in armour, with his legs crossed, which denotes some rank. Surely this is Sir Arnald de Gaveston, the Gascon knight who saved Edward I.’s life. When he died the King sent cloth of gold for his funeral.

But no, he was buried in the north transept. This is supposed to represent William de Foix.

“Whoever he is Time has pulled him by the nose a little,” said Mr. Hertford; “but he always loves to deride the greatness of man.”

“He would have had a better excuse,” I returned, “had he treated the delightful ‘Piers’ in this unhandsome manner.”[81]

“Why, not one of these tombs has the ring of truth about it,” said Mr. Hertford, discontentedly.

[Sidenote: Peter de la Roche.]

“Well this last one next the Lady Chapel is genuine,” I replied. “It is that of Bishop de Lucy, but was long asserted by an easy and patriotic error to be that of Lucius, the British king. The occupant of the tomb immediately to the north of Bishop Sumner is unknown, but to the north-east lies Petrus de Rupibus. Few would understand without a teacher that this meant Peter de la Roche, but in that age the manner in which names were Latinized raises a suspicion that some jesters were engaged in the work. Thus we find Montagu rendered ‘de Monte acuto;’ and in this Cathedral we have the grave of ‘Johannes de Pontissara,’ _i.e._, John Sawbridge.”[82]

“Much more mellifluous,” observed Mr. Hertford. “But one might almost say to them as Quince said to Bottom in the ass’s head, ‘Bless me! thou art translated.’”

“Peter de la Roche,” I continued, “was a native of Poictiers, and had served in youth under Richard Cœur de Lion. He became Henry III.’s guardian and tutor, and seemed at one time to have all the kingly power at his command. As a bishop he supported the Papal authority against the national party, which was represented by Hubert de Burgh. When unsuccessful he ‘took the cross’--went to the Crusades. Afterwards he returned, presented the monastery with one of the feet of St. Philip, and was able to entertain Henry sumptuously at Wolvesey Castle. He became the head of the Government, founded the Dominican Convent at the Eastgate, and built (or suggested)[83] Netley Abbey, and the great North ‘Solomon’s’ porch at Westminster. On the southern wall of this area is a monument to Sir John Cloberry--representing him as a kind of ‘fat boy,’ with a long curly wig. He was an officer under Monk, and contributed to bring about the Restoration. His house was in Parchment Street.”

Further on, at the extreme east, we come to Bishop Langton’s Chantry (he died in 1500). This and the next chapel is beautifully enriched with oak carving. Next to this we enter the Lady Chapel, by building which Priors Hunton and Silkstede made this the longest cathedral in England.

[Sidenote: Mary and Philip.]

A gleam of gold and jewellery comes to us here from 1554. We were told that in this Lady Chapel Mary and Philip were married, but there is no doubt that the ceremony was performed before the high altar, which seemed the proper place. The chair in which Mary sat is here, and has originated the claim of the chapel. It is small, with a low back--a faldistorium--of a form not then uncommon, but was brave with brass nails, gilding, and velvet. It has now a shabby and melancholy appearance, like the performances of the sovereign who sat in it; the horse-hair is coming out, and no wonder, for nearly every second lady visitor poses in it as the queen of the moment.

But let us look at something better. The light of love is in the eyes of the gloomy bride, and is even slightly reflected from the dark, underhung visage of the king. All the nobility are gathered from the whole of England. The Queen in cloth of gold, with the sword borne before her, sweeps up with a long retinue from the west entrance, and takes her place on the “Mount,” beneath the rood loft. On her left is Philip, also in cloth of gold, having beside him a large number of nobles of Spain. Golden hangings glow in the choir, and at the altar stand six bishops with their crosiers. But with all this brilliancy none could fail to see the dark cloud of popular discontent lowering in the sky, and alas! the golden apparel concealed a sad and a false heart.

In this Lady Chapel, which has such high pretensions, the remains of some old frescoes (Silkstede’s) long covered with paint and plaster, are still visible. There are twenty-four separate designs, all in honour of the Virgin. In one place a young man puts a gold ring on the Virgin’s finger to keep it till he sees his lady-love. When he returns for it he finds it will not come off. He does not attribute this to the trickery of the monks, but to the intervention of the Virgin, and forthwith jilts his sweetheart and takes the cowl. In another design a painter accustomed to represent the devil “as ugly as he knew him to be,” is executing on a high wall, a figure of Our Lady, with the devil under her feet. His artistic work is stopped by a dragon-like fiend pulling down his scaffolding, when lo! the Virgin he has just painted holds out her hand to him and supports him till assistance arrives. Here also we have John Damascen, a celebrated writer of the eighth century, condemned by Saracen Caliph to lose his right hand. The peccant member is cut off, and hung up in the market-place, but on its being taken down and applied to the wrist with prayers to the Virgin, it is reunited.

“What absurd stories,” said Miss Hertford. “I wonder how even a child could have believed them.”

“I did not credit them,” I replied, “but now that I see framed on the wall that wonderful restoration of these indistinct outlines, I may think that the miraculous power of the Virgin is still present in her chapel.”

[Sidenote: Rebuses.]

Those who deem that a person guilty of a pun should suffer imprisonment will not look with much appreciation on the humour attempted on the vaulting of this and the last-named chapels. All that can be said in its behalf is that it has the flavour of a bygone age. These rebuses seem to us puerile. There might be a temptation to represent Silkstede by a skein and a horse; and as Winchester was often called Winton, and famous for its wine, there might be something juicy in symbolizing it by a vine issuing from a tun. But here we have a musical note termed “long,” coming out of a tun for Langton, and some can see a hen making a similar egress for Hunton. The dragon issuing from a tun refers to Proverbs xxiii. 31, 32: “Look not upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup.... At last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.”

We might be surprised that, when Fox put up the panelling here, he did not insert his own name in a similarly humorous manner. Reynard was a known ecclesiastical emblem, but not a complimentary one--in a church carving we find him preaching to a flock of geese. Our austere bishop would have been shocked at such a representative; he chose the self-sacrificing pelican.[84]

“Playing with words was much in fashion even at a later epoch,” said Mr. Hertford. “Not a few of our great families have punning mottoes as ‘Ver non semper viret’ for Vernon, ‘Cavendo tutus’ for Cavendish, and so on.”