Part 2

Perhaps that was the first thing that made King Offa’s conscience begin to prick, but, like King Ahab, he tried to brazen the matter out; saying to himself, “The deed is done and I cannot undo it, so I may as well have the Kingdom.” So he sent an army to East Anglia, and took possession of it.

But I think that all the time he must have been feeling more and more unhappy, for, remember, at heart he was a good man, and had lived, up to this time, a noble and honourable life; and a certain terror must have fallen upon him when, two months later, his wife Quendreda died, and, sitting by his desolate hearth, he remembered the old story of the King of Israel who had done as he had done, and on whom the wrath of God had so speedily fallen.

It must have been almost a relief when one day Eadwulf, Bishop of Lichfield, came to him and said: ‘What is this that thou hast done? Killed a defenceless man in thine own Palace, and taken possession of his Kingdom. Hadst thou killed him in open battle, no one could have blamed thee, but to murder him in secret when he came as a friend was not worthy of thee, O King.’

‘I know it, I know it,’ replied Offa, who was now thoroughly sorry for his deed; ‘but it was the wine which I drank, which my wife gave to me. It inflamed my brain so that I knew not what I said.’

Now, at that time people had the idea that they could atone for any wicked act that they had done by giving money or lands to the Church, or going on some pilgrimage; so Eadwulf told King Offa that he thought that first of all he had better see that King Ethelbert’s body had Christian burial--you remember it had just been thrown into a hole--and that after that he must go a pilgrimage to Rome, and tell the Pope the whole story, and do whatever he told him to do as a punishment.

Then he added some words which were very solemn, but which turned out only too true. This was what he said: ‘Because thou hast repented of thy evil deed thy sin will be forgiven; nevertheless, the sword shall not depart from thine house. It was in thine heart that Mercia should be the greatest of English Kingdoms, and so it might have been. But now the glory shall depart from thee, and another King, even the King of Wessex, shall be greater in power and shall become the first King of the whole of England.’

Offa did as he was bid. He had the body of the young King taken from its rude grave, and buried in the little church of reeds and wattles at Fernlege, near which Ethelbert had sat and mused on the night before his death.

Illustration: _S. B. Bolas & Co._ HEREFORD CATHEDRAL: THE NAVE.

Then he went to Rome and told the whole story to the Pope, and said how penitent he was, and how gladly he would do anything in his power to atone for his sin; and the Pope, who wanted to have more churches built in England, told him to go home again, and show his sorrow by building a really fine church at St. Albans--where the first English martyr Alban laid down his life for the Faith--and another at Fernlege, where there was only the plain little Cathedral Church of wood.

Offa promised that he would do these things, and when he returned to England he gave orders that the two buildings should be begun without delay. Very soon afterwards he died, and it fell to the lot of one of his Viceroys, whose name was Milfred, to carry out his plans at Fernlege, and to build an ‘admirable stone church’ there.

And so King Offa vanishes from history, and although we cannot doubt that his penitence was very deep, and that his great sin was forgiven, it is very striking to read how Bishop Eadwulf’s words were fulfilled, and how the glory did indeed ‘depart from his house.’

We have seen how his wife died, and how his youngest and fairest daughter became a nun. Then he himself died and was buried, not in either of the two great Minsters which he had caused to be erected, but in a little chapel on the banks of the Ouse, near Bedford. One day a dreadful flood came, and the Ouse overflowed its banks and washed away the chapel, and King Offa’s bones along with it, and no one ever knew what became of them.

Soon afterwards his only son, Prince Ecgfrith, died, and slowly the Kingdom of Mercia grew less and less important, and the little Kingdom of Wessex grew greater and greater, until its King, King Ecgbert, great-grandfather of Alfred the Great, became ‘Overlord’ of the whole of England.

As for King Offa’s eldest daughter, Eadburh, her story is the saddest of all, for she was a wicked woman like her mother; and she did one bad thing after another, until at last she had neither money nor friends left; and the old chroniclers tell us that, ‘in the days of Alfred, who reigned over the West Saxons, and who was Overlord of all the Kingdoms of England, there were many men yet living who had seen Eadburh, daughter of Offa, and wife of Beorhtric, begging her bread.’

But it is pleasant to think that if Eadwulf’s words came true in such a terrible way, the dream or vision which poor King Ethelbert had on the last night of his life came true also, but in a much happier and sweeter manner.

For, as I have said, under the direction of Milfred, King Offa’s Viceroy, a noble stone church replaced the little wooden one at Fernlege, or, as it soon began to be called, ‘Hereford,’ which means ‘The Ford of the Army,’ because, when the Mercian soldiers wished to pass into Wales, they crossed the River Wye at this point.

This new church was dedicated to ‘St. Ethelbert and the Blessed Virgin,’ and into it, when it was finished, the Bishop’s chair was carried.

For, although the young King could not be called a martyr, he certainly left the record of a pure and brave and noble life behind him, and it seemed fitting--and we are glad that it did so--that the memory of his name should linger, all down the ages, round the stately Cathedral which was built as an expiation of his death, and in which, for half a century at least, his body rested.

It was not taken into the new Cathedral at once, however, which seems rather curious, but it was left for more than a hundred years in the grave in which it had been laid by Offa, before he went on his pilgrimage to Rome.

Perhaps this was because there was constant fighting going on all these years between the people of Mercia and the Welsh; and Hereford, being just on the border of the two Kingdoms, was so constantly exposed to the danger of being raided, or looted, or burned down, that no one had any time to think about anything else.

But at last there came a period of peace, and the Bishop of Hereford who was living then, whose name was Æthelstan, determined that he would restore the Cathedral, which had got sadly knocked about in these border quarrels. When he had done so, he took King Ethelbert’s bones from their humble resting-place, and had them brought into his newly restored church and placed in a gorgeous shrine which he had prepared for their reception.

A great misfortune fell upon this good Bishop, for, for the last thirteen years of his life, he was blind, and I have no doubt that, during all the long period when he could not see, it must have been a great joy to him to think, as he was led out and in to Service, that he had been allowed, before the darkness fell on him, to repair the House of God, and to provide a fitting tomb for the royal youth in whose memory it had been erected.

Alas! he little knew what a few short years were to bring; and we almost wish that the poor old man had died before his life-work was all undone.

For in 1056 a quarrel took place between Elfgar, Earl of Chester, and Edward the Confessor, who was King of England at that time. I do not know what the quarrel was about, but at any rate Elfgar was summoned to appear before the ‘Witan,’ or Parliament in London, on a charge of high treason.

His guilt was not proved, but the King was so angry with him that he made him an outlaw, which was, of course, very unjust.

Elfgar, as was to be expected in these old warlike days, determined to have his revenge, so he went and hired the services of a band of Danish pirates who chanced to be cruising about in their ships round the coast of Ireland. Then he went to Gruffydd, King of North Wales, who was his friend and neighbour, and asked him if he would help him also. Gruffydd agreed readily, for he hated the English, and soon a fleet of Danish ships came sailing up the Severn, full of fierce pirates and wild Welshmen, all of whom were sworn to obey Elfgar and Gruffydd.

They came to the West Country because they knew there were a great many rich churches there that they could plunder, and as soon as the river became too shallow for their ships, they disembarked, and marched in the direction of Hereford.

Now, as perhaps you know, Edward the Confessor was very fond of the Normans, and he had made one of his favourites, a Norman noble named Ralph, Earl of Hereford. This Ralph was a brave man, and quite ready to lead the citizens and the people of the neighbourhood out against the lawless invaders, but he made one great mistake.

It was the custom, in his own land, for all the gentlemen to fight on horseback, instead of on foot, as was the way of the Anglo-Saxons, and he insisted on his followers following the foreign fashion, setting the example himself, with the result that everyone felt awkward and embarrassed, and very soon it became evident that Elfgar and his friends were going to have the best of it.

Seeing this, Earl Ralph lost his head, and ran away, and perhaps we cannot wonder that the simple country folk followed his example, although, alas! one or two hundred of them were overtaken and killed before they had gone very far.

Then the victorious hoard of savages, for they were little else, swept on, straight to the Cathedral, where they knew that the holy vessels, at least, and the ornaments on the altar, would be of gold or silver.

But if they thought that they could obtain these easily they were mistaken, for they had not reckoned on the kind of men with whom they had to deal. For the brave priests determined to defend their church to the last, and shut and barricaded the doors in their faces; and, although at last they were overcome and the church looted, it was not until seven of their number lay dead in the great Western doorway.

A scene of wild confusion followed, and when the wild invaders marched away again there was nothing left of the little city or of the great church which Æthelstan had restored with so much labour and pride but a few smouldering ruins.

Among other things, King Ethelbert’s shrine was destroyed, and, although we hope that his bones were taken care of, and buried somewhere in the church, or else burned up altogether, we cannot tell for certain what became of them.

Now, if there is one thing which we admire more than another about the grand old builders of the Middle Ages, it is their perseverance.

They would spend a hundred years over the planning and building of a church, when one man died another taking his place; and when--as happened here, and many times elsewhere--the church was destroyed, either by accident or design, they lost no time in useless lamentations, but just patiently began to build it up again, trusting that in the future a time would come when their work would be prized and taken care of, as it deserved to be.

So we find that in a very few years the work was begun once more from the beginning, this time by a Norman Bishop, named Robert de Losinga; and we are glad to know that his work remains, for if we go into the Cathedral we can see part of it still standing, for it was under his directions that parts of the choir and of the south transept were built.

Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ HEREFORD CATHEDRAL: SCREEN.

That was more than eight hundred years ago.

Then followed the building of the nave, the Lady-chapel, the north transept, and the tower, until, some four hundred years after Bishop Losinga had begun it, the great church was completed, and stood much as it stands to-day, except that a wooden spire surmounted the square tower of stone.

This spire was taken down in 1790.

Now that we have learned all about its history, let us enter the Cathedral and look what it is like inside.

As you see, it is built of red stone, in the form of a cross, the choir being separated from the nave by a curious screen, which is made of four metals--iron, copper, brass, and bronze.

The nave is very grand and stately, with rows of massive Norman pillars and beautifully carved arches.

Although St. Ethelbert’s shrine no longer exists, if we go into the choir we can see the place where it stood--here, in this arch, between the two pillars nearest the altar on our right-hand side as we face it. A statue of the murdered King has been placed, as you see, on a pedestal, close to one of the pillars, and here, on the floor, in front of the altar, is a circular slab of marble, on which is traced a representation of his murder.

But if we cannot visit St. Ethelbert’s shrine, we can visit another, which is six hundred years old, and which was erected to hold the bones of a very celebrated Bishop of Hereford, who was such a good man, that, after his death, people thought he deserved the name of Saint;--Thomas de Cantilupe.

It stands in the north transept, and is just a great marble chest, with what looks like another ‘openwork’ chest, also of marble, above it.

Round the sides of the lower chest a great many figures are carved, and if we look at them closely we shall see that they are figures of Knights Templars, with their cloaks and crosses, for Bishop de Cantilupe was Grand Master of that Order.

Perhaps he obtained this office because he was very fond of soldiers, and when he was a little boy he wanted to become one.

This was a very natural wish, for he was the son of a powerful Baron, who had an estate and ‘manor’ in Buckinghamshire, and to become a soldier was the common lot of most boys in his position.

He had an uncle, or great-uncle, however, who was Bishop of Worcester, and this Prelate had other hopes for his nephew’s career.

One day, when little Thomas was staying with him, he asked the child what he would like to be.

‘A soldier,’ said the boy promptly, looking up in the Bishop’s face.

The old man patted him gently on the head.

‘Then, sweetheart, thou _shalt_ be a soldier, but a soldier of the King of kings,’ he replied, ‘and thou shalt fight under the banner of thy namesake, St. Thomas of Canterbury, and thy harness shall be the cassock of a priest.’

So the little fellow put the idea of earthly warfare out of his head, and set himself to study Greek and Latin instead, and when he was older he went to Oxford, and then to Paris with his brother Hugh, and soon became a very distinguished student.

When he returned to England he became Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and a very good Chancellor he was, for he knew how to rule the students who were often very high-spirited and turbulent, just as students are nowadays.

But their high spirits took rougher and more dangerous forms, just as the times were rougher and more dangerous, for they used to fight with one another with swords, and bows and arrows, and the Chancellor used to get hold of these weapons and confiscate them, until such time as their owners came to beg them back on condition that they kept the peace.

Afterwards King Henry III. gave him a more important position, that of Chancellor of England, for you must remember that in those days the clergy were politicans as well as priests, and often held the highest offices of State. Then, in 1275, when he was quite an elderly man, he became Bishop of Hereford.

And a true ‘Father in God’ he proved himself to be, to the poor people, at least, for he had one or two very serious and rather funny quarrels with the rich and powerful nobles who lived in his Diocese. These quarrels arose not because he was jealous of his own dignity, but because he was jealous of the dignity of the Church, and he imagined that any slight or insult paid to him as Bishop, was really a slight and insult paid to the Church of God.

In fact, he must have been rather a puzzle to the rich people over whom he was set to rule in spiritual matters, for some of his views were so different from theirs.

They saw that he was haughty and imperious to anyone, no matter how great he might be, who disobeyed him, or encroached on his dignity, and they saw also that he was always splendidly dressed, like a King indeed, for he wore a tunic trimmed with Royal miniver, and had a miniver covering to his bed.

But they did not understand that under his haughtiness and imperiousness, which certainly were faults, and under the apparent luxuriousness of his dress, lay a very real desire, not for his own honour and glory, but for the honour and glory of the King of kings, whose ambassador he felt himself to be.

Sometimes they caught a glimpse of his real self and were more puzzled still, for when they were dining with him they would see him deliberately pass dish after dish which they knew he was very fond of, and content himself with the plainest and poorest fare, in order that he might learn to say ‘No’ to his own wishes.

Then, when the meal was ended he would rise, and select some dainty from the table, and carry it out of the hall with his own hands; and if he had been followed, he would have been found beside the bed of some poor sick servant, coaxing him to eat what he had brought to him.

They knew also that he ordered bales and bales of woollen stuff to give to the poor in winter, with which to make stout cloaks and petticoats, and that he examined the goods most carefully when they arrived, to see that the colours were nice and bright, and just what he wanted them to be.

Once, as was his wont, he was going to visit a poor sick person in a miserable hovel in the town, when a high-born Baron met him, and remonstrated with him, telling him that such work was beneath his dignity, and that he should leave it to the common clergy.

‘Sire,’ replied Bishop Thomas gravely, ‘I have to give an account to God for the souls of the poor as well as of the rich;’ and the Baron had no answer to make.

There is just one other story which I will tell you about him, and this shows his haughty and imperious side.

The Castle at Ledbury belonged to him as Bishop, so did the right of hunting over the Malvern Hills, which were Church lands.

It is quite possible that he did not care in the least for hunting himself, and that he would have granted the privilege to anyone who had come and asked him for it. But when, one day, he was riding with his attendants on these same Malvern Hills, and heard the sound of a hunting-horn, and, on asking what it meant, was told that Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, who was at that time the most powerful noble in England, also claimed the right of hunting there, and was out that day with his hounds, his anger rose, and he rode forward alone to meet the Earl and order him off the ground.

The Earl looked at him contemptuously, and, answering with a sneer that ‘he was not going to be driven off his ancestral land by a “clergiaster,”’ and that ‘he had a good mind to chastise him for his impertinence,’ rode on.

Not a word spoke the Bishop; he simply turned his horse’s head and galloped back to his attendants.

A few hours later the Earl and his followers, tired out with the chase, had dismounted, and were resting under the shade of a wide-spreading oak, when the trampling of hoofs was heard.

Looking up, they saw an extraordinary procession, a procession which was generally only to be seen in a church.

There was the Bishop in the foreground, vested in mitre, cope, and stole, and there, behind him, rode his attendant priests and acolytes, carrying lighted candles, and a great bell, and a book!

And while the Earl stared at them, half in anger, half in fear, the book was opened, the candles extinguished, the bell tolled, the most solemn curses of the Church levelled at his head, and a form of excommunication read, whereby he was denied all the rites of his religion, even Christian burial itself.

And all this because he had hunted the wild deer on the Malvern Hills in defiance of Bishop de Cantilupe, which in Bishop de Cantilupe’s eyes meant in defiance of Almighty God.

It was not only with the English Barons that the Bishop had differences, he had them with the Pope himself, when he thought that the rights of the Church of England were being tampered with; and it was when he was returning from Rome after having been to the Pope about one of those differences, that he died in Italy, on August 25, 1282.

Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd._ HEREFORD CATHEDRAL: TOMB OF BISHOP CANTILUPE.

His desire was that his bones should be laid to rest in his own Cathedral Church in far-away England, so, as it was an almost impossible task to convey a dead body across Europe in those days, do you know what his followers did? They _boiled_ his body, until the flesh separated from the bones; then they buried the flesh in the Church of St. Severus near Florence, and the bones, which were now quite easy to carry, they brought to Hereford, and buried them in the Lady-chapel. They were afterwards removed to a little chapel known as the Chapel of St. Catherine, and at last this beautiful shrine was prepared for them, and they were placed inside.

Not very far from the shrine of Thomas de Cantilupe, on the east wall of the transept, there are two tablets, one above the other, which I think you would like to look at, for they tell a very curious and pathetic story.

As you see, they have both been placed there in memory of the same man, Captain Arkwright, but not at the same time. For if you read the inscriptions you will see that one of them is thirty-one years older than the other.

Captain Arkwright was a young soldier who was very fond of Alpine-climbing; and on October 13, 1866, he set out to try to ascend Mont Blanc. He never returned, for he was caught in an avalanche, and swept away out of sight. Although careful search was made, his body could not be found, and after a time all hope of ever finding it was given up, and this topmost tablet was erected to his memory.

Thirty-one years passed by, and those of his friends who were alive had become elderly men and women, and I suppose his memory had grown a little dim to them, when strange news came from the little village of Chamonix, which lies at the foot of the great White Mountain.

You all know what a glacier is? A river of ice which moves very very slowly down the side of a snow mountain, but which comes at last to the region where the air is so warm that it melts, and runs away down into the valley in a torrent of muddy water.

Well, Captain Arkwright’s body had been swept by the avalanche into a deep crevasse, or ‘crack’ in one of these glaciers, and all these years it had been moving, encased in ice, slowly down the mountain, until, on August 23, 1897, it appeared at the foot of the glacier near Chamonix, in a perfect state of preservation, just as it was on the day when he was killed.

It was taken from the ice which had held it so long and so mysteriously, and laid in Chamonix churchyard, and one of Arkwright’s old schoolfellows, who by this time had become Dean of this Cathedral, had the second, or lower, tablet erected as a memorial of the strange event.

Now let us cross the church, and go into the south transept to look at a curious raised tomb which stands there, which I am sure all the little boys and girls, at least, would like to look at.

As you see, three figures rest upon it. A father, a mother, and a tiny little baby, who lies half-hidden among the draperies of her mother’s gown.