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1891
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STUDIES BY A RECLUSE.
 
STUDIES BY A RECLUSE

gn Cloister, Town, and Country

AUGUSTUS JESSOPP, D.D.

Rector of Scarning

“T have considered the days of old,
The years of ancient time.”

THIRD EDITION

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PREFACE.

20

THE pursuit of Historical Research is one of those
delightful luxuries which only the favoured few can
indulge in with any great success. Like other forms of
sport, it requires a certain command of money, and
more than that, it requires much leisure on the part
of its votaries. From Herodotus, downwards, the
great historians of the world have, at all times, been
men of independent fortune, or at any rate, men whose
resources were ample and their incomes large. Clio
demands that they who attend her court and hope to
win her smiles should be well dressed, well mounted,
well housed and far removed above the sordid needs
of those who have to earn their bread. Thucydides
had his gold mines in Thasos, Polybius, they say,
~ had a Roman fleet at his orders when he chose to
sail away for Carthage or Spain. Livy had the

run of all the Patrician archives. Tacitus lived in
vii
viii PREFACE.

affluence all his days ; and so it has gone on from age
to age. Gregory of Tours, whom men call the father
of French History, and Beda, whom we may call the
father of our own, could never have known what we
understand by “money difficulties” any more than
Matthew Paris did with the resources of St. Alban’s
at his back, or than Gibbon, or Grote, or Hallam,
or many another of the great ones of our own time
whose balance at their bankers has always been on
the right side. When we come to consider it, we see
that it could not have been otherwise. ;

The study of History makes great demands upon
the scholar’s. purse. . He must have a large supply
of books at his: elbow; he must be; a traveller, and
so must haye acquired the trained geographical eye;
he must be able to read at least three or four lan-
guages; he must be able to wait before he sums up
great masses of evidence that cannot help accumu-
lating upon him; he must often. investigate minute
points by the help of experts who can be trusted and
who have to live by their toil; and all this, and much
more which original research,involves, cannot be done
by those who are haunted by “the eternal want of
pence” and the anxiety de lodice paranda: —

But this is not all. The man that hopes: to earn
the title of Historian must be- one whose circumstances
allow of his having much time that he may call. his
PREFACE. ix

own. For the great teachers are not they who pick up
their knowledge at odd moments and who have to
trust. to occasional half-hours snatched from the
business of life, to follow up some faint clue, or to
work out some complex problem. They have their
object to live for and their vocation is, to prove
to their less fortunate fellow creatures the inestimable
value of leisure when they to whom it is granted
devote their energies to such noble tasks as can
never, fay, and which yet require to be done by the
ablest and the wisest.

These things being so, it must be obvious that, in
our days, a clergyman with a cure of souls whether
in town or country, must give up all hopes of being
anything but a smatterer in science and the higher
walks of literature. If he attempt to pose as a master
he is pretty sure to be set down as a mere pretender
by the specialists. A man need not be quite a
beggar, he may hang loosely to the income of his
benefice, he may even be liberally supplied with the
ordinary means and appliances which are essential to
independent investigation and research; but he is
not an honest man if, having accepted the charge of
a parish, he does not regard the duties of his official
position as the main duties of his life; and in so far as
he is true to them he cannot call his time his own.

It seems to.me simply impossible that the “parson
x PREFACE.

of a town,” in the modern acceptation of the word
“town,” can be a student, and it is increasingly diffi-
cult and must become more and more rare to find
even a Country Parson who can be a man of real
learning and profound research.

As to the townsmen, they make no secret of the
matter, they tell us that the claims upon their time—
night and day—are all but bewildering ; they assure
us they have no time for serious reading ; they seem
disposed to concede that high culture is not expected
of them. But my town brethren show a disposition
to finish up their expressions of regret at their own
shortcomings by a covert sneer at us, their brethren
in the country villages, by loftily assuming that we in
the wilderness have nothing to do. This ridiculous
superstition is a survival of a state of things which
has long since passed away.

The fact is that the country parson’s time is as much
broken into and frittered away as the townsman’s is,
The difference lies in this, that in the town the clergy-
man, if he be good for anything, has to work through
a small army of subordinates, and the country
parson has zo subordinates, no one to co-operate with
him, no one to whom to say, “Go, and he goeth,” or
“Come, and he cometh.” My friend of the streets
has district visitors and school teachers and lay helpers
and sisters, and a host of other earnest people of both
PREFACE. xi

sexes, and he does his work, and he must do it,
through and with them. We in the villages must
visit every soul in our parishes, manage the school,
keep the charities going—beg, borrow or give, as the
case may be, and sometimes, like Corporal Trim, we
are sorely tempted to steal—for this necessity or that.
The ringers and the singers, the sexton and the clerk,
the relieving officer and the paupers, the guardians
and the workhouse, the naughty old gossips and the
saucy boys, all somehow or other contribute to worry
the Country Parson.

What a different state of things there was in our
grandfathers’ days. There were no schools then ; no
fussy visiting of the poor; no worrying to put in three
services on Sunday, and at least two in the week ; no
lecturing in the Mission Room on the common when
the snow was falling; no detestable newspapers to dis-
turb the minds of growling grumblers ; above all, no
thought of two sermons on Sunday to haunt you with
their disappointments of yesterday and the weight of
their heavy burden hanging round your neck to-day
and to-morrow and the next day, till the hour
comes round for their delivery, and the anxious
question recurs, “Who will be there to listen?”
And yet who of us with any heart and any con-
science and any zeal for God or man does not rejoice
that we have been delivered from any tolerance
xii PREFACE.

of the. old supineness, and who of us would not
contemplate a return to the old condition of affairs
with shame and dismay ? '

But the fact remains, that, with all that is aedsa ds
from town and country parsons nowadays, and in the
face of all that the best of them are humbly and prayer-
fully. trying to-do for their people and the Church of
Christ, it is too much to expect that we should have a
learned clergy, it is inevitable that culture and anything
in the shape of erudition should steadily, and perhaps
rapidly, decline among us all. Of course there is an
evil to fear in the prospect, and I notice that in the
Irish. Church they have already begun to feel the
seriousness of that evil and to deplore the fact that
the clergy in Ireland are tending to become all men
of one type, narrow in view, and diminutive in intel-
lectual stature. But I for one am not afraid of the
future.

In the providence. of God it may well be that
His Church shall be built up to more loftiness of
endeavour, more lowliness of mind, more intense
appreciation of simple goodness, more living faith
and devout vigilance: by a clergy who are “not of
this world,” and who may.even be the objects of con-:
tempt to the sciolists. It. may be we need to be
reminded that there are better things than writing
History or even Theology, and: that it was not by
PREFACE. xiii

learning that the conquering Cross prevailed, but by
the labours of ignorant and foolish men who over-
came the world through the sheer force of love and
sublime self-sacrifice.

And so when a pert young academic, just fresh
from the schools, and rejoicing in his place of honour
bravely won, assures me that all the other professions
are going up and the clerical profession alone is going
down, I do not quail before that exuberant youth or
tremble at his glowing eye, but, like the silent parrot,
I “think the more”; and a whisper seems to say to
my own heart, “Fishermen from Galilee in their
Master’s strength beat the Philosophers once; they
took some time about it, but the rout was complete
at last. Strong Son of God! it may be—it may be
that Thy Word shall go forth for the weak ones of
the world to do the like again!”

I have written thus far by way of disclaimer and
apology. Three years ago I published a collection of

papers which I had the presumption to call Historic

Essays, in which some of the critics discovered,
as a matter of course, a bad blunder or two, and
therefore proceeded to censure me for presumption.

‘? “The Coming of the Friars and Other Historic Essays.”
1889.

gt
xiv PREFACE.

The fact is that I was still possessed by the old-
fashioned notion that the word “essay” meant an
attempt and nothing more. But the great masters in
Historic Literature have lifted the word “essay” to a
higher level than heretofore, and it has now attained
to the meaning of a great achievement. The title
of my volume was its condemnation and my own,
and convicted me of setting up a claim to take rank
among the great historians of our time; when in the
very truth I was no historian at all. I have already
said that I hold it to be next to impossible for any
clergyman in the 19th century who is conscien-
tiously trying to do his duty as a Parish Priest, to be
a master and teacher in History, “the most difficult of
all the sciences.” And yet there are some men in
whom a taste for this or that pursuit amounts to a
passion. They know—none better—that they cannot
hope to attain, but they cannot help aspiring. These
are the unfortunate amateurs in art or science whom
the experts are too much inclined to despise, forget-
ting that these too are a useful class in their way, and
that so far from dreaming of putting themselves in
competition with their betters, they are really quite
the most generous and the most enthusiastic admirers
of the professionals and their best qualified critics.
You may call these poor creatures “smatterers ” if
you will, and they will confess that it must be so—
PREFACE. xv

and confess it with a.sigh of chagrin. But they do
not deserve to be called pretenders, for they know
their own deficiencies and under what limitations they
must needs follow their favourite pursuits.

For myself, I prefer to be called a poacher in Clio’s
wide domains. They say you never can cure a
rogue of poaching; it is born in him. I believe I
shall go on poaching to the end; yes, as long as I
can crawl, I have almost ceased to envy those
favoured ones who have the run of the rich preserves
and a dozen beaters at command and the chance of
sauntering through the covers when they please,
their waistbands studded with cartridges. But let
such keep their temper when they see me looking
over the palings. I have known a good shot hurl his
gun into the hedge and vow he could not help
missing shot after shot when that rascal Jem Styles
was watching him. It was very weak of you, my
worthy squire! We, the poachers, would do better
an we had the chance, but we are only what we
are :—

“ Like plants in mines which never saw the sun,

But dream of him and guess where he may be,
And do their best to climb and get to him.”

So this time I do not call these stray papers
Essays, but mere Studies—fumblings if you will—
xvi PREFACE.

studies after my poor fashion; take them for what
they are worth,

The first paper in this volume, entitled “St. Alban’s
and Her Historian,” was contributed to Ze Quarterly
Review soon after the issue of the concluding volume
of the late Dr. Luard’s magnificent edition of Matthew
Paris’ “Chronica Majora.” It was, and it always will
be, a happiness to me to reflect that: the Review
appeared during Dr. Luard’s lifetime, and that it
gave him pleasure in the reading. We had been in-
timate friends for more than. forty years—ever since
the days when we were both undergraduates at Cam-
bridge, brought together by a community of tastes
and, I think, by the unbounded influence which Dr
Maitland’s writings exercised upon us both, at that
time of life when young men are not ashamed of
being hero- worshippers.

Dr. Luard was the only Englishman of his genera-
tion who, notwithstanding that he was for. twenty-
five years a most earnest and faithful parish priest
at Cambridge, and at the same time engaged in the
somewhat laborious official duties of University Re-
gistrar, contrived to amass such stores of varied
learning as few professed students have ever so much
as equalled. Like all men of really profound learning
he may be said 'to have been profusely generous
in giving help to.all who-asked it of him, and never
PREFACE. xvii

was more pleased than when he was pouring forth
from his stores of recondite lore some curious in-
formation which he always seemed to’ have ready
at command. Deeply as I deplore his loss, and daily
as I feel my want of him, I should never be able
to tell how much I owe him.

Posterity will think of Luard and his work as the
moderns think of Bingham and 42s work—wondering
how scholars did without. him and before him. But
Luard was happier than Bingham, in that he never
knew what the pinch of poverty was, and never was
without the companionship of men of learning and
great gifts, and never felt the grievous need of books
which he could not buy nor borrow, and he did not
leave a family of children behind him unprovided for,
nor, like Bingham, a widow who died in an alms-
house. Yet the names of both one and the other are
not to be found in the Past: Ecclesie Anglicane.

Of the other papers in the volume, the one on the
origin and growth of the English towns was written
for an American monthly called Zhe.. Chautauguan,
to which Professor Freeman contributed more than
once.. This subject was not one of.my own choosing,
though I suppose the editor had been told that it was
one on which I had bestowed some thought. Experts
are sure to find that I have not dealt exhaustively
with the question, but I hope and trust that. zvos
xviii PREFACE.

may find it suggestive. The other six papers—two
of which, “ The Land and its Owners” and “ Letters
and Letter Writers,” have appeared in The Nineteenth
Centuey—were all delivered as lectures, and I have
thought it best in revising them to retain their
original form.

The plan of St. Edmund’s Abbey, before the sup-
pression of the monasteries, was compiled from trust-
worthy sources by Mr. W. K. Hardy, a Wesleyan
minister, who was trained in an architect’s office. .

The original drawing is in the possession of Mr.
W. S. Spanton, photographer, Bury St. Edmunds,
and it is from a megative kindly supplied by him that
our illustration has been taken on a reduced scale,

The call for a new edition of this volume has come
upon me so suddenly as to render it impossible for
me to carry out such a revision of the work as may
seem, to some, desirable. Six or eight misprints—
why are misprints always so obvious and so shock-
ing ?—have been corrected, and a curious scrap of
information, which I have only recently come upon,
will be found added, as a note, at the end of the third

paper.
PREFACE. xix

There is one mistake which may be pardoned ina
Cambridge man, and all the more readily because
it has brought to my knowledge a fact which is known
to few and will be interesting to all. When, at page
63, I rashly asked, “ Who ever heard of a candidate
for honours taking Polybius into the schools ?” I did
not know that there were at least two living scholars
who actually did take in this author, and that Jr.
Gladstone is one of those two. Is there no limit to
the range over which the reading of this wonderful
Englishman has travelled ?

SCARNING, May 15, 1893.

a
CHAP.

IL.

{Il

Iv.

VI.

VIL.

VILL.

CONTENTS.

ST. ALBANS AND HER HISTORIAN... Sis
BURY ST, EDMUNDS... bea nits esis
ON THE EDGE OF THE NORFOLK HOLY LAND
THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF ENGLISH TOWNS
THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS IN PAST TIMES...
L’ANCIENNE NOBLESSE ... ae see ies
LETTERS AND LETTER-WRITERS ai sek

A SUGGESTION FOR MY BETTERS wee oes

PAGE

66
go
112
143
184
215

258
I.

at. ALBANS AND AER
HISTORIAN.

aot.

 

Few men of our time have done so much for
English History as the late Mr. Brewer. As a
teacher he was eminently stimulating, sympathetic,
and enthusiastic ; as a writer he was always brilliant,
lucid, and vigorous ; as an explorer he was a safe and
sagacious guide; as an expounder of the meaning of
such facts and testimony as mere advocates are very
liable to misinterpret, he has rarely been surpassed.
But it was as an organiser of research that he
earned his greatest fame and achieved his greatest
success, and it was to him more than to any one
man, to his immense persistence in urging upon the
powers that be a more generous freedom of access
to our Records, and to his prodigious powers of
work in arranging and tabulating the enormous
2 Iz
2 ST, ALBAN'S

masses of documents of all kinds which constitute
the Apparatus of English History, that this country
stands indebted, and will remain indebted as long
as our literature lasts.

In the Essay on ‘New Sources of English
History,”* Mr. Brewer gave us a startling account
of the deplorable condition into which some of the
most precious of our national manuscripts had been.
allowed to fall—of the utterly chaotic state of our
depositories—of the hopelessness, the despair which
must needs have come upon one student after
another who might be fortunate enough to be turned
loose into the various prison-houses of our muni-
ments—and of the efforts made, and happily at last
made with splendid success, to cleanse the Augean
stable, and to let the world know something of the
wealth it contained. With characteristic modesty
Mr. Brewer said nothing of his own part in all the
laborious and sagacious organisation which resulted
in our obtaining the magnificent ‘‘ Calendars,” which
have opened out to us “that new world which is
the old” that had become almost forgotten or un-
known. He was not the man to assert himself, he
knew that posterity would give him his due, but
with a simple desire to stimulate research, and to

* “English Studies,” by the late Rev. J.S. Brewer. Murray,
London, 1879.
AND HER HISTORIAN. 3

show how much remained to be done, and how
much to be discovered and made known, he drew
the attention of his readers chiefly and primarily to
the value of the ‘‘ Calendars,” and to the important
results which those “ Calendars” had already pro-
duced, and were destined to produce hereafter.
He had quite enough to say upon this point, and
if his life had been spared, it is probable that he
would have eventually given us a more compre-
hensive account of the series of volumes originally
undertaken.

Such an essay by such a master would have
been indeed an important aid to the student, but
at the time of Mr. Brewer’s lamented death the
day had hardly come for such a résumé; and even
now, though so much has been achieved, so much
and so well, neither the hour nor the man has.
arrived for taking a comprehensive survey, and
giving to the public an intelligent and_ intelli-
gible account of that other Library of Chronicles,
and biographies, and letters, and cartularies, and
other memorials of the Middle Ages in England,
which it is to be feared are hardly as well known
as they ought to be, or as widely studied as they
deserve.

Meanwhile it is high time that attention should
be drawn to that noble series of volumes now issuing
é ST. ALBANS

from the press under the editorship of scholars whose
reputation is assured, and whose work continues to
enhance their reputation—high time that we should
begin to do something like justice to the labourers,
who have deserved so well at the hands of such
Englishmen as have any sentiment of loyalty to the
great thoughts, the great doings, and the noble lives
of their forefathers. The philosopher, who “holds
the mirror up to nature,” has not of late, as a rule,
missed his reward. The historian, who in his dogged,
patient, toilsome fashion holds the mirror up to the
life of bygone ages, has received among us scant
recognition, and generally is rewarded with but
barren honour. What has been done and still is
doing will be best understood by briefly reviewing
the progress of that movement, which has brought
about the great revival of English Historical study,
under the influence of which the opinions and
convictions of educated men have passed through a
very decided change, one destined to produce still
greater and more unlooked for changes of sentiment:
and belief before the present century shall have
closed.

It is just fifty years since “ the Father of Record
Reform,” as he has been justly called, received his
patent creating him Master of the Rolls. As far
back as the year 1800 a Commission was issued
AND HER HISTORIAN. 5

for the methodising and digesting the National
Records, and for printing such calendars and
indexes as should be thought advisable. During
the next twenty-seven years many works of supreme
interest and importance were printed at the public
expense, but the enormous extent of our National
Records was known to few, and the difficulty of
consulting them (dispersed as they were through a
score of different depositories) was enough to deter
all but the most resolute inquirers. It was Lord
Langdale who first set himself to reduce the chaos
of our archives into something like order. When
the old Record Commission expired in 1837, it was
by Lord Langdale’s influence that the Public Record
Act was passed on the r4th of August, 1838, whereby
the Records named therein were placed under the
custody of the Master of the Rolls for the time
being, and hereupon a new era began. It was, how-
ever, not till July, 1850, that a vote was obtained
from the Treasury for the erection of a national
depository, wherein our vast archives should be
assembled under a single roof, and not till 1855 that
the magnificent Tabulavium in Fetter Lane was
opened for the reception of our muniments.

Lord Langdale died in April, 1851; he was
succeeded in the Mastership of the Rolls by Lord

* Lord Langdale resigned three weeks before his death.
6 ST. ALBANS

Romilly, then Sir John. A happier choice could not
have been made. To Lord Langdale belongs the
credit of carrying out the grand scheme for consoli-
dating the various collections of documents, which,
as we have said, had up to this time been widely
dispersed, and the very existence of the larger mass
of which was known only to a few experts. To
Lord Romilly we owe it that the great original
sources of English History so assembled have been
rendered accessible to all students who desire to
consult them; and it is to him, too, that we are
indebted for the issue of that great series of
“Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and
Ireland, from the Invasion of the Romans to the
Reign of Henry VIII.,” which has laid the founda-
tion for a science of history firmer and deeper
and wider than before was believed to be even
attainable.

Great men are at once the product and the leaders
of their age. When Lord Langdale set himself to
his task he was only attempting that which had
been talked of since the reign of Edward II. For
five centuries the unification of our National Records
had been recommended and advised by lawyers,
statesmen, and scholars from generation to genera-
tion, but no practical scheme had ever been sug-
gested, and the difficulties in the way of reform
AND HER HISTORIAN. 7

were supposed to be insuperable. It was a Herculean
task, and one that grew ever more arduous the longer
it was postponed. During the first quarter of the
present century profound dissatisfaction had begun
to be felt at the condition of our historical literature.
The ordinary text-books were full of fables, more
than suspected to be fables, and which yet it was
extremely difficult to disprove satisfactorily. Theories
which had long passed current were being rudely
assailed, and yet—in the face of the obstacles that
-hindered research—stubbornly held their ground, or
were repeated with peremptory dogmatism. A deep
distrust of the old methods and the old assumptions
had given rise to a widespread desire to drag forth
from their hiding-places any documents, however
dry or recondite, which might throw some clear light
upon our national life and manners, and not only
upon mere events of national importance during
.Medizval times. A desire to know the truth was
in the air. The science of history had passed out of
its infancy, and the stirrings of a new craving—the
passion of Research—were making themselves felt
in that mysterious restlessness which indicates that
the old smooth-faced docility, the old childish sub-
mission to tutelage, the old unquestioning acceptance
of authority, has gone for ever, and a new life has
‘begun. The year before Lord Langdale received his
8 STZ. ALBANS

appointment as Master of the Rolls, the Surtees
Society had been founded for the printing of un-
edited MSS. illustrative of the history of the northern
counties ; and in the same year that the old Record
Commission expired, the English Historical Society
was started, a society which numbered amongst its
promoters such men as the late Mr. Kemble, Mr.
H. O. Coxe, Sir T. Duffus Hardy, and Mr. Stevenson
—the leaders and teachers of that school of younger
men who have so ably followed in the steps of their
seniors, and who, mounting on the shoulders of the
giants, have gained a wider view than it was given
to those others to attain. The five years that fol-
lowed saw the foundation of the Camden, the Percy,
and the Chetham Societies, not to mention many
another that has done useful work in its way. The
labours of these pioneers soon made it apparent
that the sources of our national history—social,
ecclesiastical, and political—were quite too volu-
minous for private enterprise to deal with, and
would demand the co-operation of a body of trained
scholars and the resources of the public exchequer
to make them available for the teachers of the
future.

On the 26th of January, 1857, Sir John Romilly
submitted to the Treasury his memorable proposal
for the publication of certain materials for the
AND HER HISTORIAN. 9

History of England; and on the oth of February
a Treasury Minute was put forth approving of the
plan that had been drawn up as one “well calculated
for the accomplishment of this important national
object in an effectual and satisfactory manner within
a reasonable time.’’ Forthwith arrangements were
made for the issue of that series of works which is
now known as the “Rolls Series,” a collection
that has already extended to upwards of 200
volumes.

The lines laid down by Sir John Romilly were
almost exactly those which had been followed by the
English Historical Society. Every editor was to
“give an account of the MSS. employed by him, of
their age and their peculiarities; that he should
add to the work a brief account of the life and
times of the author, and any remarks necessary
to explain the chronology; but no other note
or comment was to be allowed, except what
might be necessary to establish the correctness
of the text.” The restriction was absolutely neces-
sary if only for this, that when the “ Rolls Series”
was first commenced even the most accomplished

* The proposal to print and publish the “ Calendars” had
been approved by authority of the new Record Commissioners
as early as January, 1840. See preface to Mr. Lemons’
“Calendar” (Domestic, 1547-1580), p. viii.
10 ST. ALBANS

of its editors were mere learners. The time had
not yet arrived for comments. The text was wanted
first in its completeness and integrity.

Looking back to this period—little more than a
quarter of a century ago—it is difficult for us to
realise the deplorable condition into which our
historical literature had been allowed to fall.
Kemble’s great work, the “‘ Codex Diplomaticus
zevi Saxonici,” the first volume of which appeared in
1839, and his ‘ History of the Saxons in England,”
published in 1849, came upon the great body of
intelligent men as the revelation of new things. It
is sufficient to turn to the chapter on the Constitu-
tional History of England before the Conquest, in
Hallam’s ‘History of the Middle Ages,” to be
assured how meagre and superficial even Hallam’s
knowledge was of everything before the Norman
invasion. It was no fault of his; he made good
use of all such materials as were then accessible
to the student—that is, all such as had been
printed ; for that incomparably larger body of
evidence which since Hallam’s days has been
published to the world, it was for all practical
purposes as if it had never existed at all. Even
men of culture and learning were persuaded that
all that was ever likely to be known about the
religious houses had been collected in the new
AND HER HISTORIAN. Ir

edition of Dugdale’s ‘‘ Monasticon.” It is hardly
too much to say that of the history of English
monasticism Hallam knew nothing. Dr. Lingard
himself had very little more to say of the great
abbeys than his predecessors, and had a very in-
adequate conception of the part they played in the
development of our institutions; and when Dr.
Maitland wrote his brilliant ‘‘ Essays on the Dark
Ages,” he hardly names St. Edmundsbury or St.
Alban’s, and though one of his most fascinating
chapters is concerned with the early days of Croy-
land, his only authority for the beautiful story
which he has handled so skilfully is a romantic
narrative attributed to Ingulphus, which has been
demonstrated to be a somewhat clumsy though a
clever forgery.t Of the Mendicant Orders—of the
work they did, of the influence they exercised, and
of the attitude adopted towards them in the 13th
century by the parochial clergy on the one hand,
and by the monks on the other—even less was
known, if less were possible, than of their wealthier
rivals.

Two years had scarcely elapsed since the issue of

* A masterly exposure of this curious forgery, eminently
characteristic of the learned author’s searching and sagacious
criticism, has just appeared from the pen of F. Liebermann.
Ueber Ostenglische Geschicts guellen des 12, 13, 14. Fahrhun-
derts, besonders den falschen Ingulf. Wanover, Halm. 1892.
12 ST. ALBAN’S

the Treasury Minute of February, 1857, before it
began to be said that the history of England would
have to, be written anew. In the single year 1858
eleven works of the highest importance were printed,
and it was evident that neither original materials
nor scholarly editors would be wanting to make the
“Rolls Series” all that it was desired it should
become. The “Chronicles of the Monasteries of
Abingdon and of St. Augustine at Canterbury,” the
contemporary “‘ Life of Edward the Confessor,” and
the priceless ‘‘ Monumenta Franciscana,” telling the
wonderful story of the settlement of the Minorites
among us, were printed from unique MSS. Next
year the ‘Chronicle of John of Oxnedes” was
brought out by Sir Henry Ellis; and the “ Historia
Anglicana” of Bartholomew Cotton, by Dr. Luard,
neither work having ever before been printed.
Volume followed volume in rapid succession, a
steady improvement becoming observable in the
style of editing, as the several editors became more
familiar with the results of their predecessors’
labours.

It was while working at Bartholomew Cotton that
Dr. Luard was brought into intimate relations with
the 13th century. Hitherto the composite character
of such chronicles as had been published had indeed
been perceived, but no attempt had been made to
AND HER HISTORIAN. 13

trace the original authority for statements repeated
in the same words by one writer after another.
Dr. Luard opened out a new line of inquiry, and in
his edition of Cotton’s Chronicle he endeavoured to
distinguish in every instance the material which
might fairly be called original from that which
his author had borrowed from older writers and
incorporated into his text. The borrowed matter
was printed in smaller type, and the sources from
which it had been derived were indicated by
references given at the foot of the page. Cotton’s
own additions were printed in a bolder type, so as
at once to catch the eye. While conducting the
laborious researches necessitated by this new method
of editing his text, it became clear to Dr. Luard that
Cotton had borrowed largely from Matthew Paris—
who had lived just a generation before him—and
that he had also borrowed from a mysterious writer
much read in the 14th and 15th centuries, who went
by the name of Matthew of Westminster. As to
this Matthew of Westminster, Dr. Luard postponed
dealing with him till some future time. He might
prove a mere mythic personage, and it was suspected
he would; but Matthew Paris was certainly no
shadow but a very real man, whose greatness
seemed to grow greater the more he was studied
and the better he was known. Yet as Dr. Luard
14 ST. ALBANS

became more familiar with the text of Paris, he was
soon convinced that in its printed form it was
bristling with the grossest inaccuracies of all kinds.
Originally it had been published under the authority
of Archbishop Parker in 1571; and though other
editions had appeared in this country and on the
Continent, several times since then, Paris’s great
work had remained exactly in the same state as
Parker (or whoever his agent was) had left it three
centuries ago. That is to say, that by far the most
important work on English history during the 13th
century—not to mention European affairs—and by
far the most minute and trustworthy picture of
English life and manners during the reign of Henry
III.—a record, too, drawn up by a contemporary
writer of rare genius and literary skill—was defaced
by blunders and audacious tampering with the text
and by gross inaccuracies, to such an extent that no
conscientious student could allow himself to quote
the printed work without first referring to one of the
very MSS. which the Archbishop professed to have
used.

Nevertheless, the task of bringing out a critical
edition of the “‘ Chronica Majora” did not appear
less formidable as fresh sources of information
cropped up; and if Dr. Luard shrank from the
immense labour that such an edition involved, it
AND HER HISTORIAN. 15

was because he had formed a correct notion of its
magnitude. In 1861 he brought out in the same
series the ‘‘ Letters of Robert Grosseteste,” the
heroic and magnanimous Bishop of Lincoln; and
while working at this volume, the England of the
13th century became more and more alive and
present to his mind.

But distinctly and grandly as one noble character
after another revealed itself, there was a strange
mist that required to be dispelled before even the
importance of great events could be rightly estimated.
The inner life of the monasteries, great and small,
must be inquired into, so far as it was possible to
get any information on so obscure a subject ; and,
above all, the paramount influence which so magni-
ficent an institution as the Abbey of St. Alban’s
exercised upon the intellectual life of the country
must be studied with patient impartiality. Before a
scholar with so lofty an ideal of an editor’s duty
could venture upon his magnum opus, there was
indeed an enormous mass of preliminary work to get
through. The horizon seemed to widen everywhere
as the years of historical discovery went on. It was
left to Mr. Riley to attack that wonderful collection
of documents to which he gave the title of ‘‘ Chronica
Monasterii Sancti Albani”—a series occupying twelve
thick volumes, and which furnish us not only with a
16 SZ. ALBAN'S

priceless Apparatus, by the help of which a hundred
problems perplexing the historian are furnished with
a clue towards their solution—but which afford such
an insight into the life of the greatest monastery in
England during its best times as nobody expected
could ever be forthcoming. While Mr. Riley was
occupied with the “Chronicles” of St. Alban’s and the
lives of its Abbots, Dr. Luard was engaged in col-
lecting all the “‘ Annals” of the lesser monasteries
which he could lay his hands on. Some of these had
already been printed more or less carelessly; others
had never seen the light since they were written.
Such as were printed were extremely difficult to
procure—scarce and costly. Dr. Luard took six
years in bringing out his five volumes—volumes
referring to the golden age of English Monasticism,
which threw all sorts of side-light upon Mr. Riley’s
“Chronicles,” while they were in turn continually
being explained and illustrated by them.

While the ‘‘ Monastic Annals ” were passing
through the press, a very startling announcement
was made by no less a person than Sir Frederick
Madden, Keeper of the Department of Manuscripts
in the British Museum. Sir Frederick declared that
he had come upon a copy of what was commonly
called the ‘‘ Historia Minor” of Matthew Paris, not
only written by the author himself, but actually
AND HER HISTORIAN. 17

annotated, corrected, and illustrated with drawings
by his own hand. Such an announcement made by
an expert of European reputation, one who had been
handling MSS. all his life, necessarily created a
sensation in the literary world. If it were accepted
and proved true, it was one of the most curious
romances in the history of literature. But was it
true? To most critics the antecedent improbability
of the theory put forth by Sir Frederick was so
great as to relegate it to the domain of extravagant
paradox; but the name and fame of its supporter
were too high to allow of its being dismissed without
refutation. For two or three years no one ventured
to enter the lists against so formidable a champion
who had staked his reputation upon theissue. At last
another great specialist, not a whit less competent
than the other, came forward to controvert the
opinions and theory which had been so confidently
maintained by Sir Frederick. In 1871 Sir Thomas
Duffus Hardy brought out the third volume of his
“Catalogue,” and it was in the famous Introduction to
this volume that the Madden Hypothesis was first
assailed with damaging effect. Sir Thomas, it must
be remembered, was Deputy Keeper of the Records.
Sir Frederick was Keeper of the Department of
Manuscripts at the British Museum. Each was the
representative man in his own department, and a
3
18 ST. ALBAN'S

very pretty quarrel arose. Into the merits of that
quarrel it is impossible to enter here; it is a matter
for specialists, not for outsiders, to pronounce upon.
This, however, may be said with confidence, that if
we except that school of very able and accomplished
experts which the British Museum has trained,
experts whose range of diplomatic knowledge must
needs be wider than that of any “ Record man,” the
refutation of Sir Frederick Madden by Sir Thomas
Hardy was generally regarded as unanswerable and
triumphant. With the exception indicated—a very
important exception indeed—the Madden Hypothesis
was believed to be utterly demolished. Nevertheless
there are those, from whom something may be
expected some day in the way of rejoinder, who are
by no means sure that the last word on this question
has been said that requires to be said, and even so
‘scrupulous and sagacious a critic as Dr. Luard
grew less certain than he had once been that Madden
‘was quite wrong in all he affirmed, and Hardy quite
tight in all he denied.

The attention which had been drawn to Matthew
Paris by this remarkable controversy could not but
hhave its effect in awakening a desire for that critical
edition of the larger Chronicle which Dr. Luard had
been so long preparing. The way was cleared for such
an edition now; it was not likely that any more MSS.
AND HER HISTORIAN. 19

of the author would be discovered. Such as were
deposited in the various libraries had been carefully
scrutinised, or their homes were known, and the long
years of preparatory study had been turned to good
account—no pains had been spared nor any labour
grudged. In 1872 the first volume of the “ Chronica
Majora” appeared in the ‘‘ Rolls Series.” In 1884
the seventh and last volume was issued, containing
the learned editor’s last preface, glossary, and
emendations, and an Index to the whole work,
extending over nearly 600 pages. It is a long time
since an English scholar has had the good fortune
to carry to its completion so important a work as
this, projected on so large a scale, executed with
such conscientious care—characterised by so much
critical skill and scrupulous accuracy—and all this
achieved single-handed in the midst of duties, pro-
fessional and academical, quite sufficient to exhaust
the energies of an ordinary man.

Now that the work has been done, and done so
thoroughly that it may safely be asserted the
standard edition of the ‘‘ Chronica Majora” has been
published once for all, we are in a better position
than we ever were heretofore for taking a survey of
the life and labours of its author, and for answering
the inquiries which of late have been made with
increasing frequency, and made too among those
20 ST. ALBANS

who might have been expected to be able to answer
them. Who and what was Matthew Paris? What
did he,do, and what did he write that the learned few
should speak of him with so much reverence, though
to the unlearned many he is little more than a famous
and familiar name ? ,

Perhaps before dealing with his personal history,
or entering into any examination of his literary
labours, it will be well first to answer the question—
What was Matthew Paris? foritis simply impossible
to estimate rightly the debt we owe to him, or to
understand the brief account that could be drawn up
of his career, until we have learned to know some-
thing of the grofession to which he belonged, and the
great foundation of which he was so distinguished
an ornament. iBy profession Matthew Paris was
a monk. A monk “ professed” is a term indicating
the higher grade to which not every brother in a
monastery attained. || The very term ‘ profession ”’
may be traced to the cloister. In its usual ac-
ceptation it is modern.

To dilate upon the various monastic orders, which
were almost as numerous in the 13th century as the
different religious denominations are in the roth,
would be out of place here. Suffice it to say
that the English monasteries in Henry III.’s time
counted by hundreds. But there were monasteries
AND HER HISTORIAN. 2i

and monasteries. Some the homes of the scholar,
the devout and the high-minded, the seats of learn-
ing and the resting-places of the studious and the
aged, who hated war and tumult, and only longed
for repose. Some that were mere hiding-holes for
the lazy and the incompetent, the failures among
the younger sons of the gentry, who had not the
power of pushing their way in the world, or whose
career had been a disappointment. Such men,
when all else failed, could get themselves admitted
into some smaller religious house by the interest of
the patron ; sometimes bringing in a trifling addition
to the common property, sometimes simply ‘* pitch-
forked” into a vacancy, it is difficult to say how.
Then they became ‘ brethren” of the monastery,
and sharers in most of the good things that it could
offer; they were almost exactly in the same position
as Fellows of Colleges were twenty years ago, hold-
ing their preferment for life, with this difference,
that a Fellowship at the smallest College in Oxford
or Cambridge always implied some qualification for
the post. A College Fellow, at the worst, must
have had some claims to learning or culture ; where-
as in the smaller and more remote monasteries a
man might be scandalously ignorant, and yet gain
admittance as a brother of the house.

Between the highest and the lowest of that great
22 ST. ALBANS

army of monks, dispersed through the length and
breadth of the land, when English monachism had
declined from its earlier ideal, there was as great a
distance as there is at this moment between the
Fellows of Balliol or Trinity, and the poor brethren
of the Charterhouse, or the bedesmen in the cathe-
drals of the old foundation.

In the first half of the 13th century English
monachism was at its best; the rath century was
emphatically the reformation age of British mona-
chism. All the many schemes for starting new
orders with improved Rules, and all the efforts to
improve the discipline of the religious houses and
fan the fire of devotion among their members,
assumed that the monasteries were then living
institutions with vast powers for good, and institu-
tions which needed only to be reformed to make them
all that the most earnest and ardent enthusiast
claimed that they ought to be, and might become.
In the fifty years preceding the accession of King
John, more than 200 monasteries had been built and
endowed—some of them munificently endowed, and
the only purely English order (that of St. Gilbert of
Sempringham) had been founded, and in little more
than fifty years could count no less than fourteen
considerable houses. Englishmen believed in the
monastic system as they have never believed in any-
AND HER HISTORIAN. 23

thing else since then. Never have such prodigious
sacrifices been made, never have such lavish munifi-
cence been shown by the upper classes as during the
century ending with the accession of Edward I. In
the next hundred years they were chiefly the towns-
men and traders, not the landed proprietors, who
emptied their money-bags into the lap of the Begging
Friars. Certainly the great religious houses at the
end of the 13th century had the entire confidence of
the country, and it is impossible to understand the
long reign of Henry III. unless we are fully awake
to the fact that then, too, the monasteries were not
only thriving and powerful, but were institutions on
whose help and power the people leant with an
assured confidence, because they were pre-eminently
the people’s friends.

But between the old foundations which had a
history and the new houses that were springing up
in every shire, some feeling of jealousy and soreness
was sure to arise. The old abbeys, with a history
that looked back into a past all clouds and mist, but
none the less glorious for that, affected a supercilious
tone towards the mushrooms that had of late sprouted
into vigorous life. A man need not be an old man
to remember when the Eton and Winchester boys
at the Universities affected an air of contempt for
all the “ modern” places of education, and dis-
24 ST. ALBAN'S

dained to number such institutions as Cheltenham
or Clifton among the ‘‘ public schools.” These were
all very well in their way, but where were their
traditions ? So with the older and grander Benedic-
tine monasteries, with charters from Saxon, kings,
let alone anything else. Glastonbury, where men
said two of the Apostles had built themselves a
house of prayer, and where St. Patrick and St.
Dunstan lay entombed; Canterbury, where Augus-
tine, the English apostle, found a home; Malmes-
bury, where St. Aldhelm preached to the barbarous
people, and when they tired of his sermon played to
them upon his harp, and, anticipating Mr. Sankey,
sang David’s Psalms to the crowds that moved by
him as they passed over the bridge of Avon. These
venerable foundations, about whose origin a glamour
of mystery had gathered, whose history had become
strangely obscured by the body of myths that had
grown up in the lapse of centuries—which had
survived pillage and anarchy, and all the horrors
of fire and sword, desolating, devastating—were
there before men’s eyes, testifying to the amazing
vitality which a millennium of strange vicissi-
tudes had not only not destroyed, but not even
impaired.

Such a mighty pile of buildings, as had risen up to
heaven there in the old Roman town of Verulam,
AND HER AISTORIAN. 25

appealed to the imagination of mankind—the very
materials of the massive tower, ruddy in the blaze of
the noon-day, must have been a wonder and astonish-
ment to many an awe-struck pilgrim perplexed at
the first sight of Roman bricks burnt on the spot a
thousand years ago. There stood the mighty Roman
rampart, vast, enormous—the ground beneath his
feet teeming with the tangible memories of grisly
conflict, or of an old civilisation that had been
blotted out long ago—the swords of Roman legion-
aries, the bones of British heroes, coins with legends
that few could read turned up by the ploughman’s
share. Yonder, men said, away there at Redburn,
the heathen pursuers had come upon England’s
proto-martyr and slain the saint of God, whose
bones since then had been gathered up, and were
now resting in their sumptuous shrine. When the
Norman came, and the new order was set up in the
land—not a day before it was needed—the thirteenth
Abbot of St. Alban’s was of the blood royal, and
heir, they said, to Cnut, the Danish king, who had
passed away. It was to him that the awful
Conqueror made oath he would bind himself by
the Confessor’s laws, an oath which, if he ever meant
to keep, he meant to interpret according to his mood.
Even the very laxity and short-comings of the abbots
of generations back, which tradition, and something
26 ST. ALBANS

more to be trusted than tradition, declared to have:
been matters of scandal, proved no more than that
the great abbey could live through evil times, outride
the storms which would wreck weaker vessels, and
right itself, though overloaded with abuses which
timid pilots would have shrunk from throwing over-
board: and now that 400 years had passed since
Offa, the Saxon king—(stirred thereto by Karl, the
Emperor)—had founded the monastery in St. Alban’s
honour, and from generation to generation vast
building operations had been going on almost with-
out interruption, and the old abbey still held up its
head proudly, its abbot taking precedence of every
other in the land; any man might be excused for
thinking that to become a monk of St. Alban’s Abbey
was to become a personage of no small consideration.)
Verily it was a great abbey in the days of King
John. There, in the eighth year of that King’s reign,
was held that memorable council which, if it had
been let alone, would doubtless have issued its
protest against the intolerable aggression of the Pope
and his cuvia. There, six years afterwards, another
assembly was convened; the first occasion on which
we find any historical proof that representatives were
summoned to a national council in England. Eight
times during his reign the ruffian King was himself a
guest at the abbey. Once after John’s death, when
AND HER HISTORIAN. 27

Louis was desperately struggling to hold his own
against young Henry’s friends and supporters, he
too came to St. Alban’s, and threatened to give it
over to fire and sword: only money saved it from a
sack. There was always something to take, and yet
always wonderful state kept:up. The magnates in
Church and State were for ever going in and out;
the mere domestic expenditure was enormous. Yet,
even when the country was groaning under horrible
anarchy, and grinding taxation, and war and poverty,
the building went on as if men lived only to glorify
the great house, to raise its church tower, or
beautify the west front, to fill the windows with
stained glass, or erect the splendid pulpit in the nave
—a very miracle of art.

It would be a very great mistake to eonGiiide that
all this lavish expenditure implied the enjoyment of
large rents from land. The revenue derived from
the tenants of the abbey and the profits of farming
were no doubt considerable; but that revenue could
never have sufficed alone to defray the cost of keep-
ing up the establishment. In point of fact, when a
monastery, great or small, depended wholly upon its
landed property, it invariably got into debt; some-
times it got hopelessly into debt. It is clear that
before the Dissolution a very large number of the
religious houses were insolvent. The striking
28 ST. ALBANS

paucity in the number of “ religious” at the time
of the suppression—for hardly one house in ten had
its full complement of inmates—is by no means
wholly to be attributed to the reluctance on the part
of people in general to take upon themselves the
monastic vows. Where a monastery was financially
in a critical condition, the brotherhood resorted to
the expedient which is at this moment being carried
out at more than one College in Oxford and
Cambridge. Now, when times are bad, we tempo-
rarily suppress a Fellowship; then, on the death of
a brother of the house, they chose no monk into his
place.

The income from landed estates at St. Alban’s
was probably at no time equal to what may be called
the extraordinary income. The offerings at the
shrines of SS. Alban and Amphibalus, the proceeds
of the offertory at those magnificent and dramatic
functions in which the multitude delighted, and the
douceurs that were always expected and almost
always given in return for hospitality, only in theory
free,—these and many another source of profit, which
the universal habit of giving money for “‘ pious uses ”
supplied, all made up a grand sum total. The rent-
roll furnished but a fraction of the annual income.
The lands of a monastery made it a power; but it
was only a question of time when it must get into
AND HER HISTORIAN. 29

serious difficulties if it had no means of support other
than itsnet rental. In the taxation of Pope Nicholas
(A.D. 1291) the whole revenue of the abbey from
rent and dues in the liberty of St. Alban’s is set
down at £392 8s. 34d.,a sum which in those days
would go as far as £5,000 a year now. Even grant-
ing that this was only half the net income derivable
from the abbey’s estates, which were widely dis-
tributed, an expenditure of £10,000 a year would go
in our own time a very little way towards meeting
the charges which such an enormous establishment
involved. The mere keeping up the buildings at all
times entailed a very heavy annual outlay. Already
- in the 13th century the precincts of the abbey were
overcrowded with palatial edifices, which were never
pulled down except to make room for larger ones.
There were acres of roofs within the abbey walls.
And what return was being made to the nation,
that every rank and every class were keeping up
a rivalry in munificence in favour of such an
institution as this? What had they done, what
were they doing, these seventy men, with their
Abbot at their head, who were in the enjoyment
of an income larger than that of many a principality ?
How was it that no one im those days accused them
of being indolent drones? Mere burdens upon the
earth, as they were called frequently enough, and
30 ST. ALBAN’S

loudly enough, and angrily enough, three centuries
later? It was the age for the expansion of the
monastic system—none then wished to sweep the
monks away. One of the reasons why the monas-
teries had retained their hold upon the affection
of the people, and were regarded with reverence and
pride and confidence, lay in this, that they had
moved with the times, and that the monasticism
of the 13th was very different indeed from the
monasticism of the gth century. The primitive
asceticism had almost vanished; it had not how-
ever died leaving nothing in its place. No one
now expected to find the religious houses filled
with religious people, every one holy, devout, and
fervent; the personal sanctity of the inmates was .
one thing, the sanctity of their churches and shrines
was quite another. In the old days the monks were
separate from the world, living to save their own
souls at best; examples to such as trembled at the
wrath of God, and longed for the life to come. As
time went on they mixed more boldly with the sinful
world, and gradually they became more and more
the illuminators of the darkness round them. Now
they were regarded as in great measure the salt of
the earth, and if that salt should lose its savour,
where was such virtue elsewhere to be found?
Personally, the men might be worldly—vicious,
AND HER HISTORIAN. 31

as a rule, they certainly were not—they were, mutatis
mutandis, what in our time would be called cultured
gentlemen, courteous, highly educated and refined,
as compared with the great mass of their con-
temporaries; a privileged class who were not
abusing their privileges; a class from whence all
the art and letters and accomplishments of the time
emanated, allied in blood as much with the low as
the high, the aristocracy of intellect, and the
pioneers of scientific and material progress. The
model farming of the 13th century would be
regarded as barbaric by our modern theorists; but
such as it was, it was only to be met with on the
demesne lands of the larger monasteries, and was
a prodigious advance upon the petite culture of the
open fields. The Priory at Norwich made an income
out of its garden in the days of Edward III., and
probably much earlier; the pisciculture of the
religious houses remains a mystery as yet unsolved ;
the skill exhibited in the management of the water-
power of many a district round even the smaller
houses, still awakens wonder in those who think
it worth their while to study it. At St. Alban’s,
as at Glastonbury, St. Edmund’s Abbey, and else-
where, the culture of the vine was made profitable
for generations. The monasteries were the first to
give personal freedom to the villeins, and the first
32 ST. ALBAN’S

to commute for money payments the vexatious
services which worried the best men and maddened
the worst. The landlords in the 13th century
were real lords of the land. T hey were, as a class,
very poor, spite of the privileges they enjoyed and
the power that they possessed of making themselves
disagreeable ; and though the constitution of a
manor was a limited monarchy, and the limits were
very many, yet the lord could exercise a great deal
of petty tyranny in his little kingdom if he were
so disposed. In the manors which were in the
possession of the religious houses the lord was
necessarily non-resident, and the tenants were left
to manage their own affairs with very little inter-.
ference. The tenants of the monasteries were in
afar more favoured condition than the tenants of
some small lord, needy and greedy, who extorted
his dues literally to the last farthing, and who knew
exactly what the best beast was, on the land that
owed him a heriot; and, when the tenant was in
extremis, kept a sharp look-out that a fat bullock
or a promising young horse should not be driven
off before the owner died.

So the monasteries, at the time we are now con-
cerned with, were regarded at once with pride and
affection by the great bulk of the people; they were
places of refuge where, in a turbulent time, men and
AND HER HISTORIAN. 33

women who had been stricken, bereaved or wronged,
might find a quiet refuge and hide their heads and
be forgotten and fall asleep, with the prayers of
other sufferers to console and support them in their
passage through the valley of the shadow of death.
The gentlest spirits here could taste the bliss of
a holy tranquillity; the ascetic could indulge his
most fantastic self-immolation; the morbid visionary
could dream at his will and give his imagination full
play, none hindering him; evil demons might chatter
and gibe and twit him at his prayers; choirs of
angels might calm his despair with celestial lulla-
bies ; awful forms might rise from clouds of incense
as the gorgeous procession moved along the vast
church aisles, or stopped before some glittering
shrine. What then? Who would question the
reality of a miracle, or doubt that sublime revelations
might be made to any holy monk as he wrestled in
prayer in a rapture of the soul, and found himself
lifted to the seventh heaven in ecstasy unutterable ?
What has been said applies mainly to the older
houses, those which were under what may be called
the primitive Benedictine rule. If men were moved
to rigid asceticism, however, and had a taste for
bald simplicity; if art, and music, and ornate archi-
tecture had no charm for them, and they dreamt
that God could only be sought and found in the
4
34 ST. ALBAN’S

wilderness, the Cistercian houses offered such a
congenial asylum.) The Cistercians were the
Puritans of the monasteries, and appealed to that
mysterious sentiment which makes some minds
shrink with fear from the touch of luxury, and
regard culture as antagonistic to personal holiness.
The sentiment was strong in the reign of Henry IL,
when nineteen Cistercian houses were founded ; but
it is not improbable that other motives, beside mere
taste for a stricter discipline, led to the foundation
of eight more in the reign of King John.
Se eanwhile the Benedictines had become by far the
Ost learned and most educating body in the land,
and pre-eminent above them all was the great Abbey
of St. Alban’s. Ifit was not at this time the centre
of intellectual life in England, it was because at this
time centralisation was unknown. Eadmer, Florence
of Worcester, Gervase of Canterbury, William of
Malmesbury, Simeon of Durham, were all 12th
century Benedictines. They were all students and
writers of history, and history meant literature till
Peter Lombard arose at the end of the rath cen-
tury and revolutionised the world of thought—at
any rate the domain of logic. John of Salisbury
fiercely assails the intellectual innovators of his time
on the ground that the new lights of the 12th
century disdained to be students of history, and .
AND HER HISTORIAN. 35

affected contempt for the past. It was the old
story; literary culture found itself in antagonism
with scientific culture, and the vigorous childhood
of scientific research was aggressive, insolent, and
noisily insubordinate. The old seminaries, whose
homes were in the Benedictine monasteries, refused
to welcome the new learning. Its teachers settled
themselves elsewhere; at Paris, on the other side
of the water, they had a hard fight of it. Once
in 1209 the Synod of Paris actually prohibited the
reading of Aristotle’s ‘‘ Metaphysics.” At Oxford
they seem to have met with a more generous recep-
tion. Perhaps it was because that reception was
too enthusiastic that King Stephen at the close
of his miserable reign expelled Vacarius, the first
teacher of scientific law in England. Whereupon
young men of parts and ambition crossed the
Channel, seeking and finding at Pavia and Bologna
what was not to be had at home. The monastic
schools held their own, and went on in the old
groove; the intellectual revolution which soon came
about by the agency of the Mendicant Orders was
not yet dreamt of. St. Alban’s, Malmesbury, and
other such mighty foundations, stuck to the old
studies, just as Eton and Winchester stuck to Latin
Verse as the one thing needful, and reluctantly gave in
to the new-fangled notion of having a “‘ modern side.”
36 ST. ALBANS

Outside the abbey precincts, a hundred yards from
the great gate, and separated from it by the Rome
land, which may possibly have served the boys as a
playground, stood the Grammar School. Whether it
offered a different training from that which was usually
supplied to the scholars who were under training in
the cloister, it is difficult to say. Within the precincts,
when the 13th century began, there stood the great
church—enriched by the accumulated offerings of
centuries, and glowing with dazzling splendour of
jewels and cloth of gold, and glass that glorified
the very sunshine, and wonders of sculpture and
colour and needlework filling the heart to over-
flowing with inexplicable hopes and longings for
an ideal that seemed possible of realisation, if only
the Church in heaven should be as far removed
above the actual of the Church on earth as the
glories of the Church on earth were removed above
the squalid life of the common workday world. |_All
this in witness that the great Abbey was, first and
foremost, a religious foundation, raised in the first
instance to the glory of God, and meant to help
forward the worship of God, and make that worship

orthy of the Most High

But besides being primarily and emphatically a
religious foundation, the abbey in the 13th century
had grown into something else, and had become
AND HER HISTORIAN. 37

the home of a corporation of scholars and students,
who were the leaders of art and culture in an
age when art and culture were to be met with
nowhere outside the walls of a great monastery.
There, in what might be called the museum
of the abbey, you might see no mean collection
of antique gems that had once been the pride of
Roman magistrates. Mysterious specimens of bar-
baric gold-work, fashioned by unknown craftsmen
for the necks of nameless chieftains who had
drawn the sword and perished, none knew when.
Engraved gems that had been dug up in mysterious
sepulchres, about which even imagination despaired
of telling any story; relics of saints and martyrs;
charters of Saxon kings, granted centuries before
the Normans came to ring out the old and ring in
the new. The wealth of mere archeological
specimens at St. Alban’s made it such a museum
of antiquities as provokes wonder and bitterness,
when we read the catalogue of what was once there,
and has perished utterly and for ever.?

The range of buildings to the south of the church

* In Dr. Luard’s sixth volume there are two facsimiles
of certain coloured drawings of the more precious gems at
St. Alban’s, with careful descriptions of them, the text and
the illustrations being most probably executed by Matthew
Paris himself.
38 ST. ALBAN'S

covered a far larger area than that which the church
itself occupied. Uncertain though the exact site
may be and is, there had already been added in
Brother Matthew’s time what we should now call an
Art school, a Library, and, almost more famous than
all, the Scriptorium. By and by, too, came the
printing-press, which John Herford set up in 1480.
Wynkyn de Worde was sometime schoolmaster of
St. Alban’s, and Lady Juliana Berner’s famous
volume issued from the Abbey Press, while Caxton
was still pursuing his craft in the almonry of another
monastery at Westminster.

In the days of King John, however, people had so
little idea of the possibility of the printing-press, that
they were almost equally ignorant of such a material
as paper for literary purposes. Yet it is a huge mis-
take which has not yet been exploded, as it ought
to be, that reading and writing were rare accom-
plishments in the 13th century. Knowledge of a
certain kind was disseminated far more effectively
and far more universally than is generally believed.
The country parson was expected to be the school-
master of his parish, and generally was so, and there
was hardly a village in England during the reign of
Henry III. in which there were not one or more
persons who could write a clerkly hand, draw up
accounts im Latin, and keep the records of the various
AND HER HISTORIAN. 39

petty courts and gatherings that were continually
being held, sometimes to the annoyance and grievous
vexation of the rural population. The professional
writers were so numerous, and their training so
severe, that they had got for themselves privileges
of a very exceptional kind; the clerk took rank with
the clergyman, and the writer of a book was almost as
much esteemed as its author.

The scriptorium of a great monastery was at once
the printing-press and the publishing office. It was
the place where books were written, and whence they
issued to the world. With the traditional exclusive-
ness of the older monasteries there was less desire,
no doubt, to diffuse and disperse than to accumulate
books, but the composing and the multiplication of
books was always going on. The scriptorium was a
great writing school too, and the rules of the art of
writing which were laid down there were so rigidly
and severely adhered to, that to this day it is not
difficult to decide at a glance whether a book was
written in St. Alban’s or St. Edmund’s Abbey. Some-
times as many as twenty writers were employed at
once, and besides these there were occasionally super-
numeraries, who were professional scribes, and who
were paid for their services; but nothing short of
perfect penmanship, such trained skill, for instance,
as would now be required of an engraver, would qualify
40 STZ. ALBAN’S

a copyist to take part in the finished work, which the
copying of important books required.

One of the conclusions which Sir Thomas Hardy
arrived at during the course of his minute examina-
tion of Sir Frederick Madden’s theory is so curious,
and opens out such an unexpected view of the way
in which our monasteries may have been brought
under the influence of foreign literature, that it-is
worth while in this connection to quote the great
critic’s own words :—

“After minutely examining every page of the
manuscripts in question, as well as others, which
were undoubtedly written in the monastery of St.
Alban’s, and comparing them with others executed
in various parts of England and on the Continent, I
can come to no other conclusion than that during
the latter half of the 13th century, and perhaps a
little earlier, there prevailed among the scribes in the
Scriptorium of St. Alban’s, a peculiar character of
writing which is not recognisable in any other re-
ligious house in England during that period; but
which is traceable in some foreign manuscripts, and
even in private deeds executed in England in the
neighbourhood of St. Alban’s during the rath and
13th centuries. These facts lead me to the infer-
ence, that the schoolmaster who taught the art of writ-
ing to Matthew Paris and the other members and scholars
AND HER HISTORIAN. 4

of the establishment at St. Alban’s was a foreigner ; that
his pupils not only imitated their instructor in the
formation of his letters, but also in his exceptional
orthography.”

What questions suggest themselves as we accept
the conclusion arrived at! Who was he, this
‘‘foreigner,’ who had come from across the sea to
bring in his outlandish novelties into the great scrip-
torium? Was he some ‘‘ Frenchman” imported
from sunny Champagne, where Thibaut, the mawkish
singer, was making verses which his people loved to
listen to? Did he teach the young novices French
as well as writing? Did he touch the lute himself
on Feast-days, and charm them with some new lyric
of Gasse Bruslé, or delight them with one of Rute-
beuf’s merry ditties? France wasall alive with song
at this time, and princes were rivals now for poetic
fame. It may be that this “ foreigner” brought in
a taste for light literature as well as for a new fashion
in penmanship, and made known to his pupils such
alluring novelties as the ‘‘ Roman d’Alexandre,” soon
to be eclipsed by the ‘‘ Roman de la Rose.” !

The scriptorium at St. Alban’s was founded by
Abbot Paul, akinsman of Archbishop Lanfranc, when
the great abbey had already existed for three cen-

1 See Eugéne Gerusez, “‘ Histoire de la Littérature Francaise.”
Livre 1, chap. v. Didier, Paris, 1863.
42 ST. ALBAN’S

turies. Paul became Abbot eleven years after the
Conquest, and he showed himself an able and
earnest administrator. From this time learning and
a love of books became a tradition of the house.
Abbot after abbot continued to add to the collection
of MSS., and to increase the value of the library.
But St. Alban’s had never had a great historian of its
own. Strange and shameful fact! East and west
and north and south, all over the land, there were
great writers holding up their proud heads. Out in
the desolate wilds there at Peterborough, they had
been actually keeping up a chronicle for centuries—
aye, and written in the vernacular too. The lonely
monastery of Ely, among the swamps, had its his-
torian. Malmesbury boasted her learned William ;
and Worcester, which St. Wulstan had raised from
the dust, as it were, only the other day, had already
her Florence. In the great houses of the Northern
Province there had been no lack of writers to whom
the past was an open book. Even Westminster had
long ago had her chronographer, and far away in
furthest Wales, Geoffrey, the Monmouth man, was
making men open their eyes very wide indeed with
tales—idle tales they might be, but they were well
worth the reading—and there was talk too of another
young Welshman, Giraldus, who was on the way
towards outdoing the other by and by. What are
AND HER HISTORIAN. 43

we coming to? Holy St. Alban, shalt thou and thy
house be put to shame ?—that be far from us!

Thus it came to pass that about a century after,
the foundation of the scriptorium, and when the’
library had grown to an imposing size, Abbot Simon
bestirred himself, and a new office was created in the
abbey, to wit, that of Historiographer. In our time
we should have given this functionary a grander title,
and called him Professor of History; but in the
I2th century, they called him what he was, a
writer of history, and from this time, in fact, the
writing of history, after a certain authorised method,
began, and what has been called and deserves to be
called the St. Alban’s School of History took its
rise.

It is evident that before the 13th century had
well begun, an historical compendium of great value
had already been drawn up, which must have been
compiled by careful students with a command of
books such as during this age was rare.

“The compilation,” says Dr. Luard, ‘ whenever
and by whomsoever it was written, must be regarded
as a very curious and remarkable one. The very
large number of sources consulted, the miscellaneous
character of many of the extracts, the mixture of
history and legend, the giving fixed years to stories
which even writers like Geoffrey of Monmouth had
44 ST. ALBAN’S

left undated, the care-at one time and the careless-
ness at another, the slavishness with which one
authority, is followed, and the recklessness with
which another is altered, the frequent confusion of
dates, their ignorance and want of care, the blunders
displayed in many instances from the compiler not
understanding the author whom he is copying, as is
especially the case in the extracts from the ‘ Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle’; all these characteristics may well
earn for the author the title that Lappenberg has
given to him, though under the name of ‘ Matthew
of Westminster,’ namely, that of the ‘ Verwirrer der
Geschichte.’ At the same time there is no doubt
that he had access to some materials which we no
longer possess: and my object has been to trace all
his statements, where possible, to their source, and
to distinguish any additions that the compiler has
made when they are merely rhetorical amplifica-
tions of his own, or when they are really from some
source not now extant” (Pref. to vol. i. p. xxiii.).
After all that can be said, the work surprises us
by the erudition it displays. Nor is that surprise
lessened when we have gone through the masterly
analysis of its contents, which Dr. Luard has given
us in the Preface to his first vol. Such as it was,
it became the great text-book on which Roger of
Wendover founded his own labours when he incor-
AND HER HISTORIAN. 45

porated it into the chronicle which he left behind
him. Roger of Wendover did good work, and
laboriously epitomised, supplemented, and improved,
but he was a mere literary monk after all; a student,
a bookworm, simple, conscientious, and truthful; a
trustworthy reporter, ‘‘a picker-up of learning’s
crumbs,” a monkish historiographer, in short; but
by no means an historian of large views and of
original mind. Roger of Wendover died in 1236,
and Matthew Paris succeeded to his office and work.

From what has been said, the reader may be pre-
sumed to have gained something like an answer to
our first question: What was Brother Matthew?
Briefly, he was a representative monk of the most
powerful monastery in England during the 13th cen-
tury, when that monastery was atits best, and doing
the work which in after times the Universities and
great schools of the country took out of the hands of
the religious houses ; work, too, which since those days
has been done by the printing-press, and by many
other institutions better fitted to deal with the re-
quirements of an immensely larger population, and
to be the instruments for diffusing culture and refine-
ment through the nation after it had outgrown the
older machinery.

When we come to look into the personal history of
Brother Matthew, the details of his biography need
46 ST. ALBANS

not detain us long. Sir Henry Taylor’s famous line
is only half true, after all ;

‘“‘ The world knows nothing of its greatest men ”

really means that the world knows less about them
than it would like to know. And yet the world
knows almost as much about them as is good for it.
The leading facts of a man’s career are all that con-
cern most of us—the main lines—not the details.
Of Matthew Paris we know enough, because he has
himself given us so faithful a picture of his times,
and so charming an insight into the daily life which
he led.

Unnecessary doubt has been suggested as to his
parentage, and whether his extraction was or was not
from a stock that could boast of gentle blood. For our
part we incline strongly to the belief that Brother
Matthew was called Paris because that was his name,
and had been his father’s name before him. A
family of that name held lands in Bedfordshire in
Henry III.’s time; others of the same stock were
settled in Lincolnshire earlier still; and the Cam-
bridgeshire family (one of whom was among the
visitors of the monasteries under Henry VIIL)
boasted of a long line of ancestors, and retained
their estates in the Eastern Counties till late in
AND HER HISTORIAN. 47

the 17th century. (Young Matthew probably re-
ceived his education in the school at St. Alban’s,
and soon showed a decided taste for learning and the
student’s life, and that in the 13th century meant
an inclination for the life of the cloister. itary a
precocious lad is even now taught from 1is childhood
to look forward to the glories of a College Fellow-
ship, and the career which such an academic success
may open to him; and in the 13th century a school-
boy’s ambition was directed to the goal of admission
to a great monastery—that step on the ladder which
whosoever could reach, there was no knowing how
high he might climb—how high above the common
sons of earth or, if he preferred it, how high towards
the heaven that is above the earth.

Matthew was probably born about the year 1200,
and in January, 1217, he became a monk at St.
Alban’s, 7.¢e., he became a novice. At this time a lad
could commence his noviciate at 15; but the age
was subsequently advanced to 19, the younger limit
hhaving been found, as a rule, too early even for the
preliminary discipline required. On the day after
the lad was admitted, a frightful scene took place in
the monastery. A band of Fawkes de Breauté’s cut-
throats had stormed the town of St. Alban’s, burst
into the abbey, and slaughtered at the door of the
church one Robert Mai, a servant of the Abbot.
48 ST. ALBAN’S

William de Trumpington was Abbot at this time, a
vigorous and resolute personage, who ruled the con-
vent with a firm hand. Like all really able men, he
was ably seconded, for he knew how to choose his
subordinates. At first the monks had repented of
their choice, and there were quarrels and litigation
and appeals to the Pope, and many serious ‘ un-
pleasantnesses”; but as time went on, Abbot
William had won the allegiance of all the convent,
and they were proud of him. He was a man of
books, among his other virtues, and had an eye for
bookish men; and when he deposed Roger de
Wendover from being Prior of Belvoir with a some-
what high hand, and brought him back to St.
Alban’s, he doubtless did so because he knew that at
Belvoir he was a square man in a round hole, while
in the scriptorium of the abbey he would be in his
tight place: Certainly the event proved that the
Abbot was right, and it was to this judicious removal
of a student and man of letters to his proper home
that we owe so much of our knowledge of those inte-
resting minutiz of English history which the writer
has revealed. It was under the eye of Roger de
Wendover that Matthew Paris grew up, rendering
him every year more and more substantial assistance
in the library and in the scriptorium.

But the young man was not only a bookworm and
AND HER HISTORIAN. 49

a copyist, he soon got to be looked upon as a pro-
digy. He was a universal genius; he could do
whatever he set his hand to, and better than any
one else. He could draw, and paint, and illuminate,
and work in metals. Some said he could even con-
struct maps; he was versed in everything, and
noticed everything, from “‘the cedar that is in
Lebanon to the hyssop upon the wall;” he was an
expert in heraldry ; he could tell you about whales,
and camels, and buffaloes, and elephants—he could
even draw an elephant, illustrate his history, in
fact, with the elephant’s portrait—the first elephant,
he says, that had ever been seen in our northern
climes. It was centuries before men had dreamt of
what the science of geology would one day reveal.
Then, too, he had vast capacity for work, and was a
courtly person, and he had the gift of tongues,
and had been a great traveller; he had early been
sent by the convent to study at the University of
Paris, and wherever he went, he was the man to
make friends. When the Benedictines in Norway
had convinced themselves that there was sore need
of a reform of their rule and discipline, they applied
to Pope Innocent IV. to send them a Visitor fur-
nished with the necessary authority for carrying out
so delicate and difficult a mission; and the Pope
made choice of Matthew Paris as the fittest possible
5
50 _ ST. ALBAN'S

person for such a work. Reluctantly Brother
Matthew was compelled to undertake the task: he
started on his northern voyage in 1248, and was
absent about a year. In Norway he soon grew into
high favour with King Hacon, who peradventure
would have kept him at his side if he could. This
seems to have been the most important episode in
his otherwise uneventful life. But the advantages
and opportunities which were at the command of any
ambitious and studious young monk at St. Alban’s
were in themselves extraordinary.

We have said that building was always going on.
It was going on on a very large scale indeed in Abbot
William’s time. That means that there were the
plans and sections and working drawings to be
copied for the architect, and measurements and
calculations by the thousand to be made—a school of
architecture, in short: and besides that, what Roger
de Wendover was in the scriptorium, that Walter of
Colchester, pictor et sculptor incomparabilis, was in the
painting room. Walter was a sculptor; indeed he
wrought at his marvellous pulpit which the Abbot set
up in the middle of the church: and he carved the
story of St. Alban upon the great beam over the high
altar, and did many another thing of which we have
only too brief descriptions. Then, too, there was
Richard, the monk who decorated the grand new
AND HER HISTORIAN. 51

guests’ hall deliciose, as we are told,t and who painted
pictures and carried out other works of embellishment
at a pace which none could have kept up, but that he
had his father to help him with his brush, and
another artist, John of Wallingford, to carry out his
great designs, and many more skilled limners whose
names have gone down into silence.

When Abbot William’s reign came to an end, the
monks were unanimous in choosing John of Hertford
as his successor, and the new Abbot lost no time in
showing favour to Matthew Paris. Next year Roger
de Wendover died, and who could there be so worthy
to succeed him as historiographer as the versatile
and accomplished brother, who by this time was
the boast of the great house? And_historio-
grapher accordingly Matthew became—a sort of
13th-century editor of the Times; his business was
to gather from all points of the compass, if not the
latest news, yet the best and most trustworthy
reports upon whatever was worth recording. He
had his correspondents all over Europe, and that he
sifted the evidence as it came to him we know.

Wherever there was any great event that deserved

* See an article on “The Wall-paintings in St. Alban’s,’
Archeological Journal, vol. xxxix. p. 64; consult too the valu-
able Appendix F in vol. iii. of Jo. Amundesham’s “ Annales S
Albani.”
52 ST. ALBAN'S

a place in the Abbey Chronicle, some splendid
pageant to describe, some battle, or treaty, or pesti-
lence, or flood, or famine, straightway tidings came
to the vigilant historiographer; and there was a
comparison of the evidence brought in, and some
testing of witnesses, and finally the narrative was
drawn up and incorporated into Matthew’s history.
Again and again it happened that a great personage
who, while himself making history, was anxious that
his own part in a transaction should be represented
favourably, would try and get the right side of the
famous chronicler, and would furnish him with
private information, in other words, such personage
was not averse to being interviewed. Even the King
himself thought it no scorn to communicate facts and
documents to Brother Matthew. Once when Henry
saw him in a crowd on a memorable occasion, he
picked him out, and bade him take his seat by his side,
and see to it that he made a true and faithful report
of what was going on; and it is evident that the royal
favour he enjoyed through life must have extended to
furnishing him with many a story and many a detail
which none but the King could have supplied. The
minute account of the attempt to assassinate Henry
in 1238; the curious State paper giving a narrative
of the dispute between the King and his nobles in
1242; the strange scene at the tomb of William
AND HER HISTORIAN. 53

Marshall in 1245, and scores of other incidents in
the career of Bishop Grossteste and Richard of
Cornwall, were evidently “ inspired,” and could only
have come from eye-witnesses of the events recorded.
Nevertheless Matthew, though he was willing enough
to receive information, and to utilise facts and docu-
ments, was by no means the man to reproduce them
exactly in the form in which they came to him.
More than once he ventured to remonstrate with the
King, and very much oftener than once he expresses
his opinion of him in no measured terms. Some of
the severest censures he had marked for omission,
and some expressions he modified considerably, for
we have the good fortune to possess his chronicle
both in an earlier and in a later form; but even
though the fuller and more outspoken record had
perished, we should still have had enough proof to
make it clear that we have in Matthew Paris an
instance of a born historian, one who never con-
sented to be a mere advocate, taking a side and
seeing only half the truth of anything; but a man
gifted with the judicial faculty, that precious gift
without which a man may be anything you please—
a rhetorician, a special pleader, a picturesque writer,
a laborious collector of facts; but an historian, never.

And yet Matthew Paris was a magnificent hater,
with a fund of indignant scorn and righteous anger
54 ST. ALBAN’S

which never fails him upon occasion. Friend of King
and nobles as he was, he will not spare his words of
wrathful censure upon the tyrant, or upon any that he
held deserving of rebuke for cruelty, oppression, and
avarice. When he has to lay the lash on such as
had proved themsclves enemies to his much-loved
abbey, or who had wronged and defrauded it, he is
well-nigh as fierce as Dante. He singles them out
—the doomed wretches—and holds them, as it were,
over the fire of hell before he drops them down into
the burning flame.

Did Ralph Cheinduit, that blustering, burly knight,
cry aloud ‘A fig for St. Alban and his monks! Since
they excommunicated me—look you—I have only
increased in girth, behold me fat and jolly, in faith
almost too big for my saddle. A fig for them all!”
Did he say so? the impious wretch! Be it known that
from that very day Sir Knight began to shrink and
waste and pine, and if he had not repented and been
absolved in time, he had gone down to the bottom-
less pit with never a hope of deliverance.

Did not Sir Adam Fitz William show the evil
spirit that was in him when he sided against us time
and again? And now, look to his awful end! Gorged
with meat and drink one night, he sprawled upon his
bed, indigestus, as you may say, and he never woke
more. Aye! and he died intestate too. And as
AND HER HISTORIAN. 55

though that was not bad enough, his wife too died,
straightway, like another Sapphira slain by the shock
of the tidings. And then there was Alan de Beccles,
too, always notorious for setting himself against us
and our house, he too perished as the other did, for
he loved choice dainties overmuch, and he dined late,
and he ate as none should eat, and when he could
eat no more, suddenly his speech failed him, and his
veins burst, smitten with an apoplexy. And many
others, whom it would take too long to name, follow-
ing evil courses, and being persecutors of Holy Alban’s
Church, perished for ever by God’s vengeance.

It is no longer the fashion now to denounce the
Pope and his myrmidons, but if the rage of Exeter
Hall should ever recur, and the orators of the old
platform should revive a taste for anti-papal agita-
tion, they might find in Matthew Paris as rich a
repertory of testimonies against Roman aggression
and greed as the most rabid Irish Protestant could
desire. ‘‘O thou Pope,” he bursts out once, “ thou
the father of all the fathers in Christ, how is it that
thou sufferest the realms of Christendom to be fouled
by such creatures as are thine?” The “creatures”’
were the papal legates and nuncios and all their
belongings, who were plundering England without
shame. ‘‘ Harpies they were and blood-suckers,”
says Matthew, ‘“‘ mere plunderers, skinning the sheep,
56 ST. ALBANS

not shearing them only.” Then there were the
King’s Justiciars—‘ Justice ’—nay, with that they
had nothing to do. Why tell of their unrighteous
deeds ? he asks. ‘‘ Better forbear from vainly writing
about the wrongers, and return to the story of the
wronged.”

Of course the friars come in for their share of
strong words—chiefly because the Pope made use of
them so vilely, and not less because they set them-
selves above their betters—us, to wit—monks of the
old houses.

“They started with such fair professions, they
were going to be so very poor, and so very unworldly,
and were going to supplement our work and inter-
fere with nobody, and give us all a helping hand.
Look at them now!” says Matthew; “ they march
through the streets in pompous array with banners
flaunting in the sun and waxen tapers, and rich
burghers in holiday garments joining in the long
train, and if they have no land they have money,
good store, and as for their churches, they are
eclipsing us all. Their invasion of our territory is a
dreadful scandal, and they sneer at us and at all
other religious men and women, and they flout the
parish priests and call them humdrums, and schism
is at work horribly, and the people are running away
from the old guides, and there is no end to them.
AND HER HISTORIAN. 57

Actually in the year of grace 1257,” he says, ‘a new
order of these fellows turned up in London. Friars
of the sack, forsooth, because they were clothed in
sackcloth! Of course they came armed with a papal
licence as usual. What did these fellows come for ?
Was it to make confusion worse confounded? Alas!
alas! If we had only been as we were in the golden
age, these friars would never have had a chance—not
they! We too are not as the monks of old were;
they lived the guileless life—austere, hard, self-
denying, saintly! What are we in comparison with
them ?

‘Did not we find the bones of our brethren there,
hard by the High Altar, when we were beautifying
the same? O ye degenerate sons of this degenerate
age! Two centuries ago and our monks were men
of faith and prayer. In the year of grace one thou-
sand two hundred and fifty-one, we found more than
thirty of them buried together, and their bones were
lying there, white and sweet, redolent with the odour
of sanctity every one; each man had been buried as
he died, in his monastic habit, and his shoes upon
his feet too.t Aye, and such shoes—shoes made for
wear and not for wantonness. The soles of these
shoes were sound and strong, they might have served
the purpose for poor men’s naked feet even now, after

* Compare “‘ Gesta Abbatum,” vol. i. p. 293.
58 ST. ALBANS

centuries of lying in the grave. Blush ye! ye with
your buckles, and your pointed toes and your fiddle
faddle. These shoes upon the holy feet that we dug
up were as round at the toe as at the heel, and the
latchets were all of one piece with the uppers. No
rosettes in those days, if you please! They fastened
their shoes with a thong, and they wound that thong
round their blessed ankles, and they cared not in
those holy days whether their shoes were @ pair.
Left foot and right foot each was as the other: and
we, when we gazed at the holy relics—we bowed our
heads at the edifying sight, and we were dumb-
foundered, even to awe, as we Swung our censers over
the sacred graves of the ages past!”

The anecdotes and out-of-the-way pieces of infor-
mation in the ‘‘ Chronica Majora,” which may be said
to represent the paragraphs of modern journalism,
are countless. Brother Matthew enlivens his history
with these cross-lights at every page, and what gives
to these scraps an added charm is that Matthew
himself seems to be always with us when he prattles
on. Not even Herodotus has succeeded more entirely
in impressing his quaint personality upon his narra-
tive. It is always something which he has seen, or
heard from some living man who saw it with his own
eyes.

‘““There was my friend John of Basingstoke, had
AND HER HISTORIAN. 59

studied at Paris, and a wonder of learning he was,
but he told me himself that his best teacher by far
was the young lady Constantina, daughter of an
archbishop she. Archbishop of Athens, too—arch-
bishops may marry out there! Before she was
twenty she knew all that men may know; she was
worth two universities of Paris any day; she fore-
told the coming of plagues and storms, and eclipses
—and—more wonderful still—the coming of earth-
quakes too: and John of Basingstoke was her
scholar, and whatever he knew that was deep and
rare, he learnt it of the lady Constantina, the Arch-
bishop’s daughter.”

Matthew is very great when he has to tell of
omens and portents:

“We were scurvily treated by Pope Innocent
III.,” he says, ‘in the days of Abbot John. Spite
of all our privileges and indulgences, the Pope would
have him come to Rome every third year; a sore
burden and harm to us all. Forthwith evil omens
came. Thrice in three years was our tower struck
by lightning. After that wrong of his Holiness it
was no wonder that the impression of the papal seal
in wax, which we had taken good care to fix on the
top of the steeple, availed not to keep off the thunder-
bolt—small good you see in that kind of thing.”

Besides the miscellaneous paragraphs, there are
60 ST. ALBANS

periodical reports of the weather, and the storms,
and the droughts, and the harvests. Moreover, there
are what answer to our police reports, and details of
criminal proceedings against Jew and Gentile; and
births and deaths and marriages; and now and then
brief notes upon the state of the markets; and some-
times hints and reflections upon the desirability of
certain reforms in Church and State; and all this
not in the spirit of modern journalism, which at its
best too often bears the marks of haste, and betrays
the literary soldier of fortune paid for his work at
so much a column, but genuine, hearty; throbbing
with a certain passionate loyalty to a tradition or
an idea which you may say is exploded, grotesque,
or fanciful, but which in the 13th century honest
men and devout ones lived by and lived for, and
were trying in their own way to carry out into
action.

But now that we have got this precious
“Chronicle,” not to mention other works in the
composition of which Brother Matthew had at least
a large share—though our space forbids us dwelling
upon them or their contents, and we must refer our
readers to Dr. Luard’s elaborate prefaces if they
would desire to know all about them—another
question suggests itself, which sooner or later will
become a pressing question—What are we going to
AND HER AISTORIAN. 61

do with such a national work of which this country
has great reason to be proud ?

The days are gone by when a man was supposed
to be educated in proportion as he was familiar with
the literature of Greece and Rome and ignorant of
everything else. Already at Oxford candidates for
the highest honours in the final schools think it no
shame to read their Plato or their Aristotle in
English translations, and in half the time that
was needed under the old plan they get a mastery
of their Thucydides or Herodotus, devoting them-
selves to the subject-matter after they have proved
at ‘‘Moderations” that they have a respectable
acquaintance with the language of the authors.

May the day be far off when Homer and Aschylus
shall cease to be read in the original! The great
writers of Hellas and Italy were poets or orators,
great teachers or great thinkers; but they were
something more. They were perfect instrumentalists
too. Their thoughts, their lessons, their aspirations,
their regrets, you may interpret and transfer into the
speech and the idioms of the moderns; but the
music of their language, the subtleties of melody
and rhythm, and harmony and tone, can no more be
translated than a symphony for the strings can be
adequately represented upon the organ. You may
persuade yourself that you have got the substance;
62 ST. ALBAN'S

you have missed the perfection of the form. Yet
who but a narrow pedant will insist that the study
of any literature, ancient or modern, is valuable
chiefly for familiarising us with the language, not
for enriching our minds with the subject-matter ?
Do we desire to understand the past and so to he
better able to estimate the importance of great
movements that are going on in the present or, by
the help of the experience of bygone ages, to forecast
the future? Then it behoves us to see that our induc-
tion shall be made from as wide a view as may be, and
to avail ourselves of any light that is to be gained.
But it is mere waste of time to be for ever staring
at the lamp which may be pretty to look at in itself,
but is then most precious when it serves as a means
toan end. If we are ever to construct a Science of
History, the old methods must give place to some-
thing which may approximate to philosophic inquiry.

When we come to think of it, how very small
an area of time or space is covered by the historians
of Greece and Rome! how small an area and
how superficially dealt with! Even Thucydides
hardly ventures to lift the veil which separates the
civilisation of his own age from that of an earlier
period; he lifts it for a moment, then drops the
curtain and passes on. It is true indeed that
Herodotus introduces us to a world that is not:
AND HER HISTORIAN. 63

Hellenic, and brings us into some sort of relation
with men whose habits and art and religion had a
character of their own; but then these nations
were not as we, and not as men of our race could
ever become. We never seem to be im touch with
Egypt or Assyria, and when he prattles on about
these nations it is less as an historian than as an
observant traveller that Herodotus delights and
allures. Xenophon’s passing notices of the manners
and education, of the feudalism and the social life of
the Medes, are too brief to be anything but tanta-
lising; but the neglect of Xenophon by professed
students is not creditable, however significant. Per-
haps of all the Greek writers Polybius was the man
who had the truest conception of the historian’s
vocation; perhaps, too, it was just because he was
so much before his age that his voluminous and
ambitious work has come down to us little more
than a fragment. Because he was something better
than a compiler of annals, they who read history
only to be amused found him dull, and the moderns
have not yet reversed the verdict which was passed
upon him. Who ever heard of a candidate for
honours taking Polybius into the schools?

It is from the Latin historians that we might have
expected so much and from whom we get so little.
What do they tell us of ancient Spain—the Spain
64 SZ. ALBANS

that Sertorius pretended he was going to regenerate,
and whose civilisation, literature, and national life
he did so much to extinguish? If it were not for
what Aristotle has told us in the Politics, what
should we know of that mighty commercial Republic
which monopolised the carrying trade of the old
world? It never seems to have occurred to Livy
that the political organisation of Carthage could be
worth his notice. His business was to glorify
Rome, and to tell how Rome grew to greatness—
grew by war and conquest and pillage, and the
ferocious might of her relentless soldiery. The
“Germania” of Tacitus stands alone—unique in
ancient literature; but what would we not give for
such a monograph upon the Britain which Cesar
attempted to conquer, or the Gaul which he
plundered and devastated? The great captain’s
famous missive might be inscribed as the motto
of his ‘‘Commentaries.” Veni! vidi! vici! sums
up in brief the substance of what they contain. It
was always Rome’s way! Rome swept a sponge
that was soaked in blood over all the past of the
nations she subdued. She came to obliterate, never
to preserve. Her chroniclers disdained to ask how
these or those doughty antagonists had grown
formidable, how their national life had developed ;
whether their progress had been arrested by the
AND HER HISTORIAN. 65

conquerors or whether they had become weak and
enervated by social deterioration or moral corrup-
tion. Enough that they were Barbarians.

The science of history can be but little advanced
by writers such as these, who pass from battlefield
to battlefield—

*Crimson-footed, like the stork,
Through great ruts of slaughter,”
and to whom the silent growth of institutions and
the evolution of ethical sentiments and the develop-
ment of the arts of peace were matters which never
presented themselves as worthy of their attention.
You may call this History if you will, in truth it is
little better than Empiricism. The world is a larger
world than Rome or Athens dreamt of, and students
of history are beginning to realise that not quite the
last thing they have to do is “to look at home.’
Such a work as the “Chronica Majora” of Matthew
Paris is a national heritage which it is shameful to
allow much longer to be known only by the curious
and erudite. Now that there is no excuse for our
neglect, is it too much to hope that the day may not
be far distant when the name of this great English-
man may become as familiar to schoolboys as that of
Sallust or Livy, of Cornelius Nepos or Casar—
his name as familiar, and his writings better known
and more loved ?
6
II.

BURY ST. EDMUNDS.

— ee

FROM CENTURY TO CENTURY AT ST. EDMUND'S
ABBEY.*

WE are assembled this afternoon on the spot where
for several hundreds of years the daily life of one of
the great English monasteries was carried on.
Behind me and to my right rose one of the most
magnificent churches in the world. All round us—
east, west, north, south—there are still the stupen-
dous ruins of an institution which was slain 350 years
ago after a chequered life of nearly nine centuries.
It was in the 7th century that Felix the Bur-

* An address delivered in the cloisters at Bury St. Edmunds
on Friday, July 25, 1884.
66
BURY ST. EDMUNDS. 67

gundian came to help the men of faith and prayer
who were trying hard to bring the pagans of East
Anglia from darkness to light and from the power of
Satan to God. Sigebert, whom men called the
learned, was King of East Anglia at that time, and
he gave the foreigner so glad a welcome and such a
hearty co-operation that Felix became the chief
power in the land, and before he grew very old,
people from beyond the sea had begun to talk of his
wonderful success and to think of him as a new
apostle who had some strange secret for winning
souls. -Among others three Irishmen came to visit
Felix, of whom Fursey was chief, and they offered
themselves as labourers in the good cause if Felix
would but tell them where they must settle and toil.
In those days missionaries of the faith of Christ had
an entirely different way of setting to work from that
which prevails now. We think the only way to
make heathen people receive the Gospel is to preach
sermons, and to be perpetually arguing and speechi-
fying. We are profoundly convinced that if you can
only talk long enough you must win a man over to
your way of thinking. In the days of Fursey and
Felix—+.e., more than twelve hundred years ago—
the leaders of thought and opinion did not believe
in talking; they did believe in being and living!
Their view of the wants of the age was—“ Ours, at
68 BURY ST. EDMUNDS.

any rate—

“is not the time
For stringing words with satisfaction ;
* What’s wanted now’s the silent rhyme
’Twixt upright will and downright action.”

So Felix said to Fursey’s company :—

“ Go to Bedericsworth, and show people what the
Gospel is. Be Christians. Win over the heathen
to the Gospel by the lives you lead and the example
you show.”

Where we are standing now was Bedericsworth in
the old time ; and here those men settled—men who
were doers and livers, not talkers and preachers; and
they ran up half-a-dozen beggarly hovels, and they —
somehow built something like a church, rudely con-
structed of the trees that were growing hereabouts;
and they set to work to teach the heathen how to gain
a livelihood by tilling the soil and using the streams
to turn the mill which ground the corn; and they
cleared the scrub and stubbed up the old roots; and
whereas everybody else was hunting and fishing and
quarrelling and fighting, they were men of peace, and,
strangest ofall, men of prayer. “‘ What’s the meaning
of it all?” said the heathen people. “ Let’s try and
find out the secret of the strange men; hearken, you
Fullan and Ultan, or whatever your odd names are.
How do you manage it all? How is it you don’t
BURY ST. EDMUNDS. 69

seem to be afraid of us, and don’t want to hurt us
or cheat us? Nay, not such bad fellows neither.
We can hardly resist the conviction that you are
really good fellows, and don’t want to make anything
out of us—positively nothing. What’s your secret
—speak!” That little band had only one secret, it
was an open secret—Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
They pointed to the cross and the Lord that hung on
it. The secret? There!

These first colonisers were the first monks of
Bury, and King Sigebert joined them—became one
of them. These monks kept up a devout life
here, and there is good reason to believe they pros-
pered, and that for two hundred years or so they
were the quiet teachers and educators of the rude
Suffolk people, doing good work without much show
or profession till the terrible Danes came and settled
in East Anglia. The Danes had been dropping in
upon the Norfolk and Suffolk coast for many years
before; but it was not till 867 that they made any
settlement here; that year they passed their first
winter among us. Edmund, whom men call St.
Edmund, was the King of East Anglia at that time.
It may be that the monks of Bedericsworth had taught
him. He was certainly a Christian; as a Christian
he took up arms against the Danish marauders,
fought a battle somewhere hereabouts, was beaten
7O BURY ST. EDMUNDS.

and slaughtered, as I need not tell. The Danes
were furiously set against the Christians. I think
that the death of St. Edmund points to the fact. that
his war with the Northern pirates was to some extent
a religious war, and that when the Danes gained
the day they set to work to put down all the strong-
holds of the Christian religion in the land. It is not
unlikely that during the two hundred years that had
passed since King Sigebert’s days, Bedericsworth
had grown to be a place of note in the little kingdom,
and that the monastery on this very spot had become
a place capable of defence, as so many monasteries
were in the rude times. But the Danes carried all
before them; they stormed one religious house after
another, slew the monks, burnt the houses and
reduced the churches to ruins. This was the first
suppression of the monasteries in East Anglia.

For the next hundred years the spot on which we
stand must have presented on a.small scale pretty
much the same appearance that it does now on a
large scale—z.e., the ground must have been strewn
with ruins—ruins incomparably less imposing, how-
ever, and less extensive than these. Then it would
appear that there was a revival of the ascetic spirit
and a revival of the desire to live the higher life in
communities. And, accordingly, at the beginning
of the rith century some well-meaning clergy
BURY ST. EDMUNDS. 71

bound themselves together by solemn. engagements
to govern their daily lives by a certain rule, and to
submit te the discipline of that rule in all things
that the rule prescribed. The Greek word for rule is
canon; and these good men, because they lived by
their rule, got to be called Canonicz, or men of rules;
and gradually the word Canonici got changed into
the more common everyday word of Canon. These
Canons somehow got back to the old buildings here,
but the Canons took to themselves wives, and hence
houses rose up and babies and children playing about
the ruins and toddling between the canonical and
paternal legs as the devout Canons went to worship
the Almighty Father and the Virgin Mother, and the
adorable Son, in the church that had been patched
up, restored, roofed over, and beautified once more.
These Canons lived almost exactly as the Canons of
Ely and Norwich do in the cathedral closes at this
moment. Perhaps not quite as comfortably, not
quite ds grandly ; but live as they might, they were
fathers of families, and the old awe and halo that
surrounded the monastery—when all the inmates
were unmarried, and as it were lifted up into a region
where the cares and troubles of family life were
unknown—+that had somehow faded, almost vanished.
No man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre, and no man
is‘a monk with a wife and children.
72 BURY ST. EDMUNDS.

Moreover, the feeling of the times was against
clergymen being married; but most strongly and in-
creasingly was the feeling of the times against Canons
being married. “Men of rule ?”’—people thought ;
“Nay! Nay! Nay! You’ll never make us believe that
men will keep rules and live by rules when they
have wives ; the wives would have a word to say in
that matter!” It ended by the Canons being turned
out. They were voted a sham and pretence: they
had no business here. They hadto go! The great
King Cnut was ruler of England now; yes, and
Master of Scotland, and of Norway and Denmark
too. King Cnut favoured monks—he by no means
believed in the half-and-half gentlemen, the married
Canons, neither fish nor flesh, under petticoat -
government. King Cnut had founded the great
Abbey of St. Benet’s Hulm in the stagnant
swamps—dreary, cold, damp, and aguish among the
Norfolk Broads. The very horribleness of the place
—lonely and dismal now, worse than lonely and
dismal then—instead of repelling men of faith and
prayer, attracted them. Let me again remind you
that the raison d’étre of the monk was not teaching
and preaching, but living. They were to show forth
the Lord’s life. Preaching the Lord’s truth—that
they left to others; it was not their main object, it
was not what they had to do; they had to live the
BURY ST. EDMUNDS. 73

Gospel according to their light, according to the rule
laid down for them by their founder.

The Abbey of St. Benet’s filled at a suprising
rate. King Cnut gave the word. The Canons of
Bury St. Edmund’s were ejected, and a colony of
twelve monks from St. Benet’s took their places ;
and here they settled nearly a century and a half
after the first suppression of the monasteries, a
Danish king having been the instrument for restor-
ing the conventual life to the same spot from whence
his Danish predecessors had driven the monks out
and made havoc of them six or seven generations
before. Thus the Abbey of St. Edmunad’s sprang
into being, renewed its life, or began a second life,
the monks being associated under the rule of St.
Benedict, and living here in common with large
endowments to support them, and planted in this
spot with this mission before them, to set forth by
their daily and hourly life an example of Christian
devotion, sobriety, and self-denial, and helped thereto,
so far as human sagacity, wisdom, and foresight
could be of any avail, by being subject to a code of
Jaws and a system of discipline which would have
kept them from the power of evil and out of the
reach of temptation if—oh! those i/s—if only men
were docile as little children without passions and
vices bred in the bone and therefore sure to come out
74 BURY ST. EDMUNDS.

in the flesh; if—if—if those well-intentioned and,
let us hope, earnest and sincere enthusiasts had zot
been flesh and blood—had not been in fact—men.
But leaving this, let us come back to the fact that
it was King Cnut, the sovereign of England, Norway,
and Denmark, who was the founder of this great
Abbey of St. Edmund half a century before the
Norman Conquest, and that it was he who settled
monks once more in the old spot after the first sup-
pression of the monasteries in East Anglia. But
when the abbey made a new start the monks who
came here were an improvement upon those who
had formerly been driven out. These new men
lived under a new and improved rule of discipline,
and that rule was the rule of St. Benedict. This is
not the time or place for saying much upon the sub-
ject of the monastic rules. It is a difficult subject,
and one which though interesting and instructive I
must needs pass by on this occasion. Only this
must be borne in mind: that the Benedictine monks
were like their predecessors united in a corporation,
with the professed object of displaying to the world
an example of a simpler, more pure, more self-deny-
ing, and more devout life than it was supposed
possible to lead whilst men were buying and selling,
and scheming, and intriguing, and fighting, and riot-
ing in the market, and the shop, and the camp, and
BURY ST, EDMUNDS. 75

while they were thinking only of bringing up their
families and winning honours and hoarding money
to leave behind them. These monks I doubt not
began well, their daily life was passed in this spot.
Here was their cloister.

The cloister was a quadrangle, vege outer walls
you may easily trace from where we are now stand-
ing. It is pretty certain that at no very great
expense the rubbish and débris might be easily
removed, and the old walks of the cloister be laid
bare; and, if it were, this spot would be made at
once incomparably more impressive and incom-
parably more beautiful than it is. You will find
that from ten to twelve feet inside the outer wall ran
an arcade, the walls of which were some feet lower
than the outside wall of the cloister, and between
those two walls stretched a roof that covered the
space between. This arcade in King Cnut’s days
was open to the air, but long before the last great
spoliation of the religious houses, it had been glazed
throughout, and almost certainly glazed with the
most glorious stained-glass windows. The four sides
of this arcade, or cloister, were used for different
purposes. In one of the walks the school was held,
and I think it very probable that if such removal of
the rubbish as I have hinted at were made, you
would. find here, as you may see at Westminster
76 BURY ST. EDMUNDS.

Abbey and at Norwich, not only the stone cupboards,
in which the school books were kept, but the marks
of the bays’ games actually remaining on the stone
benches and the pavement. Yes! it is quite certain
that little boys in the monastery schools played at
marbles, and were in the habit of working holes into
the solid stone when the monks’ backs were turned,
and leaving their marks behind them. The square
spacein the middle was called the garth; it was usually
a grass plot open to the air, and I think it probable
that you would find the remains of a fountain there,
or at any rate, of a large well. And there is some
reason to believe that here, at times, a peacock
might be seen and heard, or other tame birds were
kept, and storks and ravens would come and perch
and peer, looking serious and thoughtful.

Here, as I have said, pacing round the cloister,
living their life in it, the monks pursued their avoca-
tions — studied, taught, mused, and sometimes
quarrelled. Behind us there rose the church; in
King Cnut’s days a very different structure from that
the ruins of which still remain—looking so gaunt
and dreary. When that church stood up in its glory
it was 100 ft. longer than Norwich Cathedral, 2oft.
shorter than York, and only 9g ft. short of Canterbury.
For ages kings had been its nursing fathers and
queens its nursing mothers. In splendour and
BURY ST. EDMUNDS. 77

renown it was not only the glory of East Anglia,
and her boast and pride, but one of the wonders of
England. Nay, one of the wonders of the world.
Excavation there too would be pretty sure to result
in some surprising discoveries. I use that word
advisedly. It would be easy, for instance—to go no
farther—to lay open the old crypt under the shrine
of St. Edmund, which probably remains very little
damaged. I think it probable that that crypt would
be found intact at the present hour, and that it would
be a mere question of the cost of spade labour to
determine how much the whole expense of such an
experiment would amount to.

I dare not take up your time by pointing out the
site of the various buildings of the monastery. It
must suffice if I notice one or two of them very
slightly. I must, however, draw your attention to
the fact that the position of the conventual buildings
at St. Edmund’s Abbey is abnormal. The cloister
and the other ordinary and indispensable monastic
buildings that were clustered round it are, as a rule,
to be found to the south of the church—i.e., exposed
as much as possible to the sun. Here they are as
you see to the north, and they must have been very
cold, dark, and cheerless. Why they were so placed
in this instance I am unable to explain. But I think
the theory of Mr. Gordon Hills, alluded to in Mr.
78 BURY ST. EDMUNDS.

Morant’s paper, does not afford a satisfactory expla-
nation in this instance. I say, I think, for it is
possible that a more careful examination of the facts
than I have been able to bestow, as yet, might con-
vert me. There-was sure to be some good reason
for departing from the usual practice, and the lie of
the land, or the course of the streams, or some other
cause may be found to explain the fact. A local
antiquary, who is familiar with the site and whose
eye has had the requisite training, would probably
be able to make it all clear to us.

There were two entries from the cloister to the
church, one to my right, the other to my left.
Parallel with the church, abutting on the north wall
of the cloister, and of the same length with it, rose
the refectory, or great dining-hall. Yonder to my right
stood the Chapter-house, in which the whole convent
met every morning to talk over their plans for the day
that was coming, and to discuss questions of business
that were always calling for attention. At right
angles with the refectory, and probably built over an
undercroft or vaulted storehouse, was the dormitory
or common bedchamber of the monks, of the stone
staircase communicating with which I think you
would find fragments hard by the north-east angle
of the cloister and abutting on the outer wall of the
Chapter-house.

% * * x *
BURY ST. EDMUNDS. 79

Fifty years after King Cnut’s days came the
Norman Conquest, by which, from all that appears,
the abbey gained rather than lost—gained in wealth
and power, I mean—whether it gained in anything
else, whether the dwellers in these walls, abbot and
monks, were better or worse than King Cnut’s earlier
Benedictines is quite another question. One thing
is certain that about one hundred and fifty years
after the Conquest the Abbey of St. Edmund’s was in
a very bad way indeed. The convent was horribly
in debt, and not only in debt but something very like
absolutely insolvent. There had been a great deal
of gross mismanagement on the part of incompetent
abbots and other officials, who were bad men of
business ; and that process which the moderns call
‘flying kites ’’—getting advances at a usurious rate
of interest—had been carried on to an extent which
it is hideous to read of. The money-lenders in those
days all over England were the Jews, and the
Jews had got such a hold upon the estates of
the abbey, and its rents were so heavily mort-
gaged that they had actually entered- upon the
monastic buildings and taken possession, and were
actually living there with their wives and children.
The monks being, it is to be supposed, almost in a
state of siege, kept within the four. walls of this
cloister and the church, the Jews frolicking about
80 BURY ST. EDMUNDS.

among the gardens and the buildings yonder; little
Jew boys, with hooky noses, crying to my Lord
Abbot, ‘Go up, thou baldhead!” and little Jew
girls, with the dark, inscrutable eyes, peeping round
the corner at the prior, consumed with vexation,
anxiety, and shame—peeping at him, giggling, and
running away with a scream of scorn. What would
have come to pass if, in the providence of God, a
great man had not been raised up in the person of
Abbot Sampson it is very hard to say, for instances
are not uncommon of a religious house getting
deeply into debt and being actually compelled to
sell up its property and vanish from the face of the
earth. If there had been no Abbot Sampson or no
one like him at that very critical time the subsequent
history of this great house would have been very
different from what it really was.

Abbot Sampson, who ruled over St. Edmund’s
Abbey for thirty-three years, was one of earth’s
great ones in an evil time. He came to the rescue
of his house, and managed its affairs so well that
the Jews were speedily sent to the rightabout. I
earnestly hope he was in no way answerable for the
savage massacre of fifty-seven of them on the 23rd
of March, 11go, in the streets of Bury by some
furious and bloodthirsty ruffans who called them-
selves Crusaders. I hope he and his monks were
BURY ST. EDMUNDS. &r

ashamed and horrified at that wicked slaughter. I
hope it was before that that the abbey was swept
clean of Jews, debts paid, rents recovered, discipline
restored, abuses removed ; certainly from this time
it went on prospering hugely. If you would learn
more about Abbot Sampson and his doings read the
first half of Carlyle’s Past and Present, which contains
passages of extraordinary force and pictures of the
life of the time which will repay some hours of
study ; though if you can manage to get through the
rhodomontade of the latter half of the book you will
achieve more than some of us have been able to
accomplish.

Abbot Sampson died in 1212. He did not live to
take part in the anxious struggles which ended with
the signing of Magna Charta. I forbear to dwell
upon that and upon the meeting of the Barons on
the other side of the wall there when the Charter of
Henry I. was produced, and they swore to stand by
one another in defence of their rights and liberties.
Twenty years after Abbot Sampson’s death the
preaching friars tried to settle in Bury. In fact they
did settle there and remained for years; they had to
go at last, however; but that is too long a story to
tell. In 1257 there were fearful floods hereabouts,
and after the floods a famine and then a pestilence,
and more than two thousand poor creatures died at

7
82 BURY ST. EDMUNDS.

Bury in the year and were buried in the cemetery
yonder. Six years after this when there was war
between, the Barons and Henry III., Simon, Bishop
of Norwich, who had taken the wrong side, had to
flee for his life, and found refuge here from the anger
of the Baronage, and three years later the party of
the Disinherited turned this abbey into a stronghold,
and it was the last great fortress that held out
against the Royal arms. For this the abbey was
heavily fined, and the townsmen outside suffered
only a less severe impost. Five years later, in
August, 1272, Henry III. died within these walls.
Twenty-four years afterwards—viz., on the 1st of
March, 1296—Edward IL, on his return from Scot-
land, held a Parliament here. The Barons and
Burghers voted a subsidy. The clergy, under the
advice of Archbishop Winchelsey, refused to con-
tribute anything. It was one of the minor crises
in English history, on the significance and the
consequences of which I may not dwell.

‘Pass over another thirty years and we come upon
another crisis. Queen Isabella, the consort of Edward
II., and mother of Edward III., landed at Harwich on
the 24th of September, 1326, with a force of foreign
mercenaries, with the avowed purpose of thrusting
her husband from the throne. She, her army, and
her supporters rested here for a while—the abbey
BURY ST. EDMUNDS. 83

doubtless being thronged by the great ones, the ©
town swarming with the rank and file of that
invading force, which carried all before it. It was
a time of bad government, almost of universal
anarchy. The townsmen of Bury outside had
been getting more and more powerful, the religious
houses had not been growing more popular. I
doubt whether the townsmen were only the
oppressed, aggrieved, and plundered people whom
Mr. Green represents them to have  been.!
They had got to feel their strength, and at Bury
they had just had a very impressive lesson in the
arts of revolt, and seen the example which the
Queen and her paramour had given them. When
queens and nobles threw off the yoke and robbed
people of their lands and possessions, pillaged, and
slew in defiance of law, why should not we, the
middle-class townsmen, do the same? Rebellion was
“in the air,” so the townsmen of Bury rebelled against
the Lord Abbot. The mob looted the place; they
robbed and burnt and destroyed, and one curious and
very significant incident in the affair deserves to be
specially noted—viz., that among the leaders of the
riotous multitude there were country parsons not a
few. Why is that so significant ?

™ See “Stray Studies from England and Italy,” by J. R.
‘Green, p. 196. Macmillan, 1892.
84 BURY ST. EDMUNDS.

1. Because it reminds us that there was not then,
and never was before or since, any cordiality between
the country parsons and the religious orders. There
never was a time when the monks did not treat the
country parsons with just the sort of supercilious
condescension which Fellows of colleges showed
towards them a few years ago and still continue to
show in our own days. Until a man has got rid of
the delusion that monks built parish churches and
served them and were working clergy, he will never
be able to understand English history.

2. This incident shows that at this time the
country parsons were the people’s friends and
natural leaders. Said the poor rustics to the
parson, ‘‘ You have been wronged as well as we.
The abbey has robbed your tithes and appropriated
them, and spends them for its own glorification.
You have cause for quarrel, so have we. Put
yourself at our head. If thou wilt go with us we
will go, and if thou wilt not go with us we will not
go.” Said the parsons, “ We will go;” and they
went !

3. It shows us how by this time the monasteries
had already lost a great deal of their old religious
character, they were regarded now as governed by
a Lord Abbot; and there was more of the lord
than anything else; while in the course of time the
BURY ST. EDMUNDS. 85

convent had come to be regarded as little more than
a corporation that held lands in every parish and
had powers without limit. The secular duties, the
business relations that brought the monks face to
face with the people, had come more and more into
prominence ; the religious character of the institu-
tion and of its members had faded.

All this comes out more and more strikingly as
time goeson. The great agrarian revolt of 1381 burst
upon this abbey with tremendous force. The leader in
Suffolk was one John Wrawe, whom you must please
not to confound with Jack Stvawe. One of the chief
victims of the violence of the rebels was the Prior of
St. Edmund’s Abbey. That is an ugly story, but it
has two sides to it, and now must be passed over
very lightly. Twelve years after that tragedy there
came again great storms and floods upon the eastern
counties, and in October, 1393, so great a deluge
visited these parts that the water rose even to the
level of where we are now standing, and the church
was flooded from end toend....

And now I must make a leap over the intervening
period, about which perhaps it is as well that not
too much should be inquired. Looking round about
us to-day and seeing as far as the eye can reach
traces of ancient grandeur, the handiwork of a
mighty corporation, which, on the whole, exercised
86 BURY ST. EDMUNDS.

an influence at once elevating and beneficent—in
our sentimental moods we are inclined to indulge
in idle*regrets and more idle longings for the days
that were. The final catastrophe which came so
suddenly at last was attended with unexampled out-
tages and unexampled injustice and wrong. There
was nothing wanting to make the cup of bitterness
as bitter as it could be made. But the catastrophe
was inevitable. Like one of those enormous trees
which you may see in a primeval forest, this great
abbey had been spreading forth its branches far and
wide, not helping other things to grow, but keeping
them down. It overshadowed the land. It had
thrust its roots so deep into the ground of things
that it was living at the expense of the life of
every other institution with which it came into
relation. Nay, it had become a brainless, heartless
organism—there was no speculation in its eyes, the
soul of it was gone.

And yet when the axe was laid to the root of the
tree it had never looked more magnificent. Leland
the antiquary saw St. Edmund’s Abbey in its
splendour only a very short time before it ceased to
be—it was a vision to awe a man, almost to over-
whelm him. ‘“‘ The sun hath not shone on a goodlier
abbey,” he says, ‘‘ whether a man indifferently con-
sider either the endowment with revenues, or the
BURY ST. EDMUNDS. 87

largeness or the incomparable magnificence thereof.
He that saw it would say, verily it was a city, so
many gates there are in it, and some of brass, and
so many towers, and a most stately church, upon
which attend three others also, standing gloriously
in one and the same churchyard, all of passing fine
and curious workmanship.” And yet it was the glory
and the splendour of art, not of life. Leland saw
eighty stalls in that astonishing choir—eighty stalls
in which none but monks might take their seats.
Not fifty of them were filled. When the Act of
Parliament was passéd for dissolving the monasteries
there were only sixty-two monks here all told, and
only forty-nine signed the surrender of the estates to
the King. But how different these monks were from
the devotees who had settled here in the waste lands
centuries before! They were men of prayer, or they
were nothing. They could leave to posterity their
churches and lands and buildings; they could not
leave their spirit to those that came after. The
later monks kept fifteen chaplains—note that !—to
perform the daily services for them by deputy, and
they kept forty or fifty clergymen to officiate in the
churches and chapels outside and to do the routine
work which could be done by any one, and did not
require so important a person as a professed monk
of St. Edmund’s Abbey to trouble himself with.
88 BURY ST. EDMUNDS.

The monk was a dead man, because he had ceased
to have any duties. The despised country. parson
survived and still lives on, and will live on because
he is not a mere useless burden upon God’s earth !
And so this place was doomed. All the splendour
and the pomp has passed away; the treasures and
the jewels and the gold were scrambled for by
ruffians, wasted upon debauchery and riot. It could
not be helped, perhaps. Earthquakes have their
use, and hurricanes do some work in the economy
of nature, and the eruption of the volcano casts up
the dust of continents to be. And so it is in the
other world—the social world, if I may so call it—
where the strata are for ever subject to pressure, sub-
sidence, upheaval, ceaseless change. There, too, the
old order is for ever changing. It may bethat some
of us would like just for one hour to find ourselves
back in the prehistoric time—say among the men
of the drift chipping at their flint weapons, clicking
in their rudimentary language, sucking the marrow
from the bones of elks and bears—or for one hour to
watch the monstrous saurians crawling with enor-
mous bulk among the gigantic reeds and sedge; and
see the mastodons floundering, munching, wallowing
yonder, where the tiny Linnet trickles now ; or catch
a sight for one hour of Nature in her giant forms.
But no! We cannot put back the clock, which will
BURY ST. EDMUNDS. 89

move on. Dragons of the prime that tare each other
in their slime, were dragons after all. Magnificent,
awful, but still dragons. The past is gone. It has
left us some things to regret, some things we would
fain recover, if so it might be—some things for the
which we think we should be the better if we could
have them now; but the great law of progress, with
its irresistible force, pushes us onwards, admits of
no loitering, forbids all going back. Better surrender
ourselves consciously and reverently to the necessity
that is laid upon us; and instead of lamenting the
past on the one hand, or ignorantly declaiming
against it as nothing worth on the other, better try
to use such light as it may have to give us, and walk
by that light as wisely as we may :—

“ Dead and gone is the old world’s ideal,
Theold arts and old religions fled ;
But I gladly live amid the real,
, And I seek a worthier ideal—
Courage, brothers—-God is overhead !’
III.

ON THE EDGE OF THE NORFOLK
HOLY LAND.

Tue river Nar, or Setchy, takes its rise in the parish
of Litcham, and pursuing a somewhat tortuous
course of about thirty miles, finds its way at last
into the Ouse at Lynn. It is probable that during
that remote period when the vast earthworks which
astonish the visitor at Castleacre were first under-
taken, the little river was navigable for galleys or
barges of small draught of water, and probable, too,
that the stone of the medizval castle and of the
glorious priory, whose ruins still bear witness to its
former importance, may have been brought up the
river from some distant Lincolnshire quarry without
the necessity of any land carriage to increase the
labour and the cost. Even in comparatively modern

times the Nar was navigable as far as Narborough,
go
THE NORFOLK HOLY LAND. or

where in our days the church stands just fifty feet
above the level of the sea, from which as the crow
flies it is scarcely ten miles distant, though the
sluggish stream winds for nearly twice ten miles
before it loses itself in the salt water.

Fed by three streamlets which, in their ordinary
course, trickle lazily down from the high ground of
East Walton on the north, and confined on the south
by what we in Norfolk may venture courteously to
call the table-land of Tottenhill, Shouldham, and
Marham, the valley of the Nar from Narborough
to Lynn must have been for ages a desolate swamp
liable to be inundated for months at a time, and
in the condition in which the Norfolk broads are at
this moment, except that the enormous flocks of
birds that frequented the lonely meres were then
undisturbed by human creatures who love to be
noisy slaughterers of all that can ‘fly above the
earth in the open firmament of heaven.” At the
edge of this forbidding region as time went on men
settled, and made their habitations. It seems that
when the Norsemen came and found homes among
us, the valley of the Nar fell almost entirely into the
hands of powerful Danish magnates—Hacon the
Dane was the great man at Pentney, Turkil at
Shouldham, Turketil—if he were not identical with
the other—at Wormegay and Tottenhill, while
92 ON THE EDGE OF

Marham had come to be a possession of the great
religious house of Ely, having not improbably been
bestowed.upon that monastery by King Cnut him-
self. But their manors or townships all lay at the
edge of the vast swamp that filled the valley of the
Nar. Sometimes the marshes were valuable for
cattle to lie on; sometimes the stagnant morasses
were very productive of eels, or great pike were
speared, or the plovers’ nests were rifled for their
eggs, or the wild ducks coming in flocks found the
tall reeds a treacherous resting-place, when the craft
of man was set at work to satisfy the cravings of his
maw. But in the main the valley was waste land,
and the villages, or towns, as they called them, lay
away from the low swamp. On the heights beyond
these the people were gathered, and tilled the soil,
and lived as tillers of the soil were wont to live,
and as they are likely to live to the end of the
world. When the Norman Conquest came the
people in this district were as weli off perhaps as
other people were in the rural districts, and as far
as church accommodation goes they were a great
deal better off than they are now. ‘The churches at
Wormegay, Tottenhill, and Pentney are mentioned
in the great survey. Pentney had thirty acres of
glebe, and at Shouldham there were actually two
churches with seventy-three acres of glebe between
THE NORFOLK HOLY LAND. 93

them. The church at Marham is not noticed, but
there almost certainly was one there too. In every
single instance these churches have been, if not dises-
tablished, yet long since disendowed. Thereby hangs
a tale, which this is not the time or place to tell.

Without being at all able to prove it, and
without having intention on the present occasion
of giving the reasons for saying so, I yet must
express my suspicion that the Norman Conquest
and the expulsion of the Danish landowners from
their estates and the handing over of the said
estates to the Conqueror’s followers, acted very
disastrously in this district, socially, economically,
and religiously. I suspect that the villages were
to a very great extent deserted—the land untilled,
the clergy starved out, the churches sorely decayed.
I suspect that things went from bad to worse, and
that they got to their very worst when Stephen was
called King. Nevertheless it is certain that in little
more than a century after the death of the Con-
queror—.¢., in less time than has passed since the
accession of George III.; in less time than has
passed since some of our grandfathers were born—
the valley of the Nar had become the Holy Land
of Norfolk.

Let me explain what I mean by calling this
district a Holy Land. I mean that following the
94 ON THE EDGE OF

course of the Nar downwards, through all its
windings for some twenty-five or thirty miles from
Castleacre, there were at least nine religious
houses, no one of which was five miles distant
from the stream—houses, every one of which was
characterised by extensive buildings of more or less
splendour and magnificence, and occupied by societies
of men or women living in communities which were
governed according to a certain rule or constitution
prescribing to the several members of the com-
munity the minutest rules of conduct and the most
searching details of discipline for every day and
every hour of their lives; rules which the several
members bound themselves by the most solemn
engagements to observe, without subterfuge, with-
out murmur, to their dying day. The professed
object aimed at by these societies and believed to be
facilitated by the discipline they were pledged to
submit to, was the attainment of a higher ideal
of duty, a more devout and aspiring habit of mind,
and a loftier, purer, and nobler life than was sup-
posed to be at all possible while men were breathing
the atmosphere of coarseness and violence and
covetousness and passion, with which the work-day
world and all worldly society was assumed to be
saturated.

The belief that the world could never be really
THE NORFOLK HOLY LAND. 95

reformed, and that if a man or woman wished to
live a virtuous, holy life there was no other way
of doing so than by retiring from that world and
sheltering himself or herself from all contact with
it, I have little to say in excuse of. But it is
undeniable that such a belief had obtained a pro-
found hold of people’s minds in the iz1th and
I2th centuries, and that through the length and
breadth of England that belief produced a profound
impression upon our forefathers and led to such
prodigious sacrifices on the part of the rich and
powerful, as very materially to affect the history
of this country.

At the time of the Conquest—speaking without
any attempt at precise accuracy on a subject of
some obscurity—there may be said to have been
only two classes of religious houses—(1) those which
were tenanted by Benedictine monks living under
the rule of St. Benedict, and (2) those which were
occupied by Regular Canons, whose rule was
much less strict and severe than the other. Con-
siderable jealousy had long existed between the two
religious bodies. The ‘old connection” of the
Benedictines had suffered of late a serious schism,
and the new connection or Reformed Benedictines
were now represented by the Cluniac monks, for
whom the vast priory of Lewes was founded about
96 ON THE EDGE OF

twenty years after the Conquest, and of this great
priory the Castleacre monastery was a cell. That
is, it was a house affiliated to the mother house,
as a branch of a great commercial house in Bombay
might be connected with the original firm settled
in London. Of the history of Castleacre a great deal
might be discovered by any one having the time
to make a study of its registers, one of which is in
the British Museum. What may be called the
Benedictine of the ‘“‘old connection” was repre-
sented in this district by the nunnery of Black-
borough in the parish of Middleton and by that
alone.

The Regular Canons were represented by the
occupants of the once splendid house of Pentney,
and we have assembled here this morning to attempt
in some small measure to throw ourselves back into
the past and to recall from oblivion some of that
busy and earnest life which for at least three cen-
turies went on hereabouts where we are standing.
‘We have passed through that magnificent gatehouse
which in its desolation and decay still witnesses to
the grandeur of the days gone by. We can still
easily trace the line of the wall which ran from this
gatehouse to the stream which turned the priory
mill; but the monastic buildings, and the splendid
church, and the dwellings of the servants and
THE NORFOLK HOLY LAND. 97

labourers, and the school where the children were
taught, and the cloister in which the Canons’ private
life was passed—these have all perished. The
foundations might be easily laid bare, and the ori-
ginal plan and arrangements of the conventual
buildings be exposed at a trifling expense; but
there is not one stone left upon another and the
harvest has just been garnered from the soil which
300 years ago was covered with such triumphs of
architecture as would put all our nineteenth-century
‘attempts to shame.

Though I cannot act as showman and point out
the site of this building or of that which would give
a certain point and interest to our meeting here, yet
I trust some substitute for such a scrutiny as we
cannot hope to make may be accepted in the shape
of a very brief review of some scenes in the history
of Pentney Priory, which I think will be new to
most of you present. Before I begin, however, let
us take a slight survey of the ground.

Due west of where we stand, and about two miles
off, situated on the edge of what was then a
swamp, the little Priory of Augustinian Canons of
Wormegay was founded about the year 1190 by one
of the Earls of Warenne. It was one of the many
religious houses that started in a very ambitious

way, and early overbuilt themselves. It dragged
8
98 ON THE EDGE OF

on an unsatisfactory existence for some 250 years,
and then, becoming hopelessly insolvent, was
abolished, and its encumbered estates were taken
over by this Priory of Pentney. Three or four miles
further to the west the Nunnery of Crabhouse, in
Wiggenhall St. Mary, was founded about 100 years
after Wormegay. The original site is described as
a “solitary place or desert,” which was given to
the poor women who settled there because it was
worth nobody else’s having. In process of time the
nunnery became a flourishing institution, and in the
15th century Joan de Wiggenhall, being prioress
of the house, caused large sums to be spent upon
the buildings, of which a long and curiously minute
description remains for some ambitious Norfolk
antiquary to transcribe and print for the benefit and
instruction of us all.t

To the south-east yonder, about two miles as
the crow flies, -was the Cistercian Nunnery of
Marham ; and a mile or two to the west of that the
curious Monastery of Shouldham—curious, 7.e., to
Norfolk men, because it was the only house of the
Gilbertine order in East Anglia, and because the
Gilbertine was the only purely English order, and

* Since this address was given it has been transcribed and
contributed, by Miss M. Bateson, to the ninth vol. of the
“ Journal of the Norfolk and Norwich Archzological Society.”
THE NORFOLK HOLY LAND. 99

because its rule had some provisions of a very
peculiar character on which I have not now the
time to dwell. All these four monasteries were
situated on the left bank of the Nar, and all on the
edge of the morass that I have before alluded to,
and all within a radius of six miles of where we are
now standing. To the north-west of us on the right
bank—i.e., on the same side of the river as Pentney
—it seems that some members of the Scales family
had intended to found a Gilbertine house in the
parish of Middleton, possibly during the lifetime.
of St. Gilbert; but the scheme did not succeed, and
in the next generation the intention of the founder
was carried out in a different way by the setting up.
the Benedictine Nunnery of Blackborough, which
flourished exceedingly as time went on and became
eventually one of the richest nunneries in East Anglia.

Let us now return to Pentney. When Hacon the
Dane was evicted from his estates hereabouts by the
Conqueror, those estates were handed over to the
great warrior, Roger Bigot. The Pentney estate
(to use a modern expression) extended as far as
East Walton, and seems to have included all the ©
marshes as far as Narford. It was a considerable
territory, and, Hacon being expelled, Robert de
Vals, as he is called in the survey, or Robert de
Vaux, or Robert de Vallibus, as he has been else-
100 ON THE EDGE OF

where called, was put in his place as sub-tenant to
the great Roger Bigot and his heirs. Robert de
Vaux being, as he was, one of the greatest men in
Norfolk, was an absentee landlord, and being affected
by the then prevalent enthusiasm in favour of the
monastic bodies, made over his Pentney estate for
the founding of this priory towards the end: of
the 11th century or beginning of the 12th; the
Canons were to pray for his soul and the soul of
his wife, Sibilla, and as far as can be made out for the
souls of his son John and /is wife Avelina. But there
seems to have been some little informality in the sur-
render of the property, and it was afterwards alleged
that Robert de Vaux had not obtained from Roger
Bigot a confirmation of his grant, which was there-
fore void.

From this irregularity (if it were well founded) arose
great troubles to the Pentney Canons; and when their
priory had been built with more or less magnificence,
and their church had been duly served, and the value
of the estate enormously increased by their good farm-
ing, and they had become already a power in the
country and a blessing to this neighbourhood; and
Roger Bigot had been dead some years, and Robert de
Vauxand his wife were dead too,and under the nominal
rule of King Stephen all was anarchy and confusion
and robbery; Hugh Bigot, son of Roger, suddenly laid
THE NORFOLK HOLY LAND. 101

claim to the whole Pentney estate, churches and
conventual buildings and houses and lands, and took
forcible possession, and drove the Canons out. The
pretext for this outrage was that the estates had
been forfeited to the overlord for want of his con-
firmation having been obtained, and there is good
reason for believing that William de Vaux, another
son of the founder, who had succeeded to the in-
heritance of his elder brother, was more than a con-
senting party to the attempted robbery—the two
worthies having made an agreement, more or less
precise, to share the plunder which they hoped to
gain. There was little law in England then—little,
very little that deserved the name of law or justice;
the only hope of redress for any one—and that only
was to be had by the clergy, who were a privileged
class—was by an appeal to Rome. The prior of
Pentney at this time was named Geoffrey, and that
is about all I know of him. He seems to have acted
with some decision and promptness, and to have
started at once to lay the matter before the Pope’s
Court, the great court of appeal for all Europe at
this time. The case must have come on for hearing
about 1155, and when Adrian IV., the only English-
man who ever held the Papacy, presided over the
Roman see, and it was decided in favour of the Prior
and Convent of Pentney.
102 ON 7HE EDGE OF

It was one thing, however, in those days for an
injured party to get a verdict in his favour, and
quite another for him to get possession of his
property. Hugh Bigot and William de Vaux defied
the Pope and the Canons, and seem to have kept
possession of Pentney and its belongings for at least
ten or a dozen years, and if it had not been for the
iron will and irresistible pertinacity of Thomas a
Becket they never would have recovered their hold
on the monastery and its possessions which they
clung to so long.

Matters, however, came to a crisis a little before
Becket’s murder by the boldness of William Turbe,
Bishop of Norwich, in publicly excommunicating
the two lordly robbers in the cathedral; and
this, followed as it was by the scare that ensued
upon Becket’s murder, brought the two worthies
to their senses. The lands and buildings were
restored, the Canons, reduced to six in number
with their prior, were reinstated in their monastery,
and, rendering good for evil, they offered up prayers
day by day for the souls of the founder Robert and
‘his wife, and that founder’s son, John de Vaux, and
the Lady Avelina ; but whether they also forgave the
‘evil-minded William de Vaux and prayed for him
and his Iam unable to say. After this it is to be
presumed that the Canons of Pentney and their
THE NORFOLK HOLY LAND. 103

successors for many generations went on in a quiet
and inoffensive way adding to the grandeur of their
monastery and the splendour of their church, and
farming their lands and keeping their school and
being considerable personages in the neighbourhood.

One by one other religious houses rose up around
them—those, viz., that I have named before—the
parish parsons were fleeced systematically, and in
the place of the old rectors succeeded the late
vicars, with just enough stipend to keep body and
soul together; and unless there had been such
things as Easter offerings, and free-will offerings,
and fees for masses and burials and the like, the
poor human sheep of the wilderness would have
-been in a sorry plight, for a monastery seldom ac-
knowledged any duty in the shape of a cure of souls.

There is nevertheless strong proof that the Canons
of Pentney through their whole history retained
the confidence and esteem of the district round.
This evidence is twofold. The indirect evidence is
that which is afforded by the continual and un-
interrupted flow of small benefactions which came
to.them for three hundred years. This may. be
traced pretty well in the list of. benefactors to be
found in Blomefield and in Taylor’s“ Index Monasti-
cus,” and it might be traced much more minutely and
much more satisfactorily if the present possessor of
104 ON THE EDGE OF

the Cartulary, which the editors of the ‘‘ Monasticon”
were permitted to use and extract from in 1830,
could be induced to make it available for research
now. Unhappily that Cartulary is no longer
accessible to the student. When we come to the
direct evidence of the character borne by the
Pentney Canons as time went on, it must be
premised that we must be thankful for any light
thrown upon such a subject as this, after the clean
sweep that has been made of all documents belong-
ing to the see of Norwich, excepting the Institution
books ;-and on the face of that scandalous oblitera-
tion of the materials of history we can expect but
few and very fragmentary notices of the condition
of the monasteries. Nevertheless, there are some
scraps of information, and in every single case, as
far as they go, they are in favour of this monastery.

Fifty years or so after the affair of Hugh Bigot
and William de Vaux, Archbishop Peckham made
a visitation of a peculiarly strict and searching
character through the religious houses of this
Norwich diocese. Peckham was a most vehement
and uncompromising reformer. He entered the
diocese in the middle of November, 1280, and
made a strict visitation of Wymondham Priory
first ; from Wymondham he went on to Norwich,
taking up his quarters at the Bishop’s residence at
THE NORFOLK HOLY LAND. 105

Thorpe. He found that the nuns of Carrow had
been defrauded; he did them justice and got them
their dues. He came down upon the Priory of
Coxford like a school inspector upon a board school,
and lectured them roundly for their worldliness and
frivolous lives. On January 5, 1281, he visited the
abbey of North Creak, found things going on wrong,
and forthwith compelled the abbot to resign. On
the 8th of January he was at Docking, and an
attempt was made to resist his archiepiscopal
authority. Peckham stamped it down with prompt-
ness, and the revolters were frightened into ob-
sequious silence. On the 15th of January he was at
Castleacre ; there he was on the edge of the Norfolk
Holy Land. Five days were occupied in visiting
the district. Marham Nunnery had only just been
begun, and its foundress was buried there next
year. But with Pentney and the Canons there
no fault could be found. I have no doubt that
the day will come when further evidence will be
forthcoming from sources as yet unsearched, but in
the meantime we must be content to skip over the
period of two centuries till we arrive at 1492, when
Bishop Goldwell made his Visitation of this diocese
—a record of which still remains. It is a most
valuable document, and gives a minute account of
the religious houses in Norfolk and Suffolk in the
106 ON THE EDGE OF

fifteenth century, with the names of all the inmates,
and a great deal else.t At this time Pentney seems
to have been by far the most efficient and flourishing
monastery in Norfolk. There were a Prior: and
seventeen Canons, everything was going on in a most
satisfactory way, the buildings were in an admirable
condition of repair, the school was regularly kept,
and the services were all that they ought to be. I
am sorry to say that at the Priory of Norwich,
where there were forty-five monks, things were not
as they should have been, but with that I have no
present concern. Two more Episcopal Visitations
have come to light since I was fortunate in discover-
ing Bishop Goldwell’s: both of them during the
Episcopate of Bishop Nix, one conducted in 1514,
the other six years after; in 1514 there were only
ten brethren, besides the prior ;. in 1520 eleven. In
1514 the report, though contrasting very favourably
with that which is made elsewhere, yet indicates
that the old prestige had somewhat declined. The
Prior confesses. to having been careless in. his
accounts, and two of. his Canons complain of his
slackness in discipline and especially that they had
had no schoolmaster for. two years past. The abuses

* This visitation of the monasteries in the diocese, together
with some others of a later Bete I edited for the Camden
Society in 1888.
THE NORFOLK HOLY LAND. 107

appear to have been rectified, and at the next Visita-
tion there. are no complaints: all things are going
well. But the monasteries were doomed, and all
over England men seemed to have felt that they
had done their work and were hardly wanted.
Certainly the smaller houses had lost their hold
upon the confidence of the people high and low.
At last the suppression came—that act of tyranny
and outrageous robbery about which one cannot
speak without shame and horror and indignation
that anything so abominable in the way in which it
was carried out should have disgraced the annals oi
this country. Bear with me while I refresh your
memories with a few dates and memoranda.

In October, 1535, Henry VIII. sent round his -
visitors to find out all the evil they could, and to
invent all the abominations they could against the
religious houses. To find out the evil would have
taken a great deal of time and trouble, and might
not have. repaid the inquisitors after all; to invent
enormities which would shock the susceptibilities of
the most unclean and raise a cry among the mob
was a very easy task, for men who were of unclean
lives, of filthy imagination, and blasted character.
The miscreants appealed to their imagination for
their facts, and in three-or four months pretended
to be in a position to report veraciously upon the
108 ON THE EDGE OF

condition of every monastery and upon the private
life and habits of every monk or nun in England.
In less than six months after the common informers
had been sent out, the Act of Parliament was passed
for giving all the smaller houses in the hands of the
King—absolutely, mind, with no conditions.

The next step was to make a survey of the lands
and property of the houses so condemned. As far as
Norfolk was concerned that survey was intrusted to
certain gentlemen of position and character, who
were to draw up an elaborate report of all the
Norfolk monasteries. That report has been printed
in Mr. Rye’s “‘ Norfolk Antiquarian Miscellany,” and
is, I believe, the first of these documents which has
ever passed through the press. The survey was
conducted with great rapidity; the whole matter
was carried through as much as possible by a coup de
main. The Commissioners began their work on the
oth of July, 1536, and finished it about the 28th of
August. The unhappy inmates of the monasteries,
panic-stricken and distracted, had hardly two
months to consider the ruin that was coming upon
them before the thunderbolt fell. There is reason
to believe that the dissolution of the houses followed
immediately upon the drawing up of the survey, and
that one morning there was a large establishment
carried on pretty much in the way that it had gone
THE NORFOLK HOLY LAND. 109

on for centuries, and employing a large number of
people engaged in various forms of labour; and the
next there was a mere empty range of buildings,
stripped to the bare walls, the furniture removed,
the cattle driven off, the servants dismissed with a
month’s wages, and only a single caretaker left
behind, who was responsible for the custody of such
trumpery utensils as had not yet been cleared off.
When the suppression came Robert Codde was
Prior of Pentney. He was a man of some note, and
was brother of Thomas Codde, who was Mayor of
Norwich at the time of Kett’s rebellion. He became
Prior about 1520, and at that time held other prefer-
ment, insomuch that he was compelled to get a
dispensation from the Pope (Clement VII.) for
non-residence and plurality of benefices. It is
evident that Pentney flourished under his rule.
When the imquisitors came they reported that
there were a prior and twelve Canons in residence,
and so high was the character they bore that even
the filthy informers only ventured .to invent lies
against four of them. When the Commissioners
appeared next year three of these twelve had either
died or otherwise disappeared, and the report of
them is that they were “priests of very honest
name, and good religious persons, who do desire
the King’s Highness to continue and remain in
110 ON THE EDGE OF

religion.” -The whole establishment comprehending
the labourers on the land, the household servants, °
the pgor men supported by the alms, and the boys
at the priory school, of whom there were thirty,
numbered eighty-three in all, exclusive, of course,
of the prior. and Canons themselves. On the 15th
of February, 1537, the King’s Commissioners came
down to this house, passed through that gate that
we have passed through to-day, and entered that
great range of buildings of which hardly a trace
remains. They sold every sheep and cow and
horse ; every bench and table; every. bushel of corn ;
every stick of furniture ; every surplice, cope, cloth,
or curtain in the church: they turned every man
and boy out of the place, giving them the most
insignificant and contemptible dole, showed no
mercy, locked the doors, and put in a caretaker.
The Priory of Pentney was dissolved. The prior
survived the -spoliation some fifteen years, and
became a somewhat prominent person in the
diocese. He-received a pension of £24 a year. Of
the Canons I know nothing but their names.

The chief buyer at the sale of: movables was
the Earl of Rutland, and I daresay that at Belvoir
Castle there are many records of this priory wait-
ing for the time and the man to come together,
when we shall be wiser than we are. We shall
THE NORFOLK HOLY LAND. TI

then learn something of the building up of this
remarkable monastery—something of those who
were buried within its walls, something of the life
that its inmates passed—something, but perhaps
not much, Even a very little of such knowledge
would be a gain—a gain upon the blank ignorance,
the thick darkness under which we are lying now.

NOTE ON THE PRIORY OF PENTNEY.

Cal. Dom. Henry VIII. 27° vol. x. p. 22.
Dated 27 March, 1536. Rich. Southwell and Rob. Hogan
-. + to Cromwell.

. We beseech your favour fone the Prior of Pentney, assur-
jae you that he relieves those quarters wondrously where he
dwells, and it would be a pity not to spare a house that feeds so
many indigent poor, which is in a good state, maintains good
service, and does so many charitable deeds. We hear that
great labour will be made unto the king for the same, and large
offers, the rather because fhe house is made new throughout,
and no house in the shire stands so commodiously. If you
will prevent it, your labour will not be without remembrance.
IV.

THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF
ENGLISH TOWNS:

I.

THE great Roman historian, Tacitus, writing about
a hundred years after Christ, lays it down as a
fact, which everybody knew at the time, that the
German people to the north of the Rhine had not
only no cities, but could not endure that one house
should abut directly upon another, or that there
should be raised among themselves streets of houses
and buildings after the Roman fashion. Among
them every man’s house was surrounded by its
own open space or court, and any association based
upon such community of interest as the proximity
of permanent domicile implies, was unknown.

Just’ a century and a half before Tacitus wrote

112
THE ORIGIN OF ENGLISH TOWNS. 113

his Germania, Cesar put together his notes of
what he had learnt about our British forefathers.
Let it be remembered that the inhabitants of
Britain during the century before Christ were
Celts, whose ancestors had developed a civilisation
far in advance of that which the Germans had as
yet arrived at, and had long ago emerged from
the fierce and rugged barbarism which still pre-
vailed among the nomads, huntsmen, and warriors,
who clung to their wandering independence in the
country between the Danube, the Vistula, and the
Rhine. Nevertheless, Czesar expressly tells us that
even the Britons understood by a town (oppidumnt)
only a fortified enclosure, in which the tribe, or
sept, or clan, could find a refuge when war broke
out in its borders, and from which they issued
furth to pasture their herds or till the ground when
the war was over (B. G., v. 21; of. 1. 4). Happily
the researches of the last thirty years have dis-
covered and drawn attention to many remarkable
confirmations of Czsar’s statement. More than
one or two of these early British fortresses have
been examined with their ramparts and ditches
still easily traceable ; which yet proved so little able
to withstand the assault of the Roman invaders,
that there, in their midst, to this very day the
Roman Camp may be seen; while, a foot or two
9
114 _ THE ORIGIN AND GROWIA

below the surface, the. bones and weapons and
money and ornaments of the conquerors and the
conquered lie side by side as they were left eighteen
centuries ago. Vast as was the extent. of these
British enclosures, it admits of proof that they
were not places of residence, but, as Cesar des-
cribes them, were camps of refuge, the defences
kept up in time of peace by the labour of a whole
people, who as yet had little idea of associating
themselves together for any other purpose than
warfare, and had not risen to the conception of
stable institutions and all that they imply. The
most extensive of these ancient inclosures are to
be found in Gloucestershire and Dorset. One of
them, called Maiden Castle, may take rank among
the most stupendous earth-works on the face of
the globe.t

When the Roman Legions advanced in their
irresistible progress from the Eastward and overran
the South and West, they found it necessary in many
instances to occupy the earlier British inclosures,
but they seldom raised there any large camp of
occupation. The Roman- camps in Britain, of
which so many traces remain, in which whole
legions or large bodies of troops were quartered,
which served as depdts, and became the places of

* See ‘“ Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley,” p. 11.
OF ENGLISH TOWNS. 115

residences for the military governors of the sur-
rounding district, were almost always planted on
lower ground and by the side of a river. These
tended to become places of resort for. traders who
settled outside the walls, and they were also the
channels of communication between the conquerors
and the subject people, who gradually acquiesced
in the state of things which they found to be in-
evitable, and gradually gave up their roaming habits
and learned to accommodate themselves to the ways
of civilised life. Thus the Roman occupation
wrought a marked change for the better.

_ The Britons became a peaceful and law-abiding
people; the differences in race, which had tended to
bring about disunion, ceased more and more to operate
in the direction of disintegration. The Castva stativa
developed into the towns of the Romano-British
period—towns which, in many cases, having passed
through some strange vicissitudes, having been
laid waste, destroyed, left desolate, and again
revived, exist at the present day on their old
sites, though their constitution and their corporate
life have undergone important modifications.

It has been said, and said truly, that ‘each of |
the leading cities and towns of England has some |
distinctive character of its,own which parts it off
from all others, and which may almost pass for
116 THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH

its definition.” The English towns fall into groups
or classes, excluding those which have grown up
in quite modern times, and whose rapid progress
and extension are due to the springing up of
industries which the enterprise of the last century
or two have developed. It may be accepted as a
statement of the case not far from the truth if
we say that in order of time the earliest and most
important group of towns with which we are for the
present concerned are those whose civic life can
be traced to Roman times. Nevertheless, it would
be an over-statement to assert that all these towns
were strictly of Roman origin. Town life in
Britain had apparently already begun before the
Romans came. London was clearly a large and
important city, with commerce and trade, in the
century before Christ. Exeter, though a place of
defence, a citadel for the gathering of the tribesmen
on occasion, was something more. Even in those
early days there probably were something like
centres of trade in the Eastern Counties; for the
coins of the Iceni in copper and gold testify to the
existence of a state of civilisation in the first century
of the Christian era (and even anterior to that
period) in which the requirements of commerce
had necessitated a currency. Colchester (Camulo-
dunum) and Old Sarum, there is ground for sus-
OF ENGLISH TOWNS. 117

pecting, were the centres of some ancient tribal
worship; and during the century of peace which
followed the repulse of Julius Caesar, immigrants
from the Continent had built towns at Bath and
Ilchester, not to speak of those others which are
said to have been founded among the Yorkshire
Wolds. But all these early aggregates of popula-
tion inhabiting permanent and contiguous dwellings,
and associated for other objects than defensive war-
fare, became absorbed in the Roman Conquest,
were remodelled as to their local governments, and
were made to submit to such laws and ordinances
as the conquerors chose to impose. They were
all brought under one set of hard and fast rules,
which were rigidly enforced by an external
authority. They had no liberties, no individuality.
The grandest ambition which any of these early
towns could hope to attain was that its citizens
might be admitted to be citizens of Rome by virtue
of their being regarded as “colonies” of the
conquering people. Such an honour was conferred
upon the inhabitants of Cambridge, and Bath, and
Gloucester, and some others of which a list might
be formed.

The Roman occupation of Britain lasted for three
centuries and a half. It began in a.D. 43; it came
to an end in a.p. 410. Before the 4th century
118 THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH

had closed it had become evident that the govern-
ment of the island did not pay its expenses; nay,
that the retention of so distant a province, so far
from being an advantage, was a source of weakness
and a serious drain upon the resources of the
Empire. During all those centuries the Britons
had been: kept down under the heel. of an iron
military despotism. . Rome had indeed defended
them from themselves, from ‘each other, and from
foreign enemies; but it: had been at the expense
of the people’s manliness and self-reliance. Think
what would happen to any people on earth, twenty
successive generations of which had been sternly
forbidden to bear arms in their. own defence!
Suddenly, as it appears, the huge army of Roman
mercenaries was withdrawn, the towns and
fortresses were left ungarrisoned, the legionaries,
who had been the people’s protectors so long, left
the helpless nation to its fate, mocking them with
the dreadful gift of a freedom which meant no more
than the liberty of surrendering themselves to the
domination of new masters. : > 3
From over the sea 'those new masters came—the
hordes of Saxons and Angles, the fierce and pitiless
warriors of that Germanic race whose contempt
for the townsmen and the town ‘life was:almost as
great now as Tacitus had described three hundred
OF ENGLISH TOWNS. 119

years before. They poured in upon the doomed
land as the Israelites did upon the cities of the
Canaanites, as the Vandals did upon the cities of
North Africa. Whenever they came they came as
destroyers. The old towns were pillaged and left.
These ferocious Teutonic barbarians, revelling in
carnage, put the clock back in Britain. Yes; put
it back four hundred years. They, too, threw up
their great earth-works as defences to baffle the
despairing efforts of a people emasculated by ages
of submission, but they scorned to turn to account
the mountain fortresses of the earlier Britons, or
the more carefully constructed castva-of the Romans.
They brought with them new tactics and a new
system of fortification, which was adapted to the
more dispersed and straggling warfare to which they
were accustomed; they scattered themselves in small
and numerous bands over the island, and everywhere
they gave the towns up to pillage, converting them |
into ruinous heaps, and leaving them for the wolves
to dwell in.

So it went on for nearly two hundred years after
the Romans left the wretched Britons to themselves.
Theold civilisation was almost blotted out, and the old
religion with it—for there had been some form of Chris-
tianity prevalent under the Roman sway—and with
this hideous obliteration the towns almost vanished.
120 THE ORIGIN AND GROWTA

Almost—not wholly—London continued to retain
some remnants of its ancient civic life. Exeter
never sank into nothingness. Chester, Lincoln,
and some few others became from time to time
rallying points for fugitives, and centres round
which the unhappy people gathered, and where
they made their desperate stand. But there were
no longer to be found any centres of luxury and
ease where the dwellers in the streets and the
saunterers in the public square could enjoy security
and amusement, sheltering themselves within the
circuit of stone walls. The obliteration of the old
civilisation which had grown up under Roman
protection, and had been in great measure the
result of Roman colonisation, was almost as com-
plete as that which followed upon the occupation
of Mexico by the Spaniards, almost as complete, as
ruthless, and as savage; the difference between the
effects that ensued lying in this: that the Spaniards
brought with them their own culture and their own
faith, such as they were, while the Germanic bands
brought no culture, and in the room of the religion
which had now become the established religion of
the Roman world, they substituted a confused and
confusing heathenism.

But as the conquerors went on in their career
of carnage and destruction, driving the Britons
OF ENGLISH TOWNS, 121

before them further and further westward, their
very success in warfare, and the very completeness
of the devastation that followed upon their march,
necessitated the revival of that trade and commerce
which they had extinguished. As the host of
warriors increased in multitude and the wave of
assault grew wider in its reach, the necessities of
the commissariat and the demand, if only it were
for weapons and implements, must have made itself
felt. There was increasing need of craftsmen, and
stores, and supplies, which the plundered towns
and the slaughtered townsmen had furnished in
abundance for a generation or two, but which at
last fell short. As the mixed multitude of Germans
and Angles and Jutes drew together, and slowly
grew into the English people, the restless tribesmen
and kindredmen found themselves compelled to
become tillers of the soil. Peace inevitably aroused
the social impulse, and a yearning for repose and
union grew up among these fierce warriors, who had
grown weary of war and battle without end. Before
the 6th century was well closed some commerce
had returned, and before the 7th century was
half done the English conquerors had themselves
been vanquished by the conquering cross.

I. New forces were at work, and they worked
concurrently. As a people of kindred blood (for
122 THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH

all these separate bands that had come from
,different points on the Continent spoke the same
tongue, and their several dialects differed but
slightly), the tendency grew ever stronger to merge
their family and tribal rivalries in a common unity
and to submit themselves to the discipline of a
government which, though it might be hateful to
them in so far as it was centralised, yet had this
in its favour, that it was in its essence representative
and stable.

2. So, too, when these men found themselves
stirred strangely by the preachers of the new Faith,
and a new sense of fellowship sprung up among
them—the outcome of agreement in the same
religious beliefs, and hopes, and fears—the desire
for union led them to join together in ‘religious
communities which in idea were societies for
mutual defence against the powers of evil that
were watting against the soul.

3. Lastly, the mere lust of gain, which their
forefathers in the days gone by had hardly known,
or had known only to regard as a petty vice to
: scorn, had already become a powerful incentive to
concerted action among them, and they had got to
see that the profits of commerce and trade would
be best assured to them ‘by . co-operation ;. mutual
support and mutual defence ‘affording .some ‘guar-
OF ENGLISH TOWNS. 123

antee for the safety of those ventures which, if they
were made in isolation, would but tempt the spoilers.

On all sides the forces which tended to cohesion
were at work. The several village communities,
each with its local customs which served for laws,
gradually drew together, and agreed to submit to
the arbitrament of a larger assembly, where disputes
might be settled without an appeal to brute force.
So the Hundred Court originated in a coalition of
Tun-moots associated as a court of appeal, where,
if justice and right could not always be found, it
was at any rate.demanded and looked for. So, too,
the early monastic establishments in these times
were little more than associations for keeping alive
the religious life at a higher level than could be
reached by men and women whose devotion was
not carried on in sympathy and neighbourhood.
And so again the old family compacts for mutual
defence and support in war developed into the gilds,
or associations of craftsmen and traders, of which,
though it would be too much to say that they were
the origin of the new towns, yet they were the
natural outcome. of. the changes that had passed
over the people, now become familiarised with the
new conditions of life which the growth of trade
and commerce had introduced. Men became united
by the bonds of some common interests, and were |
124 THE ORIGIN AND GROWTA

kept together, not by the ties of blood alone, but
by the constant pressure of common needs.

Thus it must be truer to say that the earlier gilds,
such as we know them in the later centuries of
the ‘‘Saxon” kingdoms, originated in the new
towns rather than that the towns originated in the
gilds, or truer still to say that the town and the
gilds grew up together, inasmuch as neither could
do without the other, while the social fabric was as
yet unconsciously adapting itself to the requirements
of the coming time.

As the monasteries increased in number and
wealth, and their discipline improved—though
before the Norman Conquest came that discipline
was evidently laxity itself as compared with what
it became afterwards—these religious establishments
presented great attractions to those who had a taste
for leisure or culture or art. Inside the sacred
precincts dwelt a class whose resources were ample
and their influence exercised in the direction of
refinement and intellectual advance. The Con-
ventuals were spenders of money and benefactors
whom it was well to live near. Of course, it
followed that outside the walls there gathered
numbers who were attracted by the hopes of gain
or any chance of lucrative employment. Hence
the monastery became continually the nucleus of
OF ENGLISH TOWNS. 125

a new town, which might, in some rare instances,
have sprung up on the site of the old Roman city,
but which, for the most part, grew into importance
where there was little opportunity for trade. Thus
the great Abbey of St. Albans was founded on the
site of the Roman town of Verulam, and the
monastic buildings were largely built with the
Roman bricks of the ruined city; but the Abbey
of St. Edmunds was far away from any Roman
station, and the town that grew up outside the
abbey walls was altogether a new town which owed
its rise, and may be said to have depended for its
existence during many generations, on the support
and patronage which the great East Anglian
monastery afforded it.

When the Danes came in upon the land during
the gth century, they came as plunderers and
marauders in the first instance, but they came as
something more. It was not long before they
settled down as immigrants who meant to stay and
make their homes in the lands they coveted. So
far from being destroyers of towns, the Danes were
almost as much traders as pirates, and they used the
seaports as commercial centres, from which they
developed their trade.t The Irish towns, Dublin,

* On the increase of trade and commerce under the Danes.
See Mr. York Powell’s review of Keary’s “Catalogue of
English Coins,” English Historical Review, No. 17, p. 134.
126 THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH

Limerick, Waterford, and Cork, originated in
Danish settlements, and whatever may be the
history of the confederation of the “ five boroughs ”
—Leicester, Lincoln, Derby, Nottingham, and
Stamford—it is certain that for many years this
association of towns—which even thus early might
claim to be called civic communities—constituted
for many years the strength of the Danish hold upon
Mid-Britain ; while, again, in the Eastern Counties
they seem to have occupied the towns of Colchester,
Bedford, Huntingdon, and Cambridge, as centres
of government, where the tribute they levied on
the surrounding districts was paid and perhaps
treasured.

Hence it appears that the. English towns which
had originated in the desire for union and consolida-
tion which came upon the Saxon invaders when their
conquest was completed and peace settled upon the
land, so far from being arrested in their growth by
the coming of the Northmen, were rather stimulated
to greater activity, and grew more rapidly to a con-
sciousness of their own importance and a readiness
to claim a certain measure of independence or
privilege which should be substantial advantage
to their inhabitants. And in tracing the develop-
ment of English municipal life, the influence of
the Danish occupation during the gth and roth
OF ENGLISH TOWNS. 127

centuries must by no means be passed over as a
factor which contributed not a little to that develop-
ment.

Thus far we have seen that the English town
was a thing of English growth—not an impor-
tation, on the one hand, as the Roman colony
or municipium was an importation of a foreign
institution into another land, nor, on the other
hand, a survival of a state of things which was
continued from age to age, as was the case
with the towns of France, whose boast it is
that they have kept up till the present day the
traditions of civic life which they got from their |
‘Roman masters. Among us there was an age of
obliteration before the time of reconstruction began,
and when the new growth started into being, it was
characterised by a vigorous spontaneity. The new
towns were neither revivals nor reproductions of the
old ones that had passed away.

II.

When we begin to look into the history of the
English towns, we are very apt to be led astray by
assuming that the more modern word town means
the same, or pretty nearly the same thing as the
more ancient name which historians now commonly
128° THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH

spell as tun. In the period preceding the Norman
Conquest it may be accepted as a statement conve-
niently near the truth that England was divided into
some thousands of geographical areas very unequal
in extent, which were occupied by communities
whose members were united together by very inti-
mate relations, which were governed each by its own
unwritten code of “customs,” possessed a certain
constitution, and were to a very great extent self-
supporting. The boundaries within which these
communities lived were jealously guarded from
encroachment on the part of any neighbouring
tillers of the soil, and in many cases were clearly
marked by rude inclosures which served at once as
boundaries and as defences against trespassers. The
lands included within these limits were defined as
the tun, and the community as an aggregate of
people having a common interest in making the
most of the land and in preserving its own unity and
independence was called a tunship.

As long as the community contented itself with
living on what its land could produce, and one
generation only trod in the steps of the preceding
one, there was no great difficulty in keeping up the
status quo ante. The moment, however, that the
produce of the land was in excess of the wants of
the community and it became a question how to
OF ENGLISH TOWNS. 129

dispose of the surplus commodities, that moment
trade and commerce began, and with the beginning
of commerce new complications were inevitable.
The old “customs” and old methods for settling
disputes were found to be unfitted for the new
conditions that had arisen, and the machinery which
sufficed for the regulation of the earlier tunship
tended to break down. The more trade and com-
merce increased in any wide area, the more necessary
it became that the contiguous tunships should come
to some agreement whereby a Court of Appeal might
be provided; and thus it would happen that a num-
ber of tunships would generally form themselves into
a union which should in many important matters
supersede the union of the smaller tunships. This
union was a union for mutual self-defence, for
co-operation, and for affording some assurance of
justice and right in questions between man and man,
such as had never emerged in the narrower life of
the earlier ¢unship. ‘This is what is meant when it is
said that ‘‘ London was only a bundle of communi-

ties, townships, parishes, and lordships, of which ;

each had its own constitution.”

What was true of London was true also of other
towns. It was especially observable at Lincoln, and
perhaps as true of each of the Five Boroughs of the
Midland, which, moreover, appear in the early days

Io
130 THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH

to have been united in a league or hansa, possibly
an anticipation of the great league of the Baltic
cities—and possibly, too, it may have suggested that
other powerful league of the Cinque Ports on the
south-eastern coast of England—Hastings, Sand-
wich, Dover, Romney, and Hythe.

It must be borne in mind that when the Norman
Conquest took place, and during the century that
followed, there was strictly no such judicial ma-
chinery as we now understand when we talk of the
“Jaw courts” and the “law.” When the towns
grew into important communities and aimed at
“freedom,” the liberty that they strove for was first
an immunity from appearing before the Court of
Appeal, where the king’s officer presided and levied
his fees; and, secondly, an immunity from personal
taxation exacted by the officers of the Royal Ex-
chequer. To get rid of these burdens they asked for
the privilege of choosing their own portreve who
should preside in the town court and set them free:
from the necessity of appearing at the Court of the
Hundred; and they asked, too, for the liberty of
taxing themselves and compounding for the capricious
and arbitrary exactions of the officers of the Exchequer
by the payment of a lump sum or annual rent to the

King—such annual rent being called the Fivma
Burgi.
OF ENGLISH TOWNS. 131

When a town had obtained for itself these liberties
or privileges it had passed out of the larger class of
merely agricultural communities or tunships, and it
had passed into the smaller but higher class of
trading communities. It became a chartered town /
—that is, it had obtained from the sovereign freedom
from the exactions of the sheriff, to try its own
prisoners, to settle its own trade disputes, and to
raise such taxes as it needed for its own wants, much
in the same way as borough rates are levied now.
But the town was not free from contributing its
share to the zational taxation. The charter was
purchased for gold from the king, or. from the great
lords who held the several boroughs under the king.
In the latter case the charter held good, because the
rights of the lord extended over the hundred in which
the town happened to lie, and it excluded also the
interference of the sheriff or other similar intrusion
of the king’s officer.

But there were other towns that grew up rather
as aggregates of traders which had not yet acquired
any other cohesion than as organised communities,
and these towns were the mere market towns which
still exist up and down England in large numbers.

It is difficult for us to realise the fact that there
was a time, and a long time too, in England, when
a man could not buy and sell where and when and
132 THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH

with whom he pleased. Yet it is certain that within
the limits of the ancient tunships exclusive dealing
was the rule, and trade with the outside world was
regarded with suspicion, the trader being ‘supposed
to be seeking to enrich himself by parting with that
in which the community had some interest. Hence,
when the instincts of trade had proved too strong for
the jealous restrictions which the petty tunships
were inclined to put upon it, and it became apparent
that people who wanted certain commodities would
buy and sell them however much you might try to
prevent them, the next step was to legalise trade in
a given area, and to provide that it should be carried
on under some sort of police supervision and control.
People were not to be allowed to sell when and
where they liked ; they were only allowed to buy and
sell at certain centres and at certain specified in-
tervals of time. The inhabitants of this or that
conveniently situated locality were allowed to hold
a market once a week, or it might be oftener; bar-
gains were to be carried on in public; rents were to
be paid for stallage; dues were to be levied upon
sales. The village grew into a town, and the
townsmen prospered. But such towns need not
necessarily pass out of the rank of market towns,
and in point of fact very few of them did. Thus, of
the hundred and twenty towns to which King John
OF ENGLISH TOWNS. 133

granted market rights during the seventeen years of
his reign (A.D. IIg9-1216), scarcely more than half
a dozen ever rose to the rank of chartered boroughs,
and some are now obscure villages where even the
weekly market has dwindled to nothing..

If, however, the town which may have begun to
be a centre of trade outgrew that condition of affairs
for which the mere right of holding a weekly market
sufficed—that is, if the petty dealings which were
confined to a limited area developed into the larger
transactions of a widening commerce—then the town
sooner or later won its charter, paying for it the
purchase money in the first instance, as has been
said, and obtaining for itself some form of self-
government ; it became a chartered town. But the
charters granted by successive kings were by no
means identicalin form. ‘The privileges purchased
and bestowed varied very greatly from time to time.

To begin with, the buyers of the charter in one
place might be the few or the many, and they who
had advanced money for the acquisition of certain
privileges or advantages were not likely to allow
others to share in the boon obtained without secur-
ing to themselves something like a higher status in
the newly-recognised town. There were some of
these dwellers in the towns who were free by birth—
there were some who were not, just as in America a
134 THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH

generation back there were masters and slaves. In
America the broad distinction between the two
classes was sharply marked by difference of colour.
In early England there was indeed the same differ-
ence between Jew and Gentile which was easily
discernible by the eye, but between the folitically
free and bond there was no such physical mark of
distinction. The Jews, who were to be found in
considerable numbers in some of the English towns,
were never freemen of the boroughs; they lived apart
in a quarter of their own, called the Fewry; they
were there on sufferance. There were, however,
others, Christian and English born, who, because
they were ‘‘ bondmen by blood,” could not be ad-
mitted as burgesses of the borough till they had
somehow worked out their freedom. It was the
interest of the old burgesses to assert themselves as
against the new men and to keep in their own hands
the good things, whatever they were, which their
charter secured to them. It looks as if they who
were the children of bondsmen in one generation had
some difficulty in obtaining for themselves recogni-
tion as freemen in the next.. It seems, too, that in
many cases the only means whereby they could
secure such recognition was to get themselves first
admitted as members of the gilds, of which we have
heard before.
OF ENGLISH TOWNS. 135

The increase in the number of these gilds was
looked upon with some suspicion and dislike by the
powers that be. They threatened to become dange-
rous associations whose interests were antagonistic
to the interests of the king and his officers in one
direction, and a check upon encroachment on the
part of the richer burgesses on the other. As early
as 1180 Henry II. forbade the formation of new
gilds without royal license; and as many as eighteen
adulterine gilds were fined during this reign on the
ground, presumably, that such unions aimed in one
way or another at interfering with the king’s pre-
rogative in the several towns in which they had been
organised. For, in theory, the burgesses of a char-
tered town were the resident householders who paid
' scot and bore lot, which, being translated into modern
language, meant those who paid rates and were liable
to be elected to serve certain offices in the town,
which were more or less burdensome.

In the first instance only the burgesses had the
liberty to buy and sell within the limits of the
borough. But as the trade of any town increased,
it would happen that the burgesses would perforce
extend their operations with outsiders whose capital
was embarked in the trade, and who might or might
not be residents. Thereupon it would become
necessary to provide security for such outsider that
136 THE bee AND GROWTH

his share of profits should be assured to him.
Neither he nor his agent or factor could become a
burgess without some difficulty; but if an association
were formed among the merchants which afforded a
certain guarantee to all its members that the in-
terests of each and all would be protected, a mer-
chant or his agent, though a non-resident or an
alien, might still safely embark in the trade of the
town, even though he were no burgess—that is, he
might be elected a member of the Merchant Gild and
enjoy all the advantages which he cared to enjoy
though never a burgess. The same might happen
in the case of the gilds of craftsmen. These crafts-
men gilds were intended to keep up a monopoly of
the manufacture of certain articles. The Saddlers,
the Girdlers, the Glovers, and fifty other “‘city com-
panies ” or gilds, still exist in the city of London,
and are the survivals of the old state of affairs when
it was practically impossible for such an Establish-
ment as we are now all familiar with to sell a waist-
band, a pair of gloves, a glass bottle and a horse
collar at the same counter. If you wanted any
one of these articles you had to buy it of the maker,
nor indeed could you always buy it safely of him
unless he were a brother of the gild associated for the
protection of the interests of the craftsmen who kept
the manufacture of such articles in their own hands.
OF ENGLISH TOWNS. 137

Here again it is obvious that occasions would
arise when the makers of this or that article would
find it prudent to admit sometimes an intelligent
capitalist into the brotherhood, and sometimes a
pushing inventor, who, though a non-resident in
the borough, might be willing enough to employ the
craftsmen if they would manufacture some improved
article to his order; and as in the former case, so in
this, such employer of labour might be admitted to
the gild, though he were no burgess of the borough.
Gradually the power and influence of the gilds in
the boroughs would become more and more potent,
and the tendency would increase for all members of
the gilds to be accounted, and to become also bur-
gesses, and for every burgess on the other hand to
be enrolled as a brother of some one of the gilds.

The next stage in the development of the boroughs
was reached when the richer and more energetic of
the burgesses had acquired so dominant an in-
fluence that they began to get the government of the
boroughs into their hands, and when an oligarchy
which appropriated to itself a name that anciently
had a very different meaning, under the designation
of a ‘‘common council,” arrogated to itself the right
to initiate any measures which were carried out, and
assumed to itself also the exclusive right of ad-
mitting new burgesses. When this stage was
138 THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH

reached the next object of the boroughs was to ob-
tain a new charter of Incorporation, whereby the status
of the oligarchy was recognised, and its functions
and supremacy were legally established. These
charters of incorporation appear to have begun to
-~be granted in the reign of Henry VI., though it is
very doubtful whether the assertion so often made
can be substantiated, that the first incorporation of
a municipal ‘body was granted to Kingston-upon-
Hull in the year 1439. The incorporation of boroughs
continued steadily after this, and the effect of such
incorporation, as has been stated, was to throw allt
administrative power in the boroughs more and more
into the hands of a few, while the great body of the
inhabitants had less and less voice, and only a small
privileged class were permitted to give their votes
even for the very men who were elected to be the
representatives of the borough in Parliament.
Asingle instance will suffice by way of illustration.
In the year 1585 the little town of Helston, in
Cornwall, obtained one of these charters of incorpo-
ration. By virtue of this charter the mayor and
commonalty, with the four aldermen of the borough,
were allowed from time to time to admit any
‘honest ” inhabitants to be freemen of the borough,
and the new corporation, which had the power of
adding to itself new members or refraining from
OF ENGLISH TOWNS. 139

doing so according to its pleasure, was privileged to
send two burgesses to represent the borough in the
House of Commons. In the year 1774, less than
two centuries after the granting of the charter, there
was a parliamentary election at Helston. It then ,
appeared that, in consequence of the obstinate -
refusal of the oligarchy to admit any of the inhabi-
tants to the freedom of the borough, the corpora-

tion had dwindled down to six, and these six men —

actually elected two members to the House of
Commons; and in those critical years in the world’s
history which followed 1774, those two members
took their seats and recorded their votes on those
momentous questions with which everybody is, or
ought to be, abundantly familiar.

From what has been said it will have been made
clear that during the four centuries after the Norman
Conquest the growth of the English towns did not
mean so much their growth in wealth or prosperity,
but meant very much more their growth in a certain
sort of political power. They did not grow as much
as we should have expected in size or population ;
for in these respects the towns increased so slowly,
so imperceptibly, as almost to perplex the student of
history by their apparent stagnation. The chartered
boroughs grew in the sense that there were more of
them—they grew in numbers; that was almost

—
140 THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH

inevitable, for each town as it won its charter
pursued a policy of the most jealous protection of
its supposed interests and privileges. Exclusion of
any foreigners was the one object which the burgesses
kept before their minds. If the trade of a town
increased beyond the powers of the townsmen to
deal with it, they never thought of extending the
limits of the borough and including within the new
limits an increased population which would bring
wealth to the original community. So far from this,
they fiercely excluded all aliens, and aimed much
more at keeping their towns to themselves and
monopolising their privileges, than at throwing open
their gates and widening their operations. Hence it
was inevitable that the surplus trade was forced to
find a new home for itself, and one market town
after another obtained its charter of incorporation
only to find itself sooner or later pursuing the same
blind and selfish policy—only to find that it too, in
its turn, had outgrown its power of dealing with its
increasing commerce or manufacture.

The towns multiplied, they did not grow to great-
ness. When the Flemings, whom the detestable
persecution of the Spaniards in the 16th century
forced to take refuge in the eastern counties of
England, were graciously permitted to settle in
Norwich in 1568, the city was swarming with
OF ENGLISH TOWNS. 148

beggars, and scores of houses were in ruins, for the
trade of the town had been of late seriously declining.
Nevertheless the Norwich citizens were immensely
indignant that the foreigners should be allowed to
settle among them, and revenged themselves upon
the new-comers by making their lot as hard as they
could. It was the way everywhere. Thus it came
to pass that even so late as the 17th century, when
the Pilgrim Fathers made their grand start to find
better homes in the new world, there was not a town
in England, except London, that could boast of
thirty thousand inhabitants, and not five towns that
could boast of ten thousand. Yet the towns were
strong in their numbers and the comparative wealth
of their inhabitants. The sympathies and instincts
of the townsmen were indeed in favour of a certain
sort of progress; in favour, too, of a certain limited
freedom of opinion, and opposed to the domination
and intolerance of the Church on the one hand, or
the tyranny of the courtiers and nobles on the other.
When the great upheaval came in religious matters
which we call the Reformation, the townsmen almost
everywhere were strong and bigoted Protestants.
When the other upheaval came which we call the
-Great Rebellion, they were, as a rule, bitter Round-
heads. And when the time came for that remodelling
to our constitutional machinery which we are wont to
142 THE ORIGIN OF ENGLISH TOWNS.

associate with the Reform Bill of 1832, again the
townsmen were for progress, and that not only in
the great aggregates of population which had no
representative in the legislation and no political
status (because they had no charters and no
corporate existence), but even in the smaller and
insignificant boroughs ; for there too the inhabitants
had their grievances, and the oligarchs had not
gained the love or confidence of their fellow townsmen.

Before this crisis arrived, however, there were
towns that were springing up, there were towns
that had sprung up, which had indeed grown in
wealth and influence and prosperity—towns which
seemed doubtless to the ancient boroughs to be
huge and monstrous exaggerations of the reason- ,
able proportions which a self-respecting corporate
borough or chartered town ought to content itself
with maintaining.

Of these later towns—whose origin it is not difficult
to trace—whose enormously rapid increase in popula-
tion is to be accounted for without any necessity for
much historical or antiquarian research—towns which
owe their greatness to their geographical position or
of favourable circumstances, which may be said to
have given them birth—of these it is not within my
province to speak, and I leave them to those who are
inquirers into fields of Political and Physical Geo-
graphy, or the History of Commerce and Economics.
Vv.

THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS
IN PAST TIMES.

[ad Populum.)

In November, 1889, I undertook to deliver a lecture
in the theatre of the Midland and Birmingham Insti-
tute on ‘ The Land and its Owners in Past Times.”
It would have been ridiculous to read an academic
treatise on such a subject to an audience of fifteen
hundred people, at any rate upon a week-day, and
accordingly I took my chance and trusted to find in
the inspiriting presence of such an assembly the
words that might fairly express my meaning.
Practised orators acquire the accomplishment of say-
ing in an hour what they wish to say on any theme
they set themselves to discourse upon; but for myself
I have never acquired this knack or art, and when I
had exhausted my time, I brought my oration to a
close with the conviction that I had bungled sadly.

143
144 THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS

Since then a brisk correspondence has been going on
in the newspapers about the very subject which I
was venturous enough to deal with, and it has been
represented to me that there are some—perhaps not
a few—who would be glad of such a popular view of
the subject under discussion as I endeavoured to lay —
before my Birmingham audience.

It might or might not be easier to deal with a
question of this kind by attempting a scholastic and
severe handling of the whole matter; but, other con-
siderations apart, my experience has taught me that
the generality of fairly educated people learn most
from those who assume that their readers or hearers
know least.

A specialist is not always the best instructor even
on his own subject; he is apt to forget that he was
himself at one time a beginner, and apt to take it for
granted that everybody knows this or that. In the
following pages I assume no special knowledge on
the part of whosoever may attend to me. Here are
some facts that everybody does not know, which
everybody would be the better for knowing, which
some will be glad to know, and which some who
pose as teachers of new things do not seem to know,
and yet ought to know better than any one else. As
to the discussion that has been going on between the
giants who soar into the higher regions of specula-
IN PAST TIMES. 145

tion, and do battle for and against such academic
subtleties as rough-and-ready politicians cannot away
with, that is no concern of mine. When a man pre-
sumes to address the many rather than the few, he
must avoid! transcendentalism if he expects to be
listéened'to. It is dangerous swimming in a fathom-
less ocean when the monsters of the deep are showing
themselves on the surface. |
Let my readers, then, imagine themselves in the
great Hall of the Midland Institute on any evening
‘they please. To them enters the popular lecturer,
-who may be supposed to speak as follows :—

‘As I stand upon this platform my feet are planted
‘upon the carpet which is spread upon the boards;
these rest upon. joists and beams; they upon some-
thing else; but at the foundation of all, at the bottom
of all, there remains the land on which the whole
building reposes. ,

‘I presume I may take the liberty of asking to
whom does this land belong? And I am not likely
to be wrong in assuming that the carpet and the fur-
niture and the building and the land all belong to
one and the same owner or owners—to wit, the
Society or Corporation of the Midland and Birming-
ham Institute. So far so good.

But there are two more questions which I must

II
146 THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS

take leave to ask before I can get on, and they are
(1) How did the Society. become possessed of the
land? and (2) What was the nature of the pos-
session acquired ?

I. The first question is soon answered, and yet the
answer is not without its suggestiveness. The land,
I suppose, was bought by the Society from some
previous owner. That means that the land is now
a saleable commodity—and a commodity sometimes
owned by a single person, sometimes by a society
or a corporation ; that is, sometimes held in severalty
and sometimes in common. We may go on to-add
that the land may be cut up into very minute
portions and sold by the yard, or it may be sold,
as you may express it, by wholesale ; and when sold
the enjoyment of this commodity or the use of it
may belong toa single landlord or to a community
of owners.

And yet it is a fact, which is a great deal more
certain than many so-called facts can be said to be,
that there was a time, not so very long ago, when
the land of this country was not to be bought or sold
for money as it is now, and when it was not divisible
at a man’s pleasure, z.¢., in no sense to be sold retail.

II. But what is the nature of the possession
acquired by the present owners of this piece of land?
If I take my handkerchief out of my pocket I show
IN PAST TIMES. 147

you something which certainly belongs to me; I
bought it and paid for it. If I please I may—as I
can—toss it into the fire and reduce it to ashes in a
few moments; in fact, destroy it, practically get rid
of it, annihilate it. So with the gold chain at my
buttonhole; I might, if I could, serve it in the same
way, but practically I cannot utterly destroy it, for
gold is. a very indestructible substance, and though
I may hammer it into gold-leaf or beat it into dust,
the gold practically remains unchanged, only the
form of the gold alters. But with regard to the land
I neither may nor can destroy it, nor can I deal with
‘i as if it were a private chattel. I cannot destroy

; I may not quite serve it as if it were wholly and
nes mine.

This, however, is but the ‘pesinniay of our diffi-
culties. Observe, I can measure and weigh this rag
of linen or this golden chain; it is so wide, so long,
so thick, it weighs so much. But can I get the
dimensions of this land as easily? Can I get them
at all? We say that a man buys so many acres
or so many square yards of land. That is the length
and the breadth of it. How about the depth of it?
May I, if I choose and if I can, may I build an
Eiffel Tower upon it, say 2,000 feet high this time,
and this time not of iron but of brick or stone?
Clearly not! Because if I did so I should inevitably
—e,

148 THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS

interfere with my neighbours’ rights of enjoyment
of theiy land. I may not shut out the light of heaven
from them nor interfere with their claim’ to the free
current of the air that is our life ; for my neighbours
who own their land claim all that:is .above it as far
as the stars in an infinite column upwards; and fora
like:reason I ‘may not go digging away to the centre
of the world so as to prejudice their rights below
the surface—for when we say we own this or that
patch of land, we mean that our ownership reaches
to the zenith above and down to the centre below.

And yet so inextricably are our rights: entangled
that we are all more or less limited in our owner-
ship; and with the land which belongs to him
no man can say in all strictness that he can deal
as if it were absolutely and personally his own. So
that the old distinction between real property and
personal property is based upon fact and truth.
For what men make, what they produce by personal
toil or skill, that is personal property, 7.¢., it owes
its very existence to human effort and human intel-
ligence. But what, according to the old cosmogo-
nies, man did not make, but which, rather, man was
made of—the good old mother earth—thati is not
personal, but antecedent to human personality; for
man could not exist without the land, though the
land could do very well without man.
IN PAST TIMES. 149

So far, you observe, we have got to this: that
when we talk of being owners of a certain tract
of land, we mean that we are owners of a certain
superficial area with appurtenances thereto belonging,
such appurtenances extending to the heavens above
and to the depths below, but that our title to those
appurtenances is limited. There is a point at which
we are sure to be stopped if we soinvade the column
of air above us that other owners of land are wronged
by our vaulting ambition; and there is another point
at which we shall be sure to be stopped if, by dipping
down to the depths below us, we injure the subter-
ranean appurtenances of our neighbours on this side
or on that.

But this is not all. You say that the land on
which this building stands belongs to this Society
or Corporation.. Suppose that one fine morning one
of those horrible men of science, who are never tired
of discovering something, were to announce that
under this floor at a certain depth there ran a seam
of the richest coal, which if it were worked for a
year or two would produce untold wealth, and suffice
to build a dozen such halls as this, and still leave
a vast surplus to. pay off all your debts and relieve
you of all fear of paying rates for another century
at least. I presume the temptation would be irre-
sistible to let.this Hall take its chance. You would
150 THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS

have a shaft sunk in a few weeks or months, and
down you would go burrowing into the bowels of the
earthin search of the hidden treasure. Thats to say,
you would do this ¢f you might. You will do this
if you may. But may you? ‘“ This land belongs
to the Corporation,” say you; ‘therefore yes!”
But we have seen that for all your claim of right
you may wot go as high as the Tower of Babel if you
are mad enough to conceive the whim of climbing
up to the moon. Your néighbours will cry out—
‘The winds of heaven and the moving air .are not
yours to obstruct and play your tricks with; the
blessed sunlight is not yours that you may leave
us in darkness and rob us of our ancient lights.
The upward appurtenances of-your plot of land are
common property. If you stretch your rights too far;
they cease to be yourrights and become our wrongs.”
That is intelligible enough as far as your-upward
appurtenances are concerned. .But when we come
to claim, what I venture to call, our downward
appurtenances, these things are not so simple and
plain. We have assumed that this Society bought
this land. Who did they buy. it of? "When. did
they buy it? Under what conditions? With what
reservations ? :
Leaving other questions on one side, let me ask,
Did the former possessor of this landed: estate~in
IN PAST TIMES. 1s1

selling this portion of his property—did he reserve
the mineral rights? If he did, then all the coal of
Newcastle may be packed close and deep under this
floor, and yet the Corporation of Birmingham may
not touch it. It belongs to some previous owner of
the land, and a lordly treasure-house it may be;
but it is all his, it is not yours, however much you
might like to have it. I said ‘‘some previous owner.”
And here comes in another of those anomalies which
make every step in the study of this subject bristle
with difficulties. For if it were only coal that was
to be found, the coal would belong to the first owner
of the soil who reserved the mineral rights, and he
might be a man who purchased the landed estate
one day and sold it the next. But if it should turn
out that this Hall were built upon a gold mine, the
gold would belong to the crown. i

Do you see what we have come to? ‘This parcel
of land on which we are at this moment standing
seems to belong to no one person or corporation
absolutely. No one owns it to such an extent as to
be able to deal with it as if it were a personal
chattel. The owner is stopped if he goes too high,
and he is stopped if he goes too low. In other
words, we may say that this land is after all held
in joint proprietorship. The neighbours have rights
in it; the overlord who reserved his minerals has
152 THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS

rights in it; the crown has a claim upon it, if there
are precious metals below the surface; and it may
be, for all I know, that there are other persons who,
so to speak, may claim to have a finger in'the pie,
and who, in a sense which I will not at this: point
stop to explain, may have something to say. in! the
way of claiming a proprietary interest in it. And
yet I can hardly be wrong in assuming that this Hall
is built.upon freehold land, as it is called, and that
the fee, as it is called, belongs to this Society.

I shall have to get. away from Birmingham soon,
but. I cannot quite leave it yet, for it is necessary
that I should carry you back to a time eight hundred
years ago. It is just about eight hundred years ago
since a survey was made of Birmingham and its
neighbourhood, among other places, and the record
of this survey still exists, and may be read by any
one who has learnt the trick of deciphering it. The
record does not tell.us very much, not, of course,
as much as we should like to know, but it does tell
us something. We find that. at Birmingham about
the year 1089 there was a certain William, son of
Ansculf, who owned a landed estate at Birmingham.
He had, I suppose, inherited it from his father ; for
Ansculf himself had been a great man in his. day,
and had done good ‘service:in the wars. He seems.
to have been a considerable personage, whose an- :
IN PAST TIMES. 153

cestors had. lived in a great castle at a place called
Pinkeny or Pinchingi, near Amiens ; and when
William the Conqueror was gathering his host
about him to win the crown of England, and with
it the land of-England, Ansculf, seeing that William
was the right man to follow and serve, threw in his
lot with the great leader, and brought his retainers
along with him; and I: suppose he had his share
in the fighting, and he got his share of the spoil.
Then ‘he died, not; however, until he had been very
well paid for his services. His son William followed
in his father’s steps, and when the Warwickshire:
folk set themselves against the Conqueror, and gave
him some little trouble, the son of Ansculf, I take
it, stood by his leader; and then, I think, he too got
his reward. But there was an Englishman named
Ulwin, who was a small gentleman in his way,
living at this time in Warwickshire, who it appears
was not gifted with foresight and worldly wisdom—
he was of the school of Mrs. Partington, and’ apt to
entertain conscientious objections to the Atlantic
Ocean—and when the great tide of conquest moved
his way, he set himself to stem it.. Ulwin had what
we now call am estate of no great. importance at Bir-
mingham, with a house upon it, such as it was. He
had half a dozen or so of people, who were more
or less dependent upon him, living'on the estate,
154 THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS

and a wood, or patch of forest, part and parcel of
the said estate, or let us call it his lordship.. William
the Conqueror made short work of the wretched
Warwickshire folk who stood in his way; he found
out who they were, what their names were, what
their lands were, and all about them that he cared
to know, and he put his hand upon that land and all
that appertained to it, and making very little dif-
ficulty about the transfer, he gave it piecemeal to
his supporters, the men who had stood by him in
the struggle. ‘‘ Who is this Ulwin?” quoth the
Conqueror. .‘‘An insolent little upstart rebel, it
seems, giving himself airs by reason of his trumpery
lordship and his half a dozen ragamuffin tenants,
and his few dirty acres, and his woods where the
swine munch the mast. Such a man is to be cleared
out of the way. As for his land, be it enacted that
from henceforth his land, or his lordship if he likes,
is no longer the possession of this Ulwin, but that
it belongs to the son of Ansculf and his seed for
ever!” Thereupon the son of Ansculf became Lord
Birmingham. In a sense it belonged to him. In
what sense it did so we shall see by and by. pe

But you will say, “Surely, this was a very high-
handed proceeding. The king could not do this, he
had no vight to take away the poor man’s land and
give it away in this outrageous fashion ! ”
IN PAST TIMES. 155

Observe how here we find ourselves slipping into
another question—a question of abstract right.
With that question let me say at once that I have
no concern whatever at this moment. If you object
that the king could not do as he did, I can only
point to the stubborn fact that he did it. If you
insist further that he had no right—no moral right—
to do it, I have only to say that you are at perfect
liberty to think as you please upon that question,
and that I rejoice with all my heart that you, at any
rate, are not disposed to confound might with right ;
but, for myself, I am not lecturing on ethics, or
discoursing upon the eternal obligations of the Ten
Commandments. This only I .know, that when
that poor little gentleman, Mr. Ulwin, was dis-
possessed of his own, and his lordship was handed
over to the son of Ansculf, people had a much
weaker faith in abstract right than they have now,
and a very much stronger belief in the rights which
conquest conferred upon the conqueror; and when a
doughty king like the great William won a territory
by his strong arm and irresistible power, and: none
were able to stand before him and say him nay,
then this conqueror had no manner of hesitation in
taking what he thought fit to claim, and giving it to
whom he would. Yes! even the land.

But the son of Ansculf was a very big man, and this
156 THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS

Birmingham: estate was certainly not the place he
would have chosen to live in. Why didn’t he sell
it and get rid of it? :Sellit! Well, I will not go the
length of saying that eight hundred years ago land,
was not a marketable commodity, because that:would.
convey a wrong impression; but this I will say, that.
it would no more have entered-into: the head of the
son of Ansculf in the year r0go to hand over his
little Birmingham estate to Tom, Dick, or Harry. for
money down, than it would have occurred to him to.
sell his backbone ‘for a bank post-bill. ‘Well!
But who did he leave all ‘his land to?” Do you
mean by will? If you do, again you are going
astray, for the answer to this quéstion: brings us face
to face with another: fact, which will, Iam sure, be a
surprise to many of you. |

In those days in England men could not she a will
and leave their land to whom they please.

If the son of Ansculf had died without heirs, his
land would have gone. back to the king who, gave it.
As it was,he had.an only daughter, and all his estates
went to her. But in those days buying and selling
of land was a thing almost unknown, and leaving a
landed estate by will was not ‘known at all. And
there was good reason for this; for by the conquest
of England, or consequent upon it, eight hundred
years ago, the king became the supreme landlord ;
IN PAST TIMES. 157

all the land of the nation, the old folkland, became
his; and all private land was held of him mediately
or immediately. .When, therefore, we hear of a gold-
mine under this Hall being the property of the
crown, we come upon a survival of the old theory—
the land may belong to you or to:me in a certain
sense, but there are limits even now. to our. owner-
ship. There are some things in the-land which do
not belong to us, some things which we may not
claim as our own, even though they. be found on. our
land. We may not dig up the gold that lies buried
under our kitchens! »

I said just now that after the Conquest the king
became the supreme landlord, and that all the land
in England. was held mediately or immediately: ot
him. Well, that is true andit is not true... It zs true
if we mean that the destowal of all the land and ‘all
its appurtenances belonged to the king. It is not
true if we mean that in every case the king could
bestow it upon any one he pleased.. For ages
anterior to the Conquest there had been a portion of
the land of this country which had been reserved for
the maintenance of a certain class in the nation, and
in addition to this reserve of land there had been,
speaking within limits, a reserve of a share of the
appurtenances of all the other land under cultiva-
tion. The reserve lands were known as church
158 THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS

lands, and the reserved appurtenances were known
as tithes. When the Conqueror took to himself the
right of dealing with the land as a whole, he ac-
knowledged that in the bestowal of the church land
and in the bestowal of the tithe even his power
was limited. The church lands :and the tithe, he
acknowledged, could only be: bestowed upon a tenant
for life who was a clergyman, or upon a religious
corporation, which was treated as if it were in some
way or other exercising the functions which the
clergy could discharge. oe

There is an entry in the great Survey of Hants
which gives us a good illustration of what I mean.
The commissioners are giving the king information
concerning a place which they call Stanham, and
this is what they say :—

‘* Richer the clergyman holds the Church of this
Manor, and with it two other churches near Henton,
which belongs to the Mother Church; and close to
this church there lies a Hide-of land (about 120
acres) [also held by Richer], and in addition he owns
all the tithes of this township—even the tithes of the
King’s land. He did hold this of the Bishop, he
does hold it now of the King.”

That is to say, that this reverend gentleman—
Richer by name—had been presented to this living
of his in the first instance by the Bishop as patron of
IN PAST TIMES. 159

the living. Then came the Conquest; and the
Conqueror, using his high-handed proceeding, took
to himself nof absolute possession of the land re-
served—still less did he call back the appurtenance
called the tithe, even though it was levied upon his
own royal domain—but he took to himself the right
of saying to whom the life-interest of such land and
appurtenances should be granted in the case of an
avoidance. And yet he tacitly acquiesced in his
power of disposing of the benefice being a limited
power. He could only confer the life-interest upon
aclergyman. The enjoyment of such land and tithe
was limited, inasmuch as the estate formed a part of
the reserve of church lands.

Now you may perhaps have observed that so far I
have not gone behind the date of the Conquest by
the great William. I have taken this as my terminus
a quo for many reasons, but chiefly for this most
important reason—that no man holds land in this
country upon a title anterior to the Conquest. The
settlement of the land by William the Conqueror
may be said to be practically the beginning of things ;
and if we go behind that we are plunged at once into
the region of cloudland, of hypothesis and theory :
we leave the sure standing-ground of ‘facts.

But having in a manner carried you back to this
point—the point beyond which we will not travel in
160 THE LAND. AND ITS OWNERS

our tracing the origin of things which concern the
history of the property in land in England—let us see
what we find. It is this, that eight hundred years
ago we have all the land in England claimed as his
own by the sovereign, and acknowledged to be his by
the whole body of the landowners. Yes; the whole
body of the landowners—indeed, we may say the
whole nation—submitted to hold all their land of the
king: all the land was, as it were, forfeited to him.
Some of it—indeed, a great deal of it~he gave back
to the landlords who had: previously owned it; but
these consented to hold their lands as tenants of the
great Conqueror. Some: of it was handed over to
his brethren in arms—they too being his tenants.
Some:of it was reserved for the maintenance of a
privileged class ‘(the clergy), to whom it was given
for their several lives, and at their death it reverted
to the king in some cases, to the landlords (who were
the tenants of the king) in other cases ; but this land
could only be held for life by clergymen. Thus,
then,.all the land—speaking within certain limits—
was held subject to the condition of performing cer-
tain services. In the case of the laity, the service was in
the main the service of helping the king in war ; in the
case of the clergy, it was the service of keeping up the
worship of God and performing the offices of religion.

And because this reserve of land and appurten-
IN PAST TIMES. 161

ances had been submitted to for many centuries, and
had been acquiesced: in by successive generations—
the non-clerical owners of the land having no
thought of revolting against the old status quo ante—
the Conqueror in this instance made no change;
and thus the settlement of the land question by
William may be said to have been arrived at on the
theory that the real supreme landlord of all the land
in the country was the king, who at his pleasure
made grants of certain lordships or fiefs or manors
to whom he would—these grantees becoming tenants
of the king, such tenants having the right to make
what they could of their lands on condition, first,
that they acknowledged his sovereignty by rendering
him certain tributes or “rents” for which they were
liable, ov, secondly, on condition that, being clergy-
men, they performed certain functions which only the
clergy were qualified to discharge, and whereby the
whole nation was assumed to receive a real benefit.
I have not yet done with the son of Ansculf.
That vigorous and insatiable young gentleman was
not going to be put off with such a poor reward as
the lordship of Birmingham—a squalid little desolate
hamlet with half a dozen huts, where the population
huddled as best they could, and a score or two of
lean hogs picked up a very precarious livelihood in

the woods. There was a very much more consider-
12
Sy

162 THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS

able lordship hard by, which would bring him ina
far larger revenue. In the survey this lordship is
called | Eston. Now it is called Aston, and is a
suburb of Birmingham, and, I believe, contains more
than 150,000 inhabitants; but in eight hundred
years the look of some places changes a great deal,
and so it has been with Aston, otherwise Eston.
This Eston lordship had formerly been one of the
possessions of Edwin, Earl of the Mercians. It com-
prehended a large tract of arable land on which some
forty families were settled, who, among them, kept
eighteen or twenty ploughs going. There was a
parson to look after them, and presumably a church
for him to officiate in. There was a mill for grinding
the corn—a sure source of income to the lord.
There were some miles of forest, and there was a
certain portion of the estate which the lord had kept
in his own hands, and which is technically known
as land im demesne, with, presumably, a house upon
it called the “capital mansion.” For some reason
or other, this demesne land seems to have run out of
cultivation, for at the time of the survey there was
not a plough to be found upon it, though in better
days it had taken six ploughs to keep it under tillage.
Now it unluckily happens that when the men who
drew up the survey of Warwickshire sent in their
returns, they contented themselves with giving a
IN PAST TIMES. 163

much briefer and less minute account of the several
lordships than the surveyors of Norfolk and Suffolk .
had felt themselves bound to forward to head-
quarters. The consequence is that we are compelled
to fill in the void places by the help of conjecture
and analogy; but we have certain data to go upon,
and we are in a position roughly to form a probable
estimate of what the Eston lordship was like. At a
guess I should say that the whole lordship extended
over at least 5,000 acres. I suspect the manor-house .
had been burnt down, and the whole place pillaged
during the late rebellion. As to the 1,000 acres of
arable land, it was cultivated as open fields. There
were pretty sure to be some common pasture lands
on which the cattle might be turned when the corn
was growing. Also, over and above the woodland |
or forest; there was pretty sure to be another breadth
of mere waste land, scrub or heath not worth the
tillage—such land as in Norfolk was called bruary,_
where nothing but briars and thorns would grow.
So that we have here what I must venture to call
five different kinds of land, and why I call them so
will appear in the sequel: (1) The demesne land or
home farm of the lord; (2) the open fields cultivated
by the tenants of the manor for their own profit, but
yielding an annual rent to the lord ; (3) the common
pasture; (4) the forest or woodland, and (5) the
164 THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS

waste or bruary, which supplied a certain amount of
‘fuel in the shape of turf, bracken, and brushwood for
all the.tenants, and cover for rabbits and other game.

It must be understood that this area bestowed
upon the son of Ansculf was not a mere aggregate
of estates each held in severalty, but was one and
indivisible. When the Conqueror took upon. him-
self to confiscate all the land of the country, that
land was divided into a large number of small
territories, each of which may be described as a
miniature kingdom, with something like a constitu-
tion of its own. It will suffice to call these petty
kingdoms manors, for that is the name which they
were generally known by, and I call them petty
‘kingdoms’ because in those days people could only
conceive of government as exercised by a chieftain
or king or ‘lord,’ even though this chieftain or lord
might be very far from being an absolute sovereign,
and though the governed class had rights which
acted as powerful checks upon the dominating in-
fluence of the chief ruler. Thus in the case of this
manor or lordship of Eston the demesne lands with
the capital mansion upon it represented the residency
of the lord with its home farm, and it was the only
portion of the estate that was surrounded by a fence
or inclosure. Whatever hedges or palings were to
be found elsewhere within the limits of the manor
IN PAST TIMES. 165

they existed on sufferance or had been put up by
license of the: lord. If any one had dared to put up
a fence without consent of the lord and without
consent of the other tenants of the manor, it would
have been pulled down very speedily and with very
little ceremony, for the tenants too had a voice in
the matter, and they too had an interest in resisting
anything in the shape of invasion of their rights.
-And, as I have said, all had rights, and those rights
were reciprocal; for as the owner of the demesne
lands was the lord of the manor, so every cultivator
of the soil within the limits of that manor was, in
‘theory, the lord’s man.

But when we come to speak of the open fields of
the manor we come upon a condition of affairs which
it is sometimes difficult for people in our time to
understand. The open fields constituted a certain
area of arable land within the manor which was
cultivated by a body of tenants who held their
several allotments by a very peculiar tenure. To
begin with, these allotments or strips were scattered
about in the most unmethodical way possible. It
really looks as if the Conqueror when he gave away
lordships to his supporters and, as we are told, took
care to let none of his great lords have more than
two or three such lordships contiguous—it looks, I
say, as if he had taken a hint from the wonderfully
166 THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS

minute subdivision of lands in the manors them-
selves, and, seeing how such subdivision must tend
to prevent the tenants of the manor from ever be-
coming individually formidable to the lord, bethought
him that it would be wisdom to adopt.in his king-
dom the same policy which answered so well in the
manor, the policy of Divide et impera. Be that how-
ever as it may, it is certain that the open fields of
the manor were cut up into a very large number of
strips or patches, which were held by the tenants of
the manor undera very peculiar tenure. The tenants
had the right of dealing with their lands as if they
were their own for a portion of the year only; but if
they did not clear off their crops by a certain day,
the lord in some cases, the whole body of tenants in
others, might turn their sheep or cattle into the
common fields and devour whatever was left of the
tenant’s harvest.

On the other hand, these tenants to all intents
and purposes possessed such rights over their several
strips of arable land, and in many cases over enclosed
meadows, and gardens and houses too, that they
could not be dispossessed of their holdings at the
will of the lord. They were tenants indeed, but they
were tenants with a very real and definite tenant right.

But rights imply duties. What were the duties
of these tenants? Well, one of the most important
IN PAST TIMES. 167

of those duties was the duty of paying something in -
the shape of rent to the lord. In those days money
was scarce—very scarce—therefore the dues rendered
to the lord in exchange for.the use of the lord’s land
were paid to a great extent in what I may as well
call kind. The money rent was for the most part a
small fraction of the payment exacted, but the other
rent was at times extremely onerous.

_ Thus I could give you chapter and verse for one
case, which is no better and no worse than hundreds
of others that might easily be adduced, where one
John, a tenant of the manor of Banham, in Norfolk,
held twenty-five acres of the lord. For this he paid
gd. a year in money rent, but this was the. least of
his burdens. He had to do six days’ ploughing and
nine days’ reaping in harvest-time for the lord. He
had to..do two days’ work at haymaking-time, and
half a day’s work at carrying the lord’s hay. He
had to do four days’ carting and nine days’ of job-
-work in the lord’s demesne whensoever it suited the
lord to set him on, and he had every year to bring to
the lord’s house two hens at Christmas, twenty eggs
at Easter, and four quarters of oats on St. Andrew’s
Day, i.¢., the 30th of November. If you add up all
these dues—to say nothing of a great deal else that
I must not dwell on—you will find that the dues paid
by the tenants in those early times were by no means
168 THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS

light or inconsiderable. Nay, in many instances it
is almost inexplicable how they were paid at all; the
burdens in many instances which have come under
my notice must have been almost crushing. And yet
it must be remembered that there were certain
alleviations of these burdens. In the first place
the tenants had fixity of tenure of their land. It
may be said pretty safely that in those days there
was hardly anything in the shape of land laws, and
the whole complex machinery of leases for a term of
years was hardly known. Instead of any statute
law, every manor was governed in the main by certain
customs which had’ been handed down by tradition,
and these customs it was the interest of every
member of the community to keep inviolate. If any
dispute arose it was settled, not by an appeal to any
outside tribunal, but by bringing the cause before an
assembly of the tenants—the homagers as they were
called of the manor—and though’ at these assemblies
or courts of the manor the lord or his steward pre-
sided, he was by no means supreme, indeed cases
arose at times when the lord of the manor was
actually censured for infringing upon the rights of
the homage.’ . Then; too, every tenant of the manor
had rights over the waste, over any common pasture
that there might be, and over the woodland in the
manor.
IN PAST TIMES. 169

There is a very widespread delusion among the
majority of people to the effect that where a common
pasture existed within the limits of an ancient manor,
any one who liked, and who was an inhabitant of the
manor, might turn out upon the common as many
sheep and heads of cattle as he liked—a drove of
camels or a herd of ponies. So far from that being
the case, it may be said that there was no right which
the tenants of a manor were more jealous of than
the rights of common pasture. Not only could no
one but a tenant of the manor turn even a donkey or a
goose upon the common, but it was a matter of strict
ordinance how many cows or sheep might be allowed
to come from each holding. So, too, it was with regard
to the waste or bruary. Then, too, there were very
valuable rights which the tenants enjoyed, I mean
the right of cutting turf for fuel, and of gathering
bracken for kindling or thatching; but no one man
or.any dozen of men could be allowed so to use his
rights as to deprive other men of theirs, and the
rights of turbary were jealously watched by every
member. of the community, each having an interest
in guarding all from the usurpation of. any one.
Lastly, in’ the case of the forest or woodland, the
timber growing there belonged to the lord; but the
tenants had in many cases the right of lopping and
topping certain ‘trees, and in my part of the world
170 THE LAND’ AND. ITS OWNERS

you may see many an old oak tree that must be at
least as old as the Conquest, and which for ages was
subject to this treatment, the tenant never daring to
cut the tree down, and the lord. not caring to do so,
but resigning it to the bills and hooks of the tenants
of the manor, who hacked off the young branches
when they came in handy for fuel or other purposes,
and doing this in despite of the lord or by his conni-
vance. Besides this right of lopping and topping,
and certain other rights over the underwood and the
fallen branches, there was a very valuable right of
- pannage in the woods, 1.¢., the right of turning their
cattle or swine into the woods to feed upon the mast
or the acorns, or to browse upon the herbage; but
all these rights were strictly limited.. They were
limited in time, for they. began'on one day and they
ended on another day year by year, and they were
limited in space, for the area over which they ex-
tended was, as I have said, clearly and sharply
defined. ae

Such was the manor of Eston, which became the
possession of William, son of Anscult, eight cen-
turies ago. Such was his manor or lordship, or as
we should call it now his Janded estate, which, if he
rose from the dead now.to take a look at, he,would
assuredly not. recognise as even remotely resembling
what he once called:-his own. But having got. this
IN PAST TIMES. 171

lordship, with a great many others besides, what was
he to do with it? He could not dive there, for, as
we have seen, the manor-house was probably a
blackened ruin. He could not sell it. Could he give
it away? No, he could not even do that. For you
must understand that when the Conqueror bestowed
a tract of land upon a new lord, he did not only
give the land to the lord, but he did more—he gave
the lord to the land. The lord was answerable
to the king for the land, and for the men who lived
upon the land, and lived by the land. If he could
make anything out of his lordship so much the better
for him; but, whether or no, he was answerable for
the land and its cultivators in more ways than one,
and occasions might easily arise when the grant of
this or that manor (if it stood alone) might prove to
be the gift of a very horrible white elephant to the
grantee. What, then, was the son of Ansculf to do
with his manor of Eston? ‘There were two courses
open to him: he might keep it in his own hands and
manage it by a bailiff, or he might Jet 7¢ out to some-
body else—by giving that somebody else a perpetual
lease of the manor—receiving money down or an
equivalent for the grant of this lease and receiving a
—~peppercorn rent, as we term it, in acknowledgment
of his overlordship. And he might further reserve
to himself this or that privilege or contingent advan-
172 THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS

tage which his whim or his foresight might suggest
as desirable to retain.

The son of Ansculf did not keep the manor in his
own hands. He made it over to an Englishman to
make what he could of it, and that ‘Englishman’s
name was Godmund, whose descéndants, for any-
thing I know to the contrary, may be landowners in
Aston or Birmingham to this very day. So God-
mund forthwith became the lord ‘of the manor, and
“stood in the shoes” of the son of Ansculf, as we
phrase it, though he was not the owner of the estate |
nor directly even a tenant of the king: he became
what was technically known as a mesne tenant.
When the king demanded his due on account of this
manor of Eston he came upon the son of Ansculf for
it, and left the son of Ansculf to settle with the
mesne tenant as best he could. And when the son
of Ansculf demanded his due of Godmund, Godmund
had to’ settle for his own liabilities to the tenant-in-
chief, and it must be admitted that as time went on
‘Godmund and his successors contrived to shift such
liabilities as they could upon their. sub-tenants, that
is the homagers or smaller landholders of the manor.

Thus, then, as regards this manor—and 'the same
is true mutatis mutandis of all the land in England—
the truth seems to be that it was a tract of land
which had, and yet it had not, got away from the
IN PAST TIMES. 173

original grantor—to wit, the sovereign. The king
could not keep all the land in his own hands and
farm it by an army of bailiffs. Landowners in
ancient and modern times who have tried that ex-
periment have discovered that there is only one
class in the community that finds that a profitable
speculation, and that is the class of which one re-
presentative has become immeasurably notorious,
inasmuch as he will be known to all time as the
unjust steward. So the king let out his land to
certain tenants-in-chief, whom we will call A, B,
C, D.

But the tenants-in-chief were in the same position
as the king; they too had more land than they could
manage profitably, and they too had not unlimited
confidence in the steward or bailiff class. So they
did as the king did; they too sublet their manors to
the mesne tenants, whom we will call a, b, c, d.
These mesne tenants thus became the real lords of
the manors, but between them and the land there
were the sub-tenants, who were the tillers of the
soil, holding their land of a, b, or c, subject to cer-
tain rents, services, or burdens, but possessed of
tenant right of which they could not be deprived.
We will call them 1, 2, or 3. They were virtually
part owners of the soil.

The accompanying apology for a diagram will,
174 THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS

perhaps, make the state of the case clear at a
glance :—

    
     

*

are ee ee oe

  

af 2 teks
aste or
Bruary ei

Very noticeable is this point in William the Con-
queror’s settlement of the land question, that it
IN PAST TIMES. 175

made no provision for any sub-division of the land.
The Conqueror dealt with the land by wholesale,
and it is hardly too much to say that, according to
his settlement, selling land by retail was impossible.
~The manor was the unit. The manor with its group
of sub-tenants constituted a five, with its drones
and its workers and its queen-bee. The tenants be-
long to the land as much as and more than the land
belonged to them. No one of them could alienate
his land or any portion of it at his: pleasure; he
might cultivate it or he might run away and leave
it; but if he wanted to hand it over to any one else
it was at the lord’s option to say him Yes! or No!
But what happened if 1, or 2, or 3, or anyother of
the tenants of the manor, simply died and left no
heirs—as they did die by the thousand in that dread-
ful year 1349? Then the land which had been. held
by these tenants came back to the lord of the manor
- —escheated to him as it was called. He got the land,
but he was the poorer by the loss of the rents and
services. He might, again, take the land into his
own hands and farm it, but he could not absorb it
into the demesne lands, for to do that would have
been stoutly resisted by the tenants, for very good
reasons which I will not stop to particularise; and
inasmuch as the land of the tenants was, as we have
seen, ‘‘ scattered all over the place,” to retain it
176 THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS

would have been madness. Therefore it was almost
inevitable that the lord should let it out again,
sometimes on the same terms as before, sometimes
upon better terms. But as often as the lord saw
that here a strip or there a strip lay conveniently
near his demesne, or his woods, or his pastures, we
may be pretty sure that such strips of land would be
little by little tacked on to the lord’s private pro-
perty, and though this would not be done on a large
scale, or by a coup de main, the process of annexation
would be always going on; for the lord was, of
course, a much bigger man than any of his tenants,
and the tendency was always for him to become
richer and more powerful, and for the sub-tenants to
become weaker and poorer.

That is to say, on the land, as everywhere else,
the tendency was and always will be for the big man
to gobble up the small man—the weakest must go
to the wall—and though you may set yourselves as
much as you please against this tendency, you will
never be able to resist this great law of the universe.
Bring any molecule you please within the orbit of a
body of greater volume and density, and the attrac-
tion of the greater will infallibly tend to absorb the
less into its mass. From the point of view which a
small man is apt to take of things in general, I con-
fess I am sometimes tempted to rebel against this
IN PAST TIMES. 177

kind of thing. I do not like the thought of being
gobbled up by some great one, but I have arrived at
the melancholy conviction that I cannot help it;
and, moreover, I do not see how I could alter it for
the better. The logic of words is often only a
matter of contending fallacies, the logic of facts is
irresistible. And so it could not be otherwise than
that A, B, and C should tend to dominate more and
more over I, 2, and 3; for the sons of the soil—the
tillers of the soil—had very little to fall back upon
when things went wrong with them. Some went
away to the wars; some went to seek their fortunes
as pedlars or artisans; some took to crime and vice;
some laid down and died, no one knew how, or
when, or why; and some were hanged, and then
again their land did not escheat to the king, but
came back into the hands of the lord of the manor.
The one class would be steadily, however slowly,
going up, the other class would be going down.

But would not the same law hold good of the
tenants-in-chief relatively to the mesne tenants or
lords of the manors? No, not to anything like the
same extent as in the former case. To begin with,
the number of the mesne tenants was not a hun-
dredth part of the number of the sub-tenants or
peasant class. The lord of the manor was incom-
parably better clad and housed and ‘“ nourished”’

13
178 THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS

than his tenants; he might grow fat while they
starved ; famine and nakedness were not in his line;
they were often enough very near to them; disease
stalked among them with a ghastly familiarity, and
death came knocking at theiy doors, sometimes
rather as friend than foe. For one lord of the
manor who died without heirs up and down the
length and breadth of England there would be a
thousand of the sub-tenants who dropped out and
none regarded. But if an a or b or c did die leaving
no heirs to succeed to his lordship, what happened ?
Exactly what happened in the case of the death of
I, 2, or 3. The whole estate went back in its entirety
to A, B, or C, the whole manor and all the tenants
upon it, the whole dive and all the bees init. That
is to say, a, or b, or c, as the case might be, cease to
exist, and the manor became linked to A, or B, or C
without any intermediary, the rents or services re-
mained absolutely as they were before, and so did
the rights of the tenants, they stood exactly as they
had stood, and things returned to the same condition
that they were in before there were any mesne
tenants, as the middlemen between A, B, and Cand
I, 2, and 3.

This, then, 1s briefly a statement of the case with
regard to the tenure of land in England as it was
settled 800 years ago. Of course great changes
IN PAST TIMES. 179

have come about in the lapse of centuries, but, as
is usual with us in England, these changes have
operated very gradually, and rarely have they been
made with violence. Nay{$o unwilling are we to
break with the past and to tear up the old founda-
tions, that the settlement made by the Conqueror,
after all the great and many salutary changes that
have come about, survives actually to our own time.
Yes, the crown is still the one supreme landlord
from whom all the rest in theory hold their lands.
Still the land of the man who dies intestate and
without heirs escheats to the lord of the manor,
unless that land has been enfranchised, or to the
sovereign if it no longer is part and parcel of a
manor. Still the heirs of the mesne tenants or of
the tenants-in-chief exact their mineral rights. Still
the crown claims its royalty on gold or flotsam and
jetsam on the shore. Even heriots are not quite
things of the past, still less are those fines for en-
trance upon land held by copy of court roll. These
things are survivals, but very real and active sur-
vivals ; they are reminders that ‘‘ though much is
taken, much remains” of what we are too apt to
think has utterly passed away—reminders which
come to many men as ghosts to trouble joy. Mean-
while nothing is more certain than that the owner-
ship of the land is incomparably more free and un-
ah

180 THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS

__Shackled_than_it v was.) You may alienate your land .

to whom you please. You may bequeath it by will
according to your whim and caprice. You may buy
it by the acre or the square foot. You may sell it
wholesale or retail, and even for exportation, if you
could only manage to take it away. It might almost
be thought that now there was no difference between
‘“‘ personalty ” and “realty” except that the land is
indestructible. All this change in the character of
the ownership of the land of this country, in the
power of dealing with it and the rights which assure
its possession, cannot be regarded in any other light
than as the result of progress and development in a
condition of affairs which in the nature of things
could not but change. The old order must change.
But if we come to trace the direction of that
change we shall see that, whereas the proprietary
rights of the landowner were originally limited and
barred by very stringent checks, so that he was
never allowed to deceive himself into the belief that
his land was absolutely his own, to deal with as a
chattel in the production of which he might have
had a hand—now, on the contrary, we find men sur-
prised and angry when they are told that even now
they may not quite call the land their own. That is
to say, proprietary rights in the land have been
steadily growing in favour of the landowners for 800
IN PAST TIMES. a 181

years, and, in the opinion of some thinkers, they are
not unlikely to continue to grow in the same direction.

On the other hand, there are economists of the
root-and-branch order—economists who are in far
too great a hurry to set things right to have any
time to study history, which is always a long and
laborious process, abhorrent to men who belong to
the slapdash classes—and these tell us that we have
gone on a great deal too fast in the wrong direction,
and that the time is coming when we shall have to
nationalise the land. For myself political theorising
is not in my line, and Utopian dreams have no
charm for my mind. But what seems to me plain
enough as I look facts in the face, and what may
not unlikely have dawned upon others who have
followed me in the foregoing retrospect, is this : “that
the land of this country is—yes, it zs nationalised—
and that the basis of the settlement by the Con-
queror eight centuries ago was actually this that
some are advocating so loudly without knowing
what they mean—to wit, the nationalisation of the
land. In an age when men hardly could conceive
of a nation except as represented in the person of
the sovereign, all the functions of government
seemed to them to be centred in him, and all
national life and greatness seemed to depend upon
him. Ifthe land was indeed to be regarded as the
182 THE LAND AND ITS OWNERS

land of the nation, then in whom could that land be
vested except in the nation’s representative? The
sovereign must needs become the supreme landlord.
As long as, and in proportion as, that sovereign was
an irresponsible ruler, and practically absolute, as
long as his personal will dominated irresistibly over
the nation that he ruled, again and again did he
deal arbitrarily, tyrannically, despotically, and out-
rageously with the land of persons or corporations.
I need only refer you to such a stupendous act of
pillage as the plunder of the lands of the religious
houses, or the innumerable examples of confiscation
of the landed property of high and low.

When, on the other hand, as has happened at
least once in our history, the sovereign has not only
been reduced to a cipher, but the nation has deter-
mined to do without him, then similar acts of con-
fiscation and resumption of land by the supreme
landlord have been carried out; the nation in this
case taking just as little heed to consult the sove-
reign as in the former case the sovereign took to
consult the nation.

‘When, as in our own times, absolutism had be-
come as much a thing of the past as chain-armour,
and the nation had learnt steadily to work out its
purposes and to carry out its resolves in, and with,
and by the dignified and intelligent co-operation of
IN PAST TIMES. 183

the sovereign—the sovereign who had given up all
dreams of playing the autocrat, and gloried rather
in being the constitutional head of a great people—
then if it has seemed good to the nation to assert its
claim to be considered still the supreme landlord,
there has been no timidity or hesitation in putting
forward that claim, and no tyrannical and cruel dis-
regard of national obligations expressed or implied
in ancient covenants. But where it was abundantly
plain that it was for the interest of the many to
sacrifice the proprietary rights of the few, the nation,
the sovereign of course concurring, has over and
over again taken possession of large tracts of land
which the private owners were not allowed to with-
hold, and dealing immeasurably more justly, im-
measurably more generously than king or common-
wealth had done in former times, the nation has
respected the vested rights of the personal pro-
prietors by awarding reasonable compensation for
the enforced determination of a long-standing con-
tract. This has been going on among us during
every session of Parliament for generations, and this
will continue to go on to the end. After all, it
seems that the instincts of a great nation are wiser
than the dreams of philosophers, and working politi-
cians are more to be trusted than mere thinkers
when great problems have not only to be thought
out, but to be worked out in the national life.

Pryce
VI.
LPANCIENNE NOBLESSE.

[A Lecture.)

I HAVE undertaken to offer for your acceptance this
evening certain facts or suggestions, which appear to
myself not wholly without their significance, regard-
ing a class which it is believed are rapidly disappear-
ing from the face of the earth—or at least from that
portion of the earth’s superficies which is comprised
within the islands of Great Britain and Ireland.
That class is generally known as the class of country
gentlemen. It is said that in the Great Republic of
the West there is room for everything except the
cultured man of leisure, living upon his broad acres
in a big house, and shooting partridges and hunting
foxes over his wide domain. It is said that there

were once magnificent representatives of this class
184
LANCIENNE NOBLESSE. 185

even in America; but they were the product of the
sublime institution of slavery, and with the abolition
of that primeval condition of society the American
country gentleman passed away for ever. So, it is
said, must all country gentlemen pass away; they
belong to the palzozoic strata which underlie the
surface of the social fabric as we know it—that crust
of extinct races and nationalities, with all their
myriad creeds, and laws, and grotesque observances,
and fantastic codes of ethics; that crust of the
social fabric which, like the others, has had its
stupendous upheavals, bringing the wildest political
theories to the top and making them dominant over
enormous areas of human activity through long
ages, and which has its corresponding subsidals,
swallowing up and overwhelming beliefs and
convictions which were full of hope and promise,
and leaving only here and there a tiny fossil,
which, if it had a voice, would have a strange
story to tell.

Well, well! It may be so! ‘The country gentle-
man is, we are told, a survival of the palezozoic ages.
But it is worth our while, before he quite goes from
us, to see the kind of monster he was at his best—to
examine this curious specimen of the genus homo as
he has appeared in some stages of his development.
Granted that he is an anachronism, the very oddity
186 L’ANCIENNE NOBLESSE.

of the creature tempts us to study him briefly as he
was, and as he is, before he quite vanishes from the
scene.

How far can we get back? For anything I know
to the contrary, there may be in the records of Egypt
many evidences of prosperous gentlemen who were
thriving landlords 5,000 years ago. Unfortunately,
I know nothing of Egyptology, not even at second
hand. But there is an extraordinary wealth of
documents which throw a marvellously clear light
upon the daily life and habits of some great nations
who bore sway in Mesopotamia in times only a
few centuries later than the days when the earlier
Egyptian dynasties succeeded one another on the
Nile.

From these documents, it becomes abundantly
clear that twenty or twenty-five centuries before the
Christian era there were hosts of country gentlemen,
the exact counterparts of our modern squires, who
were holding large estates and living as great land-
lords, and exercising immense influence over wide
areas, sometimes for good, sometimes for evil, pre-
cisely as their successors have been doing everywhere
again and again.

About 4,000 years ago, one of these gentlemen,
bearing the name of Utuki Senui, underlies the
serious suspicion of having been quite a land-grabber.
L)ANCIENNE NOBLESSE. 187

He seems to have been troubled by finding that a
neighbour of his, named Utuki Idiuna, had some land
which lay most inconveniently between two estates
of his own. There were ten inclosures of arable
land, apparently two meadows, and, as it seems, two
plantations of date palms. Nothing would content
the poor gentleman but he must buy his neighbour
out, and buy him out he did accordingly—say a cen-
tury or so before Abraham.

But what sort of aman was he? Can we form a
guess?, Yes, and very much more than a guess.
This Chaldean gentleman was a highly educated
person; he had to learn at least one dead language,
which had ceased to be spoken perhaps a thousand
years before he was born. He had to get up his
lessons with grammar and dictionary, as school-boys
do now when they learn to read Homer; and some of
his school-books are to be seen to-day in the British
Museum by any one who likes to look at them. He
had public libraries to consult in all the principal
cities, and he frequently sent those libraries presenta-
tion copies of books which were wanted. He could,
if he liked, take a stroll in the botanical gardens,
which were founded by a sovereign in the old days,
or study astronomy at the public observatories, then
much more common than now. He seems to have
been fond of literature, very fond of art, and the
188 LANCIENNE NOBLESSE.

science of his day was not to be so entirely despised.
If he bought land, he sometimes mortgaged it too;
and he went to law, as we do now, about the veriest
trifles, when he lost his temper or believed himself
wronged. But, above all, he was extravagantly fond
of hunting, and he kept his horses and hounds, and
he preserved game with a tenacity of purpose quite
admirable to notice. To be sure, there were some
big beasts that only the king might hunt, precisely
as at the present day the King of Italy keeps to
himself the privilege of slaying the bouquetin. And,
as time went by, the Chaldean or Assyrian country
gentleman stocked his preserves so full, and guarded
them so jealously, that the creatures he hunted grew
disgracefully tame, and the beaters had to make
them get up to be speared by whipping the covers
with big whips to rouse the poor things into a trot.

If you want to know more about the country
gentleman, say 4,000 years ago, in that wonderful
land between the Tigris and the Euphrates you have
only to spend a week or so among the Assyrian
antiquities assembled at Bloomsbury with the very
valuable guide-books in your hands, and you will
soon know more than I can tell you.

Now it is no part of my plan to review the whole
course of ancient and modern history, or to show
how things went on from century to century in the
LANCIENNE NOBLESSE. 189

great plains of Mesopotamia; but this is certain,
that when, in the year 401 B.c. (a good deal more
than a millennium after the days of Utuki Senni, the
gentleman who bought the estate that lay in the
middle of his own), another country gentleman, whose
name was Xenophon—this time not an Asiatic, but
an Athenian citizen—found himself in command of
the 10,000 Greeks who were making their way home
from Cunaxa .on the Euphrates after the death of
Cyrus.

Xenophon has left us a minute and most interest-
ing journal of his march to the Mediterranean; and
among other things that he notices are the frequent
parks of the country gentry which he came upon all
along the line of his march. Sometimes they were
mere pleasure parks surrounding the great houses of
the nobility, sometimes they were forests well stocked
with deer and other game. They were the survivals
of the old times when lions and panthers had been
slaughtered in the great battues sculptured on the
ancient Assyrian monuments, and when the ‘‘early”’
inhabitants of the land had something to fear in
their conflicts with the now almost extinct carnivora.
But there were the parks, and there were the country
gentlemen, addicted to the old sports, with their
mansions, their retinue, and their state. The land
had grown incomparably poorer, the commerce and
190 LANCIENNE NOBLESSE.

the trade had dwindled, the population had decreased
to a mere shadow of what it had been in the time of
Tiglath Pileser and the other great rulers of the
Assyrian empire ; but the irrepressible country gen-
tleman was still to the fore. As long as anything
went on, he went on—this persistent, leisurely, cul-
tivated, dominating, and strangely successful land-
lord. Men might come, and men might go, but he
went on for ever. ...

I have said that Xenophon was himself a country
gentleman. There never was a more perfect repre-
sentative of his class. In all ages and countries the
country gentleman has been found taking his part
actively, intelligently, bravely, successfully, in the
armies of his country, wherever that country might
be. And, as we have seen, Xenophon was a most
able and gallant soldier. Ifit had not been for him,
those 10,000 Greeks would have been made mince-
meat of by those treacherous scoundrels the Persians.
Read the “‘Anabasis” of Xenophon, and you will find
all about it. Read about it in the Greek if you can,
and you will be a better and a wiser man for your
pains. Read it ina translation if you cannot, and
you will regret that your education was so neglected
by yourself or your seniors that the grace and beauty
of the original is blurred and obscured for you.

But there are some other works of Xenophon
LANCIENNE NOBLESSE. 19

which have come down to us which show us the
man, not asa soldier, but as a real, healthy, jovial
country gentleman of the real old school—always
robust and vigorous, almost restlessly active; a man
of a hundred accomplishments; a man of books as
a reader and an author, with one of the clearest,
simplest, and most lucid styles that ever cultured
writer attained to; a student of philosophy, history,
and of politics, and one of the earliest and most
suggestive pioneers in the science of economics;
taking his recreation in a manly, almost boisterous
way, as a genial and indefatigable sportsman. He
has left us actually a regular treatise upon hunting,
has given us some excellent hints and directions for
the training and breeding of horses and dogs. He
was a model farmer on a large scale. When they
banished him for his devoted friendship to Socrates,
he went away and settled at Scillus, near Olympia;
bought an estate there, and lived there for some
twenty years with his wife and children, with his
books and his hounds and his horses; and when at
last the Eleans drove him from there, he went and
took a town-house at Corinth, and there he died.
But don’t suppose that there were only a few such
country gentlemen as he in Attica or Sparta in his
days. When Xenophon was a boy, the great drama
of Aristophanes, The Clouds, was acted in the theatre
192 LANCIENNE NOBLESSE.

at Athens, and I dare say Xenophon went to see
it. Now the whole plot of that most famous and
unique masterpiece of Greek literature turns upon
the marriage of a worthy middle-aged old squire of
the gentry class, who had got into the hands of a
matchmaker and been induced to marry a fine lady

of the aristocracy, of the noble family of Megacles. =

He had the land and the money: she had the high birth
—the old story. The fruit of the union was a boy,
whom his mother spoilt. He took to the turf, kept
horses, laid the odds, was a regular plunger, and
got deeply into debt with the money-lenders, who
again, after the old fashion, came upon his father,
Strepsiades.

The play opens with old Strepsiades tossing sleep-
less upon his bed, thinking of the usurers and the bills
that are falling due; while his son—call him Philip,
that will do—is dreaming of his horses, sometimes
snoring, sometimes talking in his sleep about the
races that were on. Let me read you a few lines of
the old play. Thus speaks old father Strepsiades—

“QOdear! O Lord!
O Lord! O Zeus! These nights how long they are !
And here’s this hopeful son of mine wrapped up
Snoring and sweating under five thick blankets.
Come! I'll wrap up and snore in opposition !
Pheu—Hum! Baugh! Whee-ee—
Ah! I cav’¢ sleep a wink ; devoured and bitten
LANCIENNE NOBLESSE. 193

All through this son of mine. e curls his hair,
And sports his thoroughbreds, and drives his tandem ;
Even in dreams he rides : while I—I’m ruined,
Now that the paying time has come! .. .
* * * * *
Flunkey! My ledger! Let me reckon up
Who are my creditors and what I owe them.
Come, let me see! Here’s fifty pounds to Pasias.
Why fifty pounds to Pasias? What are ¢hey for?
Oh! for that chestnut cob from Corinth. Well, what next ?
A curricle and wheels, twelve pounds—Amynias. .. .
And so, and so, and so on !—My poor lad!...
For ever cursed be that old matchmaker
Who stirred me up to marry your poor mother.
Mine in the country was the happiest life—
A plain man, blunt, no courtier, independent,
Full of my sheep and beehives, and my vineyards,
And then I married—blunderer that I was—
A fine town lady—the Hon. Miss Megacles—
A regular proud, airified coquette.
This wife I married ; and we came together.
And when at last to me and my good woman
This hopeful son was born—our son and heir—
The boy she took and used to spoil him, saying,
‘Some day you'll drive in purple in the Row!
‘Like Megacles your uncle.’ Whilst I said,
‘Some day, my lad, you'll drive our goats about
‘Just like your worthy father did before you !’
Little he heeded my advice. But soon
A galloping consumption came upon him !—
Consumption comes apace upon my fortunes.
My son’s part is the galloping.”
* * * * *
Before we pass on from old Strepsiades the
country gentleman, with his rugged virtues and his

14
194 LANCIENNE NOBLESSE.

hard measure, I beg you to note that in this case,
some 400 years B.c., we find that the young rake,
who lives among jockies and blacklegs, does little
bills and plays the prodigal, frequents the cockpit
and is a mere trifler anda masher—he is no country
gentleman at all, but a mere dissolute young towns-
man; and that all his follies and vices are of the
streets and squares. If he goes to the bad it is
because he has ceased to be the country gentleman,
counting that life too slow. It is his worthy father
who is the representative of the squire of modern
times-—a thrifty, upright and downright conscien-
tious man, with a great deal of solid self-respect;
and if he ends by losing his head at last, it was
chiefly because he learnt that that young scamp of
a son of his had no heart to lose.

Let us move on. We.will travel westward again ;
and onward a couple of centuries or so, and trans-
port ourselves to. Italy. in the days of the Punic
Wars. Then we can hardly help making the
acquaintance of a real: old country gentleman of
the real old stiff and stubborn Tory school—Cato
the Censor. He came of a good old Italian stock
of landed gentry who had clung to their broad acres
near Tusculum, and had never cared two straws for
titles and honours.. There was a strong Conserva-
tive reaction going on in‘ Italy amongst the young
LANCIENNE NOBLESSE, 195

men. Cato hid himself away on his Sabine property
—farmed it, improved it, ruled his dependents with
horsewhip:in hand, and stung them with the stings
of that rod of rods for a fool’s back—a biting tongue,
that spared neither man nor maid, old women nor
children. ‘A sort of Lord Grimthorpe, who loved to
lay the lash on. He too got a commission in the
army, and proved himself a gallant and able soldier.
When a lull came in the war, he went back to his
Sabine estate, dressed like a farmer, ate hunks of
bread and cheese with his tenants; came down like
a sledge-hammer upon any luckless steward who
was twopence wrong in his weekly bills; told his
neighbours they were fools and old fossils; served
on the bench as a county magistrate, and appears
to have been a most influential Chairman of Quarter
Sessions.

He had a neighbour down there; one Flaccus—a
Nobleman he, while Cato was a Commoner. Flaccus
was one of the leaders of the Tory party. It was
the Young Italy party of the day. They wanted to
put the clock back, or if not that, yet they wanted
to put the regulator hard at slow! Flaccus said to
Cato, “Young man, you're exactly the sort of
colleague we want. Join us!” Cato all this while
was very much more than a mere agriculturist ; he
was that and almost everything else besides. He
196 LANCIENNE NOBLESSE.

was an omnivorous reader. He trudged about the
clods in the daytime in his heavy boots; sometimes
put his hand to the plough; looked after the cattle
and the pigs; at night-time he went to his library
and buried himself in his books.

‘The dolts know nothing about high farming!”
he said to himself; “I'll teach them!” So he
wrote his famous treatise on the tillage of the soil
and rural life in general. It has come down to us,
and may be bought for a song.

“Aye! and they know less about gardening!
Look at the wretched state of their flower-beds and
parterres!”? quoth he. So he wrote another book
about gardening and flriculture. Mind! I say
floriculiure, not only advice to the growers of carrots
and cabbages !

When he grew old he wrote a sort of anticipation
of Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to his son, in which he
warned him against physicians. They were a very
poor lot in his opinion. Let a wise man keep out
of their way; avoid pills, and live on salads and
poultry; sirloins and haunches of beef or mutton
were to be avoided—they were only fit for kings or
other such anomalous persons. “ Kings,” he said,
‘were naturally carnivorous persons.” Even hares
were not always wholesome; they made people have
batl dreams !
LANCIENNE NOBLESSE. 197

With his fiery eyes and his unkempt red hair, a
frame of iron and of gigantic strength, a loud harsh
voice and never at a loss for the most forcible
words, he became a power at Rome, and was
raised to the peerage as a matter of course. Every
now and then he went back into the country,
thrashed his slaves unmercifully, frightened his
household till they were half-dead with terror at
the sight of him; went on pouring out volume
after volume; was a most learned antiquary amongst
other things, and gave himself in his later years to
Greek literature, which he pursued with immense
enthusiasm. The old heathen grew disgracefully
rich at last. He had a remarkable faculty for stock-
jobbing ; speculated largely in building companies,
water companies, and land; and, sad to tell, he
even became a great money-lender. Farming !
Alas! alas! alas! Farming, he said, didn’t pay.

See how History repeats itself for ever. The
Serpent of Time is always swallowing his own tail !

Turn over the page again, say three hundred
years later or so. Things had changed in Italy.
The old squires had got poorer and poorer. A new
race had sprung up. The capitalists had bought
the small men out; the big estates had grown to
vast size. Folks say that’s what we are coming to.
IT express no opinion. I really know nothing about
198 L’ANCIENNE NOBLESSE.

the future, only a very, very little about the past.
And no man should prophesy except he’s sure.
Prophecies have such a plaguy trick of disappoint-
ing the prophets and their friends !

Well! about 210 years after the death of old Cato,
there was born, somewhere on Lake Como, a child
who soon lost both his parents, and who was adopted
by his wealthy uncle and is known by the name of
the Younger Pliny. He grew up to become a very
rich country gentleman with half a dozen country
seats. He inherited his uncle’s large estates and his
uncle’s taste for learning and literature. He, too,
got a commission in the army first ; but. he soon re-
tired, as we say, and then he became a barrister, and
then he took to political life and became governor of
the dependency of Pontus on the Black Sea, answer-
ing pretty closely to what is now called Trebizond,
stretching from Samsoon to Batoum. But he was
disgustingly rich; and it was not the time for much
ambition except a war broke out; and there was not
much of that now, except in that little island of
Britain or among those poverty-stricken Dacians
across the Danube. The Parthian war was coming,
but it had not yet come. What could a Roman gentle-
man do but farm, and hunt, and take to literature,
and make speeches, and write Greek plays and
Latin epigrams, and build magnificent palaces and
LANCIENNE NOBLESSE. 199

lay out gardens, and collect pictures, and look after
his tenantry; exactly as country gentlemen do now
when they have the means, or will do when they get
them?

And all this was exactly what Pliny did. But he
was an incomparably more honoured and kind-
hearted and polished gentleman than that rugged,
boorish, blustering, boisterous old Cato. Cato
behaved like a brute to his servants and dependents.
Pliny was rather inclined to coddle them.

There was a certain Zosimus, a kind of private
secretary or factotum of his, about whom he writes
quite a pathetic letter to one of his friends. Zosi-
mus seems to have been far gone in phthisis—he was
spitting blood and coughing his lungs away. Pliny
had sent him to Egypt—up the Nile, you observe—one
winter; and the man returned a trifle better; but he
could not stand the climate in the heights of the
Appenines, and the old symptoms had returned.
Pliny writes to his friend asking him to lend him a
house he had'in the south of France at Fréjus, about
ten miles from Cannes. He was to lack for nothing,
all his expenses should be paid. ‘‘ Because,” says
Pliny, ‘I have heard that the climate is very genial
and there is plenty of good milk to be had. there,
which is just what he wants to cure him.”

In another letter he writes that he was much up- ©
200 LANCIENNE NOBLESSE.

set by the death of several of his household. ‘‘ Some
people,” he says, ‘‘ look upon losses of this kind only
as so much money’s worth gone from them. People
who look at the matter only in that light may be
anything else you please, but they are not men, what-
ever else they are.”

Pliny had some magnificent gardens at one of his _
houses somewhere in Tuscany. He gives us a long
and minute account of the house and its belongings.
It was, he says, in a delightfully beautiful country and
remarkably healthy. ‘‘ People live,” he says, ‘‘ to
an astonishing age. You may see old men whose
great-grandchildren are almost grown up, and the old
fellows’ stories and talk, when you go to see them,
almost make you fancy yourself carried back to a
bygone age. . .. All along the verandah,” he says,
“there is a stretch of green sward [xystus] with a
number of patterns cut in it and edged with box,
and then there is a slope down to a raised belt of
shrubs with shapes of animals facing one another
cut out in box. Beyond this a broad walk, hedged
with evergreens, more box clipped into strange
shapes; and beyond this again a broad walk flanked
by evergreens, planted close, and low-trimmed
shrubs. . . . Then there is the riding-school, with
cypresses planted round it; and then comes the
garden where the roses grow;-and fountains, and
LPANCIENNE NOBLESSE. 201

seats, and marble columns, and the fantastically
clipped box trees here and there and everywhere.”

Verily a palace for a king, and in that climate an
earthly paradise.

As one reads all about it, and gets bewildered in
the reading, one begins to ask oneself whether Solo-
mon had any dream of such magnificence as this in
the houses that he built in Lebanon and other parts
of Canaan in the old days.

But Pliny came out now and then as a sportsman, ©
and among those Roman gentlemen pig-sticking took
the place of our effeminate practice of pheasant-
shooting. Falconry, as far as I know, was an amuse-
ment unknown to the Romans; but pig-sticking, with
its considerable share of danger, and its requiring a
great deal of nerve, coolness, quickness of eye,
clever horsemanship and a steady hand, was really
a fine manly sport, and the country gentlemen loved
it inordinately. They preserved herds of wild boars
very strictly and jealously, just as the King of
Saxony does now; and they had their battues as the
same king has to this day. Thereis a letter of Pliny
to Tacitus the historian, in which the writer boasts
of having taken three wild boars, and grand ones
too, in a single day ; and there is another which looks
like Tacitus’ answer to his friend, lamenting that in
his part of the world there were no wild boars; so
202 '  LANCIENNE NOBLESSE.

there was nothing for it but to surrender oneself to
literature and write poetry—if only one could! But
think, of Pliny and Tacitus going out pig-sticking
together and watching at the nets for a rush, hunt-
ing-spear in hand!

Kindly, courteous, very generous and high-minded,
Pliny was sure to be an enlightened and public-.
spirited landlord ! !

Twenty years or so ago, I ventured to print in a
local paper a literal translation of one. of Pliny’s
letters in which he gives a delightful account of his
meeting his tenants at the usual rent audit, and of
what followed.

One of the farmers came to the audit with his son,
a boy to whom Pliny-took a great liking. ‘‘ Where
do you go to school, boy?” said the great man.
‘Please, sir, at Milan!” ‘At Milan! What in
the world do you go. all the way there for?”2
Then followed: a discussion and a remonstrance
which ended by Pliny’s proposing to do exactly and
precisely what the Endowed School Commissioners of
this our enlightened. rgth century set forth as the
best and only satisfactory way of bringing the higher
education to the doors of every small townsman in

* The same difficulty of finding good schools in this district,
was felt eight centuries later. See Mon. Germ. Hist. Capitu-
laria, Tom. I., pars. ii., p. 327. a
LANCIENNE NOBLESSE. 203

England, and which they have been trying to do ever
since with very questionable success.

Pliny proposed that the Como people should all
subscribe to set on foot a really good day-school at
Como; get a good master, pay reasonably high fees,
and keep their boys at home instead of sending them,
at an absurd expense, to all the ends of the earth,
where they would be sure to learn a good deal of
mischief and pay dear for it too. ‘‘ Do this,” said
Pliny, “‘and instead of your sending ‘your money to
be spent in other places, you’ll find other people come
to be taught in your school, and they’ll bring money
here instead of your sending yours away to enrich
other folks. Do this, and I engage to add a third of
whatever sum you subscribe among yourselves, and
the more you call upon me to pay the better I shall
be pleased.” .

When I sent this memorable letter to the local
paper aforesaid, the learned editor told his readers
that of course it was only a bit of my fun: and the
readers all thought it was a hoax, and giggled and
chuckled and said to one another, ** What a droll man
that is! It’s a wonder how he can think of such
things. He must be very clever.” But one old gentle-
men grunted out, ‘Clever! I don’t call a man
clever who’s such a tremendous liar!”

Alas! my experience of life is a very sad and depress-
204 LANCIENNE NOBLESSE.

ing experience. When once or twice during my life
I have taken it into my head fo invent a story—and I
really have no talent for that sort of work, more’s
the pity !—people have always exclaimed: ‘‘ Oh! how
very true and life-like—there is nothing half so
charming as the naked truth.” But assure asI have
told a plain, unvarnished tale, without one atom of
exaggeration or dressing, so surely will a small
chorus of critics cry out upon me for a romancer.
‘*The man is very clever, they say, but he’s a tremen-
dous liar! ”

I cannot dwell any more upon Pliny and his coun-
try life, but his letters are full of a pleasant breezy
freshness and healthy enjoyment and kindliness and
nobleness. He stop at Rome among the gossips and
quidnuncs and all the frivolities and trivialities and
fatiguing routs and dinner parties and committee
meetings and inane palaver of the streets and clubs
and the board-rooms? Not he! Writing from
Laurentum one day to his friend Fundanus, he
sums it all up in a nutshell. ‘‘ You city people,” he
says, ‘you merely waste your time. I spend it
profitably and rationally. You think you are very
busy, and so you are; but you are busy at doing
nothing; and my opinion is that it is better to have
nothing to do than to do nothing!” A pregnant say-
ing, paradoxical, but wise !
L’'ANCIENNE NOBLESSE. 205

I must make another leap over another century or
two in time, and, travelling again westward, settle
myself down in France in the 5th century A.p.

The power of Rome had been waning for long;
that awful force had crushed out all the institutions
of old Europe which we most falsely stigmatise as
merely barbaric. Rome had moulded the peoples to
her will, and stampt her imperishable image upon
nations and races till they seemed to be almost
organically changed. The forms of Roman political,
civil, and even religious life had been reproduced
everywhere. They were delivered to the subject
people as if by a Divine ordaining, at once a destiny
and a boon whereby alone mankind could be re-
generated. The city on the seven hills was the very
embodiment of Almighty power and Divine wisdom.
Its master was accepted as the God-man whose will
was law for all the world. But times had changed,
and though the old idolatrous awe for the emperor
had scarcely waned, the executive had become almost
contemptible. The god thundered, but the levin
bolts fell harmless.

The Gaul of the 5th century had gradually been
left more and more to manage its own affairs. There,
too, local government had long been established, and
Gaul from end to end exhibited now a faithful copy
of the condition of society in Italy. In both lands
206 LANCIENNE NOBLESSE,

the same influences had long been at work. I am
inclined to think that provincial life in Gaul was in
a more healthy, or at any rate-a more hopeful, state
than’ Roman’ and Italian life. The old Gaulish
language had almost ceased to. be used in the towns.
It had long’ ceased to be written. The old. Gaulish
religion had almost.disappeared.. The old Gaulish
civilisation and. education had made way for Roman
habits, Roman dress,. Roman literature; Roman
everything. Exactly the same changes had taken
place in the relations between the townsmen and the
countrymen which had been going on in Italy, only
more so. » The. townsmen were frivolous, gay, idle,
extravagantly fond of the theatre and the circus,
holding their bishops and clergy in great awe, a
church-going people well drilled in religious matters,
execrating their Arian neighbours with a fierce
intolerance and hating them like poison. In Gaul,
too—suppose we call it France for convenience, only
don’t tell some folks that I was guilty of the crime
of talking of France in the 5th century—in this old
France, the most enlightened and delightful province
of the Roman Empire, the same changes had been
going on.for centuries which had been going on in
Italy. The small men had been bought out by the
rich men, and the land had fallen ‘into the hands of
the few.. Or if that is overstating’ the case-and we
LANCIENNE NOBLESSE. 207

may very easily overstate it—there weresome country
gentlemen who had enormous landed estates and
immense palaces, and who were living just the life
that Pliny had lived three centuries before at Como
or Laurentum.

We have abundant materials for enabling us to
arrive at a very full knowledge of the way men lived
then from the Garonne to the Mediterranean. The
impression one derives from a careful examination of
the large mass of literature of all kinds which dates
from this period of Gaulish history, is that the France
ofthe 5th century has very little to fear from a com-
parison with the France of the 1gth century. Of
course satirists ranted and raved as they always did do
and willdo. Pagan writers said the Christians were
all ruffians and hypocrites; and Christian writers
said the Pagans were all murderers, adulterers, and
robbers. But when you come to read the letters of
Sidonius Apollinaris, quite a refreshing picture of
this old French life reveals itself to us on the right
hand and on the left. Never was there more enthu-
siasm for literature. In fact, the besetting sin of
the age was pedantry. One rich man, Protadius, set
himself to collect’an antiquarian library, intending to
draw up a history of: his native ancestry.

The great schools of Arles, Bordeaux, Toulouse,
and Clermont’ swarmed with students ‘ attending
208 L’ANCIENNE NOBLESSE.

lectures on rhetoric, law, and mathematics. Rutilius,
Symmachus, Ausonius, Salvian, Sidonius—all men
whose works have come down to us, men who were
poets, philosophers, rhetoricians, historians—were all
born Frenchmen or, if you prefer it, Gauls. The ladies
were not only great at embroidery, but were great
readers too. Never alarge house without its library.

Huge and luxurious as were the Italian villas of
three centuries before this time, the Gaulish mansions
were far grander and more magnificent. The imagi-
nation of the Arabian Nights sinks into mere
childish storytelling when we come to compare the
creations of the Romancers with the descriptions of
the prodigious palaces owned by Sidonius and his
friends.

Churches rose up everywhere as if by magic.
Bishops were princes, and their influence was not only
based upon their wealth, but upon the moral power
which they exercised and the extraordinary awe that
they inspired among the hordes ef mutinous mer-
cenaries who were for ever rebelling against their
nominal masters, and at last took to living upon the
helpless people whom Rome could no longer protect
or govern. But for the country gentlemen of Gaul
in the 5th century, ney were living like the gods of
Olympus—

““Propt on beds of amaranth and moly;”
PANCIENNE NOBLESSE. 209

while bands of Wisigoths and Burgundians and
Goths, the mercenaries in Rome’s pay who broke
out in revolt, came pouring in, plundering and slay-
ing. Sidonius describes, as Pliny had done before
him, four or five of these vast country houses whither ©
the Gaulish nobles and landlords retired when the
disturbed state of the country made town life perilous
and intolerable. But at the time we are dealing with
they were monster edifices two or three times the
size of Windsor Castle or Buckingham Palace. The
most audacious romancer has never dared to describe
so amazing an architectural prodigy as the villa of
Pontius Leo overlooking Bordeaux. In mere sport
and pride the builder of this vast place had sur-
rounded it with high walls embattled and flanked
with towers. For the time had come when it might
very easily need to be turned into a veritable fortress;
“and if it should come,” says Sidonius, “‘ it would
take an army to besiege it.” Even among the very
ramparts there were magnificent baths. A mighty
cascade at intervals sent down a foaming cataract
over the roofs of the mansion and thence flowed
on into an artifical lake, where at times there were
boat-races and miniature sea-battles. In front of
the baths was an arcade supported upon columns of
the most splendid marble. The walls were panelled
with richly carved precious wood, the ceiling was
glittering with gilding.

‘ 15
210 - DANCIENNE NOBLESSE.

The plan of the palace beyond was so contrived
that there were suites of apartments from which the
visitor might see the sun at all hours of the day.
Everywhere there was a profusion of sculptures ; some
illustrating history, some merely fanciful. Galleries
of pictures, many of which Sidonius describes;
hydraulic machines distributed streams of water
wherever it was needed; contrivances for heating
every room and corridor turned winter. into summer
at will. Fountains spouting and babbling; great
fish-ponds and grottoes; gardens and shrubberies
and vineyards ; tennis lawns and archery grounds;
and for those who loved the chase, horses and hounds
and hawks and falcons, for it. seems they had learned
the art of falconry since the days when Pliny knew
nothing of that knightly craft.

But with all this luxury and culture and refing:
ment and splendour it was a bad life that these great
nobles were living—an enervating, corrupting life,
selfish, aimless, and trivial. It was the life which.
the Virginian landlords were rapidly falling into
when the great war came between the South and the
North which for ever swept,.away from American.
soil the blighting curse of slavery and made the
Western continent the land of the free. The Gaulish
landlords kept their armies of slaves, and they
suffered for their sin. They suffered in a hundred.
LANCIENNE NOBLESSE. 211

ways, but chiefly in this, that their aristocracy
became indéed a bloated aristocracy; and an effemi-
nate indolence set in among all classes till patriotism
died out and government became impossible ; and if
it had not been for what little influence the Christian
religion and the Church exercised, there would have
been mere riot and anarchy. But on all this I am
not called upon to dwell.

Again centuries went by! The horrible and
sanguinary atrocities of the French Revolution were
the fierce expression of the wild resentment of a cruel
populace against the country gentlemen of France.
Historians are beginning to have grave doubts
whether the French xoblesse were anything like as
bad as their plunderers and destroyers have been
interested in describing them. But they had to go;
just as our monasteries in the 16th century had
to go.

There was no possible way of retaining the class
of privileged landowners who were men of noble
instincts and lofty natures, and zealous for all that
was good, without leaving the tangled roots of a
poisonous growth in the soil. A passionate impa-
tience drove the multitude mad, and bad and good
alike were swept from the face of the earth. It
was done in the most savage and relentless way ;
and the mob screamed ‘its fierce applause, and
°

212 LANCIENNE NOBLESSE.

worshipped the goddess of reason, and kissed the
guillotine with bloated lips already red with blood.
There were to be no more country gentlemen on the
soil of France. 2

No more? Iam old enough to remember, nearly
fifty years ago, hearing an old French gentleman of
the old school declaiming against the deplorable
obliteration of all that was beautiful in his native
land. There was no ceremonious courtesy, no more
polished country life; no more grandeur in the pro-
vinces ; no more of the quiet rural life that was worth
living; no more cultured, enlightened, and elegant
repose. ‘ Monsieur,” he cried, “les chateaux s’en
vont ! ’—the country houses are all going.

So men have kept on repeating from year to year.
And yet they have not gone. . They are springing up
everywhere again. The old style of country gentle-
men has passed from the scene. The insolent

‘profligates, heartless and rapacious bankrupts, out-
at-elbows from their cradles to their graves—these
have gone. They have been succeeded by a new
race—rich, cultured, . public-spirited men, alive to
their duties and responsibilities, bringing to the land
a great deal more than they get from it; slowly dis-
seminating among the rustics new ideas, new hopes
and the new culture, making many a deserted
wilderness blossom as the rose. So it- is among
PANCIENNE NOBLESSE. 213

ourselves. We Englishmen do our work without
bloody revolutions—without guillotines, September
massacres, or Nantes noyades. Only once in our
history have we had experience of a violent cataclysm.
We don’t believe in the efficacy of explosions. We
trust to the slow and silent working out of great
laws in the body politic. We effect our revolutions
gradually and do our work as we can, here a little and
there a little, but always working on and forwards.
We, too, have been getting rid of many a hundred
country gentlemen who were doing no good to the
country, nor their land doing any good to them.
But others take the place of those that go and have
served their time and can no longer hold on.
Others come as wave follows wave in the great
currents that ebb on for ever through the genera-
tions. The new men are the men of the new blood,
and they and their posterity are going to have a
trial. The wolves have gone. The wild boars have
gone. The hares are almost gone. The deer and
the foxes are going. Country life will be other than it
has been ; the many will rule, the few will obey. But
as long as wealth goes on increasing, and brains and
character—intellectual and moral force—have free
scope, so long will there always be rich men who
will buy country houses and lands, woods and parks,
and fields and vineyards, and where they dwell there
214 L'ANCIENNE NOBLESSE.

must they needs be the blessing or the curse of their
neighbours, whether they like it or not, and their
influence and example will be. now in the direction
of progress, now in that of degradation. Their
leisure or their activity, their virtues or their vices,
will needs have their effect. Hodge may rail or
envy, sneer or revile, howl or cringe, as the fit takes
him ; but divide this fatherland of ours into so many
big towns, with their houses and their shops and
their factories, their streets and squares and gas
lamps, and so many million acres of mere arable
or pasture land with no other inhabitants upon
them but the mere tillers of the soil, turning over
the clods, tending: the ‘cattle, and gathering the
harvests, and this England would become the
dullest, dreariest; and most repulsive island upon
the face of the globe, and there would be'no small
danger of our posterity being compelled to cultivate
the broad acres by'convict labour only, for none but
a felon would condescend to handle the spade or the
plough.
VII.

LETTERS AND LETTER. WRITERS.

“Virginibus puerisque.”

Durina the year ending the 31st of March, 1885,
the sum of £7,898,000 was received for the trans-
mission of letters through Her Majesty’s Post Office.
This means that during the year the number of
letters, circulars, newspapers, and postal cards
counted by hundreds of millions. We cannot, try
as we may, realise what is meant by these pro-
digious numbers; they baffle the imagination; they
stagger us as much as the conception of thousands,
or even hundreds, staggers those savages of rudi-
mentary brain who, we are told, cannot yet bring
themselves to count above four consecutive units.
But this we can understand, that the mere sum of
intellectual effort involved in the composition of all

215
216 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

the vast assemblage of written and printed matter
transmitted through the Post Office in a single year
' must be and is enormous.

We most of us think that there must be something
wrong somewhere if the postman does not bring us
something to read and something to answer by the
time we present ourselves at the breakfast table in
_the morning, and very few of us of the middle class
who have got out of our teens know what it is to
pass a week without having to write a letter. Yet
I often hear it said that the penny post and the
halfpenny cards and the sixpenny telegrams are
rapidly lessening the old habit of writing letters
that are worth reading, and, in fact, that letter-
writing is an-art that is dying out.

I am one of those who do not believe in such a
dreary prospect as the pessimists hold out to us;
and if it be true that the machinery now employed
in distributing our daily budgets is being largely
utilised in sending huge numbers of circulars and
advertisements all over the land, I can see no fear of
any very great catastrophe ensuing. The rubbish
basket is also an institution of our times, and its
mission is not quite contemptible, in that it is the
great eliminator which rids us of the draff and chaff
and dross of our correspondence.

The gift of speech—articulate speech—is one of
LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. 217

the greatest of the gifts which differentiate us from
the lower animals. Language is the prerogative of
man, and the art of writing down his thoughts so
that others may read them is the art which more
than any other differentiates the civilised man from
the savage. Nevertheless, it is only when a people
has attained a high level of civilisation and culture

that men and women begin to write familiar letters —

to one another. Literature begins in verse, for
verse is the earliest of all composition, and only
when men have passed out of the stage of metrical
utterances and thence to the severer forms of prosaic
narrative or formal legislative enactments, and the
social fabric has attained to a certain condition of
stability, and education has become diffused among
the many and has ceased to be the privilege of the
few—only then do people begin to address one
another on matters of everyday life, and, being
interested in the concerns of the present, find a
pleasure in commenting upon the things im being
and the things in doing that present themselves to
their eyes.

The hankering for what we call sympathy is the
virtue—or the vice—of advanced civilisation. I
doubt whether primzval man cared much for what
his neighbour was thinking about in the abstract.
When we advance to the point where luxurious
218 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

leisure is possible, then first do we begin to com-
municate our sentiments one to the other. It is
often an extremely annoying habit..

My cultured brother! are you condemned by the
straitness of your circumstances to drive about the
country in a vehicle called a waggonette? ‘Then
you must know what it is to have an exasperating
fellow-creature of intense enthusiasm and excessive
love of the picturesque appealing to you a dozen
times in a mile to twist round your head like a
Polly-pi-caw, and look at something behind you.
“Oh, you must look!” is the cruel appeal of one
who aches for sympathy and who has no sympathy
for your aches! Strange that there should be in the
human mind this absorbing desire to put somebody
else in the same position that he or she occupies.
Such attempts always fail, yet they will always be
repeated in defiance of all experience to the con-
trary, and in total disregard of the law of nature,
that a man cannot possibly be in two places at once.
Is it that we are dimly conscious of the fact that the
spiritual man will be independent of the limiting
conditions of time and space, and that any device
whereby we can help one another to. approximate,
even to the semblance of such independence, must
be at once a move in the right direction, and a proof
that we ourselves are rising in the scale of being.
LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. 219

Certainly the earliest letter that has come down
to us—as far as I know—is an attempt to make all
who read that letter feel at home in a great Egyptian
city more than three thousand years age. Yes! At
least fourteen hundred years before Christ, say the
pundits. Think of that!

Centuries before there was a man or a thing called
Homer—perhaps while Moses was trotting about in
a wig and loin-cloth, and little Aaron was fishing in
the Nile with a bit of string and a crooked pin—this
letter was written, which all may read, by Panbesa
to his correspondent Amenemapt. ‘I arrived at
the city of Rameses,” says this old-world gentleman,
“and I have found it excellent, for nothing can
compare with it in the Theban land.” A_ very
paradise for the vegetarian. Vines and fig trees,
and leeks, and onions, and garlic, and nursery
gardens—positively, nursery gardens. But, alack!
they drank, these Egyptian people did—they drank
the shameful, and Panbesa did not blush for them;
he too smacked his lips—metaphorically—at the
wine and the beer and the cider and the sherbet.
He actually names them all, and he gives us clearly
to understand that the place was “a pleasant place
to live in,” none the less because the drinks were
various. And this before Israel had crossed the
Jordan, while wolves were prowling among the seven
220 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

hills where Rome rose in the after time, eight
centuries before Solon appeared as a legislator, and
a whole millennium before Pericles was born or
‘thought of! Yes, even then this Egyptian gentle-
man pronounces in a letter his opinion upon things
in general, and goes out of his way to remark in it
that there was a brisk trade in bitter beer imported
all the way from Galilee.t
* * * * *

It is observable how few letters we find in the Old
Testament. When they occur they are for the most
part letters written among people in a far higher
condition of civilisation than the Israelites had
attained to—i.e., people among whom there was a
more settled government, a greater knowledge of
the world, and wider views than the children of
Israel had any toleration for. It is to the West
that we must turn, and to a literature that grew up
long after the time of the older Jewish polity in
Palestine, if we are to look for the earliest specimens
of what we now understand by letter-writing.

So, too, it is significant that Greek literature is
entirely wanting in anything that may be called a
collection of letters. It is significant because, when
we remember the kind of life which people led in
Hellas, it is difficult to understand how they ever

* “Records of the Past,” vol. vi. p. 11.
LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. 221

could have been a letter-writing people. They
knew little or nothing of that affectionate intercourse
between members of the same family which our
word “home” stands for; the innocence of childhood,
or even its loveliness, has hardly a place in Greek
art; the companionship of brother and sister, or of
mother and child, was hardly thought of. Where
the moral sentiment is deficient, or so feeble as to
exercise hardly any influence upon the conduct,
people cannot be expected to keep up a friendly
correspondence. It is to Rome and Roman litera-
ture that we must turn to find the earliest examples
of affectionate and confidential letters passing
between members of the same family, and between
friends of the same tastes and sympathies.

It is when we come to the second century B.c.
that we find the fashion of letter-writing has already
become generally prevalent—thatis, justwhen Rome’s
Empire had become widely extended, and when her
citizens were always on the move, and sometimes
absent from home for months or years, while in the
meantime their hearts were ever turning towards
the old scenes and the old friends whom they had
left behind. As might have been expected, the
earliest letters are those from parents to their
children. Letters from Cato the Censor to his son
seem to have been published soon after the old
222 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

man’s death, and a considerable fragment of a letter
from Cornelia to her son Gaius Gracchus is still
extant, though some doubt its genuineness. Fifty
years ‘after Cornelia’s death Cicero tells us he had
read Cornelia’s letters—that' is, they were already
common property,:and already a recognised portion
of Roman literature. hy

Of the early Roman letter-writers, Cicero him-
self was by far the most prolific and indefatigable.
Born in’ 106 B.c., and murdered in 43 B.c., his life
of sixty-three years was among the busiest lives
that any Roman ever lived, but, like many another
busy man, he always found time to write his letters.
There are nearly eight hundred letters of Cicero
now extant, besides at least ninety letters addressed
to him; and we know that this large collection is a
mere fragment of the immense correspondence that
he left behind him. It extends over a period of less
than twenty-five years—z.e., it gives us on the
average a letter for about every eleven days of the
last twenty-five years of his life; the letters are
written to all sorts of people, and are of all varieties
of style. Only in a very few instances does the
writer seem to have had any thought of their being
published. Their charm is their naturalness, their
frankness, their outspokenness. It is difficult to
imagine what our notion of-Roman life and manners,
LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. 223

of Roman history, would be without this unique
correspondence; and all this astonishing letter-
writing went on in the midst of every kind of
engagement, and of such claims upon the writer’s
time and thoughts as few men that have ever lived
are exposed to. Cicero was deeply immersed in
politics, in lawsuits, in foreign affairs, in building
houses, in writing books and making collections of
art treasures, in travelling, in actual warfare ; yet in
the midst of it all he was writing letters, long and
short, at a rate at which only a professional journalist
nowadays could think of turning them off.

» Sometimes pedantic and sometimes affected in his
other writings, Cicero is never so in his letters.
There he-is always natural, and there you have the
best side of the man shown us. The letters were
written from his heart—I mean the familiar letters.
He writes because he had a longing to communicate
his thoughts to his friends—in other words, because
he had a craving for the sympathy of those he loved.
I believe:that will be found to be the real secret of
all good: letter-writing. If a woman sits down to
write as Madame de Sévigné did, or as Pope did,
with a view to an outside public, and only half a
thought for the friend or relative addressed, you will
never get really natural letters. There will always
be a false ring about them. More than one book
224 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

has been published during the last few years the
author of which has been extremely careful to tell us
in his preface that it was never intended for publica-
tion ;*that he was very much surprised indeed when
it was urged upon him that he should actually print
his letters! Nothing had been further from his
intention. The letters were written in the first
instance to X, or Y, or Z. Yet we can hardly
read a page without feeling quite certain that X, or
Y, or Z was only a peg to hang the letters on, which
were most surely addressed to a larger outside
public, whom the author never lost sight of from
the moment he took his pen in hand till the moment
he laid it down.

Cicero’s letters are thoroughly genuine, and when
they are meant to be read by the world at large the
style is altogether different from that which he uses
in the simple confidence of friendly intercourse.
But there is one abominable practice which is
extremely objectionable in these letters. Cicero is
always putting in little scraps of Greek and Greek
words—Greek slang, in fact. His letters swarm
with them—exactly as some people now never seem
to be able to get on without some scraps of French
or German, which might just as well, or better, be
expressed in homely English. There was some
excuse for a Roman doing this in Cicero’s days,
LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. 225

because the language was inadequate for the wants
of a large-minded man then, and there were new
ideas and new habits and new experiences for which
the meagre Latin vocabulary of the time did not
suffice; but there is no excuse for this kind of thing
now. The habit of putting in tags and rags of
French at every page is only one of those crafty
devices whereby a person with a small vocabulary
endeavours to conceal poverty of style. It is less a
confession of weakness than a pretence on the part
of the writer that he is master of a foreign language,
which he can use with greater facility than he can
his own mother tongue. That usually means that
he is very imperfectly acquainted with any language,
his mother tongue included.

There are two curious omissions in Cicero’s letters,
one to be very much applauded, the other very much
to be deplored. The first is that Cicero never in-
dulges in that most foolish practice of ordinary letter-
writers, to wit, long descriptions of scenery—what
people now call word-painting—a most silly and
affected expression. Few things are more irritating
than to receive a letter extending over three sheets,
filled with descriptions of scenery. They are almost
always very feeble, at best they are very tantalising,
and they generally wind up with an abrupt notice
that the writer has positively no time for more. Of

16
226 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

course not! You can’t go on indefinitely using up
superlatives and ringing the changes upon all the
names of the colours in a paint-box. When I write
a book of travels, I shall describe nothing I ever
saw in the whole course of my journey—I shall only
tell my readers what I Aeard. And a very interesting
and exciting book will my travels be!

The other omission in Cicero’s letters is really quite
unpardonable. In all those eight hundred letters it
would be difficult to find one in which he says a word
about the dress of the ladies of his time—it is dis-
graceful, but so it is. It proves him to be like other
male creatures—unobservant, tasteless, dark, obtuse,
and lacking in that higher sense and that gentler,
truer, elevating refinement which the nobler sex is
gifted with. This omission in Cicero’s correspon-
dence is all the more reprehensible because his cor-
respondents were by no means exclusively gentlemen.
There was one lady, Cerellia, who, we are told, had
a very voluminous correspondence with him. . It is
most unfortunate that Carellia’s letters are all lost.
She must have told him how Fuivia and Terentia
and Tullia and a host more were dressed, and how
they looked. The result is that there are few sub-
jects of which we know less than we do of ladies’
dress at Rome in the later years of the Republic.
We know that Cicero’s own wife got him into great
LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. 227

difficulties by her speculations on the Stock Ex-
change or something of the sort, and that Cerellia
herself was an extremely fine lady of great wealth
and of very great culture. We know that Cicero
frequently writes about his lady friends, though he
was not exactly what is known as a lady’s man; but
about their toilet—their jewels—their fashion of
doing their hair—their shawls and their feathers and
their ribbons, and the last new things in caps or
mantles—not a word! It is very sad! What a
deplorable loss the world has experienced in the
disappearance of the Lady Ceerellia’s letters. Is it
not to be hoped that they may yet be discovered in
some obscure library? How much happier we
should all be!

When Julius Czsar was murdered at_ Rome there
was a young man pursuing his university education
at Athens, and his name was—well, it does not much
matter what his name was, but we call him Horace.
I don’t know whether he was a great and voluminous
letter-writer, but I do know that he left us two books
of what he calls letters, which have this great recom-
mendation, that they are written in verse. It is a
received axiom that a poet is born, not made; but a
poet is one thing, and a versifier is quite another.
Anybody who has only average ability can write
verse if he tries; it is the very easiest accomplish-
228 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

ment that man or woman can acquire. But practice
and care are needed for the manipulation of verse,
and practice and care are not generally allowed to
be essential in the production of letters worth read-
ing. Therefore I do strongly recommend any young
person afflicted with the dangerous gift of fluency in
writing and liable to be run away with by a restless
pen and an exuberant style—any one, 7.¢., who, being
still in the teens, is in a fair way to become intoxi-
cated by the discovery of how much may be produced
on paper under some circumstances and by some
unfortunate people in twenty-four hours—I say, I do
strongly recommend such persons to write, if it be
only one or two long letters a week, in English
verse. My gentle sisters of the nimble pens, my
noble brothers who drive the goose-quill with such
ready fingers; as a wholesome check upon excessive
speed in the production of literature, do try writing
your letters in verse. Did not Horace do so? Why
should not you? Is it not a melancholy thought
that all Horace’s prose letters have perished? So
may yours. Yes! But a good many of his verse
letters have survived. Why not emulate Horace?
There is one more Roman letter-writer that I have
a word to say about—I mean that coxcombical and
self-conceited prig commonly known as the younger
Pliny. Yes! he was really the beaw idéal of a prig.
LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. 229

Very rich, very polite, very refined, very highly
cultured, very choice in the society he mixed with,
very punctilious, and very much impressed with the
conviction that the world at large, and the Roman
world in particular, had a great deal to be thankful
for in the fact that he, Pliny, had been born when he
was and been brought up as he had been.

He could not help being a prig. He was brought
up a prig from his childhood. He wrote a Greek
tragedy when he was fourteen. When he was a boy
his uncle seriously expostulated with him once for
taking a walk. It was such a waste of time. Once
he writes to a friend that he had been out hunting—
killed three boars too, and fine ones. Who had?
That didn’t matter! He, Caius Plinius Cecilius
Secundus—better give him his full name !—had sat
by the nets—that was quite enough—sat with pen
and notebook in hand, a wild boar or two grunting
at him all the while and preparing for a charge
on the earliest possible opportunity! Cool as a
cucumber and improving the occasion, “I thought
about a subject, and made my notes about it,” says
he. Like a young curate sermonising, in fact.

Once, when he had been invited to a dinner, he
stipulates that he will come, provided the conversa-
tion shall abound in Socratic discourses. Once,
when half promising a friend that he intends
230: LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

to write him something worth reading, he checks
himself with the horrible thought that he had no
paperygood enough, and there was a great doubt
as to whether he could: get any good enough
to write on. ‘Think of the nasty coarse spongy
stuff in these parts,” he says. ‘‘ Why, my dear
friend, I should actually be sending you smudges
—dreadful!’? The most sublime instance of Pliny’s
priggishness is to be found in his letter to: Taci-
tus, describing his own lofty and superior demean-
our during the great eruption of Vesuvius. The
angry volcano was all aflame — the earth was
heaving like a troubled sea—the air was dark with
smoke and ashes—his own uncle had been suffocated
by the sulphurous fumes, and his mother burst into
the room where this young puppy of seventeen was
playing the stoic. Pliny says, “I called fora volume
of Livy, and read it as though quite at my ease, and
even made extracts from it as I had begun to do.”
Making extracts from Livy in an earthquake!
What sort of letters could you expect. from such a
man? . 1 4 7

And. yet. Pliny has left.us some very delightful and
amusing letters. Among them is the famous ghost
story; which is. perhaps the. best specimen of his
power of simple narrative. Here it is:—

“There was a certain mansion at Athens, large
LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. 231

and roomy, but of evil repute, and a plaguy sort of
place. In the stillness of the night, lo! there used
to sound the:clank of iron, and as you listened there
was a rattling of chains; at first a long way off,
then coming nearer and nearer, till it came quite
close. Presently a spectre appeared. An old, old
man, lean and wan, with a long beard and shaggy
hair, with fetters on his legs and manacles on his
arms, and wringing his hands. The inmates of the
house were very miserable. They would not live
there. The place became deserted and given up to
the dreadful phantom. At last a certain philosopher
came to Athens, Athenodorus by name. He saw the
advertisement, inquired the terms, asked why it was
so cheap, learnt the full particulars, and gladly hired
the mansion. Towards evening he ordered a sofa
to be set for himself in the front of the house, and
provided himself with pen and paper and a light.
He sent away all the servants and set to work
writing. For a while there was only dead silence.
By and by—hark!—there was the sound of iron
grating against iron, then the chains clanking. The
philosopher never looked up nor stopped his writing.
He kept his mind clear and his ears open. The
noise increased; it drew nearer—it was at the thres-
hold—it had come inside the door—it was unmistak-
able. He raised his eyes. There was the phantom
232 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

he had heard of staring at him. The ghost stood
still and beckoned to him with its finger. Atheno-
dorus" waved his hand as much as to say, ‘I’m
engaged; you'll have to wait,’ and he went on with
his writing. The ghost rattled his chains over his
head as he wrote. He looked up again—the ghost
was still staring at him. He took up the light and
followed. The ghost went very slowly, as if it felt
the weight of its chains. It led the way to a back
yard of the house, then vanished. Next day Atheno-
dorus went to the magistrates and told them they
must dig in the place where the ghost disappeared.
There they found some human hones and fetters
upon them. They were collected, buried at the
public expense, and the house was rid of ghosts from
that time forward !

“*WVery odd!’” says Pliny. ‘ ‘My dear friend,
what is your private opinion upon this story ?’”

I have ventured to give a translation of this letter,
not only because it is the earliest detailed account
of the appearance of a spectre with which I am
acquainted, nor because it is a specimen of the kind
of ghost story which is very commonly repeated
when such stories are going the round, but because
it is difficult to see how any such story could have
been told except in a letter. There are some things
for which familiar letters are peculiarly adapted. In
LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. 233

what other branch of literature could a man sit down
seriously to tell a ghost story? He could hardly
venture to introduce such a narrative into history ;
science would deride him, philosophy would frown at
his levity, poetry would refuse to lend herself to his
tale. But ina letter you may be as playful as you
please, and then you may adapt yourself to your
correspondent, who may be credulous or the reverse,
but in any case you know he is not likely to take
you au grand sérieux. In our letters we are not
expected to write by rule and compasses. We are
not afraid of too severe criticism. A letter is hardly
expected to be a full-dress performance.

As far as I know, more than three hundred years
had passed before any such collection of letters as
that of Pliny was published, or at any rate attained
to anything like very general popularity. At the
close of the 4th century or beginning of the fifth,
Q. Aurelius Symmachus thought proper to proclaim
to the world that he considered himself the prince of
letter-writers of his time, and the world—z.e., the
Roman world —was in such a dilapidated condition
that it took Symmachus at his own valuation. For,
like Pliny, Symmachus was very rich, had a grand
house at Rome, and several beautiful villas in
various parts of the world.

If I ever live to be rich I am not sure that I shall
234 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

publish a volume of my letters, but I don’t know.
Somehow rich people seem at all times to have
delighted in letting mankind read their letters. Any:
poor creature can get his children to read his letters,
long or short, but to get a whole generation of men
and women to pore over your correspondence and
applaud it—that seems to be grand! So Sym-
machus thought, and so his son thought, when he
edited his father’s epistles in ten books, I suppose
because Pliny had published his in ten books. It is
a dreary collection—* vapid as long decanted small
beer,” as one says—yet noticeable for one feature
that in our time has become extremely well known
to us.

Symmachus is the first who gives a specimen of
the real genuine begging letter, and we have of this
two examples. I am not going to translate them—
partly because I am reluctant to facilitate matters
for the begging impostors and give them a model
from antiquity, partly because most of us have no
neéd to'go back to the past to find out the kind of.
epistles which the begging impostors send. This is
a kind of literature familiarity with which has bred
in most of us a certain measure of contempt. There
is one letter. which Symmachus wrote for a young
friend of his, who very much, wanted to make an
offer of marriage toa, young lady and wished to do
LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. 235

so in’ the best possible manner. \ Symmachus was
equal to the occasion, and gave his friend a model.
As to the letters of introduction in this collection,
they are legion, and the letters of condolence and the
letters of'congratulation. But, as I said before, they
are a dreary lot, and perhaps the only really curious
and valuable epistles are those which have to do
with'the writer’s bargains in horseflesh and the pur-
chases he made of strange animals for his menageriel-
As for his style, it has one merit and one only, it is.
fairly simple and fluent. If the man had written
obscurely his rubbish would never have reached a
second edition.

Note that if there is something 7» what a man
says, the world will forgive a little awkwardness in
the manner of saying it. But if there is nothing,
then only that man’s writings are read who can be
understood at a glance. Miss—what washer name?
—was wise in her generation. The lips that are
always in the proper attitude for the pronounciation
of “potatoes, pruins, and prism are sure to be
practised in the enunciation of elegant phrases ; and
a letter that offends nobody, and does not require to
be read three times before you can catch its mean-
ing, is much more likely. to. be read by thirty times
three readers with pleasure than the other is to be
read three times by one.
236 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS,

Just a generation after Symmachus (almost the
last of the dandified pagans) joined the majority, he
actually found an imitator in the person of Sidonius
Apollinaris. At any rate, they say that Symmachus
was his model. He certainly did not copy his model
very closely as far as style goes, for a more villainous
style than that of Sidonius in his letters one would
not wish to find. Sidonius started in life as a poli-
ticlan, and at one time it seemed on the cards that
he might actually become Emperor of Rome some
day, for he married the daughter of the Emperor
Flavius Avitus. Avitus had a short reign of barely
a year, and then Sidonius found himself effaced. By
and by he rose to the surface again, was employed as
an ambassador from the Averni to the Emperor
Anthemius, got into favour, and had a statue of him-
self set up in Rome. I dare say it is there now
somewhere.

One day the Emperor said, ‘‘ I’ll make this man a
bishop.” Sidonius protested vehemently, by no
means liking the prospect. But there was no help
for it. In those days when an emperor took a thing
into his head it had to be done. Sidonius became a
bishop accordingly—Bishop of Clermont, and a very
good and conscientious and zealous bishop he was—
so good a bishop, in fact, that when he died he was
proclaimed a saint ; and there stands his name sure
LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. 237

enough, in the Roman Calendar on the 23rd of
August as Saint Apollinaris.

I can hardly imagine a greater contrast than the
letters of Symmachus and Sidonius. Symmachus’s
trashy epistles have been saved from absolute obli-
vion only by their flimsy transparent style, and the
very triviality of their contents. The letters of
Sidonius will always be read in spite of a style that
is most repulsive, and at times appears studiously
unintelligible. He is one of those objectionable
writers whom a man reads because he can only get
at his information by reading him; for really the
matter in Sidonius is extremely valuable. Some
paragraphs you can no more make out than you can
crack a cocoanut with your teeth. These you must
skip, and if you can find a translation happy are you.?
Nevertheless, some of Sidonius’s letters are charm-
ing. Thus the careful portrait of Theodoric, King
of the Goths, in the first book, is one of the most
elaborate miniatures that has ever been drawn in
words. So too the delightful account Sidonius gives
of a visit he had paid to a friend’s house near Nimes,
and the sketch he gives of the way in which a rich
country gentleman kept up hospitality in the 5th
century is invaluable. We talk about our luxurious

4 See Germain, ‘' Essai Littéraire et Historique sur Ap. Sid.,”
1840 ; Chaix, ‘‘S. Sidonie Apoll et son Siécle,” 2 vols. 1867.
238 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

way of living. Let a man read some of Sidonius’s
letters, and he will see that fourteen hundred years
ago, down in the South of France, people had a
rather exalted notion of grand and capacious amuse-
ment. Indeed, the impression we get from these
letters of the prodigality and. luxury of the times is
almost dreadful. There is one letter taken up with
the description of the dresses and appearance of a
young bridegroom’s retinue on his wedding morning,
and there are up and down the correspondence all
sorts of odd hints and notes which only a letter-
writer could have inserted.

But what is especially valuable in these epistles of
Sidonius is the fact that in it we seem to be taking a
farewell of heathendom, as it was concerned with the
life of the upper classes in Roman society, and find
ourselves moving now in a world that has, if not yet
become Christianised, yet has become profoundly
modified in its habits of thought, and even in its
moral tone, by the influence of Christianity. Between
the letters of Symmachus, the pagan gentleman, and
those of Sidonius, the Christian bishop, one would
expect to find a great gulf.fixed. There is no gulf
at all; Sidonius, the Christian gentleman, bridges
it over, and by the time that Sidonius has taken his
place as the bishop of his diocese. and begins to

© Lib. ii. 9.
LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. 239

write letters to other bishops and to the Pope and
the clergy round him, we feel that we have stepped
with him into the Christian world, and are not sur-
prised to find that in this valuable correspondence
we are brought face to face with that not always very
edifying form of composition, to wit, religious letter-
writing.
* * * * *

Here I am touching upon a branch of our subject
which requires such very delicate handling that I
feel I had better pass it by with a very few words.
This, however, must be said, that religious letters
were things unknown till the Gospel made its way in
the world. Not till the tendency had been at work
to a very dangerous extent whereby people were
urged to aim at being Christians first and men and
women afterwards—not till unanimity in opinion on
matters of faith had become the idol which all pro-
fessing Christians were taught to bow down to, and
till a wave of fierce and intolerant asceticism had
swept over the Christian world, and men and women
had been taught the duty of self-examination and
self-contemplation to an extent which made their
own dreams and moods and emotional condition
appear to them the only realities, and God’s beautiful
world appealing to them with its glories on every
side was getting to seem the only dreamland—not
240 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

till then did people begin to write religious letters,
detailing their.own experiences, telling of their own
or others’ visions, or temptations, or ecstasies ; and
at the best occupied with discussions on the inter-
pretation of sacred Scripture, or the writer’s views on
theology, the beatific vision, counsels of perfection,
and those tempestuous emotional paroxysms which
are called conflicts of the soul.

I am not at all sure that such letters as these
when they abound (as they have abounded at times)
indicate that religion is in a flourishing condition in
the Church, or in a healthy condition for the indi-
vidual. But with such letters I feel that it would
be unwise to meddle now. The 4th century saw
the beginning of what may be called religious letter-
writing. The three largest collections of these letters
are those of St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St.
Basil. St. Augustine’s letters can really hardly be
called letters at all; they are for the most part
treatises on the interpretation of sacred Scripture, or
on theological ‘or philosophical questions. The
human element, and even the moral element, is
conspicuously absent.. I can think of only a single
instance in all this collection of 263 epistles which I
could describe as a graceful or affecting letter; I
mean that one in which the writer accepts the pre-
sent of a tunic which a young lady had prayed him
LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. 241

as a special favour to wear. Sapidia—that was her
name—had made the tunic for her brother with her
own hand. Her brother had died—suddenly, we
may infer: would Augustine wear the tunic as a
memento of the dear lost one, as a token of regard
and confidence from the sorrowing sister? Augustine
writes that he was actually wearing the tunic at the
moment that he was replying to the poor girl’s
letter.

In the letters of St. Jerome, which number one
with another just 150, we have some valuable
notices of the religious life of the time, and we
get a most curious impression of the awfully high
pressure at which devout people were living at the
close of the 4th century. So far St. Jerome’s
letters are invaluable, but there is an unreality about
them. I do not mean insincerity. The men and
women are zot men and women, but creatures who
are trying to be something else, and who believe
themselves to be something else. Jerome’s letters
are, with, I think, a single exception, eminently and
glaringly unpractical. Jerome himself is up in a
balloon, and he seems to assume that everybody
else is, or ought to be, or wishes to be, or is trying
to be, up in a balloon too. The single exception
(which, however, you must take for what it is worth)
is the letter to Leta, in which he gives advice on

17
242 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

the education of a young lady whose mother was
very anxious to bring her up religiously. The rules
are almost amusing. The girl is not to mince her
words as the fashion is; she is not to paint; not to
have her ears bored ; not to dye her hair red; not to
dine with her parents lest she should learn to be
greedy; not to allow any young gentleman with
curly hair to smile at her; she is to learn to spin,
and she is by no means to learn dancing or fancy
‘work.

I think we have met with this kind of advice in
more modern times than St. Jerome’s, but a letter
like this is noteworthy because it helps to show us
how there is really nothing new under the sun; and
this, perhaps, is one of the most useful lessons which
familiar letters read us—they hold the mirror not up
to nature, but they hold it up to society, and remind
us that the manners of one age are not so very
different from those of another. ,

St. Basil’s letters are very much less known than
those of his two great contemporaries, but they are
far more real, genuine, human, and interesting
’ than those of Augustine and Jerome. Basil’s letters
have a wide range of subjects, and his correspon-
dents were people of all ranks and classes and
opinions—pagan philosophers and professors, gover-
nors of provinces, ladies in distress, rogues. who had
LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. 243

tried to take him in, and of course a host of bishops
and clergy. There are going on for four hundred of
St. Basil’s letters which have come down to us, and
therefore they must have been very popular once.
Certainly nobody reads them now. Yet as letters—
as natural, graceful, gentlemanly letters—they are
incomparably superior to those of Augustine or
Jerome — these are always dreadfully grim. But
Basil can laugh and can be playful—witness his letter
to the Governor of Cappadocia, who had cured him-
self of an illness by dieting himself on pickled
cabbage. “My dear sir,” says Basil, “I am
delighted at the news. I never believed in cabbage
before, still less in pickled cabbage; but now I shall
praise it as something superior to the lotus that
. Homer talks of—yea, not inferior to the very
ambrosia that served as the food of the gods!”
The Governor answered that letter very briefly,
and his answer has been preserved. ‘‘ My right rev.
brother,” says the Governor, ‘‘ you are right, there’s
nothing like pickled cabbage! Twice to cabbage
kills—so the saying has it: I find many times to
cabbage cures. Come and try. Dine with me
to-morrow on pickled cabbage—that and nothing
more!” I think the Governor had the Bishop
there. Isuppose he felt compelled to go, but I can’t
be quite sure. Think of a saint solemnly dining on
pickled cabbage !
244 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that after
St. Basil’s time, after St. Augustine’s time, the art
of writing letters in an easy, familiar, frank, and un-
constrained way died out for more than a thousand
years. I do not mean that no letters have come
down to us; they swarm in medizval literature ; the
t1th and izth centuries are especially rich in
Epistles, for that is a better name for the missives
which the prominent personages of those centuries
issued. But these epistles have all the appearance
of being made by machinery. To begin with, they
are almost always written by men in office, either in
the State or the Church, by bishops or archdeacons,
or kings or nobles, or abbots or priors. One never
hears the prattle of a child, or the sob of the widow,
or the laughter of a friend. ‘The letter-writers never
unbend. Even in St. Bernard’s letters we hear
little about common affairs. I remember one of
them in which St. Bernard, being away from Clair-
vaux, and either at Rome or on his way to Rome,
gets tidings that a certain landed proprietor in the
neighbourhood had swooped down upon a herd of
swine which belonged to St. Bernard and his monks.
The letter is a short one, and it bluntly tells the
offending marauder that on the receipt of this letter
he shall straightway send back the pigs without an
hour’s delay. “If not,” says St. Bernard, “I will
LETTERS AND LETIER WRITERS. 245

beyond a doubt excommunicate thee for thine evil
doings.” It was no light offence to drive off the
pigs of a holy abbot! But the point is that the
abbot was writing and not the man, and it is so, as
far as I have observed, through all the correspon-
dence of these ages. The people whose letters were
thought worth preserving were all personages, they
are players in the drama.of their time, and they all
have their stage dresses on—nay, they have all
broken with anything like the family life and the
sympathies and affections which flourish round the
domestic hearth. The official life has swallowed up
the personal.

If you ask how and why this was, I should be dis-
posed to assign more than one cause for the phe-
nomenon. But certainly the most powerful and
most crushing influence which produced this effect
was that which was furnished by the almost uni-
versal intolerance of anything that bordered on
freedom of thought and freedom of speech during
the long period to which I have referred. Do not
commit the mistake of assuming that this in-
tolerance was only in matters of theology. It was
in everything. The bitterest and narrowest in-
tolerance that ever was displayed was not greater
in the domain of theology proper than in the domain
of philosophy. Abelard was no ecclesiastic, and the
246 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

party strifes between Nominalists and Realists had
only a remote bearing upon religious belief. When
Vacarius, the greatest lawyer of the 12th century,
began to lecture at Oxford, and was gathering
crowds round him in his lecture-room, the king,
Stephen, drove him away from England because
he would have no new-fangled science of law.
Heresy as late as the 14th century did not mean
only theological heresy, it meant any novelty
in physical science, politics, law, even art. For
a thousand years people were afraid of expressing
their real sentiments, they were afraid of one
another, orthodoxy was the one thing needful, and
any revolt from the tyranny of the dominant autho-
rities was visited upon the rebel with no sparing
hand. How could people write freely as friend to
friend with a halter round their necks? It was not
till. the time of the Renaissance that men began
to unbosom themselves again. In speaking thus
I must be understood to speak with special refer-
ence to England and Englishmen, for the intellec-
tual awakening of Italy in the 14th century had
characteristics peculiar to itself, and the letters of
Petrarch are wholly unlike anything which we have
to produce in our literature of the same age. .

But when.the 15th century dawns, then we come
upon what, I think, may fairly be called the incom-
LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. 247

parable collection which goes by the name of the
Paston letters, and which, I think, stands quite
alone in literature as an assemblage of the private
letters addressed by members of a family of dis-
tinction to one another during a period of eighty-
seven years, and which includes more than a
thousand letters, the earliest of the date of 1422,
the latest written in 1509. The minuteness of
detail, the naturalness, the outspokenness of this
correspondence, the way in which by its help we are
plunged into the family life and social habits and
political schemes and conflicts of this period of our
_ history, are so wonderful and so thoroughly un-
reserved that an attempt was made about twenty
years ago by the late Mr. Herman Merivale to show
that they were and must be a forgery. The attempt
was triumphantly scattered to the winds. Mr.
Merivale was smitten hip and thigh, the original
letters were actually produced, and are now
deposited in the National Archives. We are not
likely to hear any further doubts of their genuine-
ness.

One of the arguments that Mr. Merivale brought
forward to prove his point was that, on a comparison
of these compositions with the published works of
the time, and especially with what might be called
the professional English of the bookmakers, the
248 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

Paston letters were incomparably more simple and
modern in their language, incomparably more in-
telligible and readable than the books were. The
fact is undeniable, and it is a very significant fact
too. Familiar letters, if they are not lucid and un-
affected in style, if they are pretentious and stilted,
are worthless. Fine writing is bad enough any-
where; it is detestable in a letter. Ifa man is paid
by the page for his writing, and has to live by it, we
may pity him for his hard fate; and if he spins off
his periods with a view to covering so much space
in a given time, it is partly his fault and partly the
fault of his unhappy circumstances ; but if a man
writes. pages upon pages of commonplace in a bom-
bastic and inflated style to a relation or a friend it is
all his fault. He at any rate might have let it
alone.

When we come to the 16th century we come to
a very curious condition of affairs. As far as the
quantity of letters is concerned, the 16th century has
perhaps the largest assemblage of letters to produce
of any period in English history. The letters and
papers (for the most part letters in form) of the
-teign of Henry VIII, which have already been
calendared, count by hundreds of thousands. The
Cecil correspondence preserved at Hatfield, and
which extends from the accession of Edward VI.
LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. 249

to the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, is a
fathomless ocean of letters. We are told that during
all those fifty years over which the Cecil correspon-
dence extends scarcely a day goes by which does not
produce one or more letters connected with passing
events. The Cecil correspondence is said to contain
upwards of 30,000 documents, only a portion of
which is bound up in 210 huge volumes. Yet it is
remarkable that in all this prodigious assemblage of
letters which the 16th century could produce, the
really hearty, friendly letters are rarities. The men
are all dressed in buckram, the women are all playing
a part; there is no free, unrestrained intercourse.
When James I. came to the throne English
society seemed to recover from the constraint which
had oppressed it so long, and then everybody began
to write letters—their name is legion. Everybody
regarded letter-writing as a graceful accomplishment
by which he might hope to gain friends or improve
his prospects, or even make money; it was like
playing the violin. Who could tell whether a career
might not be open to the professional? For the
newsletters of the 17th century did the work of the
newspapers now, and the quidnuncs of the time
bought and sold the last piece of intelligence, which
straightway was committed to paper and circulated
sometimes widely, sometimes among the privileged
250 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

few. And: this, too, produced its effect upon the
familiar intercourse which was carried on by corre-
spondence. The letter-writers were writing for an
outside public, and how large that public might
grow to be no one could say.

When the Commonwealth comes, and everybody
is suspicious of his next-door neighbour, as he had
been in the century before, it is noticeable that there
is a great dearth of such letters as we should most
desire to meet with—so great a dearth, indeed, that
we are very imperfectly acquainted with the general
tone of sentiment among even the middle and upper
classes, and their real opinions and secret hopes and
fears and wishes. under the Protectorate. It is
extremely significant that in those periods of our
history, when Englishmen were most held down
by the tyranny of their rulers, when their lives and
liberties were most insecure, when the nation was
cowering in the. most abject panic—I mean under
the terror of Henry VIII., under the oligarchy which
ruled in the name of Edward VI., and under the iron
heel of Cromwell—we have almost nothing that can
be called familiar and friendly letters. ‘ In times of
horror and fear and suspicion, and when no man can
trust his neighbour or kinsman, men and women
dare not put pen to paper; then the least said the
soonest mended.
LETTERS AND LEITER WRITERS. 251

It is only when the reign of Queen Anne had come
to an end that English letter-writing revived. Pope
and Bolingbroke wrote for fame, Gray and Horace
Walpole wrote for love. I think only one man that
ever put pen to paper has ‘surpassed Horace Walpole
as a letter-writer. Gray and he were at Cambridge
together, and through life they were always friends
and correspondents. It is impossible now to do
much more than mention the names of these accom-
plished men. Gray’s own letters are very finished
compositions—not because he laboured at them,
they never smell of the lamp; I should be surprised
to hear that he had ever re-written a letter in his
life—but Gray had all the fastidiousness and pre-
cision of style which come of severe scholarly
training and correct scholarly taste, and it is con-

_ceivable that if his education had been other than
it was, he might have proved only an ordinary
correspondent. I sometimes think that if Cowper
had been sent to the University, instead of to an
attorney’s office, he might have been, and would
have been, more like Gray than any one else. But
Horace Walpole would have been Horace Walpole
whatever his training had been. His letters came
from him by a spontaneity that can never be
attained. He was born a writer of letters, and
if he had been shut up in a desert island like
252 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

Robinson Crusoe he would have written letters all
the same, and kept them till some ship arrived which
should carry them to their destination. The good-
humour, the gaiety, the delicate satire, the exqui-
sitely felicitous turns of expression, the sly hits here
and the shrewd comments there, the inimitable way
in which he tells a story, the absence of that scowling
detraction and venomous spite which make some of
Pope’s letters so distasteful—all this, and a great
deal more make those nine volumes of Horace
Walpole’s correspondence the delightful treasure-
house they are. I never take down a volume of
Horace Walpole’s letters without reading more than
I intended, without thinking and sometimes saying
to myself, Why will people write any more books?
Surely we have enough already !

I have ventured to say that one letter-writer has
surpassed even Horace Walpole, but I feel inclined
to withdraw my words. Could any one surpass
him? Well, if any one could or did, that one was
Charles Lamb. And if he did, it was because in
Walpole’s large correspondence there is sometimes
silver mixed with the gold, and sometimes the
writer’s heart is not quite free from guile, nor his
hands always clean. But Charles Lamb’s letters are
all gold, all pure gold. When he dipped his pen in
the inkhorn all the gall evaporated. That unique
LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. 253

genius seemed to be unassailable by the baser pas-
sions and meaner motives which trouble common
men; that gentle spirit did not seem to know what the
feeling of jealousy or hatred or spite or envy meant.
Only once that I remember was he known to be
angry, but then more grievously hurt and troubled
than wroth. It was when Southey had quite unin-
tentionally laid bare an old and dreadful wound.

No man can be the worse for reading Walpole’s
letters, but any man or woman or boy or girl will be
the better—yes, very greatly the better—for reading
Charles Lamb’s letters, every word of them !

Take the following specimen. It is one of that
incomparable collection of letters addressed to his
friend Manning, and I give it as an instance of the
same kind of literary composition of which I have
already instanced the ghost story in Pliny’s corres-
pondence, when I said that only in a letter could
such a story be told; for as there are some subjects
which are best dealt with by a poet, and some bya
mathematician, and some by an historian, and some
by a philosopher, so there are some which only
admit of being handled by a letter-writer who has
no higher aim than to delight or amuse or interest
his friend, and to carry on a genial and light-hearted
talk with him on paper when he can no longer talk
with him by word of mouth. His aim is to provoke
254 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

him to laughter or playful retort, to engage with
him ‘in a game of skill and repartee, when neither
side desires to be too sombre, where both are playing
for love, and each is the merrier for all the surprises
and tricks and passages with the foils that occur as
the game goes on. Take, I say, the following asa
specimen :—

“DEAR MANNING, ... I wish you had made Lon-
don in your way. ‘There is an exhibition quite
uncommon in Europe, which could not have escaped
your genius—a live rattlesnake, ten feet in length,
and the thickness of a big Jeg. I went to see it last
night by candlelight. We were'ushered into a room
very little bigger than ours at Pentonville. A man
and woman and four boys live in this room, joint
tenants with nine snakes, most of them such as no
remedy has been discovered for their bite. We
walked into the middle, which is formed by a half-
moon of wired boxes, all mansions of snakes—whip-
snakes, thunder-snakes, pig-nose snakes, American
vipers, and this monster. He lies curled up in-folds;
and immediately a stranger enters (for he is used to
the family, and sees them play at. cards) he set up a
rattle like a watchman’s in London, or near as loud,
and reared up a head from the midst of these folds
like a toad, and shook his head, and showed every
LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. 255

sign a snake: can show of irritation. I had. the
foolish curiosity to strike the wire with my finger,
_ and the devil few at me with his toad-mouth- wide
open: the inside of his mouth is quite white. I had
got my finger away, nor could he well have bit me
with his big mouth, which would have been certain
death in five minutes. But it frightened me so
much that I did not recover my voice for a minute’s
space. I forgot, in my fear, that he was secured.
You would have forgot too, for ’tis incredible how
such a monster can be confined in small gauzy-
looking wires. I dreamed of snakes in the night.
I wish to heaven you could see it. He absolutely
swelled with passion to the bigness of a large thigh.
I could not retreat without infringing on another
box, and just behind a little devil, not an inch from
my back, had got his nose out, with some difficulty
and pain, quite through the bars! He was soon
taught better manners. All the snakes were curious,
and objects of terror; but this monster, like Aaron’s
serpent, swallowed up the impression of the rest.
He opened his cursed mouth, when he made at me,
as wide as his head was broad. I hallooed out quite
loud, and felt pains all over my body with the nee
“Yours sincerely,
“ PHILO-SNAKE, C.L.” -
256 LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS.

I have been told that when I was a child Charles
Lamb patted me on the head. (Surely the hair will
never cease to grow on that particular spot!) But
what’a reserve of joy he would have bestowed upon
me if he had ever written mea letter! A man with
a letter of Charles Lamb’s in his breast-coat pocket
addressed to his very self would be as rich as one
who owns a genuine Hobbema.

* * * * *

We have come to our own time at last, after
skimming on the surface of the centuries. We have
got back to the Postmaster-General from whom we
started. Bless the good man and all that belong to
him! We could not do without him now, and we
owe him more than we know. But is it true that
with the increase of quantity there is coming a
deterioration in the quality of our letters? Never
believe it! First-rate quality in any commodity—
material or mental, moral or spiritual—is not to be
had for the asking. But pleasant, cheery, happy
letters, such letters as—like the quality of mercy—
are twice blest ; courteous, graceful letters, such as
win young people friends, and go far to keep such
friends in good humour ; hearty, affectionate letters,
such as strike the chords of love and awaken mys-
terious tremors in response; letters that tend to
keep us at our best and protect us from sinking
LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS. 257

down to our worst—these any one may write who is
not too indolent to take trouble and not possessed by
the delusion that accomplishments come by nature
as spots do upon the leopard’s hide.

18
VIII.

A SUGGESTION FOR MY BETTERS.

A cry has gone forth from across the Channel that
the masses in France are getting a little tired of
reading novels. The booksellers in Paris are, so
they tell me, alarmed at the outlook: they say that
the everlasting fewilletons in the daily papers supply—
more than supply—all the demand that remains for
fiction ; that people will not buy the story-tellers’
books; that the appetite of the million for romance
has become jaded—jaded by satiety. So far from
being surprised at this, I can only wonder that the
craving for French fiction has lasted so long. Two
or three years ago, when I asked M. Taine how it
was that people seemed to have forgotten Emile
Souvestre, and instanced that wonderful story of his,
** Le Gardien du vieux Phare,” as a work of consum-

mate art which deserved to live for ever, the great
258
A SUGGESTION FOR MY BETTERS. 259

critic snubbed me with courteous superciliousness.
*Souvestre! Ah, bien! A sort of Miss Edgeworth.
He had his little day. Voila tout!” Of course I col-
lapsed, but inwardly rebelled: and I said to myself,
savagely—* No, it’s not all! Some men have their
little day—and their resurrection afterwards. How
many of the soulless ones that are the idols of the
soulless ones now will rise to newness of life in the
future? How long will their reputation last?”
When a man is snubbed he finds a wonderful com-
fort in prophesying bad things in store for somebody
else, and ever since I got my snub I have been
asserting loudly that French novels could not much
longer serve as the pabulum for a brilliant people.
I set myself to watch the signs of the times. Now
it seems that I have not been very far wrong.
France, I am told, is asking for more wholesome
intellectual food than its spicy, cloying, sickly half-
crown novels. Fiction, they complain, is unsatis-
fying. ‘‘Bon-bons are sweet, but they too often
disagree with us. Better to have the solid nutri-
ment of fact. Suppose we take a course of history.”
There are reasons for this change in the popular
taste which, if I am rightly informed, has been
coming over the French people. Apart from the
corrupting and vicious tone of the later novelists—
against which it was absolutely certain that there
260 A SUGGESTION FOR MY BETTERS.

would come a revolt sooner or later—there have
been other influences at work. A school of historians
has arisen—whose glorious leader and inspirer was
the late M. Fustel de Coulanges—from whom quite
startling and novel suggestions have emanated during
the last twenty years or so, and by whom a new
appeal has been made to the patriotism of French
students. These men have, above all things, set
themselves to prove that not even in historic research
does France owe anything toGermany. Forty. years
ago the theory of Von Maurer, which claimed to
trace the origin of property in land from prehistoric
times, when organised communities held the soil by
what may be called a social tenure, had been very
widely accepted by students of history. M. de Cou-
langes, then a young man, had serious doubts about
the soundness of the hypothesis, and set himself to
examine the evidence on which it was based. With
astonishing patience and labour he gave himself to
the minute study of all that vast body of recondite
lore which, directly or indirectly, had any bearing
upon the questions at issue, and, undaunted by the
vastness of the task he had set himself, nor dis-

couraged by the smallness of his. class at the Sor-
~ bonne, he pursued his researches with heroic tenacity
of purpose till the time came for him to speak. At
last, in 1885, he put forth his first and most notable
4A SUGGESTION FOR MY BETTERS. 261

volume, under the title of ‘“‘ Recherches sur quelques
problémes d’histoire.”

In his preface to this volume he says: “It is now
twenty-five years since I began to teach, and each
year I have had the happiness of having four or five
pupils. . . . The one truth of which I have persis-
tently endeavoured to convince them is that history
is the most difficult of the sciences. What I have
taught them before all things has been to inquire.”
The young men caught their master’s enthusiasm,
and, under his guidance, and stimulated by his heroic
surrender of himself to the search after truth, a new
school of historical research has risen up in France,
and his-labours and theirs have begun to bear fruit.
It has dawned upon the new generation of intelligent
Frenchmen that all this talk about a German im-
migration—a colonisation—a settlement of a whole
people, with their wives and children, upon French
soil in the 5th century, whereby all the institutions
of the invaded lands were moulded according to the
pattern of things beyond the Rhine, is a mere Ger-
man figment—a specimen of German brag and
bluster. A magician’s wand has touched the pyramid

~ + See “The Origin of Property in Land.” By Fustel de
Coulanges. Translated by Margaret Ashley, with an Intro-
ductory Chapter by Professor Ashley, of Toronto. Swan Son-
ennschein & Co., 1891.
262 A SUGGESTION FOR MY BETTERS.

of theory and tumbled it over—proved, in fact, that
its only foundation was its apex. M. Fustel de
Coulanges has blown the theory of the Mark into the
air. The national sentiment of loyalty to a cham-
‘pion who has stood forward to fight the scholar’s
battle of France against Germany, and has smitten
the host of German dogmatists hip and thigh, has
awakened a response. France will now turn her
thoughts. to historic research and laugh her enemies
to scorn. Whatever Frenchman do in any depart-
ment of literature they do better than any one else.
We may be sure that we shall hear much of the
new French school of history before many years go
by. :

But how are things looking with us on our side of
the Channel? We' too have our great Oxford
School of History. For forty years or so Oxford
has sent forth man after man magnificently trained
in the discipline of historic research. The splendid
quality of the work produced has been hardly less
conspicuous than the wide area which has been ex-
plored. The monumental histories of the Bishop of
Oxford, Professor Freeman, the late J. R. Green, and
a host of others which it is invidious to omit, and yet
impossible to include in any but an exhaustive cata-
logue, have changed: the whole character of our
views of English history. Men have begun to look
A SUGGESTION FOR MY BETTERS. 263

out for the steady evolution of our national life from
primitive institutions, and to trace the operation of
great laws in the events which used to be regarded
as the only facts worth noticing in the records of
the past. The wide range of discussion, together
with the conspicuous learning and ability of the
-writers—which the pages of the Historic Review ex-
hibit in its successive numbers — indicates how
catholic our Oxford historians are in their views of
the Science of History, and how wide the fields
which they set themselves to explore. Moreover, it
is noticeable that there is a remunerative sale even
for the most severe works on history. The Bishop
of Oxford’s “‘ Constitutional History ” can no more be -
regarded as a popular work—virginibus puerisque—
than Newton’s “ Principia”; yet edition after edition
of the master’s book is steadily absorbed. Professor
Freeman’s great “ History of the Norman Conquest”
is no drug upon the hands of the booksellers. Mr.
Bryce’s ‘‘ Holy Roman Empire” has been reprinted
half a dozen times. The “‘Corpus Poeticum Boreale”
of Messrs. Vigfusson and York-Powell, I am told; is
“ going off,” and there is hardly a county antiquarian
society or a provincial record society that is not
doing something more than paying its way. One
would have thought that, in the face of these and
other facts pointing in the same direction, we should
¥

264 A SUGGESTION FOR MY BETTERS.

be able to assure ourselves that the knowledge of
history —at least, of English history — would be
becoming very widely diffused among the masses,
and that, in return for all the immense sums that
are being spent on elementary education, the people
at large would by this time have attained to some
intelligent familiarity with the glorious annals of
their fatherland. So far from it, it may safely be
asserted that there is not a civilised community upon
earth whose people are so ignorant of their history
as our English people are of theirs.

The most splendid distinctions in the academic
arena at Cambridge can be attained by men who
need not—and often do not—know whether Charles I.
or Charles II. had his head cut off, or whether
Queen Elizabeth was the mother, wife, sister,
daughter, or second cousin of Henry VIII. Pass
the question round the hundreds of bright and
studious young men in the great hospitals of
London, ‘“‘What happened in 1066?” and every
man of them will proudly give the triumphant
answer. But proceed to ask them whether the
Spanish Armada came to grief in the 16th or 17th
century, or whether Clive was a statesman, a painter,
or a British admiral, and the future medicos would be
wise if they asked for twenty-four hours before re-
' plying to such a conundrum. It is all very well to
A SUGGESTION FOR MY BETTERS. 265

cry out, “ Then they ought to be ashamed of them-
selves!” Why ought they to be ashamed of them-
selves? We are a very practical people—at any
rate, we say we are—and how will the knowledge
that Oliver Cromwell was a different person from .
Thomas Cromwell help a young surgeon to cut off a
man’s toe? ;

The cry is for useful knowledge, and from the
category of useful knowledge we must exclude
religion, morals, and history. County Councils are
losing their heads over technical education; the
masses must no longer be left in ignorance of the
philosophy of kitchen economy—the composition of
soaps, the mysteries of the wash-tub, and the theory
of patent mangles. Agricultural chemistry—that
awtlul science, so awful that nobody seems quite to
know what it means—is to be a compulsory subject
in our Board schools in a year or two, and urchins
of fourteen will rise to the edge of transcendentalism
in the rapt contemplation of bichlorides and super-
phosphates. In the meantime agricultural labourers,
puffed up—not built up—by all this inflation of
vapoury bubble-blowing, are to be handed over to
the dominion of fluent rhetoricians, appealing to
their passions, their selfish greed, and to just the
worst side of their characters. We are leaving them
absolutely defenceless against the assaults of dema-
266 A SUGGESTION FOR MY BETTERS.

gogues who live by sowing the seeds of hatred, dis-
content, and unhappiness, they themselves looking to
reap the crop, such as it is likely to be. The poor
fellows are losing all sentiment of patriotism. How
can they retain it when they know nothing of the
past—nothing of the lessons of history—nothing of
the growth of institutions which have slowly de-
veloped out of their primal germs, scarcely recog-
nisable in the ages of barbarism—nothing of the
stubborn struggles for freedom of speech and free-
dom of opinion in which their fathers played the
heroes’ part, and paid the heroes’ price for victory
at last, in the shape of suffering and sacrifice?
England’s history is the grand heritage of English-
men, and when we keep from the masses all know-
ledge of that, we are robbing the people of their
birthright.

How long is it to go on?

I am strongly persuaded that even among our-
selves there is growing up a hunger for bread
rather than for ashes. It is quite pathetic to
receive, as some of us are receiving, week after
week, letters from intelligent correspondents of all
classes begging to be informed upon the most ele-
mentary questions, which we had assumed that
everybody was familiar with. Men are beginning to
look into the history of their parishes or neighbour-
A SUGGESTION FOR MY BETTERS. 267

hood. Others are asking whether it is really true
that their churches are more than three hundred years
‘old; whether the Danes really did sail up to Nor-
wich ; or whether the Pope came to Swaffham, but
found the place too hot for him. Others again want
to be told all about the old weavers, and how the
open fields answered, or why they have to pay two
shillings a year to the Steward of the Manor Court,
and, above all, and most frequently, how it came
about that some parsons are vicars and some are
rectors, and sometimes the tithes are paid to a woman
or an alien. Meanwhile nothing has brought home
tomy mind more forcibly the conviction that very,
very few educated, or half-educated, men have ever
had the most rudimentary training in English history
than the fact that I myself have got to be regarded
us a real historian. They might just as truly call
me an orator, and my bitterest enemies have never
accused me of that. It makes me exceedingly un-
comfortable to underlie this suspicion. I only know
one clergyman in England—I do not count the
bishops—who can be called a real historian, with a
masterly grasp of English history from the days of
- pot-bellied Saxondom” to the days of George
IV. I will not name him—it might hurt. him to
be branded as a learned man and a scholar. But
that a smatterer and fumbler, who is a mere groper
268 A SUGGESTION FOR MY BETTERS.

after a little knowledge of the past, should be looked
upon as an authority in the “most difficult of all
the sciences,” proves how bad the outlook is and
how grievously we want teachers for our rising
generation. And yet, if the demand for such teachers
is growing, surely there ought not to be much diffi-
culty in providing the supply! All this grand
historic literature which has been absorbed among
us during the last thirty years must have been as-
similated by students who are able and willing to re-
produce it, if nothing more—probably able to do
something better, by giving us the results of their
own independent researches. :
Are our County Councils debarred from using any
of their money in the disseminating of a knowledge
of economic history? I had written political history
too, but I put my pen through the word, alarmed at
my own audacity. For who would tolerate the pro-
posal that we should teach the elements of political
philosophy, or aspire to indoctrinate the masses with
rudimentary notions about the duties and privileges
of good citizenship? I need not say that I tremble
to suggest that to be conversant with the leading
truths of constitutional history will hurt no one,
though such matters to the agitators are Nehushtan.
For some years past I have, in a bungling, blun-
dering way, been lecturing on what I call historical
A SUGGESTION FOR MY BETTERS. 269

and antiquarian subjects to very different audiences
in various parts of East Anglia. I can have no
doubt at all that the interest awakened in these
matters has very greatly increased —very greatly
indeed — and that, among the working classes
especially, it is rapidly increasing still.

One Sunday afternoon a year or two ago, when
the service came to an end in the usual way, my
congregation were met at the doors by a deluge of
rain which fairly beat them. They crowded round
the doors, hung back huddling, then some retired
to their seats, waiting for the storm to spend itself.
In the excitement of preaching, I had been quite
unobservant of the violence of the wind and the
rain. When I had retired to the vestry, and was
about to make the best of my way to the parsonage
close by, I began to understand the situation. ‘“ My
good friends,” I said, ‘‘ you’ve had enough of preach-
ing. Let me tell you something about our church.”
It was quite clear before I had gone on ten minutes
that my audience were all alive and all awake.

Next winter I announced a lecture in the church
on the history of the building as far as the Rood
Screen. Kind friends came round me, drew out
plans, furnished illustrations, and gave all that
sort of kind help which lightens a man’s heart and
lightens his labour when he has a big task before
270 A SUGGESTION FOR MY BETTERS.

him. When the appointed evening came the.
building was full from end to end. Ill-natured
defamers assert that I went on for an hour anda
half; ‘but that is a libel. Be it as it may, I am
told not a soul went to sleep, and flatterers declared
they found the dulcet tones and the romantic story.
all too short. I walked about among the crowds
with a long stick. ‘Do you see that bulge in the
wall? That means so and so. Do you notice that
mark there? Well, once upon a time... John
Styles, do you know whose tombstone you are
standing on? That poor gentleman left {£10 to
.’ And so we went on: not at random,
however, but systematically, and ending—ending
observe, not beginning—at the days when the first
English Prayer Book was brought into the church
and the Book of Homilies—which, to my shame, I
forgot to bring in—was set up and read at the desk
somewhere. Again and again have I been begged
to continue my lecture, and to give, indeed, a long
course of lectures on the history of the parish too.
But life is short, and art is long, and flesh is weak.
But I think it will not be long before the wish of
my people will be in part complied with, and I have —
no fear of their being wanting in intelligent curiosity.
I venture to ask, Why should not this kind of
thing be done in a hundred churches of any given
A SUGGESTION FOR MY BETTERS. 271

area? Why should not the powers that be en-
courage the masses in town and country to look
back upon the nation’s past and the people’s past ?
Why should not duly qualified lecturers be sent out
among our villages to stimulate the historic imagi-
nation, and to awaken interest in the struggle and
the march of progress of generations gone by?
Why should not English history, or at least some
portion of English history, be made a compulsory
subject in all standards above the third? Why
should not School Boards and school managers do
their best to roll away the reproach that we deserve
should be brought against us ?

Even “happy Japan” has its staff of itinerant
lecturers, who go through the length and breadth
of the land teaching Japanese history to the young
men and maidens of the streets and the lanes; but
we in England let year after year go by and genera-
tion after generation rise and pass, while to the
enormous majority of our countrymen the glorious
record of our ancestors’ doings and strivings, and
progress and upward-climbing, and spending them-
selves in the long crusade against tyranny and
slavery and ignorance and intolerance, remains as
if it were a record buried in the depths of some un-
fathomable cavern, where darkness reigns and none
approach to decipher the forgotten scroll.
272 A SUGGESTION FOR MY BETTERS.

Assuredly there is no lack of learning and
capacity for the work that requires to be done.
Oxford could find abundance of men only too eager
to engage in it. If Cambridge is as yet very far
behind her sister University, there, too, there is an
awakening and much promise for the future. The
danger would be of young academics on the look-
out for employment offering themselves, and being
accepted, only and solely on the strength of their
names being found high up in the class lists; but
it should be remembered that, though these furnish
us with a very trustworthy index to a man’s power
of acquisition, they tell us little more about him.
They say nothing about -his faculty of imparting
knowledge, of his ability to interest young or old,
of his capacity to deal with those peculiar difficulties
and questionings which are for ever recurring when
young people need this or that statement or problem
to be put before them in different lights, or to be
presented from different points of view. Such gifts
and graces as these need to be tested by some other
ordeal than that which our University examinations,
as at present conducted, afford. It is because we
have no such ordeal that we hear everywhere of
“ shocking bad teachers’ and “‘ miserable lecturers,”
and even of “ wretched examiners.” How should it
be otherwise when there is absolutely no such
A SUGGESTION FOR MY BETTERS. 273

systematic training of University men, as there is
for the elementary schoolmasters, in the difficult
art of teaching—an art which no more comes by
nature than the art of playing the violin does.
Moreover, if we are to send forth a body of in-
structors whose duty it should be to disseminate
an intelligent and helpful knowledge of English
history among our people, the teachers should not
be left to follow each his own devices, nor allowed
to choose each his own course of instruction, with-
out some sort of direction and control. If they are
to start as accredited public servants, they will have
to be subject to discipline and required to give an
account of themselves and their doings to head-
quarters, as everybody else is expected to do who
is a stipendiary of any public body. The random
vapouring of itinerant neophytes, dispensing small
doses of Ruskin and water here and dilutions of Mr.
Addington Symonds there, sometimes offering scraps
of Egyptology and sometimes dogmatising pertly on
art or economics to mystified but ecstatic audiences
—all this will die a natural death; and not a day
too soon. All young men and maidens, all more
thoughtful and promising boys and girls, will grow |
up with something like a solid foundation of historic
knowledge, will go on to learn the significance of

great events and great movements, and to trace the
19
274 A SUGGESTION FOR MY BETTERS.

working-out of great laws and great principles in
the ages behind us. The life of the present, the
hopes of the future, will no longer be dissociated
from the life and the conflicts of the past.

 
INDEX.

—Oo

A.
Abelard, 245
Adhelm, St., 24
Adrian IV., Pope, 101
Agrarian revolt of 1381, 85
Alan de Beccles, 55
Amenemapt, 219
Amundesham. “AnnalesS. Albani,”
51
Amphibolus, 28

Ansculf, William, son of, 152-154,

155-161
Anthemius, Emperor, 236
Archbishop of Athens, 59
Arles, 207
Aristophanes, ‘“‘ Clouds,” translation
from, 191-3
Athenodorus, 231.
Augustine, St., 24; his letters, 240
Ausonius, 208
Avitus, Flavius, 236

B.
Banham, Manor of, 167
Basil, St., letter-writer, 240
Bath, a Roman colony, 117

 

Bedericsworth, 68

Bedford, 126

Belvoir Castle, 110

Benedictine rule, 33 ; monks, 95

Benets Hulm, St., 72

Bernard, St., 244

Berner, Lady Juliana, 38

Bigot, Hugh, 100, 102, 104

Bigot, Roger, 99

Birmingham, 145 ef seg.; a survey
made, 152

Blackborough Nunnery, 96

Blackborough Benedictine, 99

Bologna, 35

Brewer, Mr., I & seg.

Bruslé, Gasse, 41

Bryce, Mr., 263

Bordeaux, 207

Boroughs, exclusiveness of, 140

Burgesses, 134-136

Cc.
Cerellia, 226, 227
Caius Gracchus, 222
Cesar, Julius, account of the
British, 113 :
276

Cambridge, 126; a Roman colony,
117

Camden Society,

Canons, meaning of word, 71;

. Regufar, 95

Canterbury, 24 ~

Cappadocia, Governor of, 241

Castleacre, 90, 96, 105

Castra stativa, 115

Cato the Censor, 194, 196, 221,
248

Caxton, 38

Chaldean School Books, 187

Chartered towns, 131

Charters of incorporation, 138

Cheinduit, Ralph, 54 .

Chester, 120

Chetham Society, 8

Christianity among Britons under
Roman sway, 119

Chronicles and memorials of Great
Britain and Ireland, from the
invasion of the Romans to the
reign of Henry VIII., 6

** Chronica Majora’’ of Matthew
Paris a national heritage, 65

Church lands, 158

Cistercians, 34

Cicero, 222-227

Cinque Ports, 130

Clement VII., 109

Clergy, married, 71, 72

Clermont, Bishop of, 236

Cluniac monks, 95

Cnut, King, 25, 72

Codde, Robert, Prior of Pentney,
109; Thomas, Mayor of Nor-
wich, 10g

Colchester, 116, 126

 

INDEX.

Commission for methodising national
records, 5

Commissioners of Henry VIII.
inspecting the monasteries, 108

Comman land, rights of, 169

Common council, 137

Como, -203

Constantina, daughter of Archbishop
of Athens, 59

Conquest, Norman, effect of, 160

Corinth, 191

Cork, 126

Cornelia, 222

County Councils,
teach history, 268

Country gentlemen, 184

Country parsons and religious orders
not cordial, 84

Cotton, Bartholomew, 12, 13

Cowper, William, letter-writer, 251

Coxe, H. O., Mr., 8

Coxford Priory, 105

Crabhouse nunnery, 98

Creak, North, 105

Cromwell : letters of his time, 250

Croyland, 11

Cunaxa on the Euphrates, 189

Customs, 128

Cyrus, 189 ©

may they not

D.
Danes, the, 125
Danes, Five Boroughs, 129
Dante, 54
Demesne lands, 163
Dorking, 105
Dublin, 125 - .
Dugdale’s ‘* Monasticon,”
Dunstan, St., 24
INDEX.

E.
Eadmer, 34
Edmund, King St., 69
Edward I. held Parliament at Bury,
82
Edward VL., letters of his time, 250
Edwin, Earl of Mercians, 162
Ellis, Sir Henry, 12
Ely, 42
English towns, 112 e¢ seq.
Escheats, what they were, 175
Eston (now Aston), 162
Eton, 35
Exeter, 116, 120

F.
Fawkes, de Breautés, 47
Felix the Burgundian, 67
Flaccus, 195
Flemings settled in Norwich, 140
Floods and pestilence at Bury, 81 .
Florence of Worcester, 34, 42
Firma Burgi, 130
Fitz-William, Sir Adam, 54
Fortresses, early British, 113
France, 205
Freeman, Professor, 262
Fréjus, 190
Friars denounced, 56
Fundanus, friend of Pliny, 204
Fursey, 67
Fustel de Coulanges, M., 260

G.
Gardening at monasteries, 31
Gaul: life in 5th century, 205; mag-
nificent mansions, 208; its luxury
like that of the Virginian land-
lords, 210

 

277

Geoffrey of Monmouth, 42 .

Geoffrey, Prior of Pentney, 101

German people in time of Tacitus
had no cities, 112

Gervase of Canterbury, 34

Gilbert, St., of Sempringham, 22, 99

Gilbertine order, 98

Gilds, 124, 135, 136

Giraldus, 42

Glastonbury, 24

Gloucester, Roman colony, 117

Godmund, 172

Goldwill, Bishop, 105

Gray, poet, his letters, 251

Green, J. R., 262

Grosseteste, Bishop, 15, 53

H.
Hacon, King, 50, 91-99
Hallam, 10
Hampshire survey, 158
Handwriting special
monasteries, 40
Hardy, Sir Thomas Duffus, Ditty
Keeper of the Records, 8, 17
Hatfield, 248
Helston in Cornwall, 138, 139
Henry II. limited the number of
gilds, 135
Henry II., 27
» AIIl., 52
3,  VIII., letters of his time, 248
Herford, John, 38
Heriots, survival of, 179
Herodotus, 63
Historical Society, English, 9
History, a desire for its teaching,
266; ignorance of it by dis-
tinguished Class-men, 264

to certain
278

Horace, 227, 228
Hundred Court, 123
Hunting in Chaldea, 188
Huntingdon, 126

I.
Iceni, towns of the, 116
Isabella, Queen, rested at Bury, 82
Ingulphus, 11

J.

James I., 249

Jerome, St., 240, 241

Jewry, 134

Jews massacred at St. Edmunds-
bury,

John, King, 22-26; of Banham, 167;
of Basingstoke, 58, 59; of Hert-
ford-Abbot, 51-59; of Walling-
ford, 51

K,
Karl, Emperor, 26
Kemble, Mr., author ‘* Codex
Diplomaticus. evi Saxonici,”

‘* History of the Saxons in Eng-
land,” 8-10
Kingston-upon-Hull, 138

L.

Lamb, Charles, letter-writer, 252-
256

Land and its owners, 142 ef seg. ;
held in joint proprietorship, 151 ;
nationalisation of, 182; not
always to be bought, 146; not
to be left by will, 156

Lanfranc, Archbishop, 41

Langdale, Lord, 5-7

 

INDEX. |

Lappenberg, 44

Laurentum, 204

Leicester, 120

Leland, the antiquary, 86

Lemon’s Calendar, 9

Letters and letter-writing, 115 ef
seg. ; in Old Testament, few, 220 ;
of Henry VIII.’s time, 250; of
religions, 239

Lewes Priory, 95

Liberties, 116

Limerick, 125

Lincoln, 120, 126

Lingard, Dr., 11

Literature, Greek deficient in
examples of letters, 220; Rome
supplies them, 221

Livy, 64

Lombard, Peter, 34

London, 116, 120, 128

Louis, King, 27

Luard, Dr., 12, 13, 15, 16, 19, 60

M.

Madden, Sir Frederick, Keeper of
MSS. Department at the British
Museum, 16, 17

Marden Castle, 114

Maitland, Dr., 11

Malmesbury, 24, 42

Manor, homagers of the, 168 ; lords
of, 164

Manning, 253

Mai, Robert, 47

Marham, 91, 93, 105

Mark, theory of the, 262

Market towns, 131, 132

Marshall, William, 53

Matthew of Westminster, 13, 44
INDEX.

Maurer, von, 260

Mendicant orders, 11, 35

Merchant gilds, 136

Merivale, Herman, 247

Mesne Tenants, who they were, 173

Mesopotamia, 166

Middleton, 96, 99

Milan, 202

Monachism, cause of its influence,
30; at its best in 13th century,
22

Monasteries, influence before Nor-
man Conquest, 124; numerous in
Henry III.’s time, 20; refuge
for sad and sorrowful, 32

Munificence of upper classes in
Edward I.’s time, 23

N.

Nar, R., 90, 99

Narford, 99

Nicholas, Pope, 29

Noblesse, old, its fluctuation, 213;
French, destruction by French
Revolution, 211

Norfolk Holy Land, 90 e¢ seg.

Norwich Priory, 31, 106

Novels, French, 259

oO.
Offa, King, 26
Open fields, 163
Oxford School of History, 262

P.
Panbesa earliest letter-writer, 219
Paris, Matthew, 13, 20, 46, 473
under Roger de Wendover at St.
Alban’s Abbey, 48; succeeded

 

279

him as historiographer, 51; a
universal genius, 49 ; a protester
against Roman aggression, 55;
sent by Pope Innocent IV. to
Norway to help in reforming the
Benedictine rule there, 49; a
born historian, 54; his use of
anecdotes, 58; Bedfordshire
family of name, 46; Cambridge,
46; Lincoln, 46

Paris, Synod of, 35

Pavia, 35 ;

Parker, Archbishop, 14

Partisanship of old and new founda-
tions, 23

Patrick, St., 24

Paston letters, the, 247

Paul, Abbot, 41, 42

Peckham, Archbishop, 104

Pentney, 91, 96, 97, 99, 103 ; Prior,
98 ; Canons irreproachable, 105 ;
Priory dissolved, 110

Pinchingi, or Pinkney, near Amiens,
153

Percy, Society, 8

Personalty and realty distinguished,
148.

Peterborough, 42

Petrarch, 246

Pisciculture, 31

Pliny ‘‘the younger,” 198, 228;
suggests a grammar school, 202 ;
at the eruption of Vesuvius, 230 ;
letter with a ghost story, 230

Polybius, 63

Pontus, nearly
Trebizond, 198

Pope, 223

Profession, meaning of word, 20

answering to
280

Protadius, antiquary of the 5th cen-
tury, 207
Proprietary rights, limited, 180-
183; their tendency to grow, 180
*

R.

Rameses, city of, 219

Rebellion, the great, 141

Record Office opened 1855, 5

Redburn, 25

Reform Bill, 142

Reformation, 141

Relics discovered at St. Alban’s, 57

Reservation of church lands for
clergy, 158

Richard of Cornwall, 53

Richer, Mr., 158

Rights reserved of the Crown, 151

Riley, Mr., ‘‘ Chronicles” of St.
Alban’s, 15, 16

Roger of Wendover, 44, 45, 48

Rome: her obliteration of the past,
64, 1203; her occupation benefi-
cent, 115; its duration, 117; her
mastery of the world, 205

Roman camps, 113, 114

Rolls series, 3, 4, 9

Romilly, Lord, late Sir John, 6-8

Rutilius, 208

Rutland, Earl, 110

Ss.
Saddlers, City Company, 136
Salvian, 208
Sampson, Abbot, 80, 81
Sapidia, 241
Sarum, Old, 116

,

 

INDEX.

Saxons and Angles, 118

Saxon earthworks, 119; influence
deteriorating, 119

Scales family, 99

Scillus, 191

Sertorius, 64

Setchy, 90

Sévigné, Madam de, 223

Shouldham Monastery, 91, 92, 98

Sidonius Appollinaris, 207, 208,
236

Simeon of Durham, 34

Simon, Abbot, 43

Simon, Bishop of Norwich, 82

Sigebert, King, 67

Small owners, their absorption, 176

Socrates, 191

Southey, Robert, 253

Souvesire, Emile, 258

Specialists, temptation of, 144

St. Alban’s, 1 éf seg.; 125; great in
King John’s time, 26; splendour
of its church, 36; lavish expendi-
ture, 27 ; whence its revenues, 27 ;
its relics and gems, 17 ; its Scrip-
torium, 38; its effect, 39; its
school of history, 43; Bene-
dictines, pre-eminently here an
educating body, 343 its Rome
land, 36

St. Edmund’s Abbey, 66 ef seg.;
Benedictine rule, 73, 74; church,
76 ; cloisters, 75; Chapter House,
78; its degeneracy, 79; in the
hands of the Jews, 79; great
floods, 85 ; Queen Isabella, 82

St. Edmunds, Bury, 83, 125

Stamford, 126 i

Stanham, 158
INDEX.

Stephen, King, 35, 93, 246

Stubbs, Bishop, 262

Suppression of monasteries in East
Anglia, 70

Symmachus, Q. Aurelius, letter-
writer, 208, 233, 235

T.

Tacitus, 64, 110, 230

Taine, M., 258

Teachers need to be taught, 272

Technical school, 265

Tenants of manors, 166; in chief
who they were, 173 ; mesne, 173

Theodoric, King of the Goths, 237

Thibaut, 41

Thorpe, Bishop’s residence, 104

Thucydides, 62

Tithes reserved, 159

Tottenhill, 91-92

Toulouse, 207

Towns, origin and growth, 112, e¢
seg.; English ones existed before
the Romans came, 116

Tunships, 128

Turbe, William Bishop, 102

Turkil, 91

Turketil, 91

Tuscany, Pliny’s home there, 200

Tusculum, 194

U.
Utuki Idiuna, 187
Utuki Senni, 186
Ulwin, 153-155

Vv.
Vacarius, 35, 246

 

281

Vals, Vallibus, or Vaux, 100; Ave-
lina, 100; John, 102; Robert,
99; Sibilla, 102; William, ror,
102, 104

Verulam, 24, 25, 125

Vigfusson, 263

Ww.

Wall paintings, 51

Walpole, Horace, letters, 251, 252
Walter of Colchester, sculptor, 50
Walton, East, 91, 99

Warrenne, Earl, 97

Waterford, 126

Wiggenhall, Joan de, 98
Wiggenhall, St. Mary, 98
William the Conqueror, 153
William de Trumpington, 48, 51
William of Malmesbury, 34, 42
Winchester, 35

Worde, Wynkyn de, 38
Wormegay, 91

Wrawe, John, 85

Wulstan, St., 42

Wymondham Priory, 104

X.
Xenophon, 63, 189, 191

Y.
York Powell, 263

Zz.

Zosimus, 190
The Gresham Press,
UNWIN BROTHERS,
CHILWORTH AND LONDON,
 

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