CHAPTER XIV.

_SUUM CUIQUE TRIBUITUR._

Let us leave the snug cot and return to the desolate ruins of the Abbey.

Scarcely have the sounds of the footsteps of our two friends died away, when another step comes along the cloisters from the opposite direction, and after the pause of a moment it ascends the stair leading to the Abbot’s chamber.

Hush! the new-comer is talking to himself, soliloquizing aloud.

“Methought I heard steps and voices, and saw from the opposite cloister the gleam of a light in this very chamber. Nicholas has played me false--the young hound; I shall have a rod in pickle for his back. He should have been here to-night, to share my watch; he sent word he was on their track, and that they were _en route_ for Glastonbury Abbey; no doubt to visit the secret chamber, and he knew that I meant to await him here alone, where I have had but a cold time of it, and, I fear, a useless watch, for how can one person guard so large a place?

“Still the secret might be worth keeping to ourselves, for I am assured there is much gold, and if we could but surprise and slay them after they have betrayed their secret, we might enrich ourselves and no man the wiser, and then make our market of the parchments afterwards. ’Tis but an old man and a mere boy; Nicholas might grapple with the young one, and willingly would, for he hates him, while I disposed of the monk-knight, which would but cost me a thrust or two; and then if my page were sore pressed, I might lend him a moment’s assistance, although it would be rare sport to see him finish my precious nephew himself, and I think he _could_, for he must be the stronger, since he has had no confinement or torture to weaken his nerves or sap his health, and should be the better swordsman of the two. Ah! what is this?”

He was trembling with excitement, not unmingled with a sensation like fear, as he turned a dark lantern, and caused the hidden light to reveal the entrance, which Cuthbert had unwittingly left ajar, for the spring, rusty with damp, had failed to act.

Down the thirty steps; down to the iron door at the bottom, first closing the upper door.

“I shall have the secret all to myself, not even Nicholas shall know more than I choose to reveal; a man is his own best confidant, thanks to the saint, or may be the devil, who has helped me. Ha! ha!”

Suddenly he started, and a chill of terror caused the cold sweat to stand on his brow; was that a peal of distant laughter mocking his words? Satanic laughter?

“I am becoming fanciful. Ah! here is the spring; no more mystery, the door opens, I will press it back against the wall; yes it is safe, it stands quite still.”

He enters the vault, and passes from mortal sight for ever.

Let us stand outside and watch that door.

It is certainly moving, almost imperceptibly; oh, how terrible that slight motion. It increases in speed, _vires acquirit eundo_; oh! will no one warn the guilty wretch within of his danger.

Clang! In that sound is the awful doom of one who is lost soul and body,--the warning portent is explained, its fore-boding fulfilled.

Again that low but awful peal of laughter breaks the echoes. Ah! who shall paint the agony of the few hopeless days of darkness, which remain to him in his icy tomb--the pangs of hunger and thirst, delirium, and madness?

We draw a veil over them, and bid Sir John Redfyrne a last farewell.

* * * * *

Upon the following morning the sun rose brightly upon the earth; so soundly slept Sir Walter and his adopted son, that old Hodge had to knock once or twice ere he could arouse them.

“Look, Cuthbert,” cried Sir Walter; “the rising sun dispersing the darkness of the night, a harbinger of better days to us; dress quickly, commend thyself to God, and let us be stirring: for although we have heard nought of Sir John, it may be as well to put the sea between us and him, now our work is accomplished.”

They occupied adjacent couches in the same room, and both had slept, without once awaking, from the time they lay their heads on their pillows; a sense of delicious rest, of labour achieved, had been theirs.

And now after their thanksgivings to God, they came down to breakfast with hot spiced wine, before a warm fire; and although the reverence always accorded to rank in those days, made the old yeoman hesitate to set “cheek by jowl” with a knight and Prior rolled into one, yet Sir Walter soon put him at his ease, and the four made the last breakfast which they were ever to share together.

Cuthbert’s heart was too full for speech; he had cause to entertain the warmest feelings of affection for his kind foster-parents, and now he was leaving them perhaps for ever, for he could not hope to re-visit England, unless a total change took place in the government and its policy; and meanwhile the sands of life were running out for the aged couple.

But the last farewells had to be said; the honest yeoman brought the two horses round to the back door; the few necessaries they had were packed in their saddle-bags, and bidding a longing lingering last farewell, they turned their backs upon Glastonbury, and took the road for Lyme Regis.

They rode leisurely, for they knew no need for special haste, and enjoyed the invigorating and bracing air; oft-times from some eminence they turned back, and looked over the plain of Avalon upon the lofty Tor, with mingled feelings; it was the land-mark of home, but it was the place where foul injustice had been wreaked upon one they had both loved.

Late in the evening they beheld the sea in the far distance, and soon after nightfall entered Lyme Regis, where Cuthbert sought his uncle, while he left Sir Walter at the inn.

Such a journey as they had accomplished would have been difficult in France without passports, or in any continental land until a much later day; but in England well-dressed and respectable travellers might travel unquestioned, in the absence of any cause to the contrary, and take up their quarters without exciting suspicion, even in the last days of bloody Harry.

Cuthbert sought his “uncle,” with whom it will be remembered he had spent the ten months after the martyrdom of the Abbot, and found him just returned from a fishing expedition. At first the old fisherman could not recognize the lad who had once won his affections in the young man who stood before him, but when he did so, the warmth of the reception was all that could be desired; he almost dragged Cuthbert to his “aunt,” and no persuasion would induce them to let the youth return to spend the night at the inn with Sir Walter.

What a story had Cuthbert to tell them! “Uncle,” “aunt,” and two or three “cousins,” stalwart young fishermen: they stood aghast with open mouths and erected ears at his narration of the scenes at Exeter, which were quite fresh to them, for news travelled very slowly in those days, and even otherwise they might not have recognized Cuthbert under the altered name.

And when he asked their help to convey him and his adopted father across sea, he was met by an enthusiastic reply, “Wind and tide both serve, why not to-morrow morning, my boy; loath are we to part with thee so soon, but thy safety is the first consideration.”

So the following morning Sir Walter and Cuthbert, both clad in fishers’ garb, joined the fisherman and his stalwart sons on the beach. The largest boat, or rather sloop, was got under weigh, the wind blew directly off shore, and soon they saw the white cliffs of Dorset, and the red ones of Devon, which meet near Lyme Regis, receding on the right and left.

As they drew out to sea, and the whole coast line became visible, Hey Tor and the moorland hills loomed in the far distance on the left, and until they sank beneath the sea Cuthbert never took his eyes from them.

Now all was sea and sky for many hours, until the coasts of Normandy, about the mouth of the Seine, came into sight. And they ran the boat up the river to the nearest point to the great Abbey of Bec, founded by the famous Herlwin in 1034, and which had furnished two successive Archbishops to Canterbury in the persons of Lanfranc and Anselm.

The present Abbot had been a personal friend of Father Ambrose, and so soon as they had bidden a kind and grateful farewell to their English friends, the honest fishermen, who absolutely refused the offer of gold for their services, they directed their steps to the famous Abbey.

After a journey of some hours, they arrived safely at Bec.

“Behold an Abbey, which God has yet preserved from the spoilers,” said Father Ambrose, as he looked upon the glorious pile--grand as that they had lost--and then added with a sigh, “Alas, poor Glastonbury.”

There they met unbounded hospitality, and Father Ambrose only waited to bestow his adopted son in the care of the Baron de Courcy, whose castle was hard by, ere he resumed that life he had never willingly abandoned.

The Baron de Courcy was a descendant of an old and famous Norman house, distinguished in the days of the Conquest, when Aymer de Courcy, refusing to share in the sports of England, retired to his Norman estate, although he had fought at Hastings, and enjoyed the favour of the Conqueror.

His good qualities, well known to those who have read of them in the “Andredsweald,” a chronicle of the house of Michelham in Sussex,[57] had not suffered in transmission through so many generations: and our Cuthbert found a warm reception in the Norman household.

And so they both gained a home, each after his own heart, and the recent trials seemed only to enhance the sweet sense of security they now enjoyed.

“When the shore is gained, at last, Who will count the billows past?”

But they had not been three months in their new homes, when tidings arrived from England of the death of their oppressor. Henry VIII. had passed to his last account on the early morn of the twenty-eighth of January, fifteen-hundred and forty-seven; passed from his earthly flatterers and parasites, who had treated him as if he were a demi-god, to the awful judgment bar whither he had sent before him by the hands of the executioner some seventy thousand of those subjects who had been committed by the King of kings to his care.

_There_, where prince and peasant, lord and slave, king and monk, are all equal, where there is no respect of persons, we leave him and close our tragical story.

FOOTNOTES

[57] The “Andredsweald,” a tale of the Norman Conquest, by the same author.

Epilogue.

Here, when I first told this story to a generation of schoolboys, long since dispersed over the face of this busy world, I concluded my tale, and returned to my study, but I was followed thither by some young and eager story-devourers, who, like Oliver Twist, “asked for more.”

“Please, sir, we want to know what became of the treasure?”

“Oh,” said I, “I forgot to mention that in Queen Mary’s reign, Cuthbert paid a visit to England in the train of the French Ambassador, Monsieur de Noailles, and found an opportunity of revealing the secret to the Queen. He was sent with some others to Glastonbury, and there they found the mouldering skeleton of Sir John Redfyrne, keeping watch over the chest.”

“But how did they know who he was?”

“The name was engraved on his sword, ‘John Redfyrne, Knight.’”

“Did Cuthbert know that it was his uncle?”

“Not at the time, nor for years afterwards.”

“I fancy,” said a youngster, “Cuthbert would still have preferred the name ‘_Trevannion_’ to ‘_Redfyrne_,’ even if he had known.”

“But what did they do with the treasure? Was the Abbey ever rebuilt?”

“No, for one of the conditions which the nobles, who held the Abbey lands, exacted when Mary restored the Papal Supremacy, was, that they should be left undisturbed in all their ill-gotten possessions: you may be sure that the gold was applied to such uses as the last Abbot himself would have approved.”

“But were old Giles and his wife alive then? did they ever see Cuthbert again?” enquired a chubby little fellow.

“He yet lived, but the dear old dame had gone to her rest. Cuthbert’s visit was the last gleam of joy in the good old yeoman’s well-spent life: his foster son closed his eyes, and laid him to rest by the side of his beloved wife.”

“And did Cuthbert ever get the lands of Redfyrne?”

“No, for he never claimed them, and they passed to the next of kin.”

“But did Cuthbert have plenty of money?” cried a little fellow, anxiously.

“Yes, the King of France, Henry the Second, bestowed a valuable estate upon him, close by the Abbey of Bec, with the rank of Baron, in reward for his extraordinary valour, displayed when he led the forlorn hope at the taking of Metz, in 1552; which city remained a French fortress until the late Franco-German war.”

“And did he marry that Isabel Grey of Ashburton?”

“No, she married a fat and well-liking Devonshire squire.”

“Poor Cuthbert; what a shame!”

“Oh, you need not pity him; few people marry their first love; he found ample consolation in Eveline de Courcy, daughter of the baron, had many bright-eyed sons and daughters, and lived happy, as the story-books say, ‘ever afterwards.’”

“But how was it ever known who were his true parents: for it must have been found out, or we should never have had this tale,” said an older boy.

“You remember the good old priest of S. Mary of the Steppes in Exeter?”

“Yes,” cried several, “he was sent to fetch _that_ Sir John Redfyrne to old Madge.”

“Well, after the death of the poor old woman, he found a sealed packet in her chamber, directed to himself, with the words, ‘To be opened in case of my sudden death,’ which revealed the truth, but he dared not act upon it at once, in favour of an attainted person, and against a court favourite: he waited his time. Meanwhile, in the early years of Edward the Sixth, the Devonshire rebellion broke out, and suspected of being implicated therein, he fled across the seas, and eventually, after many years, became a monk in the Abbey of Bec. There he discovered the identity of Cuthbert, then resident at the castle of Courcy, hard by, with the youth who so narrowly escaped the scaffold at Exeter. Then he revealed the secret to Father Ambrose, and he to Cuthbert.”

“Then why did not Cuthbert claim his own?” said many at once.

“Because he had already attained all he desired in France, and the England of Elizabeth, much as it is lauded by many, had no attractions for him: besides there would have been the old question of the Supremacy to have fought out again; I am not in a position to say that his opinions had undergone any change on that point, and otherwise he could not have lived in peace in his native land.”

“But he was wrong in contending for the supremacy of the Pope, was he not?” said an incipient theologian.

“Undoubtedly; but as a modern historian, not usually credited with Catholic sympathies, says of the Carthusian martyrs who died for the same belief, ‘We will not regret their cause; there is no cause for which any man can more nobly suffer, than to witness that it is better for him to die than to speak words which, he does not mean?’”[58]

“What a wicked monster Henry the Eighth must have been!”

“Yet he had, perhaps, the majority of the nation with him; and doubtless his heart was hardened by continued prosperity and the flattery which he breathed as his vital air. I shall never forget the solemn thoughts which came upon me when I once stood over the plain stone which marks his grave at Windsor: the remembrance of his many victims, the devout Catharine, the stately Wolsey, the learned More, the pious Fisher, the faithful monks of the Charterhouse, the Protestant martyrs, the gallant Surrey, and a host of others. Then came the thought, he has long since met his victims at the judgment-seat, and he and they have been judged by One ‘too wise to err, too good to be unkind;’ let us leave him to that judgment, which also awaits us all. But hark, there is the Chapel bell.”

_Exeunt omnes._

FOOTNOTES

[58] Froude, Vol. III., Cap. ix.

NOTES.

_Note A, P. 2._--ANTIQUITIES OF GLASTONBURY.

The town of Glastonbury is a place, whose historical traditions stretch back to a very remote antiquity. It was known to the early Britons as “Inis Avalon,” or the Isle of Apples, for that fruit was said to grow spontaneously on the rich soil. Thus Camden writes, or rather translates an ancient ode:--

“O Isle of Apples; truly fortunate, Where unforced fruit, and willing comforts meet; For there the fields require no rustic hand, But Nature only cultivates the land: The fertile plains with corn and herds are proud, And golden apples smile in every wood.”

The cluster of hills was (as the name “Inis Avalon,” or “Insula Avalonia,” implies) once an island, surrounded by water from the inlet, we now call the Bristol Channel.

It was not conquered by the English or West Saxons, until the year 658, when Kenwalk [Cenwealh] of Wessex, defeated the Britons after a hard fight, and drove them across the Parret, but it was Christian long before it was English, for it is certain that it was a centre of Welsh Christianity from the earliest times.

Ancient legends relate that S. Philip the Apostle, anxious both to spread the knowledge of the Gospel, and to provide for the safety of his friend Joseph of Arimathæa, exposed to danger from the hatred of the Jews, combined these ends by sending him to Britain with eleven brethren, and some add that S. Mary Magdalene accompanied him.

They were greatly tossed by the waves, and buffeted out of their course, so that they landed on the Isle of Avalon, where Arviragus, the king, received them kindly; and gave them permission to build a Church, which they did, dedicating it to the Blessed Virgin, a dedication afterwards forgotten, for it was finally dedicated to S. Joseph himself, and under the name “Vetusta Ecclesia,” most carefully encased with stone and preserved by subsequent architects, until the great fire in 1184.

It is also recorded that the landing of the Saint and his companions took place at the northern side of Wirral Hill, at a place called in old maps, “The Sea Wall;” the exact spot was anciently identified by a hawthorn tree, which sprang from the staff S. Joseph struck into the ground when he landed. Many trees propagated by grafts from this wonderful tree still exist; they flower at Christmas in honour of the Nativity.

The legend adds, that S. Joseph brought with him a most priceless treasure, “The Holy Grail,” the very chalice in which the Saviour administered the Sacrament of His Blood.

The Cup, the Cup itself, from which our Lord Drank at the last sad Supper with His own; This, from the Blessed Land of Aromat-- After the day of darkness, when the dead Went wandering over Moriah--the good Saint, Arimathæan Joseph, journeying brought To Glastonbury, where the winter thorn Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord.

TENNYSON.--_The Holy Grail._

The original Chapel, built, according to tradition, by S. Joseph and his companions, stood at the west end of the great Abbey Church. It was 60 feet long by 20 broad, and, whatever we may think of the tradition, was doubtless one of the oldest churches in Britain; under its altar S. Joseph was said to lie buried.

Furthermore we are informed that the Ambassador, sent by Pope Eleutherius in answer to the petition of King Lucius, landed here, and revived the faith, when it was becoming decayed; but the whole legend of King Lucius is rejected by modern historians.

Here also it is said that S. Patrick, after the conversion of Ireland, retired in his seventy-second year, and ruled as Abbot for thirty-nine years, dying in the year 472, in the one hundred and eleventh year of his age. He was buried in S. Joseph’s Chapel.

Here also S. David, the patron Saint of Wales, is said to have ended his days; he wished to reconsecrate the Vetusta Ecclesia, or Chapel of S. Joseph; but our Lord appeared to him in a vision, and informed him that HE had consecrated it Himself.

Here King Arthur, the hero of a hundred fights, and a thousand myths, was said to be buried with his Queen Guinevra. His heroic deeds, in the defence of his country, against our pagan forefathers, have been sung by many Bards of old, but by none more sweetly than by our greatest living poet. Thus he describes the parting scene with the brave knight, Sir Bedivere, after the hero’s last great battle with his treacherous nephew, Mordred, at Camlen in Cornwall:--

“But now farewell, I am going a long way, With these thou seest, if indeed I go, (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt,) To the island valley of Avilion, Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly, but it lies Deep meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns, And bowery meadows, crowned with summer sea, Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.”

But the hope was vain; he went to Avalon to die.

This story was sung by the Welsh Bards to King Henry II. on his journey to Ireland in 1177, and interested him so deeply, that he recommended a search for the remains, and that they should be (if found) exhumed and re-interred in the Church, as a more fitting resting place. This wish was carried out after that king’s death by his nephew, Henry de Soliaco, then Abbot, in 1191, and in the spot indicated by the Bards, the remains were found both of Arthur and his queen. Geraldus Cambrensis, who was present, relates the scene, and says that a stone was found with a leaden cross bearing the inscription,--“_Hic pace sepultus rex Arthurus, in insula Avalonia_,”--and beneath it the remains of the hero king, which were of giant proportions, and of his queen, mingled in the same coffin. In the large skull were three wounds, and in the cavity occupied by the queen’s remains a tress of fair yellow hair, which being touched fell to pieces. The remains were duly honoured by a black marble mausoleum in the Church.

When more than eighty years had passed away, the greatest of the Plantagenets, Edward the first, and his Queen Eleanor kept the festival of Easter at Glastonbury, and the tomb was opened for their inspection; when the king commanded the hallowed relics to be exposed before the high altar, for the veneration of the people, ere they were recommitted to their resting place; _there_ to rest, until the tyrant--

“Cast away like a thing defiled The remembrance of the just.”

We have dwelt upon these old legends, not without pleasure, as recorded chiefly by William of Malmesbury, on the authority of a “Charter of S. Patrick,” and an ancient British historian whose writings were then extant, but whose name he does not hand down to posterity.

But the Charter is pronounced by Archbishop Usher to be the forgery of a Saxon monk, and historians in general, consider the truth of the legends, hitherto recorded, as doubtful as those of the kings of Rome, or of the Trojan war.

Still, there can be little doubt in a candid mind, that these ancient myths enshrine many facts, that in the early British times, nay in the very infancy of Christianity, Glastonbury was a centre of light under its earlier name, “the Isle of Avalon,” and that the site of S. Joseph’s Chapel, or the “Vetusta Ecclesia,” is that of one of the oldest, or perhaps _the_ oldest Christian Church in Britain.

We have already seen that the English Conquest had advanced as far as Glastonbury by the year 658. Sixty years afterwards, Ina, King of Wessex, after building the first Church in Wells, by the advice of Adhelm, Bishop of Sherborne, (in which diocese the new conquests were incorporated until the foundation of the See of Wells by Edward the Elder in 909,) rebuilt the monastery on the Isle of Avalon, which by that time, owing to the subsidence of the sea, had either ceased, or was fast ceasing to be an island; save, so far as it was encircled by the waters of the river Brue and its tributary streams, with the marshes they formed. So long as the English had remained heathen they had destroyed all the Churches and monasteries they found; now that they, the West Saxons, had become Christian they respected the Churches and monks, and thus they became great benefactors of Avalonia, or as the English called it, “Glæstingabyrig,” or “Glastonbury.”

Ina died at Rome, whither he had gone, after resigning his crown, in all the “odour of sanctity.”

The monastery was burnt by the Danes in the following century, and restored by the great Saint Dunstan, as described in the author’s earlier tale, “Edwy the Fair, or the First Chronicle of Æscendune.” Here King Edgar died, and was buried; here, as recorded in a later tale of the writer, “Alfgar the Dane, or the Second Chronicle of Æscendune,” the murdered Edmund Ironside was solemnly interred.

The first Norman Bishop, was one Turstinus, or Tustain, and a testy Abbot was he; he had a dislike to the ancient Gregorian music, and bade his English monks sing Parisian tones; but they clung to their old melodies; they had obeyed their foreign tyrant in other things, but would not give up their Gregorians; so the Abbot called in Norman soldiers to coerce the unwilling songsters, and there was a terrible riot in the Church, for the Normans did not respect the sanctity of the place, and slew many monks therein, so that after the conflict ended many arrows were found sticking in the Crucifix over the high altar.

The plain Saxon edifice of Ina looked mean to men accustomed to the Norman abbeys, and therefore Tustain rebuilt the greater portion.

The well known fighting Bishop, Henry of Blois, brother of King Stephen, was appointed Abbot of Glastonbury in 1126, and Bishop of Winchester in 1134, retaining the earlier appointment also till his death in 1171. He rebuilt the monastery from the very foundations, (says an old chronicler) as well as a large palace for himself.

But in the year 1184, on the 25th of May, a terrible fire destroyed the whole monastery, save the bell tower, and a chapel and chamber, built by Abbot Robert (A.D. 1172). Henry the Second, then king, immediately issued a charter, beginning with the words, “Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he reap,” and announced, that in order to lay up treasure in heaven, he and his heirs would restore and raise it to greater glory than before.

He built the Church of S. Mary, commonly called S. Joseph’s Chapel, on the site of the Vetusta Ecclesia, with “squared stones of the most perfect workmanship, profusely ornamented,” and it was consecrated by Reginald the Bishop, on S. Barnabas’ Day, 1186.

The great king only lived three more years, and after his death the further restoration went on but slowly, so that it was not until one hundred and nineteen years had passed away, that the great Abbey Church of S. Peter and S. Paul, which figures in our story, was completed and dedicated, in the year 1303, in the days of Abbot Fromont, and the reign of Edward the First.

The Abbey is said to have suffered grievously in the earthquake which shook the country in the third year of Edward the first, 1274.

The eight Abbots who succeeded in order, carried on the work of beautifying and enlarging until Richard Beere, 1493-1524, the last Abbot but one, finished by erecting the king’s lodgings for secular clergy.

Then when all was “as perfect as perfect could be,” so far as the outward structure, came the terrible fall our story records.

_Note B, P. 11._--LAD AND LASS.

“The old good wife’s well hoarded nuts Are round and round divided, And many lads’ and lasses’ fates Are there that night decided; Some kindle quickly, side by side, And burn together trimly, Some start away with saucy pride And jump out o’er the chimney.”

Burning the nuts is a famous charm. They name the lad and lass to each particular nut, as they lay them on the fire, and accordingly as they burn quietly together, or start from beside one another, the course and issue of the courtship will be.--_Brand’s Popular Antiquities._

_Note C, P. 11._--FETCHES.

These are the exact figures and resemblances of persons then living; often seen not only by their friends at a distance, but many times by themselves; of which there are several instances in Aubrey’s Miscellanies. These apparitions are called “Fetches,” and in Cumberland “Swarths;” they most commonly appear to distant friends and relations at the very instant preceding the death of a person whose figure they put on; but sometimes there is a greater interval between the appearance and death.--_Grose_ _apud_ _Brand_.

_Note D, P. 25._--COUPLED BETWEEN TWO FOXHOUNDS.

“Sir Peter Carew, being a boy at about the date of the tale, and giving trouble at the High School at Exeter, was led home to his father’s house at Ottery, coupled between two foxhounds.”--_Hooker’s Life of Sir Peter Carew._

_Note E, P. 31._--THE PARCHMENTS.

The Abbot’s connection with “The Pilgrimage of Grace” has never been proved, but it is scarcely unjust to assume, as is done in the text, his general sympathy with the movement. Froude says it was discovered that he and the Abbot of Reading had supplied the northern insurgents with money.

“Treason doth never prosper, for this reason That if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”

Thus, had the northern movement succeeded, it might generally be acknowledged to be as justifiable as the similar popular risings of 1642 and 1688; it failed, and the story has been written by the victors.

_Note F, P. 38._--THE LAST CELEBRATION.

The account of this last celebration is taken from the touching and affecting narrative of Maurice Channey, a survivor of the Carthusian monks, who suffered in 1535, _mutatis mutandis_. Locality and names being changed, the story in the text is a narrative of facts. It will be found in the ninth chapter of Froude’s Henry VIII.

_Note G, P. 73._--DEATH OF ABBOTT WHITING.

For the purposes of the story the writer has taken some little liberties with the traditional account of the martyrdom, which here he supplies, beginning with the trial at Wells:--

“When he arrived at Wells, the old man was informed that there was an assembly of the gentry and nobility, and that he was summoned to it, on which he proceeded to take his seat among them, the habits of a long and honourable life clinging to him even after his imprisonment. Upon this the crier of the court called him to the bar to answer a charge of high treason. “What does it all mean?” he asked of his attendant, his memory and probably his sight and hearing having failed. His servant replied that they were only trying to alarm him into submission, and probably this was the opinion of most who attended the court, as well as the jurors. “As worshipful a jury,” writes Lord Russell to Cromwell, “as was charged here these many years.” And there was never seen in these parts so great an appearance as were at this present time, and never better willing to serve the king. He was soon condemned, though he appears not to have understood what had happened, and the next day, Nov. 15th, 1539, he was taken to Glastonbury in his horse-litter.

“It was only when a priest came to receive his confession as he lay, that he comprehended the state of things; then he begged that he might be allowed to take leave of his monks before going to execution, and also to have a few hours to prepare for his death.

“But no delay was permitted, and the old man was thrust out of the litter on to a hurdle, upon which he was rudely dragged through the town to the top of the hill which overlooks the monastery, where he took his death very patiently, in the manner described in the text.”--_Rev. J. H. Blunt’s Reformation of the Church of England_, p. 349-350. (From original authorities.)

_Note H, P. 78._--ENGLISH FARMERS.

“My father was a yeoman and had no lands of his own, only he had a farm of three or four pounds by the year at the uttermost, and hereupon he tilled as much as kept half-a-dozen men. He had walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine. He was able, and did find the king a harness with himself and his horse. I remember that I buckled on his harness when he went to Blackheath field. He kept me to school or else I had not been able to have preached before the king’s majesty now. He married my sisters with five pounds or twenty nobles each, having brought them up in godliness and fear of God. He kept hospitality for his poor neighbours and some alms he gave to the poor, and all this he did of the said farm.”--_Latimer’s Sermons_, p. 101.

_Note I, P. 93._--THE ABBEY CHURCH.

Add this sentence accidentally omitted from the text:--

“There, in that desecrated spot, reposed the ashes of the mighty dead; there, if tradition may be believed, rested the hero king Arthur, the defender of the land against the English invasion, the hero of a hundred fights, the subject of a thousand myths; _there_ rested the holy bones of him who had afforded his Saviour the shelter of a tomb, but whose own resting place was thus defiled; there lay S. Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland; there, S. David, the patron Saint of Wales; there, S. Dunstan, whose bones were said to have been brought hither, after the sack of Canterbury by the Danes in 1012.[59] So highly had this spot been reverenced, that Kings, Queens, Archbishops and Bishops, had given large donations to the Abbey, that they might secure a resting place amongst the hallowed dead. Here lay the mournful historian, Gildas; here the venerated remains of the Venerable Bede; here lay King Edmund, the victim of the assassination at Pucklechurch; here King Edgar, the magnificent; hither, amidst a nation’s tears, they bore the heroic Ironside to his rest--and now! ’twas enough to make an angel weep--and a mortal wonder whether the nation had ceased to reverence its ancient greatness; or indeed to believe in Him Who is the God to Whom all live, whether men call them dead or not; and Who has taught us to reverence the sleeping dust, wherein His Spirit once moved and energized.”

_Note J, P. 117._--THE GUBBINGS.

The Gubbings were a kind of gipsy race who infested Dartmoor, and who were united in a confederation under one whom the people called the “King of the Gubbings.” Old Fuller (p. 398) writes:--

“They are a peculiar of their own making, exempt from Bishop, Archdeacon, and all authority, either ecclesiastical or civil. They live in cotes (rather holes than houses) like swine, having all in common, multiplied, without marriage, into many hundreds. During our civil wars no soldiers were quartered _upon_ them, for fear of being quartered _amongst_ them. Their wealth consisteth in other men’s goods; they live by stealing the sheep on the moors, and vain it is for any to search their houses, being a work beneath the pains of any sheriff, and above the power of any constable. Such is their fleetness, they will outrun many horses; vivaciousness, they outlive most men, living in ignorance of luxury, the extinguisher of life. They hold together like bees; offend _one_, and _all_ will avenge his quarrel.”

_Note K, P. 135._--THE BLACK ASSIZE.

“Among the memorable events of these times, in which innocent Catholics were everywhere made to suffer, is that which took place in the city and university of Oxford. One Rowland Jenks (a bookseller), was arraigned as a Catholic (for the publication of some unlicensed books against the changes in religion), found guilty, and being but one of the common people, was condemned to lose both his ears. But the judge had hardly delivered the sentence, when a deadly disease suddenly attacked the whole court; no other part of the city, and no persons, not in the court, were touched. The disease laid hold, in a moment, of all the judges, the high sheriff, and the twelve men of the jury. The jurymen died immediately, the judges, the lawyers, and the high sheriff died, some of them within a few hours, others of them within a few days, but all of them died. Not less than five hundred persons who caught the same disease at the same time and place, died soon after, in different places outside the city.”--_Rushton’s Continuation of Sanders_, Book iv., Cap ix.

_Note L, P. 232._--DEMOLITION OF ABBEYS.

The reader may wonder that men should have been found, so ready to plunder the house of God; so greedy, as the country people everywhere showed themselves, to share in the plunder of the Church.

The following extract from “Ellis’ Original Letters,” is much to the point, and will at least enlighten us as to their motives, which were of the earth, earthy:--

“I demanded of my father thirty years after the suppression, (that would be in the time of Elizabeth) which had bought part of the timber of the Church, and all the timber in the steeple, with the bell frame, with others his partners therein (in the which steeple hung eight or nine bells, whereof the least but one could not be bought at this day for twenty pounds, which bells I did see hang there myself, more than a year after the suppression), whether he thought well of the religious persons, and of the religion then used, and he told me ‘yea,’ for he said, ‘I did see no cause to the contrary.’ ‘Well,’ said I then, ‘how came it to pass, you were so ready to destroy and spoil the thing that you thought well of?’ ‘What _should_ I do,’ said he, ‘might I not, as well as others, have some profit of the spoil of the abbey? for I did see all moved away, and therefore I did as others did.’ Thus you may see, as well as they who thought well of the religion then used, as they which thought otherwise, could agree well enough, and too well, to spoil them. Such an evil is covetousness and mammon, and such is the providence of God to punish sinners in making themselves instruments to punish themselves and all their posterity, from generation to generation. For no doubt there have been millions that have repented the thing since, but all too late.”

FOOTNOTES

[59] The Canterbury folk denied this and said they had still got them; nay, in the days of King Henry VII. the Archbishop of Canterbury threatened to excommunicate those who venerated the “pretended relics” at Glastonbury.

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._

Fairleigh Hall. A Tale of the Neighbourhood of Oxford during the Civil Wars. _Cloth_, 3/6.

Æmilius. A Story of the Decian and Valerian Persecution. _Cloth_, 3/6.

Evanus. A Tale of the Days of Constantine the Great. _Cloth_, 3/6.

The Camp on the Severn. A Tale of the Tenth Persecution in Great Britain. _Cloth_, 2/0.

The Victor’s Laurel. A Tale of the Tenth Persecution in Italy. _Cloth_, 2/0.