^ (-14 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Siettrs m. Sage ZS91 A/../.;r^../...^...Z. -.<^4^^^3.. 5474 Cornell University Library BX5195.E5 A4 Historical memorials of Ely catliedrai. i Ely I ill olin 3 1924 029 448 812 I Cornell University ij Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029448812 HISTORICAL MEMORIALS OF ELY CATHEDRAL AU Rights Reserved Act5 of %. €tf)c(6rc6a. ca\-[p XV ccntiivp. HISTORICAL MEMORIALS In Two Lectures delivered in Cambridge in the Summer of iSg6 CHARLES WILLIAM STUBBS D.D. Dean of Ely u t^t ^^tiu of ^. ^wbteg NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO. 1897 Zo tbe &ear ilbcmocB OF MY FATHER AND MY MOTHER *' Anima sanctorum in manu Dei Contents PREFACE .... CHRONOLOGICAL ANNALS OF ELY THE SHRINE OF S. AWDREY NOTES TO LECTURE I. ALAN DE WALSINGHAM . NOTES TO LECTURE II. INDEX PAGE xi SI 97 141 i6r List of Illustrations Acts of S. Etheldreda, from a supposed Altar Piece early i 5th century, in the possession of the society OF Antiquaries . . . Photogravure Frontispiece Plan of Ely Cathedral and Old Convent Buildings West Door OF Minster. {^From a photograph) Ely Minster from S.E. . The Ballad of King Cnut .... S. Ovin's Cross ..... Carol in Cloister, now used as Doorway to Choir Boys' Vestry . . . Duke Brithnoth's Relics in Bishop West's Chapel Interior of West Tower above the Great Arches . West Front of Ely Minster The Wolf with S. Edmund's Head, the Arm of the Abbot's Chair .... ,,41 West Tower and Galilee Transept and S. Catherine's Chapel from the Deanery Garden . . ,,45 The Miracle on S. Abb's Head . . . » 73 The Pilgrim's Staff of Etheldreda . . » 75 Queen Etheldreda (S. Awdrey) takes the Veil. (/n Photogravure) .... Face p. 74 ix '^act .p.xl >? I age 3 99 7 »? 19 jj 27 99 31 99 35 99 39 &ie( of 3ffu0^ra^ionfif Archbishop Wilfrid Installing Etheldreda as Abbess OF Ely ..... Page 77 The Death and " Chesting " of S. Etheldreda . „ 78 The Miracle of the Delivery of Brightstan from Prison „ 79 Seals of Hugo de Northwold and Hugo de Balsham „ 95 The Prior's Door with Bedesman. (^From a photograph) Face p. 96 The S. Aisle of Nave Looking to N. Transept . Page 1 03 S. Catharine's Chapel in Galilee Transept . ,,109 The Assumption of the B.V.M, Lady Chapel . ,,117 Birth and Presentation in the Temple of the B.V.M. Lady Chapel ..... N.E. Angle of Lady Chapel The Octagon and Lantern from North West Octagon, Crossing from Nave S. Awdrey's Shrine. (^Photogravure, from a photograph by Mr F. H. Evans) .... A Convent Deed with Alan's Seal Two Canopies from the Stalls Prior Crauden ..... Sea'l of Alan de Walsingham The Illustrations in line are from drawings by Miss H. M. James J> 121 I> 125 » 127 » 133 Facef. .138 Page I 40 5» 14s J> 1 54 9» 160 Preface The two Lectures of which this book mainly consists were both delivered in Cambridge last year to popular audiences. The first was given under the auspices of a Young Men's Literary Association belonging to the town, the second at the request of the University Syndicate which organised the Summer School for Extension Students. At the close of my second lecture I was asked by several members of the University, to whose judgment I was bound to defer, to put both lectures into some permanent form. In preparing them tiow for publi- cation, I have taken the opportunity of adding such additional matter as I thought likely to emphasize my origitial purpose of stimulating in my hearers a desire to study for themselves both the history and the architecture of S. Awdrey's great Foundation. I have prefixed to the lectures a Chronological Table, which I trust may be found useful, both by the student of Church History who wishes to get a firm grasp of the continuity of events at Ely, and also by the intelligent visitor to the Minster who desires to form some accurate conception of the gradual development of its many and various architectural features. In compiling this Table I have had the inestimable advantage of having before me xi (preface a very complete list of all the early Convent Benefactions drawn up some years ago by Archdeacon Chapman from the original returns made to William the Conqueror by the "Juratores" of the County of Cambridge. I have, however, myself verified all his references to the "In- quisitio Eliensis " in Mr Hamilton's edition. To the anti- quarian knowledge and erudition of the same colleague and friend I am indebted for many details, historical and architectural, not hitherto published, which appear both in the lectures and the notes ; and certainly without his inspir- ing guidance I could never have acquired even that modicum of familiarity with the priceless treasures of our Capitular Muniment Room, which alone gives any temporary value to this book, and which, at least, has fired me with the hope that as the years of my antiquarian apprenticeship go on I may be permitted to contribute further material of more permanent value to the history of Ely Minster. I am much indebted also to our Sacrist and Precentor (the Rev. J. H. Crosby) for permission to make use, for the purposes of my second lecture, of his transcripts from the Obedientary Rolls of the Monastery and from the " Re- ceptus Custodis Capellje Beatas Mariae." I sincerely trust that some opportunity will shortly be found of making accessible to the student of Monastic and Church History, under his editorship, the text of these ancient documents, wjth all the detailed evidence they supply of the splendid administrative work of a great Benedictine House in the fourteenth century. To the artistic talent of one of our minor Canons (the Rev. Herbert Campion) 1 am under xii ^ufau much obligation for a very large number of special photo- graphs, — out-of-the-way bits of sculpture, ancient seals, royal charters, pages of the "Liber Eliensis," — a very small number of which, I regret to say, it has been found possible to reproduce in the present volume. Without his help, however. Miss James would have found her charming line drawings of the sculptured " Acts of S. Awdrey," from the lofty Octagon corbels, quite im- possible. From his photograph also of the ancient fourteenth century Cope, in the possession - of the Dean and Chapter, the reproduction of the famous "Ely Sprig," which has been utilised in the design for the cover of this book, has been copied. My grateful thanks are also due to the Society of Antiquaries for its kind permission to produce as a frontispiece a copy, in photogravure, of the early fifteenth century painted panels, in all probability a portion of a mediseval altar piece at Ely, or it may be of the panels of the stall canopies, at present in its possession at Burlington House. In ancient days the pilgrims to S. Awdrey's Shrine were given, it is said, by the Ely monks, tiny iron shackles, — "the S. Awdrey's chains" of plaited ribband in later times — in memory of their visit and in commemora- tion of a certain miraculous act of the Saint. If in any- thing I have said in this book I shall help to attach, by any smallest link even, the memories of Englishmen to those national traditions of valour and truth, and freedom and justice, of which a great Cathedral Church is surely the most vivid historic witness, and if, also, any word of mine should xiii (preface tend to bind upon the consciences of our many kinsmen from across the sea, — who in increasing numbers year by year travel on " the Palmer's way " to Ely, and whose arrival in our island sanctuary it is always a special pleasure to welcome, — the facts of our common inheritance from the Pilgrim Mother Church of the early days, her simplicity of faith, her warmth of worship, her assiduity of service, her reverence, her loyalty, her love, characteristics I trust to be ever inherent in men of the old English strain, I shall be amply satisfied, for I shall feel that I have tried to do my duty to our great Foundress and her Foundation, as my Benedictine brothers did in days gone by. And, for the rest, I know not how I can end better than by adopting as my own the prayer of Brother Thomas in the twelfth century to his Lady the Queen, when in the thirty-second chapter of the first Book of the "Liber Eliensis " he wrote : — " Oratio auctoris ad dominam suam beatissimam Ethel- dredam. " Inculta autem scriptoris oratio veniam mereatur, et si non meruit sperare mercedem. Et si elegantia verborum non sonuit, desideria tamen votiva complevimus. Quisquis autem tibi dicatam opus perlegerit, vel legenti sobrium gloriosa virgo adibebit auditum. Misere eorum sorti compatere, quos tibi devotos, beata mater, intenderis, orationibus tuis juva, et certamen bonum futura immor- talitas prosequatur pauperis tui cultoris, cujus tuas laudi sudavit ingenium : dedicentur Christo, te intercedente, labores. Exulis illius te lingua resonabit, quamdiu in hoc xiv preface corpore peregrina versabitur : tuque eum saltern in ultimo tuere examine, ut coelestis glorise participatione perfruatur. Quinimmo tua universis in afflictione positis menia prse- tende, et fideles tui per tua sancta sufFragia seternas vitse gaudia mereantur, per eum qui te sibi sponsara assignavit, Jesum Christum, Virginis Filium, et Virginum Sponsum, Redemptorem mundi, et Dominum, qui cum Patre et Spiritu Sancto vivit et regnat Deus per omnia sa2cula sasculorum. Amen." CHARLES W. STUBBS. Deanery, Ely, Easter, 1897. XV CHRONOLOGICAL From the Foundation of the " Christianity entered not into this Island like Century. A.D. Chronological Events and Benefactions. Authorities. VI. 563 The Celtic Mission of S. Columba at lona. 597 S. Augustine s Roman Mission to Kent : S. AugUStUlG Anglia Sacra, i, 594; said to Have built a chiircta in the Isle of Ely, at Lib.Eliens. i. 15. Cratendune. 624 ... VII. 631 Felixjjirst Bishop in East Anglia^ founded a monasteiy at L. E. i. i; Bede, ii. Soham, near Ely, '5- 636 S. Aidan at Lindisfarne : " Holy Island the true cradle of English Christianity." 637 Anna, King of East Anglia, father of S. Etheldreda, L. E. i. I ; Bede, iv. and a family of saints : slain by Penda, the heathen I9' 6J4 6SS King of Mercia. jEtheldrytha (S. Etheldreda, S. Aldrede, s".' Audrey), daughter of King Anna, bom at Ezning, 630, married, 652 (i.) Tondbert, Ealdorman of East Anglia, and (ii.) Egfrid, son of Oswy of Northumbria. 662 Mission tvori by the Northern Church, S. Cuthbert, Wilfrid of York, Benedict Biseop, Hilda, Synod of Whitby. ' 3 J ... 664 Birth of Beda. ... 673 S. Etheldreda founds her Monastery at Ely, giving to it all the royal rights which she possessed in 2 Hundreds in the Isle of Ely (about 25 Parishes), and in 5J Hundreds in Suffolk (102 Parishes). Council of Hertford 673, at -which all the Bishops of England attend, Theodore presiding. Bishop Wilfrid of York banished from Northern L. E. i. 15. Kingdom, exercises Episcopal functions at Ely, the Monastery being exempt from the jurisdiction of Bishops of East Anglia. 679 S. Etheldreda died, aged 49. XVI ANNALS OF ELY. Monastery to its Dissolution. lightning, but like light.'" — Thomas Fuller. Reign. Abbot or Bishop. Prior. Architectural features of Ely. Date. Position on Plan. RaBdwaid,K.of East Anglia. ... ... Eorpwald. Sigebert. Felix, Sp. at Dun- •uiich, 631-647. iS". Furtejf in Suf folk, 633. Anna. Thomas, Bp. Dun- •uiich, 647-651. .ffithelhere. JEthelwald. [O s w y of Northumbriar Supremacy.] Boniface, 652. Ealdulf [nephew of S. Hilda]. Bisi,Bp.ofEast Anglia, 66^- S. Etheldreda, 1 Abbess. Huna " presby- ter Alms EtheldredK." S. Sexburga, z Abbess. Saxon Period. The Pilgrims' Cross of S. Ovin in south aisle of Nave. circ. 679 s xvu > 6AbbotWilfric. ... WiUiam I. 7,Ab. Thurstan. )> SAb.Theodwyn » Administration of Godfrey. Norman Period. [a. Earliest variety.] j» 9 Ab. Simeoa. Abbot Simeon's work in ground story of Central Transepts: notice exterior of windows in west side of South Central Transept with nail-head moulding : and portion of ancient doorway below in cloister : all other early Norman windows in church have billet moulding. Under the pavement of the present choir are the foundations of an apse, which Simeon intended to build on the model of his brother Abbot Walkelin's model at Winchester. These foundations were laid bare by Professor Willis in 1850. The old Priors' Hall, ground story of Canon's Residence, old Priory adjoining Deanery. 1083 15 10, 11,12 63 WiUiam'lI. [Anslem at Henry I. Canterbury.] 10. Ab bo t ... ;.. 1 100 'S [6. More advanced, but still early Norman.] Richard. The upper stages of central transepts : notice on outside the original Norman triforium roof and clerestory, with rude parapet of triforium wall, on the east side of north central transept, the most complete speci- 18 men of the old church which is left. XXV (C^tpttofo^icaf Century. A.D. Chronological Events and Benefactions. Authorities. XII. II06 Second Translation of S. Audrey. IIO7 Bishop Hervey ; by whose exertions the BisbopriC D. & C. Cart. No. 51, was estaMlshed ; and who, under the king's order, 52; Ep. Reg. M. f. divided the Church's possessions between the See 143' and the Convent. 1 109 Death of Anselm. II18 King Stephen confirmed the rites and privileges of D. & C. Cart. Nos. 7, the Church. g. Henry II. gave special protection to the monks for Ihid. No. 9 ; Ep. Reg. the preservation of their fishing rights at Dunwich. M. f. 83, et seq. Thomas a Becket. Richard I. gave deeds of privilege to the Church of D. & C. Cart. No. 13, Ely, and to Bishop Longchamp, his Chancellor. 14; Ep.Reg.-M.f. 89, II33 Nigel, Bishop, gave to the monastery the Manor and D. & C. Cart. No. 53, Church of Hadstock, and made a grant from the 54 ; Ep. Reg. M. f. Church of Wentworth and another from property 146, et seq. in Ely to the Sacrist ; he also gave the tithes of his turbaries in Ely and rents in Horningsea and Ditton " Domui Infirmaris " ; also the trunk of a tree from a grove at Somersham every week " ad opus Fratrum infirmorum," also the Villa of Winston " in perpetuam Elemosinam," and the Villa of Marham " ad caritatem et hospitalitatem Domus augmentandam " ; also a part of Hartest for providing a light for the Altar, and spices ; also the tithes of his demesne at Cattemere in Littlebury " ad emendationem organorum," and all the tithes of Whittlesea and part of those of Pampisford " ad ' libros Ecclesiae faciendos et emendandos." Martyrdom of S, Thomas a Becket. 1135 1144 ... "54 1163 XXVI (^nmte of 6% Reign. Abbot or Bishop. Prior. Architectural Features of Ely. Date. Position on Plan. Ornamental arcaded gal- »4 leries, north and south ends of transepts. Remains of monk's 60 kitchen, north east corner of deanery. [c. Still more advanced Norman.] Nave with its splendid processional doorways to east and west alleys 4,6 of cloister, monks' and Henry I. I. Bishop Hervey. I. Prior Vincent. priors' doors. [J. Further advance show- ing great richness of detail.] „ 5J 2. Prior Henry. Apsidal Chapel in south- 3 )j J> 3J western transept. Lower stages of western transept. Screen in south central transept possibly re- 3 JJ moved from lower stages of the fallen north- '3 if J) 2. Bishop Nigellus. J) 3. Pr. William. western transept. [1. Latest and most re- fined Norman.] Infirmary buildings. 71 Stephen. )) » j> 4. Pr. Tonbert. Henry 11. ' jj 5. Pr. Alex- ander. 6. Pr. Solomon. XXVll C^tonofogicaf Century. Chronological Events and Benefactions. Authorities. XII. I164 1 170 1 174 1 177 I194 Xllf. "97 1215 1216 1219 IZZO Constitution of Clarendon. Third Crusade. Longchamp, Bishop, who gave to the monastery lands in Somersham, Corefield, Flemsfield, Elm and Leverington, to the extent of 2140 acres, with the new tithes of Somersham and four neighbouring parishes, and one sheaf from every acre of all his demesnes (called Candle Com). Eustace, Bishop, who gave the Church of Stetchworth to the monastery " ad supplendum defectos suos," and the Church of Meldred " in usus Domus hospitalitatis " ; a charge on his Manor at Hatfield for the Almonry ; Property at Berningham, with moneyj for an annual pittance for the monks and annusd gifts to the poor ; land for a cellar for the Refectory ; grants from the Rectories of Downham and Sutton for the Sacristy; and confirmed the Church of Impinton " in usus Cantarie," and " built from the foundation the New Galilee towards the west at his own cost." John, when Earl of Moreton and after his accession, confirmed the privileges of the Church. Papers Interdict. Hoger Sacouj 12 14-1292. Magna Carta, Henry III., who, out of regard for Bishop Hugh, granted special forest rights to the Church in the Royal Demesne of Somersham, and by five other charters gave peculiar advantages to the Church of Ely. Coming of the Friars. John de Fontibus, Bishop, who appropriated the Rectory of Wichiford to the monks "in proprios usus hospitalitatis," and the great tithes of his demesne at Hadham, to be divided at his anniver- sary between the monks and the poor. xxviii D. & C. Cart. 57, 58, 62 ; Ep. Reg. M. f. 1 60, et seq. D. & C. Cart. J9 to 65 ; Ep. Reg. M. f. 1 68, f^ seq. D & C. Cart. Nos. 16, 17,18 Ibid. No. 19 ; Ep. Reg. M. f. Ill ; D. & C. Cart. Nos. 21-24. D. & C. Cart. 66, 67 ; Ep. Reg. M. f. i6g, et seq. (^Ytmh of &^ Rei'gn. Abbot or Bishop. Prior. Architectural FeattiresofEly. Date. Position on Plan. Henry II. Richard I. 2. Bishop Nigellus. 3. Bishop GeoffreyRidel. 4. Wm. Long- champ. 6.Prior Solomon. 7. Prior Richard, 8. Prior Robt. Longchamp. John. Henry III. 5. Bishop Eustace. 6. Bishop John de Fontibus. 9. Prior John de Stratshate. 10. Prior Hugh. II. Prior Roger de Brigham. Transitional Norman. Upper stages of western transept and western towers, with upper arches of crossing. Black marble slab in south aisle of choir, said to be monument of Bishop Nigellus. Infirmary Chapel: with beautiful groined roof of chancel, at present the study in canon's residence. The details of infirmary north door nearly identi- cal with Bishop Ridel's west transept windows. The original Norman screen in nave, de- stroyed by Essex in 1 8th century, judging by his rude drawing of its central doorway with ornamental tym- panum, possessed simi- lar features to this north doorway of Riddell's Infirmary. , IV. Early English. [a. Lancet windows.] Gallilee porch built by Bishop Eustace. 1170- 1184 [174 37 72 73 1200 1215 XXIX C^tronofo^icaf Century. Chronological Events and Benefactions. Authorities. XIII. 1225 1229 1 241 1252 1254 1257 1259 1271 1 271 1273 1279 1283 Geoffry de Burgh, Bishop, who gave 1 20 acres of land in Bluntesham,with charges on land at Wysbech and Elm, to the monastery ; and with the consent of Absalom, the Rector ,gave the Church of St Andrew's, Cambridge, " in augmentationem Sacristarise." Francis of Assissi, died 1226. Hugh de Northwold, Bishop, a munificent Benefactor, who while expending large sums on the erection of the Presbytery, made grants from his lands at Barking to provide annual pittance for the monks and annual gifts for the poor ; he also gave to the monastery a charge of 30 marks on the Rectory of Melburne "ad Coquinam monachorum"; made a further appropriation of the Rectory of Sutton " causa hospitalitatis sectands et augmentandx " ; founded a College of four chantry priests in the Cathedral out of his Manors of Bramford and Tatteridge, and united and reformed the Hospitals within the City. Simon de ^ontfort. Third Translation of S. Awdrey, in the presence of Henry II., the whole Church re-dedicated to S. Peter, S. Etheldreda, and B.V.M. Wm. de Kilkenny, Bishop, appropriated to the monastery the Churches of Melbourne and Swaf- ham ; founded a Chantry of two Chaplains in the Cathedral, and left money to the Priory of Barne- well to found two Divinity exhibitions in Cam- bridge. Hugh de Balsham, Bishop, bestowed on the Prior and Convent of Ely the Churches of Foxton and Wisbech, for which he purchased other advowsons for the See, the former " ad augmentationem Ele- mosinarie," the latter "ad recreationem Fratrum in Refectorio reficientium," — founding also a Col- lege of Students at Cambridge, Peterhouse. Dante f born 1265. Roger Bacon's " Opus Majus." Giotto born. Edward I. confirmed the rights of the Church by special Charters. Statute of Ji^ertmain. Organisation of Convocation of Clergy. XXX D. & C. Cart. 68, 69 ; Ep. Reg. M. f. 174, et seq. Ep. Reg. M. f. 177, et seq. Wharton Anglia Sacra, vol. i. 636'. Wharton Anglia Sacra, vol. i. 637. Ibid. 26, 27 ; Ep. Reg. M. f. 119. @nMf0 of 6f^ Reign. Abbot or Bishop. Prior. Architectural Features of Ely. Date. Position on Plan. Henry III. 7, Bishop Geof- frey de Burgh. 5. Bp. Hugh de Northwold. 1 1. Prior Ralph. 13. Pr. Walter. Edward I. 9. Bp. William of Kilkenny. 10. Bp. Hugo de Balsham. 14. Pr. Robert deLevrington. 15. Pr. Henry de Banciis. The six bays of Presby- tery built by Bishop Northwold. N.S.Two bays of his early Eng- lish Triforium in south side exterior still remain. The Abbot's chair, wolf with S. Edmund's head in his paws. 1 6. Pr. John de Hemingston. xxxi Tombs of Bishop North- wold and Kilkenny. Remains of shrine or altar in south nave Tri- forium. [i. Geometrical tracery.] Eastern windows of S. central transept in present library. Windows, east and west wall, gable of Deanery. Remains of Refectory in Deanery Garden. Arched recess in cloister (doorway to choir ves- try) : possibly caroll, or book-case, or seat, of Master of the Novices. 1135- 1252 43 30 1254- 1257 1270-5 29 26 56 61 59 7 C^i^ottofojicaf Century. XIII. XIV. 1286 1288 1290 1291 1299 1302 1306 1307 1310 1314 1316 1321 Chronological Events and Benefactions. John de Kirkeby, Bishop, gave to the Convent for his anniversary a house in London, opposite the Friars Minors, called " the Belle," thereby providing pittances for the monks and alms for the poor. He also left to his successors a messuage in Holborn. Wm. de Luda, Bishop, bequeathed to his successors house and lands with endovrments in Holborn. Cimebue, John de Fressingfeld, Prior ; " multa bona fecit Ec- clesis." He purchased for the Priory the estate in Ely called "the Brays," and lands in Downham, Wycham and Sutton, with Lythgates and Barkeres, for his anniversary. Petrarch. Edward II. gave charters ; and a mandate to secure the Liberties of S. Etheldreda in Norfolk and Suffolk. John de Ketene, Bishop, left the furniture of his chapel, many valuable robes and vessels of silver- gilt to the Cathedral. Alan de Walsingham, Monk. John de Hotham, Bishop, who, after the fall of the central tower of the Church, rebuilt the Western portion of the Choir, which had also been destroyed. He gave also Pelham a Manor in London and Dageney a Manor in Northwold, to the monastery " ad oflicium Celerarie " ; purchased various plots of ground in Holbourne, with houses and gardens, which by his will he divided between his successors and the Prior and Convent ; and further gave special rents, called the Cellarer's Rents, to the monks, with gifts to the poor. John de Crauden, Prior, besides taking a leading part in the rebuilding of the Octagon and the Western bays of the Choir, and erecting the Chapel attached to the Priory, with large hall and study, purchased property in Cambridge for a hostel for the Ely Scholars. Alan Sacrist. Danti died. xxxu Authorities. Ep. Reg. R. F. 214. Ep. Reg. A. F. 156. Anglia Sacra, vol. i. 643. Ep.Reg. i27toi35;D. &C. Cart. 28,29,30. Anglia Sacra, vol. i. 642. Anglia Sacra, vol. i. 647. Some original Convey- ances in the D. and C. muniments. Rot. Celler. passim. Anglia Sacra, vol. i. 649. @nnaffir of &^ Reign, Edward I. Edward II. Abbot or Bishop. II. Bishop John de Kirkeby. 12. „ William de Luda. 13. „ Ralph de Walpole. 14. „ Robert de Oxford. I J. „ Johnde Ketene. 16. „ Johnde Hotham. Prior. Architectural Features of Ely. 17. Prior John de Shapreth. 18. Prior John Saleman. ig. Prior Robert de Oxford. 20. Pr. William de Clare. 21. Pr. Johnde Fressingfeld. 11. Prior John de Crauden. V. Decorated. [a. Early.] Canopy of Bishop de Luda's Tomb. Lady Chapel, with en- trance door in north aisle of Choir. Clere- story window in S. wall of S. central transept. Central Octagon. Three bays of present choir. Date. Position on Flan. 1300 44 1321 '9 16 54 xxxin CJtonofogicaf Century. Chronological Events and Benefactions. Authorities. XIV. XV. 1327 1337 1341 '345 1349 1362 1364 1366 1368 1374 •377 1380 1388 •397 1399 1401 1413 141 S Edward III., by his Charters, showed his interest in the Church of Ely — making a special gift of a large sum for the renewing of the stock on the Episcopal Estates, and providing annual gifts for 100 poor persons. Giotto's Campanile f 1334. Chaucer. John de Crauden elected Bishop, but not confirmed. Simon de Montacute, Bishop, who took special interest in the building of the Lady Chapel, under the superintendence of John of Wysbech, and himself bore the greater part of the expense. Alan de Walsingham, by whose zeal and talents the Octagon was constructed in place of the fallen tower ; who built the Hall with rooms over for the use of the Infirmary, with a new set of oflices for the Sacrist ; and secured for the monastery the possession of the lands of Brame and the Church of Mepal. Alan elected Bishop, but not confirmed. The Black Death. John Bucton, Prior, imder whom the great gate of the monastery, called Ely Porta was commenced. John Barnet, Bishop, who inserted new windows in the Triforium of the Choir. Wycliffs "de Dominio." " Piers Plo'wman.''^ Thomas a Kempis. Peasant Revolt, Donatello, Wm. Powcher, Prior, by whom the supporting arches of the West tower were built, and the additional building forming an Aisle on the North side of the Infirmary. (Aula Minutionum.) Brunelleschi Dome at Florence, Ibid. Nos. 32, 33, 34. Anglia Sacra, vol. i. 649. Anglia Sacra, |vol. i. 643, etc. Mepal Charters. Lam. MSB. No. 499, XXXIV (^nmh of (Bf^ Reign. Abbot or Bisbop. Prior. Arcbitectural Features of Ely. Date. Position on Plan. Edward III. Richard II, Henry IV. Henry V. 1 7. Bishop Simon 22. Prior John deMontacute. de Crauden. 18. Bp. Thomas Lisle. 19. Bp. Simon Langham. 23. Pr. Alan de Walsingham. 20. Bp. John Barnett. 21. Bp. Thomas de Arundell. 22. Bp. Johnde Fordham. 24. Pr. William Hatfield. 25.JohnBucton, 26. Pr. William Walpole. J) 27. Pr. William Powcher. 28. Pr. Edward de Walsingham. XXXV Prior Crauden's Chapel, south side of Deanery adjoining Priory. The Prior's New Hall, above old hall : see fine timbered roof. The Guest Hall (present Deanery) restored: old roof timbers and fine stone corbels. The Fair Hall built at S.E. corner of Deanery : iV.A fine tracery of 2 windows. The sub-prior's residence in Infirmary. Inserted windows in the aisles of Presbytery. Monument of Bishop Hotham: and watch- ing loft of S. Awdry's Shrine. . The wooden stalls of choir with elaborately carved canopies: the panels modern. Late decorated windows in outer Triforium of Presbytery. Inserted windows at East and West of Lady Chapel by Bishop Barnett. Bishop Barnett's monu- ment. VI. Perpendicolak. The Ely Porta, some- times called Walpole's Gate. Supporting arches of West Tower. Aula Minutionum, aisle on north side of In- firmary. 1330 '337 1340 1374 64 63 61 62 73 27 1418 42 66 7' (tjronofojicaf Century. XV. 1412 1425 14x6 1430 1438 1444 1450 •454 1461 XVI. Chronological Events and Benefactions. 1462 1478 1483 1485 i486 1500 1501 1506 1509 1510 Authorities. " Imitation of Christ" 1441. Bourchier and Gray, Bishops, carried on]]new works on the west tower of the Cathedral. Jack Cade's Insurrection, Leonardo da find, 1452-15 19. Wars of the Hoses, 1455-147 1. MrasmuSf 1467. Michael Angelo, 1 475- 1 564. John Morton, Bishop, executed a vast work of drainage which greatly increased the value of land in the Isle of Ely, rebuilt the palace at Hatfield, and bequeathed gifts to the Cathedral. Titian, 1477-1576. Raphael, 1483-1510. Thomas Mare, 1480-1535. John Alcock, Bishop, rebuilt much of the Episcopal property, including the palace Ely and Downham, and built into the N.E. comer df the Choir of the Cathedral the Chapel now called by his name. Columbus, 1492. Holbein, 1497-1543. Erasmur' " Praise of Follij,^ XXXVl @nMfe of (B% Reign. Abbot or Bishop. Prior. Architectural Features of Ely. Date. Position on Plan. Henry VI. 22. Bp. John 28. Pr. Edward Cloisters : no remains of S8 de Fordham. deWalsingham. Norman cloister, except arcade on south wall of Church. »J it 29. Prior Peter de Ely. ... )) 23. Bp. Philip Morgan. >j M 30. Pr. William WeUs » 24. Bp. Louis de Luxembourg. J» » 25. Bp. Thomas Bourchier » JJ }) JJ !J 26. Bp. William Grey. )t 3) ... Edward IV. JJ Outer wall of Triforium 1470 raised, and windows in- serted in nave. » )j 31. Pr. Henry Peterboro. Edward V. 27. Bp. John 32. Pr. Roger Bishop Gray's monu- 1478 Morton, Westminster. ' ment remains in N. Triforium nave. Richard III. )} J) Henry VII. » 3J Bishop Alcock's chapel. 1488 3* >J 28. Bp. John Alcock. 3J Tomb of Cardinal de Luxemburg. Tomb of Earl Tiptoft and two wives. 35 41 » )) 33. Pr. Robert ColviUe. 3) 29. Bp. Richard Redman. JJ ... ... S> 30. Bp. James Stanley. JJ Bishop Redman's Monu- ment. 1506 iS Henry VIII. iy JJ jj )J 34. Pr. William Wittlesea. Cloisters. 1509 58 )) 31. Bp. Nicholas West. 35. Pr. William Ffolliott. XXXVII C^tonofojicaf Century. A.D. Chronological Events and Benefactions. Authorities. XVI. I516 1522 1525 1529 1534 1539 More's Utopia, 7yndalVs translation of Bible, Fall of WoUey. Cranmer at Canterbury, Dissolution of tbe Ely Honasteiy, and reorganisa- tion as Dean and Chapter. [Authorities : L. E. = Liber Eliensis : The first two books published by I. E. = Inquisitio Eliensis: published for the Royal Literary column of Benefactions refers to pages of this edition). A. S. = Wharton's Anglia Sacra, 1691. Ep. Reg. = Episcopal Registers in Muniment Room at the D. and C. Cart. = Charters and Obedientary and other Rolls XXXVIU (^nm^B of (Bfj Reign. Abbot or Bishop. Prior. Architectural Features of Ely. Sate. Position on Plan. Henry VIII. 31. Bp. Nicholas West. 36. Pr. John Cottenham. ... ... )j » 37. Prior Robert of Wells or StewardjFirst Dean. j» » )> [i. Verging on Renais- 32. Bp. Thomas Goodrich. )> » sance.] Bishop West's Chapel. 1534 36 » ») J) VII. Classical. Doorway in north-west corner of north-central 1699 74 Transept inserted (by Sir Christopher Wren) when north-west corner of transept was rebuilt. Similar work at south door to cloister. Canon Stewart in 1848. Society 1876, edited by N. E. S. A, Hamilton (the numerals in brackets in Palace Ely. of the Monastery in the Cathedral Muniment Room.] XXXIX INDEX TO PLAN OF CATHEDRAL AND OLD CONVENT BUILDINGS. 1. Galilee Porch. 2. West Tower. 3. Galilee Transept and S. Catharine's Chapel. 4. Prior's Door. 5. S, Ovin's Cross. 6. Monli's Door. 7. Carol. g. Alan de Walsingham. 9. Bishop Woodford. 10.-1 1 1. j-Earliest Norman Windows. 12.J 13. Norman Screen. 14. Norman Galleries. I J. Central Transepts. 16. Octagon. 17. Northwold Chantry. 1 8. Norman triforium exterior. 19. Lady Chapel. zo. Steeple Gate. 21. Almonry. 22. Dean C:esar, 23. Bishop Fleetwood. 24. Charles Fleetwood. 25. Bishop Redman. 26. Bishop William of Kilkenny. 27. Canopy of S. Awdrey's Shrine. 28. Bishop Patrick, 29. Bishop Northwold. 30. Part of Abbot's Chair. 31. Bishop Gray. 32. Bishop Alcock's Chapel. 33. Bishop Allen, 34. Dr Mill. 3J. Cardinal Luxemburg. 36. Bishop West's Chapel. 37, Norman Bishop (Nigellus ? ). 38. Canon Selwyn, 39. Bishop Gunning. 40. Dean Steward. 41. Earl Tiptoft and two Wives. 42. Bishop Barnett. 43. Bishop Northwold's burial place. 44. Bishop William de Luda. 45. Bishop Goodrick (brass). 46. Dean Tyndale (brass), 47. Bishop Heton. 48. Sir Robert Steward. 49. Bishop Greene. 50. Sir Mark Steward. 51. Bishop Butts. 52. Bishop Allen. 53. Bishop Moore. 54. Prior Crauden, 55. Bishop Hotham. 56. Early English Windows. 57. Site of Chapter House. 58. Cloister Garth, 59. Refectory on Fratry House, 60. Norman Kitchen. 6i, Guest House, Deanery, 62. The Fair Hall. 63. Prior's Olde Hall. 64. Prior Ctauden's Chapel, 65. Gallery Buildings. 66. Ely Porta or Walpole Gate. 67. Barn, 68. Remains of Dormitory, 69. The Black Hostel, 70. The Cellarer's Lodging, 71. The Infirmary, 72. The Infirmary Chapel, 73. Walsingham's Hall, 74. Sir Christopher Wren's Doorway, Xl ih il ■ 1! PLAN OF ELY CATHEDRAL Al S Ipe. • Ps^rk f-4p64. ff 'A. \ \ 1 i NVENT BUILDINGS. WEST DOOR OF MINSTER Lecture I tU ^^trine of §. ^wbteg " Etheldrede of Ely Gode mayd was and hende. . . . Now God for the love of her bring us to heven blis." — MS. Bodl. 77, ff. 279. Far back in my memory shines the picture — the golden picture — of a happy day , in my undergraduate life at Cambridge, when for the first time I saw the Isle of Ely and that glorious Minster of the Fens, of which I have to speak to you to-night. It was at the close of one summer term, during which I had been attending the Lectures of Charles Kingsley, at that time Professor of History in the University. Fired by the spirit of romance and chivalry with which that most poetic teacher had retold for us the story of the old monkish Chronicler, Thomas of Ely, concerning Hereward the Wake and his long defence of the Island Monastery against the forces of William the Conqueror, I had walked over one Sunday with a friend from Cambridge. I shall never forget that day. The poetic glamour of the place and its history has remained with me for nearly thirty years. You can imagine, therefore, I fancy, — knowing as you t^t ^^tiu of ^* @wbte^ must how too often the more deliberate judgment and slower footed imagination of middle age is apt to trans- late poetry into prose, — that it was with some foreboding for my ideal vision of the past that I found myself in the early spring of two years ago once more ap- proaching the magic isle. But Nature in a double sense was very kind to me. Tired with my long journey from the North, I fell asleep as the train was crossing the wide tract of flat monotonous Fen country, and only awoke as we slackened pace within a mile or two of Ely. But what a transformation scene kindly Nature had prepared for me with her magic wand. The whole country, save a short belt of dark peat land in the im- mediate foreground, was covered with a low lying sheet of white mist. I seemed, as I looked out of the carriage window, to be gazing on a vast inland sea. Here and there the surface of the magic water, rippling in the golden evening, light, like waves upon a sunset sea, appeared to be dotted with tiny green islets, and now and then a fishing-boat, which in reality were but clumps of forest trees, or some single crown of pollarded willow, whose tops were breaking, through the mist. Suddenly, as the train swept round the curve, the dark purple out- line of the Island City, with its grouping of russet-tiled houses, rising step by step, crowned with the many towered mass of the great Minster, somewhat magnified perhaps in the golden haze, stood out against the sky, — " The charmed sunset lingered low adown In the red west." -^^^'^^S".' £.: t'?- ■■■■ ' ^ . ;-."B g : ^'^" -cp<-S'- r'' - I«=^(£s|::^^fe^.''': — ?w^ t^t ^^tiu of ^* (^w^u^ At the highest point of all, the lofty lantern windows were still flashing with the high reflected lights of the setting sun. It was indeed a scene of mystic loveliness and beauty, such as, in the old days, before the drainage of the Fens, must often have struck the imagination of our fore-fathers as they approached the City in boat or barge across the wide-stretching meres. It was such a scene probably that Wilfrid of York saw when, twelve centuries ago, exiled from the northern kingdom he came southward to find refuge at Ely, and to consecrate his friend, Queen Etheldreda, first Abbess of the Monastery she had founded there. It was such a scene that must have been before the eyes of the great Danish King, when, four centuries later, he came to the Island City, as described in the old lines of the ballad which has floated down to us across the ages : — " Merrily sang the Monks of Ely When Cnut, the King, he rowed thereby. Row near the land, cnihtes, said the King, And let us hear the good monks sing." ^ or, as in the story which tells of his visit to the Monastery one Candlemas, when the whole country was flooded and frozen, and a Ceorl, named Brithmer, led the way for the King's sledge over the ice, testing its strength by his great weight, and receiving for his services the freedom of his lands. One needs, I think, to live and to live for some time, with observant eye, in one of these wide-stretching plains, where the arch of Heaven spreads, 5 t^t ^^tm of ^. (gwbre^ as over the open sea, more ample than elsewhere, to realise what Milton calls " The virtuous touch of the arch- chemic sun " in building up " So many precious things, Of colours glorious and effects so rare," such cloudscapes, such magic picturing in the lights of sunrise, and of sunset, as certainly can be seen nowhere else in England. Circumstances, no doubt, rule first impressions of places as of men, and yet I think it is natural to speak first of the striking physical features of such a place as Ely, for certainly no one can read the old Chronicles ^ and find how the weird loneliness of that vast solitary marsh-land had fastened upon the imaginations of our fore-fathers, without feeling that it was this natural position which gave its first element of greatness to the Abbey and Minster, and made the name of Ely and the powerful men who governed there so potent a name in the mediaeval history of England. The Isle of Ely, as we know it now, is merely the name for a political district of North Cambridgeshire, whose boun- daries are roughly indicated on the map, by the slightly elevated lands, of about twenty-eight square miles in extent, which, between Ely and Peterborough, are raised by a few feet above the surrounding plain, commonly known as "the Great Level" of the Fens. This vast plain, of some 2000 square miles, containing some of the richest land in all England, is yet as much the product of the art 6 €^t Mnu of ^* @wbtrejj of the engineer as the Kingdom of Holland opposite which it lies, and is as much dependent as that country for its very existence upon the continuous watchfulness from day to day of the bankers and dyke workmen of the Drainage Commissioners. So utterly transformed has the whole Fen country become in modern times that it is very difficult to restore Ipmifr oif,ppoiorundira[/foid ^pm'ef • rrni nlma iiif i^ b'tJiigtiCE ropofiiirdifcf-. airgro^ditr ficfo nner^'ft)(Tie futigailfe muii edits bp-\lQ\vi rtjicFf Tioer d)e im'^m IV ^f J>pf mutiedicf f^rng'-Qcfun TIP ibnar. Otilce canmiwf iDond ^pfibr^mwilinjfnduisate^jpf THE BALLAD OF KING CNHT. in the imagination the original scenery of the days before the drainage, when the rivers which take the rainfall of the central counties of England, the Nene, the Welland, the Witham, the , Glen and the Great Ouse, spread out into a vast delta or wilderness of shallow waters, whose 7 t^t ^^xiu of ^* (^w^u^ sea boundaries, — instead of being marked on the map of England, as " the Wash " is now, by a line joining Boston and Kings Lynn, — would require an extended sea boundary on which Lincoln, and Stamford, and Peterborough, and Cambridge, and Brandon and Downham Market would become almost seaboard towns, and Ely an island fifteen miles or so off the coast at Cambridge.* Some of you will probably remember how Charles Kingsley — in his splendid novel of " Hereward the Wake," and again in the chapters of "The Hermits" which are devoted to the hi^itory of St Guthlac — has used his graphic pen to describe this East Anglian Fen-land. "The fens in the seventh century," he says, "were probably very like the forests at the mouth of the Mississippi or the swampy shores of the CaroHnas. Their vast plain is now in summer one sea of golden corn ; in winter, a black dreary fallow, cut into squares by stagnant dykes, and broken only by unsightly pumping mills and doleful lines of poplar trees. Of old it was a labyrinth of black wandering streams, broad lagoons, morasses sub- merged every springtide, vast beds of reed and sedge and fern, vast copses of willow, alder, and grey poplar, rooted in the floating peat, which was swallowing up slowly, all devouring, yet preserving the forests of fir and oak, ash and poplar, hazel and yew, which had once grown on that low rank soil, sinking slowly (so geologists assure us) beneath the sea from age to age. Trees torn down by flood and storm floated and lodged in rafts, damming the 8 t^t ^^xiu of ^* @wt>teg waters back upon the land. Streams bewildered in the flats, changed their channels, mingling silt and sand with the peat moss. Nature left to herself ran into wild riot and chaos more and more, till the whole Fen became one 'dismal swamp' in which at the time of the Norman Conquest 'The Last of the English,' like Dred in Mrs Stowe's tale, took refuge from their tyrants ,and lived like him a free and joyous life awhile." And yet even in those early days, the far islands of this inland sea must have had a special beauty and charm of their own, attractive at any rate to those saintly souls, who in that rude time, sought to escape from the tyrannies and the slaveries and the barbarisms of the world, and longed for some quiet sanctuary where they could live a life of contemplation and prayer and " worship the King in His beauty in a land that is very far off." (Isaiah xxxiii. 17). Such a "place of farnesses" — to use Isaiah's poetic word — the hermits and saints of the early English Church found in the Islands of the Wash. Ramsey, Thorney, Spinney, Sawtrey, Ely, Crowland, were such Isles of Refuge upon which the cells of Hermits, St Guthlac, St Botolph, St Huna were the germs out of which the great Fenland Abbeys afterwards grew, when the passion for religious solitude gave place to the passion for religious community life. Of these islands Ely is by far the largest and most im- portant. Its name Elge, or Eel-ey— the "Isle of Eels " — is derived of course from the eels which at all times were to be found there in such abundance. An unfounded t^t ^^tm of ^* (^wbireg tradition states that for several centuries there was a stand- ing contract between the Abbey of Ely and that of Peter- borough, by which in consideration of a consignment of so many hundred eels a week for the monks' table at Peterborough, their brothers of Ely might dig as much stone as they needed for the Cathedral buildings from the Barnack quarries in Northamptonshire, and certainly to-day at Ely, I know, from sad experience, that a Chapter Dinner at the Deanery would be regarded as far from orthodox if a dish of stewed eels did not appear on the menu card. The Historian Bede had no doubt of this origin of the name — " Nomen accipit a copia anguillarum " run his words.* But the ancient Chronicler of the Abbey, Thomas, a monk of the twelfth century, ventures upon a much more picturesque if somewhat mixed derivation of the name.8 The Latin " Elge," he says, is evidently derived from the Hebrew word " El " = God, and the Greek word " Ge " = land, the " Land of God " — a term which is certainly, he thinks, justified by the many Shrines and the great sanctity of the Abbey. A more modern writer, Mr Baring Gould, in his fascinating story " Cheap Jack Zita," which I strongly advise anyone to read who cares to know anything of the darker side of modern Fen life, ventures upon a still more poetic origin of the word. He surmises that Ely was originally called the "Elf-Isle," the Island of Fairies, because oiF those "mythical spiritual beings who danced in the moonlight and sported on the water of the meres." I confess I could wish for myself that philology as well as lO t^t ^^tiu of ^* @wbreg poetry gave Mr Baring Gould any authority for such a derivation. What was the first Christian settlement of the Isle of Ely it is impossible to say. It is true that the monkish Chronicler of the " Liber Eliensis," writing in the twelfth century, tells us that the first Ely Monastery, " according to the old writings," was erected through the influence of Ethelbert of Kent and consecrated in honour of the Virgin Mary by S. Augustine and was destroyed by Penda, the heathen King of Mercia. But the date is not very precisely stated — "in primitiva etenira ecclesia nascentis Fidei et Christianitatis " ^ — are the actual words, and one must always be somewhat doubtful of the his- torical exactitude of an unsupported writer who is recording events which occurred five hundred years before his own time. The " Liber Eliensis " was written by a monk of Ely, named Thomas, who lived in the reign of Henry II., and is the original authority for the events in connection with the Conquest of the Isle by William the Conqueror, and, in conjunction with the Chronicle of Crowland, for all the adventurous story of the last stand of the English under Hereward, which is known to most of you I have no doubt by Kingsley's novel. This book is, of course, among our most precious treasures at Ely and is safely guarded in a treble-locked oaken chest in the Muniment Room of the Cathedral.''^ It is natural, of course, that a Nor- man monk of a Benedictine Monastery, in the time of Henry II., should wish to trace back the History of his House, if 1 1 t^t ^^tiu of ^. ®n?breg possible, to Latin influences, and should thus endeavour to make much of its supposed original foundation by S. Augustine of Canterbury. But the earliest authority after all for the Ely settlement in the seventh century, and for the story of its great Foundress, the Virgin Queen and Saint, — ^thedrythe, Etheldreda, Eldreda, Aldreda, as the Norman Latin of the Domesday book wrote it, S. Aldred, S. Awdrey — is not the monk Thomas of Henry IL's time, but the ' Father of English history' himself, the Venerable Bede, who was born the very year that S. Awdrey founded her Monastery in the Fens, and who, if he was only six years old when she died, had yet during the next twenty years many opportunities of hearing her story from the lips of those who had known her well. For Bede was ordained deacon by John of Beverley, the pupil of S. Awdrey's aunt by marriage, the great Abbess Hilda of Whitby, probably in the very Church of Hexham which had been built by Wilfrid, and endowed with the lands which had been S. Awdrey's dowry as Ecgfrid's Queen. As a boy also in the Monastery School at Jarrow, the future historian may quite well have seen not only the Abbess Hilda but the holy saint, Cuthbert himself, the friend for whom we are told S. Awdrey worked the stole and maniple, rich with gold and precious stones, which -for many a century afterwards was preserved in the Saint's Shrine at Durham.^ Above all, we know, for he tells us so explicitly in his History, that Bede had talked of the early history of the Virgin Queen with the great friend of her youth, the Archbishop Wilfrid, the prelate who at York had married her to the future king of Nor- 12 t^t ^^tiu of ^* (^w^u^ thumbria, who had been her adviser and Confessor during all the years that she was Ecgfrid's Queen and from whose hands finally, after she had forsaken her throne, she received her pastoral staff as Abbess of Ely. The two chapters in Bede's History ^ form in fact the kernel of every subsequent biography of Queen Etheldreda. In the first of these chapters is probably contained all that is really trustworthy in her history. The second is almost entirely taken up with a rhapsodical eulogy of the virtues of the Queen, written in Latin verse, the great historian making excuse for this unusual lapse into poetry by asserting his desire " to imitate the method of Scripture, in the historical parts of which very many songs are inserted." I am afraid the lyric inspiration of Bede's poem hardly justifies the scriptural comparison. The more important lines are these. You may care to hear them. I quote them from Mr Gidley's translation. " Our ^theldrytha, virgin saint sublime Hath blessed and made illustrious our time : Sprung of a noble sire of royal race And nobler than her lord of heavenly grace A Queen's estate, a sceptre's royal power Were hers below ; more is her heavenly dower. Twice six years had she sat in regal pride When she became her Lord's affianced bride, And when her pure soul had become renowned For lofty deeds a home in heaven it found. Sixteen Novembers since was this pure saint Entombed, whose flesh corruption dares not taint. Christ, by thy power, her grave clothes still remain Shining and white, without polluting stain." 13 ti^t ^^xiu of ^. @n?bteg This eulogy of Bede, however, furnished a precedent for two other poetic lives of the Saint which have come down to us, one a life written in hexameter verse in the time of Henry I. by Gregory, a monk of Ely, apparently to commemorate the foundation of the Bishopric, and another in English verse, unfortunately imperfect, but running to the length of some 1200 hnes, to be found among the Cotton MSS. in the British Museum." From these four authorities, at any rate, Bede's His- tory, the Liber Eliensis, the monk Gregory's hexameters and the English verse of the Cotton MSS. we may piece together the main facts of S. Awdrey's life. Born in the middle of the seventh century, about 630, at Exning in Suffolk, a village which is now almost a suburb of Newmarket, Etheldreda was a daughter of Anna, the Christian King of East Anglia. In a green shady meadow just outside the village, surrounded by giant elms, I was shown, a few months ago, the five springs and the clear purling brook, in which, so village tradition still tells, the future Queen and Saint was baptized by S. Felix, the first Bishop of Dunwich. When she grew up she was married to Tondbert, a prince of East Anglia, who bestowed upon her the Isle of Elge or Ely, as her dowry. The marriage seems to have been sorely against the lady's will, for apparently even thus early, possibly under the influ- ence of the great Northern Abbess, Hilda of Whitby, who at this time appears to have been at Anna's Court, on a visit to her sister Hereswitha, — who was married to 14 t^t ^^xiu of ^. ®wbng Etheldreda's paternal Uncle, Ethelhere — the young Princess seems to have vowed herself to the religious life. Her husband appears to have respected her vow and suffered the marriage to be merely nominal. Two years later, in 654, her father Anna was killed in battle with Penda, the powerful King of Mercia. A year later still her husband Tondbert dies, and the widowed Princess retires to her Demesne at Ely, evidently intending, amid this general wreck of her family, to devote the remainder of her life solely to religion. Her mother had retired to the convent of Chelles, near Paris. Her three sisters, Sexburga, Ethelburga, Withburga, all at different periods, retired from the world, and became distinguished patron- esses of the monastic life. Etheldreda's widowhood lasted five years. Then her father's ancient enemy, the Mercian King, Penda the Prompt, was conquered and slain at Wyn^ waed, near Leeds, by Oswy of Northumbria, and there were great rejoicings among Etheldreda's Northern kin. " In the river Winwaed is avenged the slaughter of Anna The slaughter of the Kings Sigebert and Ecgrice The slaughter of the Kings Oswald and Eadwine." '^ So rang out the triumphant battle-song of the con- querors. The Supremacy of the great heathen kingdom of central England was thus broken, and with the ruin of Mercia, the two Christian kingdoms of Northumbria and East Anglia drew together. The union was cemented by the marriage of the scions of the two royal houses.^* Oswy's son Ecgfrid was married to Etheldreda, Anna's IS t^t §^tiu of ^* @wbteg daughter. This union lasted for eleven or twelve years, and was of the same nature as that with her first husband, Tondbert. In 670 Ecgfrid came to the throne, and seems then to have determined that his wife should give up her vow. He seeks the help of the Archbishop Wilfrid, who had evidently great influence with both king and queen. But Wilfrid — so at least the monk Thomas does not hesitate to say — secretly endeavours to confirm the resolu- tion of the Queen, and finally, after much opposition, per- suades the King to consent to a divorce. The ill-assorted couple separated, — Ecgfrid to seek a second wife, Ethel- dreda to take the veil at the hands of Wilfrid, in the monastery of Coldingham. But Ecgfrid seems shortly to have repented of his permission, and set out for Colding- ham with a band of followers to take his Queen from the monastery by force. By the advice of the abbess Ebba, who was the king's aunt, Etheldreda fled southwards, to find refuge in her old home at Ely. There she arrived after encountering many perils, and after many miracles, according to the later records, had been wrought in her favour. In the five centuries that elapse between her first biographer Bede and the monk Thomas, of the "Liber Eliensis," the Legend of the Saint has palpably lost much of its early simplicity. The growth of the Legend is plain to any one who looks at the sculptured " Acts of the Saint " as they are represented on the eight great corbels which support the marvellous dome of Alan de Walsingham's fourteenth century octagon. 1* Three out of the eight incident of her life thus carved in stone, 16 t^t ^^tiu of ^. @n?bre^ represent miraculous events, two belonging to the flight from Coldingham to Ely, one a legendary tale of a prisoner's release by the merits of the saint. The most striking, perhaps, of these sculptures is that in the corbel immediately above the modern pulpit of the Cathedral, which represents the fugitive Queen sleeping by the wayside, guarded by two of her waiting maidens, Sewenna and Seware, and shaded by her pilgrim's staff, which has taken root and burst forth miraculously into branch and leaf and flower. It is a prophetic parable of the life history of the Church of the nation, of its ever- changing fortune, of its ever-expanding mission, of its vicissitudes and dangers and trials, many and various, and yet of its essential character unchanged and unchanging, " the leaves of the tree for the healing of the nation," because of its living root firmly planted " on the word of our God which standeth for ever." As a prophetic dream of the future, this sculptured legend formed a very natural and moving text for the great preacher of the nineteenth century, when, on the twelve hundredth anniversary of S. Awdrey's Great Foundation, he was expatiating on the historic glories of our national Church as typified in Ely Cathedral, but Bishop Magee's poetic iancy must have been a very dimly realised vision indeed to the pilgrim Queen of Northiimbria in the seventh century, as for a second time she sought refuge in her island home, in the Fens, from the distractions of the world. > In 673 the first religious house was founded at Ely by the Queen. Bede speaks of it as a nunnery, while the B ly ti^t ^^xiM of ^+ @tx>breg monk Thomas calls it a twin monastery of monks and nuns like Coldingham, with the working of which S. Awdrey would of course be perfectly acquainted. I think that this supposition is most probably correct. For the mixed community was the fashion of the time. It was the fashion of the great Irish house of S. Bridget at Kildare. It was the fashion of the Norman convents in France at Chelles, at Autun Brie and Fontevrault, in one of which (Chelles) Etheldreda's mother had taken refuge, in another of which, Fontevrault, her sister Ethelburga was at this time Abbess. It was natural, therefore, that Etheldreda's house at Ely should be on this same model — a side for men, and a side for women, both classes being under the rule of the Abbess, and the nuns taking precedence of the monks. There was something also in the chivalry both of their Northern Christianity and Teutonic race which would give this precedence to women, and in the case of Etheldreda, as in that of her great kinswoman Hilda of Whitby, there was also the fact that she was the daughter of a royal race and that she had been the Queen of the great Northern Supremacy, which would naturally give her leadership in any such community. And we must of course remember that these early monastic settlements had none of the strict discipline of the later Benedictine rule. Indeed there is evidence to show that in many cases the establishment of a monastery was often only a pretext under which a lord and his dependents exempted themselves from their national obligations of military service. This, of course, could not be said to be in any sense the origin of i8 t^e ^^tiu of ^. @wbtreg the Ely Convent, and yet even there perhaps there may have been many inmates drawn to the convent life of monasticism not so much by the old religious impulses of ascetic sacrifice as by the new aversion from warfare and the new passion for social life and longing for peaceful industry. There was at least one such man we know among the immedi- ate followers of S. Awdrey whose story was typical of the change which the monastic movement had brought about in man's conception of the dignity of labour. Among all the archi- tectural glories of the Ely Cathedral of to- - day, to my mind, there is no memorial of the past history of our country so moving as the two simple stones, the rudely fashioned fragment of the Pilgrim's Cross of S. Ovin, with its pathetic prayer — "LUCEM TUAM OVINO DA DEUS ET REQUIEM. AMEN "— one of the oldest Christian monuments in England to-day, 19 S. OVIN S CROSS Z^t ^i^tiu of ^* @wbte^ which now stands in the south aisle of the Cathedral by the Prior's Door. This Ovin^^ had been house-thegn to the Queen on her first habitation of the Island after Tondbert's death, and had accompanied her to the north on her marriage with Ecgfrid. There he had come under the influence of S. Chad the Apostle of the Midlands, and had become a monk in his monastery at Lastingham. The picture of the East Anglian noble divesting himself of the things of this world, as he stands by the convent gate, as told by Bede in ^his History is very picturesque. " Having left all that he had he came," says the historian, "clad only in a plain garment, and carrying an axe and mattock in his hand, thereby intimating that he did not go to the Monastery to live idle as some do, but to labour. Which very thing he also showed by his practice, for as he was less capable of meditating on the Holy Scriptures, so he the more earnestly applied himself to the labour of his hands, and whilst the brethren were engaged within in reading he was busy without at work." After the death of S. Chad it would seem very probable, from the evi- dence of this cross, that Ovin had returned to the service of his former Queen and Mistress, now Abbess of Ely. For Etheldreda having organised a community in which — according to the Chronicle — " for all there was the same rule, obedience, the love of God's worship, and a whole- hearted reverence for God's House" had been formally consecrated Abbess of Ely by her old friend and adviser, Wilfrid of York. The Bishop was at this time in banish- 20 ti^t ^gme of ^* @wbn^ ment from the Northumbrian Kingdom, and seems to have made Ely his home for some years, exercising episcopal functions there, and acting as confessor and adviser to the Queen-Abbess. On his visit to Rome in 679 he made it his business to secure for Ely and his old friend a grant from the Pope, in confirmation of the decree of the Witan, which runs to this effect, that " forasmuch as the pious Queen had devoted to sacred uses the estate received as dower from her first husband, no infringement of the Liber- ties of the Isle either by King or Bishop should ever afterwards be allowed." 1® This decree and its confirmation is interesting, for it is the first of a long series of Charters " by which the Liber- ties of the Isle of Ely, " the Royal Franchise," as it was called, was gradually built up, and the Island district became in eifect, though not in name, a County Palatine, subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the successive Abbotts and Bishops of Ely, who exercised almost sove- reign authority there, hardly second to that of the Prince- Bishops of Durham, down to the, time of Henry VIII., their temporal jurisdiction in the Isle being only finally abolished by Act of Parliament in 1837. It is interesting, perhaps, to note here that in the first of these Charters, that of King Edgar, — who in 970, under the influence of Bishop ^thelwold of "Winchester, had reorganised the convent under the rule of S. Benedict, — two grants are specially named of the regal possessions of the Prior and Convent which they had inherited from Queen Etheldreda — (1) The Liberty of the Isle of Ely, 21 ti^t ^^tiu of ^. ®wbreg being two hundreds in the marshes ; and (2) The Liberty of Etheldreda, being five hundreds, afterwards spoken of as five and a half, in that part of Suffolk, of which Wood- bridge is now the centre. The Liberty of the Isle of Ely became, as I have said, the possession of the Bishop on the foundation of the Diocese in nog. The Liberty of Etheldreda in Suffolk however, remained in the possession of the Prior and Convent, and still remains in the hands of the Dean and Chapter to-day. The fees and fines, the forfeitures and amercements, however, which originally supplied the main source of the income of the Monastery I need hardly say have long since ceased to be exacted by the Dean and Chapter. The last entry on the subject, which I can find in our Muniment Room, is in 1765 when it would appear there was a dying effort to enforce our claims for some "green wax which came out of the Pipe " — the Pipe you probably know is a Department of the Royal Exchequer. The entry is headed — " A deputation to receive fines " and the document runs thus — "we nominate, constitute and appoint William Ward of Staple Inn, London, Gentle- man, Bailiff to attend at the apposal of the Sheriffs of Cambridge and Suffolk before the Foreign apposer to claim and demand, all franchises, proclamations, immunities and all manner of fines, amercements, recognisances, and other penalties, and forfeitures, commonly called green wax, which to us of right belongs." I know not how long William Ward stood looking for the green wax and the fines which it symbolises. From that time, I fear, to the 22 t^t ^^tiu of ^* ©wbteg present the Pipe, the conduit of the Royal Exchequer, so far as the Liberty of S. Etheldreda is concerned has run dry. After mofe than a thousand years the patrimony of the Anglo-Saxon Queen has disappeared. But if the patri- mony has gone, one historic privilege of the Liberty still remains, and I trust may long remain. It is in virtue of the royal rights of Queen Etheldreda, in the seventh cen- tury, that the Dean and Chapter of Ely, as her direct representative in the nineteenth century, proceeded a few months ago to the election of a Coroner for the Liberty of Etheldreda in Suffolk. But to return to our Saint. Her life as Abbess was a short one. In the sixth year of her rule at Ely, she was attacked by the plague, and after three days illness, died on the twenty-third of June, 6yg a.d., "being taken to the Lord in the midst of her own people " — I quote the words of Bede — "and just as she had herself ordered, she was buried npt elsewhere than among them in a wooden coffin." Sixteen years later her sister Sexburga, the widowed Queen of Kent, who had succeeded her as abbess, removed her body, which was found to be marvellously protected from corruption, from the grave, and placed it in a white marble sarcophagus, "a divine gift," so said the Abbey brethren who found it as by a miracle near the walls of the City Granta (Cambridge) on the Mainland, and welcomed it as an indication of the will of God that the memory of the Virgin Queen should be held in perpetual honour. " Also, they say," — I quote the words with which Bede in the 23 t^t ^?nm of ^. @wbteg fourth book of his History concludes the story of S. Awdrey — " that the coffin in which she was at first buried was a means of cure to some who were afflicted in their eyes, who when they had put their heads to the same coffin and prayed, presently were relieved of the discom- fort of pain or dimness in their eyes. They washed, therefore, the body of the virgin, and having put on it new garments, took it into the church, and placed it in that sarcophagus which had been brought, where even to this day it is held in great veneration. Indeed, in a wonderful manner the sarcophagus was found fitted for the body of the virgin, just as if it had been specially prepared for it ; and the place for the head, worked as a separate part, appeared most aptly shaped to the measure of the head." i^ And so on the seventeenth of October, a.d. 695, the First Translation of S. Awdrey took place, and the marble shrine with its sacred relics found its resting place by the high altar of the Church of the Convent. And thenceforward for two hundred years the historic record is silent save for the short chapter in the Liber Eliensis which tells how after the death of the three Abbesses, whose names alone have come down to us, — Sexburga and Ermenilda, the two sisters of S. Awdrey, and Werburga, her niece, and Ermenilda's daughter — "the vigour of the sacred foundation, under the rule of holy women, never growing faint but ever more and more increasing in fervour from the regular discipline and order of the monastic life, flourished through many roll- 24 t^t ^5nm of ^+ @wbteg ing years, and while other churches and convents in the different kingdoms of England suffered from many wars, the church at Ely, by the grace of the Supreme Pity, dwelt in peace and security and the growth of Christian Law." 19 At last, however, in the year 870, the tranquil life of the sheltered island sanctuary was rudely broken. Across the wide spreading meres, and through the labyrinth of dikes and lodes and down the water streets cut through the reeds and sedge — the natural defence of the Island against any enemies other than these — came the pirate-fleet of the Danish Wikings. " Deliver us, O Lord, from the frenzy of the Northmen" had been a suffrage of a Litany of the time, but it was one to which the monks and nuns of Ely found no answer.. The pirate horde swooped upon the Island, the panic stricken inhabitants after a brief struggle fled, the Convent ajid the Church, as afterwards at Peter- borough and Crowland, were sacked and burnt to the ground, while the convent sisters and brothers, without respect to age or sex or condition were pitilessly slain among the ruins. And so, says the Chronicler, " the Monastery established by the Christlike (Christicola), Etheldreda was given over to the enemies of the Lord." " There was one, however " — the monkish chronicler relates — " of this host of savage enemies, a man more inhuman and cruel than the rest, a satellite of the devil, breathing slaughter and blood, a son of avarice, and a truculent seeker of other men's goods, who seeing the Shrine of the blessed virgin Etheldreda, thought it was a chest of treasure, and 25 tU ^^xiM of ^. ®n?bifeg with all his strength he struck the marble sarcophagus in which rested the virgin body, and when he had multiplied blows upon the stone, he made an opening, which to this day may still be seen, but when he had done this there was no delay of divine vengeance, for immediately his eyes started miraculously from his head and he ended there and then his sacrilegious life. Which, when others saw, they did not presume any further to disturb the sacred dust of the virgin saint." ^^ And so for another hundred years the marble Shrine rested apparently unmolested in the ruined sanctuary. For a century later, after King Alfred's work was done, and the successors of his house, Ethelfled and Eadward knd Athelstan had consolidated the central English King- doms, the Dane-law was established, and for a time at least there was peace in East Anglia, even in Guthrum's Danish settlement, and Eadgar's law was moulding a new England into some promise of its after-shape, and the King himself, Eadgar the Peaceful, was building up again the English church and fashioning the English realm into accordance with a religious ideal, and Abbot iEthelwold of Abingdon, S. Dunstan's friend, came to reorganise the old convent at Ely as a new Benedictine House. " He found," so says the Chronicler, "the body of the blessed Virgin Queen Etheldreda in the Church beside the High Altar, in the very place to which S. Sexburga had trans- lated her and there, not hidden beneath the earth but raised above it, he left the body, for no one dared either to break open or examine the tomb, remembering the miser- 26 CAROL IN CLOISTER, NOW USED AS DOORWAY TO CHOIR BOYs' VESTRY CJe ^^tiu of ^* ©wbrej able fate of him who was killed there for so doing, as related in the miracles." ^i The new monastic building and the restored Church were consecrated by S. Dunstan, on the Feast of the Purification, a.d. 970, and Brithnoth installed as the first Abbot. The King had already granted by charter all the rights originally given to Queen Etheldreda, arid in addition he now gave to the monks several demesnes in Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire. " It pleased me," runs Eadgar's Saxon Charter, 22 " that he (i.e., Brithnoth the Abbot), so filled it with God's servants to God's praise, that I added to the former gift, every year, for these monks, ten thousand eel-fishes, that arose to me in former days, and all the soc over all the lands that are now given to the Monastery, or that may yet accrue to them through Christ's providence or by purchase or by gift. They shall have the soc for ever on all, and the fourth penny on the public government into Cambridge by my grant." Other benefactions rapidly followed, — a long list of the various estates is given in the Second Book of the Liber Eliensis, — and the Convent at Ely soon grew again in wealth and power -until the Abbots were thought worthy to alternate with those of Glastonbury and Canterbury in holding the high office of Chancellor to the King. Among these benefactors there are some names that Ely is not likely to forget, as, for example, that of the great Ealdorman of Essex, the Duke Brithnoth, the friend of the monks of Ely, who was slain in a raid of the Norwegian Wikings, and whose deeds are celebrated in one of the earliest of English ballads, "The Battle of Maiden," ^s and whose noble 29 ^8e ^?nm of ^+ ©wbreg death-words may well be treasured by every Englishman who gazes on the niche in Bishop West's Chapel, where now rest his bones — " God, I thank Thee, for all the joy I have had in life " ; or that of King Cnut, the Dane, of whose first famous visit to Ely I have already spoken, and who, on another occasion, not only confirmed the rights of its Church by royal charter, which he placed upon the altar where the remains of S. Etheldreda were entombed, but with Queen Emma, gave many gifts beside lands to the convent — " A purple cloth, worked with gold and set with jewels, for S. Awdrey's Shrine," is specially named as the Queen's gift by the monk Thomas, " so that none other could be found in the kingdom of the English of such richness or beauty of workmanship " ; '^ and, above all, perhaps, the name of Eadward the Confessor himself, who, as an infant, had been brought to Ely by King ^thelred and his mother, and placed there upon the holy altar of the church, and who, when he came to the throne, never forgot the lessons he had learnt as a boy in the Ely Convent — the monk Thomas speaks of his delight in join- ing with the other boys in singing psalms and hymns in the cloister — but once more confirmed by charter the posses- sions of the Abbey and added to them others of his own gift.25 - It is interesting, I think, to notice that all the great landed possessions of the monastery, which were not finally dispersed until Henry VIII. 's dissolution, and some of which, as the Manor of West Wratting and certain lands in Winston and Debenham have only this year been sur- 30 DUKE BRITHNOTh's RELICS IN BISHOP WEST's CHAPEL t^t ^5nm of ^+ ®wbreg rendered to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners by the Dean and Chapter, were all derived by special gift to the Con- vent between the time of King Eadgar's Charter, in a.d. 970, and the death of Eadward the Confessor, in 1066. The story of the fortiines of S. Awdrey's Convent, and especially of the Shrine of the Saint, after the Norman Conquest, I have only time left to tell in briefest outline. The history of the Isle of Ely, and the Camp of Refuge there, which, under the leadership of Hereward the Wake and the Abbot Thurstan,. became the last stronghold of the English against the Norman William, and how all hope of English freedom died in the surrender of Ely, I must leave you to read for yourselves in Professor Freeman's "History of the Norman Conquest," or, as perhaps you may prefer to do, in Charles Kingsley's stirring romance. For although that book is largely founded on a twelfth century story, "De Gestis Here- wardi Saxonis," which contains much impossible rubbish, yet in his narrative of the facts of King William's Con- quest of the Isle, Kingsley follows fairly closely to the monk Thomas' account in the " Liber Eliensis," a record which certainly need not be set aside in that respect as purely fictitious.^* We reach solid historic fact again about the year 1 080 when the foundations of the New Church — which during the next four centuries gradually grew into the Cathedral as we know it to-day — were laid by Abbot Simeon. He was an old man when he came to Ely, but like his brother, the Abbot Walkelin of Winchester, he began at once to c 33 C5e 0nu of ^* @wbreg tuild the new Church and to reconstruct the whole Mon- astery, — "novoscihcet ecclesiam Eliensem suscitans funda- mento, reliquasque officinas toto annisu cooedificans." ^ That the present Norman church occupies to some extent the site of the ancient Saxon one is evident from a passage in the "Liber Eliensis/'^ which tells how four years before the Second Translation of S. Awdrey it was necessary to remove some of the bodies of the Saints^from the place they had hitherto occupied, because the walls of the new Choir encroached on the site hitherto occupied by their Shrines. How much of the new church was actually completed hy the aged Abbot we do not know. There seems little doubt, however, that he laid out the foundations of the North and South Transepts, the piers of the great central tower, and the Choir apse. The plain cylindrical columns of the eastern transept arches, with their perfectly plain square edged mouldings, and th% three Norman windows with their nail-head decoration in the west wall of the south transept overlooking the cloister, are certainly his work. He died on S. Edmund's Day, a.d. 1093, at the age of loi — " Vivebas Simeon, Simeon venerabilis alter Etsi non ulnis bajulus ipse Dei," ^^ — and was succeeded after an interval of some years by the Abbot Richard, who immediately proceeded with the build- ing. It was so far complete on the 17 th of October 1 106, — a date still marked in the Calender of our English Prayer Book, — that the Second Translation of S. Awdrey was ef- fected with great pomp and ceremony, — Herbert of Losin^a, 34 INTERIOR OF WEST TOWER ABOVE THE GREAT ARCHES Z^t ^^xiu of ^* ©wbteg the Bishop and Founder of Norwich Cathedral, " vir elo- quentissimus," preaching on the Life, Death and Miracles of the Saint, "populum exhortante ad summse jucunditatis et lastitiae indicium : " ^° — and the old marble Shrine, now considered more than ever sacred, for it had been the centre of Pilgrimage to the faithful through half a millennium and the fame of Ely's Saint, the virgin Queen and Abbess, had spread far and wide through Christen- dom, was solemnly moved to the Choir of the great Norman Abbey and placed behind the high altar, with the Shrine of her sister Sexburga, eastwards at her feet, and that of S. Eormenilda on her right and S. Werburga on her left. A third time the Shrine was moved, a hundred and fifty years later, in a.b. 1257, when Hugo de North- wold's splendid Presbytery was added to Abbot Simeon's Choir. By that time the Norman Church was practically quite complete. During the whole of the twelfth century, in fact, the great Norman arches of the nave had been slowly progressing westward. The Western Tower, with its great cross aisles — the Galilee Transept, common only to Durham and Ely,-r— belongs to the last half of the century. Much of the work of it is due to the fifteen years of GeoiFrey Ridel's Episcopate (11 74-1 189) and all of it shows signs of this change, on the inside, from the rude but effective Norman workmanship of its lower arcades, to the Lancet arches and banded clustered col- umns of the upper transitional structure, while on the outside the whole grand West Front, from its massive base 37. t^t ^^tint of ^. (^w^n^ upwards, is profusely enriched with bold diaper patterns inevitably suggesting memories of the Byzantine Art which was first made familiar to England in the Age of the Crusades. In A.D. 1229 Hugh de Northwold, the Abbot of Bury S. Edmund was consecrated eighth Bishop of Ely. During the twenty years of his life there, he became one of its most munificent benefactors, making large grants of -land to the monastery, founding a college of priests, and reforming the Hospitals of the city. In the year 1234 he commenced the erection of the new Presbytery, an extension eastward as I have said, of the Norman choir. The six bays of this work — it is a hundred feet long from the great Norman Piers of Abbot Simeon's Apse to its noble Eastern Facade — is magnificent in all its details, one of the loveliest and most graceful buildings indeed of that most glorious archi- tectural period. "Nowhere," says Professor Freeman, ^^ " can we better study the boldly clustered marble pier with its detached shafts, the richly floriated capitals with their round abaci, the yet richer corbels which bear up the marble vaulting shafts, the bold and deftly cut mouldings of every arch, great and small. Lovelier detail was surely never wrought by the hand of man." It was seven- teen years in building. In the British Museum there is preserved an ancient Roll,^^ which gives the sums annually spent on this work by the Sacrist of the Monastery, acting as the bishop's agent, a memorandum which, though it does not give the careful details of expenditure in each portion of the work, which we shall afterwards see in the 38 WEST FRONT OF ELY MINSTER t^t §^tm of ^. @wbife^ Sacrist Rolls of the next century, in relation to the build- ing of the great Octagon, does add much of great interest to the general statement in the III. Book of the " Liber Eliensis," which sums up the total cost of the structure at ;^5040, i8s. 8d., an amount equal to some ;^ 1 20,000 of our money. Into this noble Pres- bytery, on the 15 th of October 1252, in the presence of King Henry II. and his son, then a boy of thirteen, and many of the leading nobles and prelates of the kingdom, the Shrine of the Foundress, and of the three other Ab- besses, and the reputed shrine of S. Alban, were removed a few feet east- ward from their position in the Norman choir, and the whole Church, in ground plan completed as we have it to-day, was re-dedicated to S. Etheldreda, S. Mary, and S. Peter. Once again, in the next century, — after the fall of the 41 THE WOLF WITH S. EDMDNd's HEAD, THE ARM OF THE abbot's CHAIR t^t ^^tiu of ^. (^wbrej^ great Central Tower, a catastrophe which, through the supreme constructive genius of one man, became a blessing in disguise, and led to the creation of that marvellous dome which gives to the interior of Ely its unique beauty and grace beyond words, and to the exterior that peculiar coronal outline — I venture myself always to speak of it architecturally as " S. Awdrey's Crown " — a feature which has no fellow in any of the churches of England, or indeed of Christendom, ^ — the Marble Tomb of the Foundress, still standing, where Northwold had placed it, in the glorious Presbytery which he had built in her honour, was further embellished by the superstructure of a splendid stone canopy and watching loft, beneath which was the ancient white marble tomb, and above the silver Reliquary, which in Norman times had been the gift of the Abbot Theodwyn, elaborately embossed with many figures, with a golden majesty blazing in its centre, with countless jewels of crystal and pearl, and onyx and beryl, and amethyst and chalcedony. ^^ And so, for two centuries longer, it remained, the object of a reverence, doubtless exaggerated beyond reasonable bounds, and the unwitting cause possibly of much social evil in connection with the Pilgrims' Fair, until at the time of the Reformation, by edict of the then Bishop of the See, the Puritan Thomas Goodrich, in a.d. 1541, "all the Relics, Images, Table monuments of miracles, shrines " of the Minster were totally demolished and dispersed. And now, not a trace of all this artistic glory, or of the sacred relics 42 t^^ ^^tiu of ^. @wbte)? of the saints, so marvellously cherished through more than a thousand years, remains. But a few yards farther back from the place of the ancient Shrine, there now stands the High Altar of the Cathedral, and Sir Gilbert Scott's splendid Reredos, — unsur- passed probably by any modern work of the kind, a glory of sculptured panels and delicate tracery in alabaster, through which in the sunlight the jewelled colours of the East Window flash like gems, its spiral columns of white marble studded with bosses of gold and cornelian and crystal, supporting lofty canopies, beneath which, on either side of the central statuary of the Transfiguration, are the four great Prophets of Israel and the four great Doctors of the Church, and higher still, carrying the eye upwards, a fourth set of canopies, enriched with costly mosaic, with the Figures of the four Evangelists, and the four Figures by the Cross, and the four Virtues and the four Graces, again once more leading upwards to the central Figure of all, in its lofty enriched pinnacle, the Christ enthroned in Majesty, — forms a marvel of intricate beauty and lovely grace of outline, and costly jewels and brilliant colouring, hardly less sumptuous in effect than the ancient Shrine of S. Awdrey itself. And yet, there in the centre of the ancient Presbytery, marked only by the sculptured keystone above in North- wold's vaulted roof, is the vacant space where once stood S. Awdrey's marvellous Shrine, and the lesson which that vacancy teaches us may well perhaps take the place of the lesson of the ancient Shrine itself. And that lesson I 43 t^t §^xm of ^. Owbreg cannot better enforce than by reading you in conclusion the words, with such transposition as may be necessary, in which the late Dean Stanley spoke of the desecrated Shrine of S. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. "There are very few probably at the present time in \vhom, as they look round on the desolate pavement, the first feeling that arises is not one of disappointment and regret, that a monument of past times so costly and curious should have been thus entirely obliterated. There is probably no one who, if the Shrine were now standing, would dream of removing it. The very suggestion would call out a general outcry from all educated men throughout the Kingdom. Why is it that this feeling, so familiar and so natural to us, should three centuries ago only have been so completely over-ruled ? The answer to that ques- tion is doubly instructive. First, it reveals to us one great diiference between our age and the time, not only of the Reformation, but of many previous ages. In our time there have sprung up, to a degree hitherto unpre- cedented, a love of what is old, of what is beautiful, of what is venerable — a desire to cherish the memorials of the past, and to keep before our eyes the vestiges of times which are brought so vividly before us in no other way. It is, as it were, God's compensation to the world for its advancing years. Earlier ages care but httle for these relics of antiquity : one is swept away after another to make room for what is yet to come : precious works of art, precious recollections are trampled under foot: the very abundance in which they exist seems to 44 ■^'.;^-.-ife' / WZST TOWER AND GAULEE TRANSEPT AND s. CATHERINE'S CHAPEL DEANERV GARDEN €^t ^9nm of ^. ®wbre^ beget an indifference towards them. But in proportion as they become fewer and fewer the affection for them becomes stronger and stronger, and the further we recede from the past, the more eager now seems our craving to attach ourselves to it by every link that remains. Such a feeling it is which most of us would entertain towards this ancient shrine [of S, Awdrey] — such a feeling as, in the mass of men, hardly existed at the time of its destruc- tion. In this respect at least we are richer than were our fathers ; other gifts they had which we have not : this gift of insight into the past, of loving it for its own sake, of retaining around us as much as we can of its grace and beauty — we have as they had not." ^* Our final thought, then, as we stand on the vacant site of S. Awdrey's Shrine, as we look westward to the great Octagon and its lofty lantern, the Crown of S. Awdrey, a landmark visible for many a long mile across the wide stretching Fens, and then as we turn eastward to the great Altar, the Altar of Transfiguration, and remember how " the Angel of the Presence " is promised to the Church of the Faithful "all the days even unto the end of the ages," our final thought, I say, may surely well be this — Let us bless God's Holy Name for all those saints of the past who have departed this life in His faith and fear, those heroic spirits of the early days of our country's history, the Prophets and Kings of England, her bygone Saints and Worthies ; and as "we praise famous men and our fathers who begat us " let us not forget, ^if once a year only, on the 17th of October, — as the Calendar of our 47 t^t ^^tiM of ^. @wbreg English Book of Common Prayer appoints — to com- memorate not least among the chief Makers of England, in the childhood of the nation, that "nursing mother of our Israel," Etheldreda, Virgin, Queen, Abbess of Ely, to whom we, in this University, as Oxford to S. Fride- swide, trace back our spiritual ancestry. 48 NOTES TO LECTURE I I. " Liber Eliensis," ii. 85, which tells how " on a certain day King Canute came to Ely in a boat, accompanied by his wife the Queen Emma and the chief nobles of his kingdom, hoping to keep there the solemn Festival of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, and how, when the boatcame to thePffr;fKj-P««///«j- of the Monastery, the King raised his eyes aloft to the great Church which close by stood up on the rocky eminence, and was aware of a sound of great sweetness, and listening intently heard the melody increase, and perceived that it was the monks singing in the Convent their psalms and chanting ' the hours,' and calling his people about him, he«exhorted them also to sing with gladness, he himself with his own mouth expressing the joy of his heart in a little song of English words, of which this verse is the beginning : — " CDepie j-ungen Se CDunechej- binnan Ely 8a Cnut ching peu Seji by. RojjeS cnitej- noep the land And hepe })e jjej- CDuneche]- fJeng '' — and in Latin it is this : — " Dulce cantaverunt monachi in Ely Dum Canutus rex navigaret prope ibi, Nunc milites navigate proprius ad terrain, Et simul audiamus monachorum harmoniam.'' and there are other verses which follow, which up even to our own time are sung, being still treasured among the old ballads." I am indebted to Dr Skeat, Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Cambridge, for the following interesting notes on these lines : — D 49 Qto^ee ^0 Btctuu on " The lines were clearly written by a Norman scribe, whose pronunciation of English was imperfect, and the spelling is as quaint as that of the Domesday Book. I have lately found that this is a far more, common phenomenon than has been suspected, and a good deal will in future turn upon this, in deal- ing with twelfth century spellings. The mistakes are these :— (r) 'Muneches' should be 'munekes'. The k never passed into modern English ch (as in chair) in this word : though it did so in the feminine ' minchen ' (female monk, nun). (2) * ching ' is equally strange, and shows that k is really meant. (3) ' reu ' is passable, but ' rew ' is better. It is the true old East Anglian and original past tense : so alsib I mew (I mowed), I sew (I sowed), both still in common use in Cambridgeshire. (4) • cnites ' is an error for ' cnihtes.' This is pure Norman. The Normans could not sound the ht (= German cht,*as in knecht). (5) ' noer ' is ill-spelt : the vowel meant is long e. The word is ' neer,' or ' ner ' ; usually written ' ner ' at this time. (6) the ae in * saeng ' is needless, and the rhyme (only a vowel rhyme) shows that ' sang ' is meant. "The rhyme 'E/y' — 'theiby' is a pure one. The rhyme ' land ' — ' sang ' is a half one. This was common about 1 200, but never found in lines of this length before I loo. " They occur much earlier in very short lines of an alliterative type. Hence we can say positively that the lines as they stand are not older than lloo, indeed 1200 would be nearer the mark. But it is quite likely that they represent an earlier tradition, and in that view I can acdept them. ■' There are some points of grammar that are quite correct for the period I100-T300. (i) Merie may be adj. plu. or adv., more likely the adv. Mod. E. ' merrily.' 50 Zi^t ^9nm of ^. @wbre^ sung^w, pt. t. plural. Munek^j-j es, plural. binn^w ; — en, adverbial and prepositional suffix. Tha = when : true old adverb. rew = pt. t. sing, correct strong pt. tense. ther-by = by that place. But this is a fine touch : this particular compound is not found in Cnut's time in this sense. xovneth : eth, pi. of the imperative. (Lat. ate, ete, ite.) cnihtifj", plural. ner is a most interesting word, the modern ' near,' .but with a difference. In early English it is invariably comparative, being, in fact, put for ' nigher.' It means ' proprius,' not ' prope ' ; as in the Latin version. ' her^ we ' : let us hear ; the suffix e marks the pres. plural subjunctive, used as an imperative. thes (these) ; the e long. (1) Literal transcript. Merie sungen the muneches binnen Ely, Tha Cnut ching reu ther-by, Roweth, cnites, noer the land. And here we thes muneches sseng. (2) Corrected transcript in the true spelling of the period. Merie sungen the munekes binnen Ely, Tha Cnut king rew ther-by ; Roweth, cnihtes, ner the land, And here we thes munekes sang. (3) Correct spelling of Cnut's own time. Myrige sungon tha munecas binnen Elige, Tha Cnut cyning reow be strande ; Rowath, cnihtas, nyr tham lande And hyre we thara muneca sang. 51 QIoUb (o &u(uxt on (4) Pronunciation of (2) in modern English spelling. Merria | so6ng-un the | mo'onekez | binnen Ailee || Thar K(e)n6ot | king — rio'o | ther-bee || Roaweth | k(e)nichtez | [' ich ' as in German licht] nair | the land [a as in German ' land.'] Und haira way | thayz | moonekez | sang | ." In the same chapter is also given the story of Brithtmer and the King's sledge — " Brihtmerus Budde, pro densitate sic cog- nominatus." 2. Matthew Paris, " Historia Major," ed. Watt's, p. 929. The passage is thus quaintly rendered in Dugdale, Embanking and Draining, p. 358 : — " In the year 1256, William Bishop of Ely, and Hugh Abbott of Ramsey, came to an agreement upon a controversy between them touching the bounds of their Fens ; whereof in these our times a wonder happened ; for whereas as antiently, time out of mind, they were neither accessible for man •or beast, affording only deep mud, with sedge and reeds ; and possesst by birds (yea, much more by devils, as appeareth in the life of S. Guthlac, who, finding it a place of horror and great solitude, began to inhabit there), is now changed into delightful meadows and arable ground ; and what thereof doth not produce <;orn or hay, doth abundantly bring forth sedge, turf, and other fuel, very useful to the borderers." Cf. also " Liber Eliensis," lib. ii. c. 105, in which the description of the Isle given by the soldier to William the Con- queror resembles rather that brought by the spies to Joshua than any picture which the name of the Fen country at the present day would be likely to suggest. " Si optatis audire quae novi et vidi, cuncta vobis retexam. Intrinsecus insula copiose ditatur, diverse gramine repletur, et coeteris Angliae locis uberiore gleba praestantior. Agrorum •quoque et pascuorum amoenitate gratissima, ferarum venatione 52 ti^t ^^xint of ^* @wbteg insignis, pecoribus atque jumentis non mediocriter fertilis, silvis, vineis non seque laudabilis, aquis magnis et paludibus latis velut muro forti obsita. In qua domesticorum animalium habundantia est et ferarum multitudo, cervorum, dammularum, caprarum, et leporum in nemoribus et secus easdem palades. In super luterium, mustelarum, erminarum, et putesiarum, satit copia est, quae nunc gravi hieme muscipulis, laqueis, vel quolibet capiuntur in genio. De genere vero piscium, volatilium, atque nitancium quse illuc pullulant quid dicam ? Ad gurgites in girum aquarum illarum innumerabiles anguillae irretiuntur, grandes lupi aquatici, et luceoli, percidae, roceas, burbuces et murenas, quas nos serpentes aquaticas vocamus. Aliquando vero isicii simul et regalis piscis, rumbus, a pluribus capi memoratur. De avibus namque quse ibidem et juxta mansitant, sicut de coeteris, nisi fastidio sit, exprimemus. Anseres innumerae, fiscedulae, felicae, mergae, corvae aquaticae, ardeae et anetes, quarum copia maxima est brumali tempore vel cum aves pennas mutant, per centum et tres centas captas vidi plus minusve : nonnunquam in laqueis et retibus ac glutine capi solent." " Of all the marshland Isles, I Ely am the Queene, For winter each where sad, in me looks fresh and greene " is the inscription given in Drayton's " Polyolbion" (21st song), in which will also be found (25|:h song) a very fairly complete list of the Fen birds in the early part of seventeenth century. 3. See the very excellent Map given in " Fenland, past and present," by S. H. Miller and Sidney Skertchley [pub. Longmans, 1878] a book full of information on the natural features of the Fen country, its geology, its antiquarian relics, its Flora and Fauna. Compare also for the whole geography of the Fen District, Professor C. C. Babington's " Ancient Cambridgeshire." 4. Bede, " Hist. Eccles.," iv. 19. 5. "Liber Eliensis,"i. 15, and also in the Acta Sanctorum. " Y, sive Ey, Anglis Insula est ; a forma scilicet ovi, 53 (Hofea to &utuu on undique prsecisa, quae Belgis composite Eylant, quasi terra ovalis : iisdem etiam anguilla diciter Ael, Anglis Eel. Dicitur etiam et scribitur Elige, et contractim Elge, quasi Elgey, vel Elig-ey, id est Anguillosa insula." " Polydorus Virgilius a Graeco '"EXo?,' quod paludem denotat, deducit ; alii ab 'Helig' Britannico, quod salices signiiicat, quibus praecipue abundat, cum aliarum arborum sit impatiens ; aspiratio tamen, qua nomen ' Ely ' caret, tertiam excusationem ab ' anguillis ' vero similiorem facit." Acta S. Annotata G.H. A vivid description of the whole country is given by Felix of Crowland, in his life of S. Guthlac. The whole passage will be found quoted in Wright's " Biographia Britannica Litteraria," p. 249, vol. i., and with it an Old English version taken from the Cotton MS., Vespas. D. xxi. 6. " Liber Eliensis," i. Prologue, " In primitiva etenim ecclesia nascentis fidei et Christianitatis, in honore semper virginis Mariae monasterium ibi fuerat fabricatum, per beatum Augustinum Anglorum apostolum ; cujus operis rex Edelbrihtus primus fundator extitit ; in quo ministros Dei ofEcium complentes instituit, quos Pendae regis exercitus, patriam devastans, inde postea fugavit, locumque in solitudinem commutavit. Talibus itaque fundatoribus Elge monasterium primitus fundatum est, ut in antiquis legimus scriptis." . 7. The " Liber Eliensis" is far the most interesting of all the historical MSS. preserved in the Chapter Muniment Room at Ely. It professes to give the history of the monastery from its first foundation under S. Etheldreda down to the times of Nigel, the second Bishop of the See. It is the work of Thomas, a monk of Ely, in the middle of the twelfth century (iii. 57), who in ii. 107 and iii. 40 and 41 confesses himself indebted to the works of another monk of Ely, one Richard, who at the bidding of Hervey, the first Bishop of Ely (1108-I131), had compiled an account of Bishop ^Ethelwold's benefactions to Ely. This com- pilation Thomas inserted, with some additions and omissions, in 54 ti^t ^^tiu of ^. @wbtre^ his second book, of which it foritis the first forty-nine chapters in the Ely copy. He is also much indebted to Bede. A con- siderable portion of his work, is printed in the Anglia Sacra i. 591, et seqq.: Acta SS. 23 June, iv. 489, and in Mabillon's Acta SS. Ord : S. Ben. ii. 707 et seqq. The best edition, how- ever, is that edited by Canon Stewart for the " Anglia Christiana Society" in 1848, though unfortunately it carries the "Liber Eliensis " only to the end of the second book. A brief summary of their contents is given by Sir Thomas D. Hardy in his Descrip- tive Catalogue (vol. i. p. 278), but the third book has not yet been printed. This is much to be regretted, because it deals largely with events which must have happened during the life- time of the writer, and of which he must have been personally conversant. In the twelfth Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, p. 393, published in 1891, the "Liber Eliensis" is thus described : — "The Ely MS. is a folio containing 189 leaves of vellum 10^ inches high by 7J inches wide, written in double columns in a hand of the thirteenth century, or early in the fourteenth. It is in very good preservation and easily legible. On comparing my notes with another copy of the work in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, which is a far less handsome volume, I found the two copies agreeing closely, but the impression left upon me was that the Cambridge MS. was copied from the Ely volume. If this were so the copy must have been made when the latter was in a more complete form than now appears, as it is defective in not containing the Descriptio terrarum Ecclesiae S. ^theldredee, or the Six Lives of Saxon Saints, which are to be found in the former MS. In the Ely codex it is significant that in every place where the words Papa or S. Thomas (Becket) occur they have been scrupulously erased, in obedience to the order of Bishop Goodrich, which was issued in 1535 ^^ ^^^ bidding of Henry VIII. In the Cambridge MS. there are no 55 (jXoitB to Butnu on such erasures. The late Mr Petrie considered the Ely copy of the " Liber Eliensis " a MS. of the highest authority. The compila- tion (for it is a compilation) was put together in the most curiously confused way ; but in the third book the miraculous element is far less prominent than in the early portion. Of the 137 chapters which it contains, only thirty-one are concerned with the fables of S. Etheldreda's miracles, the remainder deals largely with the charters bestowed upon the Monastery and with the mis- conduct of Bishop Nigel in attempting to get more power and larger possessions into his own hands at the expense of the Convent." A second MS. copy of the " Liber Eliensis " has lately been pre- sented to the Cathedral Library by Professor Stanton. This MS. appears evidently to be the one which was made by order of BoUandus when the lives of S. Etheldreda, S. Ethelwold and others were being prepared for the " Acta Sanctorum." The grounds for so regarding it are thus stated by Dr Stanton : " (l) The note at the beginning of the MS. corresponds in minute particulars with the account given in the preface to the Life of S. Etheldreda in the ^cta Sanctorum of the MS. of the Lib. Eliens which was used for that work. The most material passages from that preface are these. I have italicised the chief points in which its statements agree with those of the note already referred to. " ' Extabant ilia (viz., the acts of S. Etheldreda written by Thomas) et extant etiamnum in Cottoniana Londini Bibliotheca, MSS. codicibus locupleti. Inde sumptum ecgraphum possidet Bene- dictinorum Anglorum Duaci Collegium unde secundum exemplum Bollando nostro transcribendum curavit R. D. Leander h S. Joanne ; et utrumque scriptum Antverpiam misit conferendum ad invicem. Fecit id diligenter Bollandus : sed cum ipsum MS. Duacenum hand satis feliciter exaratum esset, non potuit absque subsidio Cottoniani originalif supplere vel corrigere defectus, fortassis plures, liberariorum socordid admissos. Nihilo plus potuit praestare Johannes Mabilio, 56 t^t §^xiu of ^. @wbrej? eodem Duaceno ecgrapho usus ad Vitam edendam, sicut fecit inter Acta Sanctorum Benedictinorum seculo 2 : plus aliquid an potuerit H. Wharton, aliud ex eadem Cottoniana ecgraphum nactus, quod Angliee suae sacrae tomo primo inseruit, prout earn nuper accepi post hsec omnia prselo parata, inter imprimendum conferendo cum nostris apparebit.' " The note at the beginning of the MS. looks as if it may have been copied in later than the date of the MS. But even so it must either have been made by the Bollandists themselves, or be an accurate copy of what they had written. If a note had been composed about the MS. after it had passed out of their posses- sion, it certainly would have been cast in another form. " (2) The MS. is mutilated at the beginning (the Prologue and the greater part of Chapter I., according to the divisions in Stewart's edition of the ' Lib. Eliensis,' are wanting). The title of the MS., however, has been saved and pasted in. It corre- sponds exactly with the title referred to in Preface to S. Ethel- dreda's life in the Acta SS., where in the sequel to the passage already quoted, the editor goes on to prove that ' verus titulus codicis, sic scriptus, Prioratus de Ely comitatu Cantabrigiae ex Historia istius Prioratus scripta per quendam Thomam Monachum.' " (3) In the next paragraph of the Preface in Acta SS. the editor says that we have the 2nd book of the Hist. Eliens : ' ex eodem codice Duaceno,' and a little farther on, ' Idem dixerim de Chronica Abbatum et Episcoporum Elyensium.' This agrees with the contents of the MS., which contains indeed more than the 2nd book of our old Ely copy, but makes no distinction between the 2nd and 3rd books. The Hist. Eliens. is followed in the MS. by a description of the Tabula Eliensis, and the Chronicle is then given. All this portion of the MS., which is indeed separately bound up, is by another hand. And it may be observed that the notice in the Acta SS., as to the name of the scribe, seems to refer only to Book I. 57 (jfiokB to Btchxt on " (4) The text, so far as I have examined it, agrees in regard to variations from the Ely copy with the Acta SS. It would be interesting to compare the corrections with the differences between the Acta SS. and Mabillon. " (5) The dates of different saints and references to pages of the MS. where they are noticed are jotted dowii on first page and margin, betokening just such a use as the Bollandists would have made." [Bollaridus died a.d. 1665. The volume of Acta SS. contain- ing Life of S. Etheldreda appeared 1707. The establishment of the Bollandists at Antwerp was broken up, and their great collec- tion of MS. was scattered by the army of the French Republic in 1794.] As the III. Book of the "Liber Eliensis " has not yet been printed, it may be convenient perhaps to historical students if I print here an index of the titles of its several chapters. LIBER ELIENSIS. CONTENTS OF THIRD BOOK. 1. Quo modo post mortem Ricardi abbatis Herveius Bangor- nensis ep'us de sua sede ejectus ab Henrico rege dirigitur in Ely ut inde procurationem haberet. Qui fratrum animos illic blanditiis et circumlocutionibus sibi allexerit ut ecclesiam ipsam de abbatia in episcopatum mutaret et ilium susciperent episcopum. Ad quod confirmandum monachis ignorantibus Rome destinatur a rege. 2. Quod Herveius a papa obtinuit mandatum ad regem Henricum de promovendo abbatiam de Ely in episcopatum et de constituendo eum illic episcopum. 3. Quanto honore Herveius suscipitur a papa ex ipsius mandate ad regem H. directo amplius colligitur. 4. Mandatum pape constituendi episcopatum in Ely. 58 th ^^tiu of ^. ^n?bte^ 5. Quod ex auctoritate apostolica episcopatus in Ely consti- tuitur. 6. Carta regis H. quo modo abbatiatn de Ely in episcopatum transmutavit. 7. Carta regis de omni libertate ecclesie. 8. Carta regis quod monachi Elyenses habeant equam portionem de rebus abbatie. 9. Quam viriliter Herveius ecclesiam de Ely et res ipsius ab injusta oppressione eripuit. 10. Carta regis de colligendo possessiones suas ad ecclesiam. 1 1. Carta regis contra invasores terrarum et bonorum S. Ethel- drede. 12. Carta regis de adquietatione custodiarum oppidi de Nord- wich et de libertate onerose servitutionis qua ecclesia de Ely misere laborat. 13. Alia carta regis contra eos qui per potentiam possessiones et servitium ecclesie detinebant. 14. Aliud mandatuip regis de libertate hundredorum. 15. Carta regis de relaxatione militumqui violenter ab ecclesia de Ely requirebantur. 16. Carta regis de condonatione pecunie que injuste exigebatur ab ecclesia. 17. Quod Herveius sua industria locum de Chatteris obtinuit et elyensi ecclesie jure perpetue possessionis ascriberet. 18. Carta regis de concessione abbatie de Chatteris in Ely cum omnibus ad eam pertinentibus. 19. Carta regis de relaxatione pecunie de ecclesia de Chatteris quam condonavlt Sancte Etheldrede de Ely. 20. Carta regis H. de adquietatione ville de Haddam. 20b. Carta regis quod monachi et ecclesia S. Eth' in Ely de theloneo sintquieti ubique per Angliam. 20c. Alia carta de eodem. 21. Carta regis de libertate hundred' S. Etheldrede. 59 Qtofee ^0 Btduu on 22. Carta regis quod S. Etheldreda ubique habeat libertatem super homines sues. 23. Quod Herveius victum monachorum divisit de rebus epis- copalibus, constituens illis annonam sed brevem et nullatenus sufficientem. 24. Carta Herveii de particulis rerum quas ad victum monacho- rum constituit. 25. Laus auctoris de miraculis S. Eth' que contigerint tempori- bus Herveii. 26. Quod turris ad portam ecclesie ab igne fulguris erepta est. 27. De quodam contracto ad beatam Etheldredam sanato. 28. De quodam ydropsico qui opem salutis meruit ad beatam Etheldredam. 29. De muliere contracta ad sanct' Etheldr' sanatam. 29b. Ex revelacione per paludem fit via ad S' Etheldram. 30. De Brichstano compedito et a beata Etheldreda soluto. 31. Quomodo quidam a dolore capitis liberatus est, adjungens gene sue bogas sancte Etheldrede. 32. De magistro Radulfo per invocacionem nominis S. Ethel- drede ab inflatione gutturis liberate. 33. Quod quidam omnibus membris destitutus restitutus est sanitati. 34. Quam maligna gestum sit erga ecclesiam S. Etheldrede. 35. Quomodo quidam nobilis tradidit se S. Etheldrede ad monachatum. 36. Quantum Herveius laboravit ut ecclesiam suam de Ely a injurationibus suis eriperet. 37. Quomodo Herveius vite modum fecit. 38. Quod S. Etheldreda cuidam infirmo apparuit promittens ei salutis remedium. 39. Quomodo S. Eth' visa fuit in quadam ecclesia orare, in una manu psalterium tenere, in altera vero cereum accensum. 60 t5e §^xm of ^, (^w^u^ 40. Quomodo ex consensu regis Nigellus est electus in episco- patum et a quo sacratus fuit. 41. Quanto honore Nigellus susceptus est a monachorum con- ventu in Ely et a populo sibi occurrente. 42. Quando post decessum regis Stephanus nepos illius factus est rex et quod dei ecclesiam in Anglia toto annisu intenderat venerari. 43. Quod quidam maligni a latere episcopi monachis insidias machinabantur. 44. Quod Nigellus precepit res S. Etheldrede describi et que ad ecclesiam revocaverit. 45. Carta Regis Stephani de omni libertate ecclesie S. Ethel- drede. 46. Quomodo epus jussit bona ecclesie interius describi et que vel quanta illic invenit. 47. Quam violenter epus subripuit monachis res suas et magistro Ranulfo illorum adversario commisit, affligendo eos crudeliter. 48. Quomodo Ranulfus nefando preventus instinctu ad sub- vertendum patriam complices sibi allexit ; sed per S. Eth' detectus proditionis conscius fugam iniit. 49. Quod epus reddidit monachis bona sua, dolens quod male egerit contra illos. 50. Carta epi de rebus quas monachis mutuavit. 51. Privilegium pape continens res totius episcopatus, in per- petuum eas confirmans. 52. Privilegium pape de rebus quas Nigellus (sed parvas) monachis constituit. 53. Miraculum quomodo mulier ceca illuminata est ad S. Etheldredam. 54. De quodam qui festum S. Etheldrede tenere noluit. 55. Quomodo aeger quidam sanatus est per tunicam S. Ethel- drede. 61 QiottB to Btdiixt on 56. De puella dextro oculo cecata sub corpore S. Etheldrede illuminata. 57. De quodam monacho nostro usque ad mortem languente, sed a S. Etheld' sanato. 5.8. Quomodo seditio in patria orta est et quid amore regis Nigellus exivit de Ely. 59. Carta Stephani quod Monachi de Ely res suas in pace habeant. 60. Quod Stephanus insulam de Ely custodiendam tradidit et quomodo Nigellus in exilium commoratus est. 61. Mandatum pape ad epum Winton' legatum Anglie de restituejido Nigellum in sedem suam. 62. Aliud mandatum ad Stephanum de restituendo Nigellum in sedem suam. 63. Aliud mandatum ad Nigellum quod benigne annuit suis petitionibus. 64. Aliud mandatum ad archiepis et epis de suis petitionibus. 65. Quod homines epi in Ely clam ingredientes oppressi sunt a duce regis Gaufrido. 66. Preceptum Stephani quod Monachi de Ely libere et in pace teneant res suas. 67. Quomodo Stephanus a suis proditus sit et quod domina imperatrix totius patriae fere dominium obtinuit. 68. Quomodo Nigellus auxiliis domine imperatricis sedem suam receperit. 69. Quomodo Stephanus de captione ereptus fuit. 70. Carta Stephani de eo quod episcopatum Nigellus in pacem receperit. 71. Preceptum Stephani quod Monachi de Ely habeant debitas firmas de suis terris. 72. Quomodo Nigellus appellatus est ad Romam. 73. Quas res ecclesie sue Nigellus prodidit et quas iterum de ea sumpsit cum Romam perrexit. 62 Z^t ^?nne of ^. @wbreg 74. Quale mandatum obtinuit a papa Nigellus ad archiepum et epos Anglie. y^. Quid papa mandaverit capitulo Elyensi per Nigellum. y6. Mandatum pape ad Stephanum pro Nigello. y^. Quod Nigellus iterum ofFensam regis incurrit et qualiter tribulatio fuit in Anglia. 78. Mandatum pape ad Archiepum Anglie pro Nigello. y^. Mandatum pape ad Archiepum Rotomag' et epos Norman- nie pro Nigello. 80. Privilegium pape quod adquisivit Nigellus super rebus monachorum quas illis parvas constituit. 81. Quod Nigellus iterum ofFensam regis incurreret et quo- modo ei fuit reconciliatus. 82. Carta Stephani de eo quod pacem concesserit Nigello. 83. Carta Stephani quod res Monachorum esse in pace pre- cepit. 84. Quod Nigellus bona ecclesie iterius susceperit ad persol- vendam pecuniam regi promissam. 85. Carta Nigelli quomodo reddiderit monachis villam de Hadestoke. 86. Carta Theobaldi archiepi super eodem. 87. Qui fuerint fidejussores pro epo de pecunia ab ecclesia ablata et quam misere eis contigerit. 88. Quam jocunda de S. Etheldreda manifestata est visio. 89. De Ailgeto agricolano S. Etheldrede. 90. Preceptum pape ad Nigellum de revocandis possessionibus in ecclesiam S. Etheldrede. 91. Quod quidam per fraudem sibi usurpavit villam de Steuchesworth. 92. Epistola de Ely ad papam de multa oppressione sibi illata. 93. Epistola Norvicensis epi ad papam de ecclesia Elyensi. 94. Epistola Archiepi epi ad papam de ecclesia Elyensi. . ^^. Rescriptum pape ad Archiepum de ecclesia Elyensi. 63 Qiottff to BiUiiixt on 96. yuam prudenter Rome et constanter Ricardus frater noster circa necessitates loci laboraverit. 97. Preceptum pape quod Monachi de Ely in pace possideant ecclesias de insula. 98. Epistola conventus ecclesie Elyensis missa ad papam. ^^. Preceptum pape ad Herefordensium epum in auxilium Elyensis ecclesie. 100. Preceptum pape quod Monachi de Ely habeant in pace ecclesias de terris suis. 1 01. Carta Theobaldi super ecclesias Monachorum de Ely. 102. Carta Theobaldi quod Monachi de Ely jure obtineant ecclesias insule. 103. Epistola Gilberti Herefordens' epi ad papam pro nimia oppressione ecclesie de Ely. 104. Preceptum pape quod Monachi Ely ens' in pace recipiant suam possessionem et libere possideant. 105. Mandatium pape capitulo Elyensi qd. libere suscipiant possessionem suam de Steuchworth. 106. Carta Herefordens' epi de possessione Elyensibus Mona- chis reddita. 107. Carta Herefordens' qualiter excluserit invasores de pos- sessione Monachorum de Ely. 108. Carta Theobaldi de Steucheworde Monachis Elyensibus reddito. "I09. Carta Stephani qd. Elyenses Monachi libere habeant Steucheworde. 1 10. Quod quidam debito constrictus erga Monachos de Ely perjurii crimen incurrerit. 111. Quam miserecorditerdeus operatus est circa quendam infirmum per merita S. Etheldrede ad fontem ejus sanatum. 112. Aliud miraculum de fonte S. Etheldrede. 113. AHud miraculum de fonte S. Etheldrede. 64 ti^t ^5nm of ^. @wbreg 114. Quam disrecte deus vindicaverit injurias dilecte sue virginis Etheldrede. 115. Quomodo deus ultionem fecerit de hostibus S. Etheldrede. 116. De presbytero qui festa sanctarum pronunciare noluit. 117. De palla S. Etheldrede quae mirabiliter restituta est Elyensi ecclesie. 118. Quod Nigellus suspensus fuit pro bonis S. Etheldrede dispersis. 119. Mandatum pape de eodem ad Elyense capitulum. 120. Item de eodem ad archiepum de revocandis bonis S. Etheldrede in locum de Ely. 121. Epistola exhortatoria Archiepi de eodem. 122. Preceptum pape de eodem. 123. Mandatum pape ad regem Henricum de coexercendis malefactoribus ecclesie Elyensis. 124. Quod Nigellus precepto apostolici juraverit reparare bona ecclesie sue et sic meruit relaxari a suspensionet 125. Miraculum de quodam puero monacho a S. Etheldreda sanato. 1 26. De monacho per S. Etheldredam liberate. 127. De nautis in periculo maris per S. Etheldredam salvatis. 1 28. Carta nigelli qd. Monachi de Ely libere et in pace teneant ecclesias suas. 1 29. Carta ne quis successorum ejus Monachos de Ely inquietet de tenuris suis. 130. Carta de terra Dernedern. 131. Quomodo Nigellus infirmabatur et de ipsius obitu. 132. Quam disrecte deus injurias S. Etheldrede vindicaverit et quomodo Robert us dedit Deneiam S. Etheldrede. 133. Carta Roberti camerii qd. dedit S. Etheldrede Deneiam. 134. Carta Comitis Britannie de eodem. E 65 Qto^ea ^0 Baciuxt on 135. Carta Alberici Picot quomodo Ely ens' Monachi emerint partem suam de Deneia. 136. Carta nigelli de eodem. 1 37. Poss . . . Sanctissimi Thome Martyris Cant' Archiepi. 8. " Liber Eliensis," i. 9., p. 34. 9. Bede's " Hist. Eccles.", iv. 19 and 20. 10. Life of S. Etheldreda, written in hexameters in the time of Henry I. by Gregory, a monk of Ely, to commemorate the foundation of the Bishopric. It is unpublished and contains some curious passages describing the church and neighbourhood of Ely (cf. Hardy's Catalogue, i. pt. 780-1). In MSS. Cotton. Faustina, B. iii. ff. 260-274, bound in vellum, small folded, xv. century, is another life in English verse, unfortunately imperfect but running to the length of 1200 lines. There is a life in Capgrave, a compilation, ff. 141-2, and also a life of S. Etheldreda, Holy Virgin, in MS. Bodl., 779 ff. 279, b. 280, from which the lines are taken forming the motto to this Lecture (cf. Hardy's Catalogue, i. 278-284). 11. " Liber Eliensis," i. 2, 3. The monk Thomas, however, in speaking of Hereswitha, as the wife of King Anna, confounds the family of Anna with that of his brother Ethelhere, for Hereswitha, who was a daughter of Hereric of the Royal House of North- umbria, was married to Ethelhere, King of East Anglia (654), and by him became mother of Aldulf and Alfwold, who succeeded their uncle in the kingdom. When, however, we remember that Hereswitha was a sister of S. Hilda, the celebrated Abbess of Whitby, it is natural, I think, to conjecture that, during the visit of a year which we know S. Hilda paid to the Court of Anna in 647, the East Anglian king's daughters, and not least his third daughter Etheldreda, came strongly under the influence, as their after career seems to 66 tit ^^xiu of ^+ @wbteg show, of "this Deborah of the Northern Church," as Bishop Lightfoot happily calls her. "It is no strained parallel," he says in a passage which aptly characterises the temper of the period, " to compare her with the Hebrew heroine. The period of the Heptarchy was to England what the period of the Judges was to Israel. It was an epoch of ferment and disturbance, a great seething time, when the elements destined to compose the mighty England of the generations to come were still struggling one with another, till at length they settled down, and order was restored out of chaos. Pagan and believer lived side by side, and fought one with another. Among Christian princes themselves the conflicts were frequent and deadly. Only now and then one king towered above his peers, and forced them to acknowledge his supremacy : just as ever and again one judge in Israel mightier than the rest had been recog- nised by all the tribes as their supreme ruler. The Church of Christ, having a principle of unity in itself, was the great moral power which composed and harmonised these discordant elements. The unity of the State arose out of the unity of the Church. In this, great work of pacification our Northumbrian Deborah bore a conspicuous part. Northumbria was the centre and the focus of light to England. Hilda was in God's hands a chief maker of England, as Deborah was a chief maker of Israel. . . . But Hilda does not stand alone. She was a type, albeit the highest type, of a numerous band of women, more especially in early times, queens and princesses, who realised the prophetic foreshadowing and became nursing mothers of their own Israel. Shall we forget that the' two ancient Universities of this land both trace back their spiritual descent to women of royal blood — Oxford to S. Frideswide and Cambridge to S. Etheldreda ? And may we not here note the coincidence that the reigns of three female sovereigns, Elizabeth, Anne, Victoria, mark the three most signal epochs in the history of English literature ? " 67 t^t ^^tiu of ^* (^ro^xt^ Bishop Lightfoot's " Leaders of the Northern Church," pp. 6l, 68. 12. "A Saxon Prince, who combined in his own person the fiercest energy of a Teuton warrior, with the sternest resistance to the progress of the new creed ; who, succeeding to power at fifty years old, was for thirty years the prop and the sword of Heathendom, and also came near to reducing the various king- doms to a monarchy, centred in the youngest of them all. This was Penda the strenuous, King of the Mercians, whose name "was long a terror to the inmates of cell and minster in every Christianised district. There is a sort of weird grandeur in the ■career of one who, in his time, slew five kings, and might seem as irresistible as destiny." Bright, " Early English Church History," p. 132. These five kings were Edwin, at Hatfield (633), Egric and Sigebert, kings of East Anglia (635), Oswald, at Maserfield (642), Anna, King of East Anglia (654). Penda himself was slain by Oswy, of Northumbria, at Winwaedfield (Nov. IS, 655). As the war was concluded " in regione Loidis," the Winwaed is probably the Broad Are, which flows by Leeds. The battle gave rise to a proverbial saying — " Unde dicitur, In Vinvoed amne vindicata est coedes Annoe, Coedes regum Sigbert et Ecgrice Coedes regum Oswald at Edwine." " With Penda fell Paganism." Penda's son, Peada, had been baptized by Finan, bishop of Lindisfarne, two years before his father's death, and when the great kingdom of Mercia became free and united again under Penda's son, Wulfhere, the teaching of the Celtic bishops had won its way, and monarch and people •embraced Christianity. 68 < o CO O Z o I— I Eh «< J w (^ O ;? I— ( o CO IS t) E- o 12; IS w 1^ O CO W CO O < *i ij ^ "S ►■a ^^ o< M ^ < 1 i 1 ^ « w [I] Bj Q 3^ S3 Eh O W a^ ~ m "9 4-1 " MC •a — S — ^ « 2 ^ ."a bo i3 c u 30 .1? » "> .S E W 3 -I' So T3 M g| -Si e !lt C ■SWsSB S C*^ en MHWg S o3 wSuJ § th ^^tiu of ^. @wbte^ And one day, *' tired with the long journey and overcome with the heat, by the grace of God having found a quiet resting-place, sprinkled with flowers of many colours, and fresh with sweet scented grasses, the Queen lies down by the wayside to rest. And she sleeps, watched by her two faithful handmaidens. And lo, when she awoke from her sleep she found that her pilgrim's staff, which she had fixed in the ground by her side, dead and dry, for she had had it a long time, had put forth branches clothed with green bark, and bearing leaves: and when she perceived this thing, she stood in wonder, and then with her companions praised God for so wonderful a deed from her inmost heart." And the staff thus miraculously planted " became," says Thomas, *' an ash tree, and is the greatest of all the trees in that 75 Qtoiea to Butuu on province, and the place where it grew is to this day called ^del- drethestowe, or in Latin, 'Repausatio Etheldredce,^ and there is now built a church, in honour of the Blessed Virgin, to the praise of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is venerated in his saints." But where that place may be, I cannot tell, I can only say with Bentham, in the last century, " I am sorry I am not able to direct the reader, not being sufficiently acquainted with the country." It is interesting to notice, however, that much the same story is told by Malmesbury concerning the pastoral staff of Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne (" Anglia Sacra," ii. 24), nor can we forget the celebrated legend of the miraculous thorn which sprang up from the pilgrim's staff of S. Joseph of Arimathsea, when he rested on Glastonbury Hill at the end of his long journey from the Holy Land. It is a little odd, however, that Alan de Walsingham's sculptors in the fourteenth century should have represented S. Awdrey's miraculous staff, not as an ash, but as a medlar, the mystic tree of the Saxons. V. Archbishop Wilfrid installing Etheldreda as Abbess of Ely. As a piece of artistic grouping this sculpture is probably the most beautiful of all the eight corbels. The figure of the Abbess, seated on her throne, veiled and crowned, with the staff of her office in her right hand,' is specially dignified and graceful. The Bishop is supported on his right by four monks ; the Queen on her left by four nuns. It is noticeable that Wilfrid in this and the following piece of sculpture is represented, not as in numbers I. and II., with the archiepiscopal crozier, but with a simple Bishop's crook. This is significant perhaps of the historical accuracy of the designer of these groups. In the former two scenes Wilfrid was exercising authority in his own Northumbrian diocese, here at Ely, consecrating his old friend, he is a banished Bishop on his way to Rome to appeal against the decision of 76 t^t ^$me of ^* ©wbte^ Theodore of Canterbury, who, without the knowledge of Wilfrid, and with the encouragement of Wilfrid's enemy, King Egfrid, had at this time proceeded to the subdivision of the great northern diocese. VI. The Death and " Chesting'' of S. Etheldreda. In the right-hand division of this sculpture, the dying Queen is represented lying on her bed, her abbatial staff in her hand. At her side stands her priest Huna elevating the consecrated Host. Behind him, holding with clasped hands a cross and rosary, stands the tall striking figure of a nun, who may well be S. Awdry's sister Sexburga, the widowed Queen of Kent, who 77 Qto^ee ^0 Butun on had early joined her sister's convent, and beyond her again two other nuns. In the second division the dead Queen is being placed in her coffin, which Bishop Wilfrid is blessing. Beyond the Bishop, on his left, stands a monk holding a book, from which the Bishop reads ; on his right, the Priest Huna with a censer. and kneeling at the coffin end the Queen's physician Kinefrid, from whom Bede learned several particulars of her death. Two weeping nuns are again in- the background. VII. The Miracle of the Delivery of Brythstan from Prison by S. Benedict and S. Etheldreda. . This legend is told at some length in the " Liber Eliensis," iii. 33, and is shortly to this effect. There was a certain man, in the diys of Henry I., who lived at the village of Catericht (or 78 t^t ^^xiM of ^, ©wbn^ Chatteris), by name Brytstan, who got his living by usury. Having fallen sick, and being in much pain and weakness, he vowed that if by the divine grace he was restored to health, he would don the habit of a monk in the convent of S. Etheldreda. Ujjon his recovery he accordingly prepares to keep his vow. But a certain man, Robert Malarte by name, a servant of the king, 79 QlokB to Butuvt on but especially a servant of the devil, hearing of the matter, falsely accuses Brytstan of wishing to become a monk only that he may conceal his robberies from the king. The innocent man is haled before the judge at Huntingdon, and by false witness condemned. He is carried away to London in chains and cast into a dungeon. There he remains for many months in much torture and agony, praying ceaselessly, and calling for help to S. Benedict and S. Etheldreda, to whose service he had vowed himself. And at last his cry is heard. One night a bright light shines in the dungeon, and he is aware of two dazzling figures, and a voice speaks to him and says, " I am Etheldreda whom thou hast so ceaselessly invoked, and this is S. Benedict, in whose habit thou wishest to become a servant of God. Dost thou wish to be freed from thy bonds ? " and then, turning to Benedict, the holy virgin said, "Lord Benedict, do thou what God has commanded." And the saint stooped to the chained prisoner, and taking one of the rings between two links in his finger drew it easily asunder, and cast the chain from him with such vehemence that he woke the guards. They immediately enter the cell to find the prisoner released from his bonds. The matter is reported to Queei^ Matilda, who sends one of her chaplains to investigate. He reports that indeed a notable miracle has been wrought. Brytstan is released. The rumour of the miracle spreads like wildfire through the city. He is followed by crowds from shrine to shrine. At Westminster he is received by the Prior and Con- vent with such honour as would be ordinarily only given to the relics of a saint. Queen Matilda expresses the 'hope that she may be allowed to retain the iron collar and chains, but Brytstan begs that he may be allowed to take them to the convent of S. Ethel dreda. The Queen consents, and orders that he should be con- veyed to Ely with all honour. On his arrival, the people of the city, young and old, virgins and widows, and an innumerable multitude receive him with thanksgiving to Almighty God ; and 80 €^t ^^tiu of ^. ®wbteg the Bishop and all the brethren of the convent receive him prais- ing God and S. Etheldreda. And there he takes his place, having donned the habit of a monk. And the chains by which he was bound are hung up before the altar in the church, "in memory of so great a miracle, and to the praise of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and honour for ever and ever. Amen." And there for many a long day they seem to have remained, a cause of much reverence and perhaps superstition. At anyrate, to the pilgrims who flocked to S. Awdrey's Shrine it seems to have become a custom of the convent to give, in memory of this miracle and of the virtues of S. Awdrey, and as a memento of their visit to Ely, miniature shackles Hke those of Brytstan. These are " the S. Awdry's chains " which at a later time had degenerated into plaited ribands, and are still to be bought among the t^aivdry finery of the annual fair. Fuller, in his " Church History," ii. 9I [quoting Hierome Porter, " Flowers of the Saints," and Harps- field, sec. 7, cap. 24] says : — " In memory of her our Englishwomen are wont to wear about their necks a certain chain made of fine small silk, which they call Etheldred's Chain, I must professe myself not so well acquainted with the sex as either to confute or confirm the truth thereof." VIII. The First Translation of S. Etheldreda. The following is the account given by Bede (" Hist. Eccles.," iv. 19) and repeated with some amplification by the monk Thomas (" Lib. Eliens.," i. 27) :— " When she had been buried sixteen years, the same Abbess (Etheldreda's sister Sexburga) thought fit that her bones should be taken up, and having been put in a new coffin, should be trans- ferred to the Church ; and she ordered certain of the brethren to seek for a stone of which they might make a coffin for this pur- pose ; and they having gone on board a ship (for the same region F 81 QXoUb to Btctuu on of Elge is on every side encompassed by waters and swamps, and has no large stones) came to a certain desolate little city, situate not far from thence, which is called in the tongue of the Angles, Granta caestir, and presently they found close to the walls of the city a cofEn beautifully wrought of white marble, and covered also most exactly with a lid of the same kind of stone. Whence understanding that their journey had been blessed by the Lord, they gave thanks and returned to the monastery. " And when the sepulchre had been opened, and the body of the sacred Virgin and Spouse of Christ had been brought from the open sepulchre to light, it was found as uncorrupted as if she had died or been laid in the ground on that same day, according as the aforesaid prelate Wilfrid, and many others who knew it, testify. But the physician Kynefrid, who was present both at her death and also when she was taken up froni the tomb, had more sure knowledge ; and he was wont to relate, that in her illness she had a very great tumour under her jaw. ' And they ordered me,' said he, ' to lance the tumour, that the noxious humour that was in it might escape ; which, when I had done, she seemed somewhat relieved for two days, so that many thought she might recover from her distemper. But on the third day, being oppressed by the return of her former pains, she was soon snatched from this world, and exchanged all pain and death for eternal salvation and life, and when, after so many years, her bones were to be taken up from the sepulchre, and a tent (' et desuper decenter composito papilionis umbraculo ') having been spread above it, all the convent (' congregatio ') of the brothers on one side and of the sisters on the other, were standing around it singing psalms — but the Abbess herself with a few others had entered within to take up and wash the bones — suddenly we heard the Abbess within proclaim with a loud voice, ' Glory be to the name of the Lord most high ! ' And not long after they called for me, the door of the tent being opened from within, 82 Z^t ^^xiu of ^. (^wbre^ and I saw the body of the virgin, sacred to God, raised from the tomb and placed on a couch, as though like one asleep. More- over, the covering of the face having bfeen taken off, they also showed me the wound of the incision which I had made, healed up, so that in a wonderful manner instead of the open and gaping wound with which she had been buried, there then appeared the slightest traces only of a scar ! Besides this, all the linen garments in which the body was wrapped appeared whole, and so new that they seemed to have been put on her chaste limbs that very day. Moreover, they relate that when she was afflicted with the aforesaid tumour and pain of the jaw and cheek, she was much pleased with this kind of distemper, and was wont to say — ' I know most surely that I deservedly bear the weight of my illness on my neck, on which, I remember, that when a young girl I bore a needless weight of necklaces ; and I believe that to this end the Supreme Goodness would have me be afflicted with pain in my neck, that thus I may be absolved from the guilt of idle levity ; since I have now, instead of gold and pearls, the redness and heat of a tumour prominent on my neck.' Moreover, it happened that, by the touch of the same vestments, demons were put to flight from the bodies possessed by them, and other distempers, in some cases, cured. Also, they say, that the coffin in which she was at first buried was a means of cure to some who were afflicted in their eyes, who, when they had put their heads to the same coffin and prayed, presently were relieved of the discomfort of pain and dimness in their eyes. (To this the Monk Thomas adds, " L. E." i. 31, that a healing fountain burst forth from the spot where her body had lain.) They washed, therefore, the body of the virgin, and having put on it new garments, took it into the Church, and placed it in that sarcophagus which had been brought, where, even to this day, it is held in great veneration. Indeed, in a wonderful manner, the sarcophagus was found fitted for the 83 Qto^ea ^0 ButiiU on body of the virgin, just as if it had been specially prepared for it: and the place for the head, worked as a separate part, appeared more aptly shaped to the measure of the head." Of this white marble sarcophagus Fuller, in his "Church History," ii. 92, says: — "But lo Caius, Fellow of Gonvile Hall, within ten miles of Ely, at the Dissolution of Abbyes, being reputed no great enemy to the Romish religion, doth on his own knowledge report, in his ' Histor: Cantab: ' lib. i. p. 8 : — " ' Quamquam illius avi caecibus admirationem in eo paret, quod regnante Hen. nuper 8, dirutum idem sepulchrum ex lapide communi fuit, non, ut Beda narrat, ex albo marmore.' " ' Although the blindness of that age bred admiration therein, yet when the tombe was pluckt down in the reign of King Henry the Eighth, it was found made of common stone, and not of white marble, as Bede reporteth.' " Thus was her tomb degraded and debased one degree, which makes the truth of all the rest to be suspected. And if all Popish miracles were brought to the test, they would be found to shrink from marble to common stone, nay from stone to dirt and untempered mortar." Stevenson, in his " Notes to Bentham's History," p. 36, says, on the authority of Bentham's " Notitia," that a lease of Barton Farm was granted by Bishop Redman, and dated Downham, Aug. 14, 20. Henry VII. Among other things it is therein •covenanted " that it shall not be lefall to no man, but onely to the said Bysshoppe and to his successors, to take awaye the water, nor no partye thereof, coming from S. Awdris Well" In the possession of the Society of Antiquaries at Burlington House is a very remarkable picture, a photogravure of which forms the frontispiece to this book, containing four scenes in the Life of S. Awdrey, which may well be compared with these sculptured legends in the octagon. The picture consists of four scenes painted on wooden panels, and has apparently formed a 84 t^t ^^tiu of ^* (^to^u^ portion of an altar piece or retable in the Minster. The painting is evidently of late fourteenth or early fifteenth century work, possibly by some Flemish painter of the school of the Van Eycks. There is much in the style and colouring of the first panel -that reminds one of the painting of the brilliant robes of the Angel Choir in Van Eyck's picture of the Adoration of the Immaculate Lamb, forming the altar piece at S. Bavon, Ghent. The fourth panel, representing S. Awdrey's Translation, is especially interesting archeologically, for as the painting cannot certainly be later than the fifteenth century, we have here in all probability an accurate representation of the celebrated " white marble sarcophagus " of the records, which was an object of so much reverence down to the time of its disappearance in the sixteenth century. The panels were presented to the Society of Antiquaries by Mr Kerrick early in this century, at that time University Librarian at Cambridge. The following is taken from his note- book, now in the possession of Mr Albert Hartshorne, his eldest surviving grandson. "These very ancient tables, each containing two pictures of the life of S. Ethel* on board. Mr James Bentham, author of the ' History of Ely,' found these pictures many years ago in a cottage at Ely, split and much damaged. One of them was cut in pieces to eke out the other two, to fit them for doors to a cupboard, and of course is the most mutilated of all. He gave them to me August 5th, 1792, and I have set them together and mended them as well as I can. The subjects are ' The Marriage of S. Ea,' ' The building of the Monastery of Ely,' ' S. E* taking leave of her husband and retiring to a Convent,' ' Translation of her body.' They are very curious, and seem to be as old as the time of Henry 6th. What is left of them is pure and not repainted." Sir G. Scharf wrote all he could find about the Kerrick bequest in his Catalogue, published in the Fine Arts Quarterly Review, 85 Qto^ea to Btduu on 1865, and he likewise printed a paper on them in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Nov. 20, 1862. 15. Bede, "Hist. Eccles." iv. 3, where Ovin is spoken of as "a monk of great merit, having left the world purely for the sake of reward from above, and worthy in all respects to have the secrets of the Lord specially revealed to him, and worthy to have credit given by his hearers to what he said. For he had come with Queen ^dilrythe from the province of the East Angles, and was the chief of her attendants and her major domo." The monk Thomas mentions him twice in his history — "Lib. Eliensis," i. chapter 8 and again chapter 23. In the first place he is spoken of as among the nobles of the province of the East Angles, who came to Northumbria with Etheldreda "inter quos prfecipuae auctoritatis vir magnificus erat Owinus nomine, monachus magni meriti et plura intentione supernae retributionis mundum derelinquens, dignus cui Dominus specialiter sua revelaret archana, dignus cui fidem narranti aures accomo- darent." In chapter 23, Thomas calls him " Owinus nomine, monachus, poedagogus, et princeps domus illius, conscius et secret- orum ccelestium auditor." This characteristic is evidently in allusion to the beautiful incident told by Bede of the heavenly song heard by Ovin announcing the death of S. Chad. " And when one day he was doing some such work out-of-doors, his companions having gone to the church, and the Bishop being alone in the oratory of the place, was attending to reading or prayer, he suddenly heard, as he afterwards related, a most sweet voice of persons singing and rejoicing descend from heaven even unto the earth ; which voice to wit, he said, that he first heard from the south-east, that is, from the part of the sky above sunrise at the winter solstice (ab alto brumalis exortus), and that then by degrees it approached him, until it reached the roof of the oratory in which the Bishop was, having entered which, it filled the whole of it, and encircled it 86 t^t §^xm of ^* (^wW^ about. And afterwards, when he asked S. Chad what that song was, the Bishop answered — ' If you heard the voice of the song and perceived the heavenly companies coming down from heaven above this oratory, I charge you, in the name of the Lord, not to tell this to any one before my decease. For, in truth, they were angelic spirits who came to call me to the heavenly rewards which I have always loved and desired, and promised that they would return after seven days, and take me with them.' Which, indeed, was fulfilled by the event." S. Chad died on March 2, 672. S. Etheldreda's monastery was founded in the following year, and there is much probability that Ovin returned to the service of his former Queen and mistress. Abbess of Ely. THE CROSS OF S. OVIN. The cross of S. Ovin, which now stands in the south aisle of the nave, was brought to Ely by Bentham in the last century, from the neighbouring village of Haddenham, where he says " it had long served only for a horse block." He adds, in a note to page 51 of his "History of Ely" that he is indebted to Dr Stukely, F.R.S., Secretary to the Society of Antiquaries, for the following remarks on, the stone : — " The inscription at Hadden- ham I took fifty years ago (at the beginning of the eighteenth century) when a lad at Cambridge. The stone was the foot of a cross erected by S. Ovin, House Steward to S. Awdrey. He lived at Winford (about a mile and a half from Haddenham) so corrupted from Owin's worth, Ovini prsedicem, a tenant of Tondbert's, Prince of the South Gervii, whose estate, the Isle of Ely, was Awdrey's jointure : so came she and Ovin acquainted. Ovin is a Welsh name, for the Isle of Ely was possessed by the old Britons long after the Saxons had taken hold of England, as before was the case in Roman times. I have long ago taken . drawings of S. Chad's habitation by the neighbouring Church of Lichfield, where your Ovin heard the angels at S. Chad's obit." 87 (JftottB (o Btduu on 16. " Liber Eliensis," i. 15. 17. Thq collection of early charters is very large, and cannot be estimated at fewer than 800. As a rule these charters are in a wonderful state of preservation, and have evidently been guarded with jealous vigilance for ages. They generally retain their seals unbroken, beautifully distinct and unusually free from blemish. Bentham, in his " History of Ely," has printed some few of them — twenty-six, I think, in all ; but more than 400 of these charters date from a time anterior to the accession of Richard II., and form, in fact, a most valuable apparatus for a complete history of the external fortunes of the monastery. The future historian of Ely will be deeply indebted to Arch- deacon Chapman, who for many years has devoted himself to the careful arrangement of these documents with an enthusiasm and assiduity which is beyond all praise. He has already arranged with great ingenuity, and added a short analysis of upwards of 500 of these precious documents, and arranged them in tin boxes under lock and key in the Cathedral Muniment Room. 18. Bede, "Hist. Eccles.," iv. 19. 19. "Liber Eliensis," i. 38. 20. " Liber Eliensis," i. 41. 21. " Liber Eliensis," ii. 52. 22. King Eadgar's Charter is given in full in the " Liber Eliensis," ii. 5- 23. Brythnoth, " Liber Eliensis," ii. 62. Brythnoth is called in the " Liber Eliensis " " Dux Northanim- brorum," but he appears really to have held one of the two great Ealdormanries of East England, which was established by King Eadmund, probably with a view of weakening the Danelaw by detaching from it all that was least Danish, and that could be thoroughly re-anglicised as a portion of the English realm. The Ealdormanry of East Anglia was entrusted to Athelstan, a noble of the royal kin, and the Ealdormanry of the East Saxons to 88 ti^t ^^^iM of ^. ®wbv^2 jElfgar, the king's father-in-law, who was succeeded by Brit- noth, the husband of ^Iflaed, ^Ifrid's daughter. At a some- what later time we find the name of "Brithnoth Dux" always following the names of the great Ealdorman of Mercia and East Anglia in the order of signatures in the numerous charters of Eadgar's reign. In the jealousies that arose about the disputed succession after Eadgar's death, we find Brithnoth siding with -^thelwine of East Anglia at the head of the monastic party, as against Dunstan's influence with the boy king. That he was a special friend of the monks of Ely we know from the story which is told in the " History of Ramsey " (" Hist: Ramesiens: " XV. 70, 71), and repeated in the "Liber Eliensis." This record tells how, when Brythnoth was hurrying with his forces to meet Olaf, who with his Norwegian Wikings had landed on the eastern coasts, he came to the Abbey of Ramsey, and was churlishly refused hospitality by the abbot, save for himself only and five or six of his selected friends. "Tell my Lord Abbot," cried Brithnoth, " that I will not dine without my men, because I cannot fight without them," and so passed on to the abbey of Ely, where the abbot, Elsin, warned of his coming, sent to meet him with the wiser message, "That in acts of kindness and charity the abbot of Ely was not deterred by any numbers, but rather rejoiced at the occasion of their coming." There he and his men were sumptuously entertained ; and on the next day, to show his gratitude, the great Ealdorman meets the Abbot and monks in the chapter-house, thanks them for their noble hospi- tality, puts them into possession at once of many manors, and promises them several others, if by chance being slain in battle they will carry off his body and bury it in their Church ; and so, commending himself and his men to their prayers, departs to meet the enemy. The story of the battle and the death of the hero is told in one of the oldest poems in the English language. Mr Thorpe, who has published it in his " Analecta Anglo-Saxonica," says that 89 Qtofea ^0 ^tctuu on the only known manuscript of this valuable fragment perished in the fire at the Cottonian Library in 1 73 1. That the poem was not wholly lost is owing to the fact that Hearne published it as prose at the end of his edition of "Johannis Glastoniensis Chronicon." It is a spirited battle piece, full of vigour and force and picturesque description. In its general features it has been not inappropriately compared to the war scenes of the " Iliad," and certainly if names like Britnoth and Godric could be substi- tuted for Menelaus and Patroclus it might be almost literally translated into a cento of lines from the great Father of Poetry himself. The death of the Hero is a specially graphic picture, containing at least one supremely beautiful verse. " Stricken by the spear of the enemy, the large hiked sword of Ethelredsthane drops to the earth, he can no longer stand firmly on his feet, he looks to Heaven." " Might he not on feet long Fast now stand up : He to heaven looked : Thank Thee Nations wielder For all the good ('wynna'= winsome) things That I in the world have bode : Now I own mild Maker, That I most have need That Thou to my Ghost Good speed should grant That my soul to Thee Now may make its way To Thy kingdom Lord of Angels With peace to journey." So the heathen warriors slay the chieftain, and the young men that stood by him, vElfnoth and Walmer, for both fell and sold their lives on the body of their lord. ..." And Byrtwold spoke: he was an aged vassal : he raised his shield : he brandished his ashen speare : he boldly exhorted the warriors — ' Our spirit shall 90 t^t ^gtrine of ^, @wbtej be the hardier : our heart shall be the keener : our soul shall be the greater, the more our men are lessened. Here lies our chief all mangled, the brave one in the dust: ever may he lament his shame who thinketh to fly from this play of weapons : old am I in life, yet will I not stir hence : but I think to lie by the side of my lord, by the side of that much loved man.' " And so the Abbott of Ely and his monks come to the battle- field and carry off the headless body of the great Ealdorman and bury it with all honour in the Church, and afterwards divide the lands which Britnoth had promised : the Lady ^Iflsed, his widow, added to them other lands, Rattendune and Soham and Ditton, and gave them to the Church, and a golden chain, and a tapestry curtain worked with the noble deeds of the hero, which for many a long year remained as one of the most precious treasures of the monastery. On the first page of the old MS. copy of the " Liber Eliensis" in the Cathedral Muniment room, is an entry giving the names of certain benefactors of the Church, including the name of Brithnoth, whose bodies had been removed from the Saxon church to the Norman Minster in 1 1 54 by Bishop Nigel, and whose coffins again had been built up in the north wall of the choir in the reign of Edward III., where they were found on its removal by Essex in 1770. The original entry in the " Liber Eliensis " is as follows : — "Isti sunt Confessores Christi quorum corpora jacent ex parte aquilonari Chori ecclesie Eliensis in locellis separatim in pariete lapideo. " Wulstanus Eboracensis Archiepiscopus. " Osmundas Epiis in Switheda regione. " Helfwinus Helmanensis Epus. " Elfgarus Helmanensis Epus. " Ednodus Abbas Ramysiensis, Epiis Lyncolniensis. " Athelstanus Helmanensis Epus. " Brithnodus Dux Northanimbrorum Strennissimus." 91 Qtofe0 ^0 Btctuxt on The following extract from a letter written by Mr Bentham to the Dean of Exeter, and read at the Society of Antiquaries, Feb. 6, 1772, describing the discovery of the bones of these old Saxon worthies immured in the North Choir wall explains their present disposal in Bishop West's Chapel. "When it became necessary, on account of removing the choir to the east end of the Church, to take down that wall, I thought proper to attend, and also gave notice of it to several gentlemen, who were desirous of being present when the wall was demolished. There were the traces of their several eifigies on the wall : [In Gough's " Sepulchral Monuments," page clvi., there is a print of these figures from a drawing made by Mr Tyson (1769), who gave them (1778) to Mr Cole. A copy of this print is also given in Stevenson's supplement to Bentham's " History of Ely," p. 6^^ and over each of them an inscription of their names. Whether their relics were still to be found was uncertain ; but I apprised those who attended on that occasion. May 18, 1769, that if my surmises were well founded no head would be found in the cell which contained the Bones of Brith- noth, Duke of Northumberland. The ground of my expecta- tion in that particular circumstance was the account given by the author of the ' Liber Eliensis,' of the unfortunate battle of Maldon, in Essex, a.d. 991, that the Danes took away with them the head of that brave warrior. The event corresponded to my expectation. The bones were found inclosed, in seven distinct cells or cavities, each twenty-two inches in length, seven broad, and eighteen deep, made within the wall under their painted effigies ; but in that under Duke Brithnoth there were no remains of the head, though we searched diligently, and found most, if not all his other bones almost entire, and those remarkable for their length, and proportionally strong ; which also agrees with what is recorded by the same historian in regard to the Duke's person, viz., that he was ' viribus 92 t^t ^5rim of ^. ®wbteg robustus, corpore maximus.' This will more clearly appear by an exact measurement I have taken, and annexed thereto, of so many of the principal bones of those persons as are remaining entire. From these measurements, os femoris 20J inches, tibia l6f, OS humeri 14^, ulna ii|, clavicula 6J, it was estimated by Dr Hunter that the Duke must have been 6 foot 9 inches in stature. It was observed that the collar bone had been nearly cut through, as by a battle axe or two-handed sword. The remains of these seven worthies are now deposited in a void space, within an arch, on the south side of Bishop West's Chapel (wherein was formerly his effigies) and are inclosed in separate cells, and in the same order as we found them ; and in the front of them is placed a row of small Gothic niches of stone corresponding with the cells, which are severally inscribed with the name and date of the death of each person whose bones it contains ; and in the upper part over the niches is the inscrip- tion on the page annexed." And of that inscription it is only necessary here to quote one word — " Requiescant ! " 24. " Lib. Eliens,," ii. 79. 25. " Lib. Eliens.," ii. 91, 92. " Jamque sublimatus in regno, beneficiorum, quae puer in Ely habuerat, nequaquam est oblitus : digna enim recompendere prsemia studuit. Illuc enim delatus, in cunabulis a patre rege et matre regina super sanctum altare oblatus fuerat, palla involutus orbiculata, brevibus circulis non plene viridi coloris ; adhuc ibi ostenditur, et sicut seniores ecclesis, qui videre et interfuere, narrare consueverant, cum pueris in claustro illic diu alitus est, psalmos et ymnos Dominicos cum illis didicit. Hujus quoque largitas supra omnium praecedentium regum munificentiam Elyensi se infudit ecclesiae, dans ei universa quae in subjecto continentur privilegio." 26. Freeman's " History of the Norman Conquest," iv. 462-485, 93 th ^^tiu of ^. (^rc^u^ and for the " Legend of Hereward " his Appendix to same volume, pp. 826-833. 27. " Lib. Eliens.," ii. 118. 28. " Lib. Eliens.," ii. 146. 29. Prior Godfrey (" Satirical Poets," ii. 153), cf. also Freeman's " Norman Conquest " Appendix, vol. iv. 833, for the dates of succession of the Norman Abbots. He gives excellent reasons why the order should stand thus : — Thurstan 1066-1073 Theodwin 1073-1075 Administration of Godfrey . . 1075-1082 Simeon 1082-1094 31. See the historical introduction by Professor Freeman to " the Cathedral Cities of Ely and Norwich," drawn and etched by R. Farren and published by Macmillan & Bowes, Cambridge, 1883, page II. A very excellent comparative estimate of the architectural characteristics of the two cathedrals. 32. Brit. Mus., Tib. A. vi. pp. 246-248, and cf. also Stewart's Analysis of Sacrist Rolls relating to expenditure on Presbytery in his " Architectural History of Ely Cathedral," p. 71. 33. For all details as to building of Octagon, see Lecture IL on " Alan de Walsingham." 34. " Historical Memorials of Canterbury," by A. P. Stanley. Third edition, page 241. 35. The two saints on the reverse of Hugo de Nothwold's seal are S. Edmund and S. Etheldreda, and the Legend is — " Me juvet Edtnundus Eldrede sim prece mundus.'' On Hugo de Balsham's seal the two saints are S. Peter and S. Etheldreda, and the Legend is — " Me servet Petrus Eldrede sim prece salvus.'' 94 •^^%^»^ SEALS OF HUGO DE NORTHWOLD AND HUGO DE BALSHAM THE PRIOR S DOOR WITH BEDESMAN Lecture II ^{c^n be Wdfsing^inn " Flos Operatorum." Some of you will remember that Mr Ruskin, in his chapter on the " Lamp of Sacrifice," in his " Seven Lamps of Architecture," speaking of the great cathedrals of the past as the best witnesses that remain to us of the faith and fear of nations, has said — "All else for which these builders sacrificed has passed away — all their living interests and aims and achievements. We know not for what they laboured, and we see no evidence of their reward. Victory, wealth, authority, happiness — all have departed, though bought by many a bitter sacrifice. But of them and of their life, and of their toil upon the earth, one reward, one evidence is left to us in those grey heaps of deep-wrought stone. They have taken with them to the grave their powers, their honours, and their errors, but they have left us their adoration." It is of one such man that I am to speak to you to- night, for I have undertaken to tell you something of Alan de Walsingham^ that greatest of the English Cathedral builders of the fourteenth century, who by his bold and original genius, gave to Ely Minster the special G 97 constructive feature of the Gothic Dome and Lantern, — the unique glory of S. Awdrey's Crown, — which makes the great Minster of the Fens, in the stateliness and variety of its outhne, so utterly unlike any other Church in England or indeed in Christendom. Bom in the last decade of the thirteenth century, Alan was the product of an age of great men and great events. Somewhere about the date of his birth, Roger Bacon, the first founder of the school of modern experimental science, died. In 13 14, the first year in which Alan's name appears among the list of Ely monks,^ Robert Bruce had broken the flower of the English chivalry at Bannockbum, and taught England the lesson which thirty years later she taught the world at Cressy. In 132 1, the year before Alan was elected Sacrist of the Convent and laid the foundation of the Lady Chapel, that stately shrine of so much that is characteristic of the imaginative life and poetry of the Middle Age, the first of Christian Poets, first in point of time, first in point of greatness, — Dante, — died. Thirteen years later, in 1334, when Alan's work was nearing completion and the great vault was being thrown across the Octagon at Ely, Giotto was dreaming at Florence in all arts and laying the foundation-stone of his marvellous Bell Tower. In 1341, the year that sacrist Alan became Prior of his monastery, Geoffrey Chaucer, the Father of English poetry, the healthiest, and therefore, perhaps, the most original of English singers, was bom, and Petrach was crowned with laurel at Rome as the first scholar and humanist of his age. 98 That Alan saw in the flesh any one of these great men, unless indeed it may have been Robert Bruce on pilgrimage to Walsingham, is more than doubtful, but none the less was he the child of the same influences as they. The very spirit of the age, a larger, happier, more benign spirit, as it would seem, than that of any preceding century, in which all the arts, and applied sciences, painting, sculpture, geometry, engineering, anatomy, botany, even poetry and music, and all the crafts of mason, carpenter, carver, gold- smith, jeweller, blacksmith, combined to produce a race of artist workmen, as remarkable for their admirable tradition as for their individual grace and freedom, seems to have presided at the cradle of this consummate worker, this English architect of the fourteenth century — " Flos operatorum . . . vir venerabilis et artificiosus Frater." Of Alan's life, like Shakespeare's in a later age, we know very little. His birthplace I suppose we may rightly presume from his designation to have been at Walsingham in Norfolk. And as an element in that environment which went to fashion his after life, that fact may well go for something, perhaps for much. For early in the twelfth century there had been founded at Walsingham a Priory of Austin Canons and a chapel dedicated "to God and S. Mary." The image of the Virgin in that chapel had from the first drawn to it an unceasing stream of pilgrims. A path, still traceable in places, leads by Cambridge and Ely, and Brandon and Fakenham, to her shrine, and is known by the name of "Walsingham Green Way," or the Palmer's Way, and because to the poetic eye of the 99 pilgrim the Milky Way in the heavens seemed to canopy this path and point towards the shrine that, too, was called " the Walsingham Way." How it came about that Alan turned his back on " Our Lady of Walsingham " and the Priory of Austin Canons, and followed the returning steps of the pilgrims along " the Walsingham Way " to Ely, I cannot say. I only know that it was a good star that drew his steps to the Shrine of S. Awdrey and the great Convent of Benedictine monks that had grown up around it. The Ely Monastery — founded by Queen Etheldreda in the year 672, — and reorganised under the influence of the monastic revival of the tenth century by S. JEthelwold, the " Muneca Faeder," as the English Chronicle calls him, was now in its fourth century of full Benedictine rule. The administrative completeness of the community Ufe at Ely, when Alan joined the Convent, its strong organisation, its careful subdivision of responsibility, its precision of busi- ness habit, and its regular custom of audited yearly accounts, still may be traced by the carefiil student of the fairly complete series of Obedientiary Rolls of the four- teenth and fifteenth centuries still in the possession of the Dean and Chapter, stored in the Muniment Room of the Cathedral. I think perhaps it may be of interest to you, and serve at least to give reality to the daily routine of the Convent Hfe, if I delay for a moment in the course of Alan's story to give you one or two details from those RoHs, which have not hitherto been published, taken from the records of two of the most important officers of the monastery, the Came- 100 rarius and the Cellerarius. The Camerarius, or Chamber- lain, in addition to an annual grant from the Convent treasury, had his own separate estate and revenue from which to provide for what may be called the more domestic wants of the Monastery. Let me take the first Roll on the list. It is that for the 8 Edward III. (1334). We shall be anticipating events a little in the life of Alan, for at that date he had already been Sacrist of the Monastery thirteen years. However, here are some details from the balance-sheet of his friend, Richard of Spalding, the Chamberlain of that year.* His total receipts were £10^^ 4s. gjd., of which £62^ 13s. 4d. came from the Convent Treasury. On the debit side of the balance-sheet the largest expenditure is for the clothing of the monks, "vestura conventus." It amounts to £2>'j, i8s. ii|d., not a very extravagant amount, as it would seem, for the annual tailor's bill of some forty or fifty people. Forty-six I gather to have been the full number of monks on the Convent Roll this year, judging at least by the following items, which go to make up the total of £%y for clothing. 46 capucia (cowls or hoods) . . £^ 6 o 46 pellicia (fur coats) 45 coopertaria (counterpanes) . 45 Tunica yemales . 45 „ zestivales . 53 Staminea (woollen shirts) 46 Stragulas (striped or corded cloth) 46 Wilkoks .... lOI 788 10 10 o 10 18 2 1000 560 4 12 o I 3 6 46 Robse (monks' frocks) . . ■ -1^15 12 o Linea tela pro femoralibus . . 7118 Bottas (boots) — winter and . . 2 13 7 summer . . . . 314 Then there follows a payment of ^^3, 13s. od. for " Caligse et pedulse yemales," as to the exact signification of which commentators appear to differ very greatly. Smaragdus says — " slippers and socks," Bernardus Casi- nensis says — " buskins and gaiters," Bernardus Nicolaus de Fractura says — " shoes and stockings." In such a conflict of authority, however, I agree with the modern com- mentator, Mr I. Gregory Smith, that "on a point so remote from the experience of modern times it is hopeless to decide," and I conclude that at anyrate "Caligas et Pedulse " were something to keep the legs of the Monks warm. For evidently — and in winter time at Ely with a north-east wind blowing across the Fens I sympathise with them sincerely — warmth was with the Monks a thing much to be desired, and apparently sought after. For I notice, in addition to the 46 " stragulas " which appear in this list, and which probably mean bedclothes, that in the Camerarius Roll of the following year there is an entry of ^4, QS. 3d. for 149 yards of blanket, an allowance that is to say of about 3^ yards apiece for each monk. At the same time, notwithstanding the very precise decrees which were laid down by Archbishop Lanfranc, for the discipline of Benedictine houses, by which the Chamberlain was re- quired to change the hay in the Monks' pallets once a year, and once a year to clean out the Dormitory, the 102 IN S. AISLE OF NAVE LOOKINO TO N. TRANSEPT only item of expenditure that I can find in this Roll under this head is is. 3|d. for the dortor and 5s. for towels in the cloister lavatory. And the is. 3^d. has not a very comforting sound, for it was expended for "nails and boards in the beds of the novices " — " In lectis pro noviciis cum clavis et bordis." Of other items in the Chamberlain's balance-sheet, apart from the wage-list of the convent servants under the Chamberlain's authority — the allutor, the sutor, the cissor, the balneator, the barbitonsor (6s. 8d. a year was what the barbitonsor was paid for keeping the monks' chins and tonsures clean) — there are two items that have perhaps a special interest. There is a payment of ;^i, OS. 5d. "pro O et olla" and there is a payment of £1, i6s. od. "pro Mimuciones." * The first entry, "pro O et olla," is very perplexing. It is evidently a slang term of the Monastery. I am inclined to think that there may be perhaps an explanation of its meaning in the following extract from the Rites of Durham published by the Surtees Society (page 75) : — " Also within this house (i.e., the Common House, or Monks' parlour, sometimes called the Calefactorium) did the Master thereof keep his "O Sapentia," once in the year, viz., betwixt Martinmes and Christimmes, a solemn banquet that the Pryor and Convent did use at that time of the year only, when their banquet was of figs and raysyns, aile and cakes, and thereof no superfluitie or excess, but a schol- astical and moderate congratulation amongst themselves." Now, on the strength of this quotation from the Durham 105 Rites, I would venture to suggest that these periodical payments made by the Cellarer "pro O et olla," — "for Prayers and Pot," — as recorded in the monastery slang of the Ely Rolls, were in all probability payments made for the annual feasts, audit dinners shall I call them, given in the Common Room by the chief officers of the Convent to the brothers or even servants specially associated with them in their several departments. These dinners would naturally be preceded by a short Thanksgiving Service, of which the chief part might well consist of one of the seven great advent Antiphons, which all begin with the exclamation "O!" and could quite appropriately be chosen in relation to the special work or function of the particular officer. Thus the Lord Prior might naturally sing the hymn, " O adonai et dux Domus Israel ; " the Sacrist the " O sapientia quae ex ore altissimi ; " the Cellarer, who bore the keys, the "O Clavis David et sceptrum Domus;" while even the Gardener, perhaps, might sing his "O Radix Jesse qui stas in signum." Anyhow, I offer the suggestion for what it may be worth. The second item is the "Minutio sanguinis," or lessening of blood, blood-letting, and was the name given to that regular custom of the Monastery, by which, in accordance with the common Pharmacy of the age, each monk retired for three days in every six weeks into the Infirmary to be bled. So important a feature, indeed, was this custom in the domestic life of the convent, that the " Minutio " — by which all the Monks of the Monastery, in weekly batches of eight or nine, under the headship of one or other of 1 06 the six great officers, the Prior, the Subprior, the Sacrist, the Precentor, the Cellarer, the Camerarius, went into weekly retreat into the Infirmary, three days for blood- letting, three days for recovery — actually gave its name to the various weeks of the domestic Calendar, so that it would appear from the Rolls — and you will see this especially when I come to speak, as I shall do in a moment, of the Rolls of the Cellarer — that where we should speak of the first, or the second, or the third week of, say, December, they would speak of the Advent Minutio of the Prior, or of the Sacrist, or of the Cellarer. Let me return for a moment or two to the Rolls of this last officer. The Cellarer is naturally an officer of much importance in the Monastery, having in his care the general arrange- ment and management of the domestic affairs of the Con- vent. So much of the comfort of the Brethren depended on him that he is spoken of as "pater totius congrega- tionis " — " a father to the whole community looking after and tending the sick and the hale." He is described as the Prior's right hand, and held, I suppose, very much the same position as the senior Bursar does now in modern college life. By the Benedictine Decrees (cap. viii.) it was his duty to "care for all things necessary for the brethren in bread and drink, and divers kinds of food," and to provide all the vessels required for the cellar, kitchen, and refectory. In the Benedictine customs of Abingdon, we are told that he must be " humble of 107 heart, benign in spirit, teeming with loving - kindness, sparing to himself, bounteous to others, he must be the solace of the sad, refuge of the sick, sober, cautious, the shield of the needy, the father and patron of all the congregation of this House." At Ely we are specially fortunate in having a very com- plete set of Cellerarius Rolls, ranging from the 9th of Edward III. to the 12th of Richard II. The Roll of 8 Edward III. is perhaps the most curious Roll in the Ely collection. It is more than 10 feet long, and gives us with extraordinary minuteness the weekly bills for a whole year of all that was prepared in the kitchen or consumed in the Refectory of the Monastery, with particulars of the cost of every article of food provided ; the rise and fall of the price of butter and eggs and milk at different seasons of the year; and the rigour with which the fast days, especially the season of Lent, were observed. I have had by me, as I wrote this Lecture, a very careful abstract made with infinite pains by our Precentor of the Diet Rolls of the Cellarer for the whole of the year dating from Michaelmas 1335 to Michaelmas 1336. Now, I am lecturing to-night, on Monday, August loth, 1896, let us turn to our Cellerarius Roll, and see if we can, how the monks of Ely fared on August loth, 1336, just 560 years ago. The i oth of August in that year was a Friday. It was in the seventh week of the summer quarter. It was the Minutio of the Sacrist. Alan de Walsingham, there- fore, who had been elected Sacrist in 132 1, was on this day 560 years ago convalescing in the Infirmary after the 108 -^iliiaihcr:^^ S. CATHARINE'S CHAPEL IN GALILEE TRANSEPT monthly blood-letting. I see on the Sunday previous, August 5th, the Camerarius had entered in his Rolls the sum of 3s. for the expenses of the Sacrist's Minutio; that is to say, if there were five of the brothers with Alan in the Infirmary, they would each receive at the rate of 2d. a-day to be paid to the Infirmarius for their table expenses during the days of blood-letting and recovery. But if the fare of the Minuti was frugal in the Infirmary their brothers in the Refectory were well cared for by "the Father of the Convent." Here are the items in the Diet Roll of the week : — 1336. Sunday, August J. Dominica 7, Minutio Sacristx. Minutio 3s. ova, eggs, Z450, i6s.6id. galli, poultry, 8 pullets, Sd. columba, pigeons, 6, lid. sagimen, dripping or lard, 3 bags, zs. gd. Total £1 8 loj Monday, Aug. 6, pottage, izjd. mori, cod, 9d. • 9i Tuesday, Aug. 7, caro, fresh meat, IS. 54d. mult', mutton, lojd. 3 3i Wednesday, Aug. 8, (Fast day) pise' rec', fresh fish, 6s. 6d. aUec all', white herring. Id. mori, cod, lod. 076 Thursday, Aug. ,9. caro, zs. 8d ■w hite herrin S> mori, cod, lod. 036 III ©fan lie Tl^afemg^am Friday, Aug. lo, (our day). white herring. mori, cod, gd. 9d. £° [ 6 Saturday, Aug. li. white herring, mori, cod. 2d. lod. ■0 i ! oj cenap', ijd. sagimen, dripping or lard or suet, 20d. milk, I9id. lib., 3s. 7jd. Total for the Week, £.^ 14 6i You will notice that this diet Roll tells us nothing of the bread, vegetables, and beer, which were provided independently by the Granatarius, just as in the present day in the economy of our Colleges the Buttery bill and the Kitchen bill are always rendered as separate accounts. It is difficult to estimate the exact quantities of either beer or bread consumed in the Monastery. They are always entered wholesale, according to the amount con- sumed in quarters of malt or corn. A thousand quarters of malt appears to have been about an average amount for a year's brewing. Among the Lambeth MSS. relating to Ely there is a " Manual," entitled " de Signis," which is in fact a description of the various gestures used by the Ely monks to signify their several wants at the Refectory table, where of course they were under a strict vow of silence. From 112 this list of the signs employed for the different articles of food and drink, we gain many interesting particulars as to the daily bill of fare in the Monastery. Thus we find five or six different kinds of bread enumerated: " panes mona- chales," "panes militares pro mandatis," "panes blakwyte," "panes prykket," and a coarser variety called "trencho." Similarly with the beer there was a better kind, a sound ale, "bona servisia," a "mediocris servisia," or small beer, and a less potent sort, called "debilis servisia," and finally, a drink called " skegman," which perhaps corresponded in quality with the " trencho " bread. To what extent wine was consumed in the Convent Refectory, either on Feast days or ordinary days, does not appear in the Cellarer's Rolls. We know, however, that the Prior and Sacrist had their private wine cellars, and it is plain from the Lambeth Sign Book that each Monk could make his sign for his tumbler and wine-glass as well as for wine, but whether he got any of the Malvesy or the red wine, which from a later Roll we find the Sacrist was accustomed to get from a certain wine merchant in London named Masga de Fynkel, or whether he had to be satisfied with, I should imagine, the somewhat sourer produce of the Monastery vineyards at Ely and Wentworth and Holborn, it is impossible to say. But certainly a careful study of these Diet Rolls from year to year does not lead one to think that the daily fare of the Monks was other than moderate and well i-egulated. It was somewhat monotonous, no doubt, rough and coarse as we should think it, yet apparently of quite sufiicient variety for health, and H 113 certainly there is no evidence anywhere in these Rolls of excessive luxury. It is true that Fuller, in his Church History of Britain,* says, " of all Abbeys in England, Ely bare away the bell for bountiful feast-making, the vicinity of the Fens afford- ing them plenty of flesh, fish, and fowl at low rates. Hereupon the poet — " Praevisis aliis, Eliensia festa videre Est, quasi provisa nocte, videre diem." _ " See after other, Ely Feasts And surely thou wilt say, That having seen the night before Thou seest now the day." But this, I think it should be remembered, is evidence of a much later date, and was probably true in any age rather of the generous hospitality shown to strangers in the Con- vent Guest Hall — and I trust that that may ever remain a characteristic of that house at Ely — than to the plain living and, let us hope, high thinking in the Fratry House of the Monks. There were always evils doubtless attendant upon this Monastic hospitality, and to our modern economic con- science, I am sure the Convent housekeeping must seem to have brought journeywork too often to no other trade but pauperism and vagrant beggary, yet after all, perhaps, for our present purpose at anyrate, we may dismiss the matter in the quaint words of Fuller himself, " All this may be confessed yet by their hospitality, many an honest and hungry soul had his bowels refreshed which otherwise 114 would have been starved, and better it is two drones should be fed than one bee famished."® But I must not linger any longer over this aspect of life in the Ely Monastery, fascinating at least to myself as the study may be. Let us turn from the Rolls of the Camerarius and the .Cellarer to those of the Sacrist. For to this important office in the polity of the convent Alan de Walsingham was elected in 1321. On the 20th of May in that year John of Crauden had been appointed Prior of the Monas- tery, and on the same day Alan had become sub-prior. This office, however, he held for only a few months, and then he became Sacrist, a post which he held until the death of his friend Prior Crauden in 1341 called him to take up the highest office in the Monastery. It was, however, during those twenty years as Sacrist that all the great architectural works which are so inseparably asso- ciated with his name at Ely were completed. The first of these great works was the Lady Chapel, one of the finest specimens of decorated architecture in the Kingdom. Its position, running parallel with the Choir of the Cathedral and corner to corner with the North transept, may possibly have been suggested by the some- what similar position of the now destroyed Lady Chapel at Peterborough. But it is still more probable, I think, that the unusual site was chosen out of respect for the great beauty of the East front of Northwold's Presbytery, and from a desire to do sufficient honour to the object of the Lady Chapel, while at the same time not interfering 115 ©fan U KVatein^^am with the famous Shrines of S. Awdrey and her sister Abbesses in the Retro Choir. The first stone of the Chapel was laid on the Feast of the Annunciation,^ 132 1, and Alan, if he thought at all of future artistic fame, might well have been satisfied to leave the design of this magnificent building as a witness to posterity of his genius, little thinking that the following year would give him so much more notable an pppoi'tunity. The length of the Chapel is 100 feet, while the span of the stone vaulting of delicate interlacing ribs at a height of 60 feet from the ground is no less than 46 feet wide. The interior is characteristic of the great window period, and is of the type that culminated nearly two centuries later in Kings' College Chapel in Cambridge. The great windows, however, of Alan's work — there are five on either side — aire remarkable for the freedom and grace and beauty of the tracery, which has naturally none of the stiffness of the later perpendicular period. The great East and West windows are much heavier in design, and are in reality insertions of a somewhat later date. It is evident from indications supplied by the masonry of the central light of the East window,* the muUions of which are of unusual solidity, that the Reredos and East window were originally combined in some structure, of which the •chief object was the large figure of S. Mary, often men- tioned in the Rolls of the Custos Capellse, and which must have occupied a canopied niche, blocking up the whole of the middle light from sill to transom. The interior walls between the windows are occupied 116 by rich tabernacle work, while beneath the windows, round the whole circuit of the walls, runs an arcade of elaborate canopied niches, of singular beauty of form, covered with the richest profusion of sculptured flower work and dainty leafage. In the spandrils above each canopy is carved, in low relief, incidents in the scriptural and legendary history of the blessed Virgin. Dr Montague James, in the remarkable book which he has lately published on the Iconography of the Lady Chapel, has by his almost exhaustive knowledge of con- temporary documents, and of the written sources of the mediaeval " folk-tales " and Legends of the Virgin, succeeded in identifying with certainty a very con- siderable number of these sculptured subjects, and has given reasonable conjectures as to many more.^ The exquisite delicacy and grace of line of the figures of this sculpture still remains, in spite of the havoc worked by the misguided activity of reforming zeal — an ideal of art and loveliness, which our best modern sculptors will probably for many a long day strive in vain to reach. There is no place probably in JEngland where an Architect, who is also an Artist, may better study what was meant, in the very greatest days of English architecture, by a noble idea perfectly expressed in stone and exquisitely adorned. It is a little difficult perhaps for us in these days, with our nineteenth-century prose practicality, and puritan common-sense, to say nothing of our recollection of the moral degradation, caused by a popular superstition in which the daily repetition of the 119 Office of the Virgin, or even the momentary exclamation of an " Ave Maria ! " was not infrequently considered to atone for serious crime, or at least to save the devotee from its consequent earthly punishment, to understand how the genius of Alan de Walsingham should have found its inspiration in such apparently puerile sources. But do not let us forget that we are speaking of the age of Dante and Chaucer, an age in which the imagina- tive life of the Crusades, when Catholic purity iii the best natures was united to the tenderness of chivalry, still cast its glamour over poetic minds, and we may come perhaps to believe that to the artist soul of Alan de Walsingham, the Idealisation of Woman, the worship of the Virgin Mother, set forth in his magnificent stone- poem of the Lady Chapel, as in Dante's " Paradiso," could only tend, in those who felt its beauty, to humanise the thought of rude and ungallant hearts, and profoundly to modifj'^ the unpolished manners of the time — "For in reverence of the Heavene's Queene, They came to worship alle women that bene." It is said that Welby Pugin once estimated the probable cost of the restoration of this interior at ;^ioq,ooo. But as I have already ventured to say in the appeal which the Dean and Chapter have lately issued for funds to repair the exterior of this Chapel, even the provision of that large sum would not make the work possible. There does not exist, probably, in Europe to-day an artist in stone who could be trusted to repair this defeced sculpture of Alan 1 20 de Walsingham's craftsmen. For such an artist we must wait for an age, when once more Art has become, as John Ruskin and William Morris have taught us, not only " the expression of a workman's joy in his work," but also the expression of a man of genius who pours into his Art, life, conscience, labour as a sacrificial act of devotion " to the King in his beauty." There remains for us the humbler task, and yet the honourable duty, of preserving the fabric of this building, the casket in which is enshrined for the England of to-day so much that is characteristic of the worship and the service, and the noble work of our fathers in the old time that is past. But to return to the work of the Sacrist. On the '2 2nd of February 1322 occurred a catastrophe which, through the supreme constructive genius of Alan de Walsingham, became a blessing in disguise, and led to that marvellous dome which gives to the interior of Ely Minster its unique beauty and grace, queenly beyond words, and to the exterior- that peculiar coronal outline- — ^I venture myself always to speak of it architecturally as the Crown of S. Awdrey^ — ^a feature which has no fellow in any of the Churches of England, or indeed of Christendom. On the vigil of the Feast of S. Eormenilda, as the monks were returning from the Church to their dormitory, the old Norman central tower, erected by Abbot Simeon just after the Conquest, fell with a crash — " with such a shock," says the old Chronicler, i» " and so great a tumultj that it was thought an earthquake had taken place." As an especial proof of the divine protection, the Ely 123 ©fan U DDatBincfim Chronicler remarks that not only was no one injured by the fall, but that the Shrines of the three sainted Abbesses Etheldreda, Sexburga, and Withburga, which stood at the eastern end of the Norman ehoir, just within the new Presbytery built by Northwold in the previous century, escaped without any injury. Alan himself is represented, in the old records, as being at first perplexed and over- whelmed at the ruinous condition to which the central crossing of the great Church had been reduced. "The aforesaid Sacrist Alan" — writes the Chronicler — "grieving vehemently and overcome with sorrow at an event so disastrous and lamentable, for a moment knew not which way to turn himself, or what to do for the reparation of such a ruin. But taking courage, and putting his whole trust in the help of God and His most Holy Mother Mary, and also in the merits of the Holy Virgin Etheldreda, set his hand to the work, and first with much labour and expense having removed from within the Church the stones and timber which had fallen in the ruin, and also a great quantity of dust and rubbish having cleared away with all possible speed, at the place in which he was about to construct the new Campanile, he by architectural skill measured out eight positions in which the eight stone columns were to stand supporting the whole building, and beneath which the Choir with its stalls was afterwards to be placed, and caused them to be dug out and examined, until he had found the solid rock upon which the founda- tions of his work might be securely fixed. These aforesaid eight places, having been most carefully examined, and 124 with stones and sand most firmly consolidated, he then at last laid the foundation of . v^v.^ A-^*^^^ the eight col- umns and the superincumbent stone work, which, indeed, as far as the upper cornice, was brought to a conclusion after six years, in the year of our Lord 1328." This simple de- scription of the old monkish Chronicler records a work, as I have said, of unique originality in its design. The late Professor Freeman, in an admir- able paper in which he compares the rival Architectural glories of Ely, Peterborough and Norwich, thus speaks of the original constructive genius of Alan.^^ 125 N.E. ANGLE OF LADY CHAPEL "His powers did not show themselves like those of William of Saint-Calais and of St Hugh — or of the architects employed by them, as the case may be — in developing new forms of architectural style, but like the nameless creator of the West front of Peterborough, in devising buildings of wholly new shapes, in translating from other architectural languages into his own. As there arose at Peterborough a translation of the Portico of old Greece into Northern language, so there arose at Ely a like translation of the Cupolas of Italy or Byzantium. But the translation at Ely is even freer than the translation at Peterborough. The Front of Peterborough may fairly be called a Gothic portico: the Octagon at Ely can hardly be called a Gothic cupola, though we may be pretty certain that thoughts of the cupola were in the mind of Alan de Walsingham. His main object was to build up something that should be less likely to fall than the traditional central tower borne up on four open arches. But the cupolas of the Byzantine, Sicilian and Aquitanian churches rest on four arches, no less than the square towers of Normandy and England, and in the Churches of Sicily and Aquitaine they rest on pointed arches. In San Sophia itself the cupola rests on four piers, just as much as in the smallest English or Norman church that has a central tower. It is of no greater span than the four limbs give it : it is wide because they are wide. The peculiarity at Ely is that the central space is far wider than any of the four limbs. It does not, like other lanterns and cupolas, seem designed as a crown for them, and as nothing else. It seems like a 126 THE OCTAGON AND LANTERN FROM NORTH-WEST ©fan U TX^afeing^am building which might have stood apart, like a round or polygonal Church which has found its way into the middle of a cross Church of the usual type, or more truly, which has had the four limbs of such a Church attached to it in some strange way. Looking across the octagon of Ely, the four great limbs, which from any other point of view seem so vast, sink into mere adjuncts to the great central space. To provide against all mischances, the new work was grounded on eight piers instead of four, and the local historian (as you have heard) enlarges on the care which Alan the Sacrist took to find safe places for their founda- tions. But if the supports were stronger than of old, the weight which they had to bear was less. No one could expect that this gigantic octagon could be carried up as a tower to the usual height of a tower ; but it might con- ceivably have grown into a true cupola, the forerunner of Brunelleschi's creation at Florence. And we may be sure that the genius of Alan de Walsingham would have as far outshone the work of Brunelleschi as the genius of Hugh of Northwold or his architect outshone the work of Arnolfo. No part of the Church of Ely, no part of any genuine English, Norman, French, or German church, looks as the dome of Florence, smaller than it is in reality. Yet lordly beyond words as is the internal view of the lantern of Ely; we are half tempted to complain that its mighty tops do not bear up something greater ; all that they ever bore, all that they ever were designed to bear, was a vast louvre of wood. Of wood, too, are the eight half vaults from which the louvre springs. And this woodwork louvre and I 129 vault, owing to the difficulty of finding timbers of the needful size, is spoken of as a greater work, and one taking a longer time, than the building of the stonework below. The stonework, begun in 1322, took six years, and was finished in 1328 ; the woodwork, begun at once on the completion of the stonework, took twice the time, and was not finished until 1342, when Alan the Sacrist had become Prior." You will remember that of the two hundred and eighty- eight Obedientiary Rolls of the Monastery, I said that forty-four were Rolls of the Sacrist. Of these nine are rolls of Alan de Walsingham, ranging from the 1 6 Edward II. to 13 Edward III. I have no time left to linger over the details of these Rolls, interesting as they are, and full of the minutest records of the expenditure from year to year on the new Campanile ^^ — payments to John Attegrene or to Peter Quadratarius the master mason, to master Thomas the carpenter, and William de Houk, to Simon the glazier's boy, to Johannes Amyot the blacksmith, to master John of Gloucester for casting the six great bells, to John of Burwell, near Newmarket, to whom the special work of carving the figure of Christ in Benediction on the great boss ^ of the key vault of the Lantern was intrusted and for which he received 2 s. and his dinner at the Prior's table, to William Schaub and Walter the painter, to Ralph the gold-beter who made the Prior's florins into gold leaf, payments also for stone and reeds and rushes for mending the roads, stone from the quarries at Barnack for building, worked stone, forme 130 pecys, and kings tables, crestes and parpent assheler, payments for the oak tress, twenty for £g from Chikki- sand, and other timber from Barnewell and Stourbridge, and Hilgay and Reach, molds and canvas from Lynn, vermilion, verdigris, whitelead and oil, — full also of evidence of the skill and science with which from time to time tlie various structural difficulties of the great vault- ing was overcome, down to the day, though that I fear was ten years after Alan's death, when in the Sacrist Roll of 48 Edward III. the usual entry " Gustos novi operis" was written on the parchment, when it was prepared for the year's accounts, and John of Ely struck his pen through it, having no longer any use for it, because the work was complete. There is the less need to enter more fully into these most interesting Rolls, because Canon Stewart in his valuable " Architectural History of Ely Cathedral " has quoted very largely from them. To that book I must refer those of you who are in any sense architectural students of Alan de Walsingham's famous structure, and also to an elaborate monograph by Mr Reynolds Rowe of Cambridge, read before the Royal Institute of British Architects, to accompany most careful and accurate work- ing plans and drawings of the Octagon and Lantern which are now deposited in the Cathedral Library. I must find time, however, to say this before I hurry to a conclusion. Original and marvellous as is the constructive achieve- ment of Alan de Walsingham's Octagon, its grace and beauty of form is as remarkable as its conception is fresh and strong. Nowhere in the vast treasury of mediaeval art which has come down to us in those great buildings, which mean perhaps more to Englishmen than to others, because they are so closely intertwined with the life and history of our nation, do I know a shrine of worship so noble, so inspiring, so uplifting as this Ely Octagon. Nowhere else do I know a building in which the characteristics of Power and Beauty are so harmoniously blended into a complete unity of design as in Walsingham's Octagon. Here we seem to have from foundation to summit the organic growth of nature, and with it not only the imaginative grace of varied line and curve, but also the more consummate beauty of perfect symmetry and proportion. Who can stand indeed beneath that noble Dome, and let his eye follow upward step by step its clustered columns, blossoming at the first stage on the level of the minor arches that flank the aisles, into ex- quisitely flower-shaped corbels, the eight chief Acts of the Foundress-Saint ^* sculptured on each calyx, as it were, of the flower before it breaks into the overhanging canopied niche of strangely original form, thus masking beautifully the further sub-division of the columns as they mount upwards in many smaller shafts and mouldings to the next stage, where at the springing of the great arches of nave and choir they bear gracefully carved floral capitals, which in their turn support the incurving clusters of the ribs that form the great vault itself; at a further stage to be broken 132 OCTAGON CROSSING FROM NAVE once again at half the height of its great sweeping curves, by the octagonal framework that carries the great vertical shaft of the lofty Lantern, whose traceried windows cast their coloured glories on. the pavement 150 feet below, — who, I say, gazing up into this marvellous Dome, can fail to feel something of what its creator must have felt, that in this primal building-art of man there is room for the marking of man's relation with the mightiest, as well as the fairest, works of God, something also of the truth that the wealth of this world may be turned from man's pride to God's praise, that the things which are seen may point upward to the things which are not seen, and that the best that earth can yield may be gathered where men come to meet with God and to wait upon His self-revealing. The remaining incidents of Alan de Walsingham's life must be compressed into a very few sentences. You will remember that I said he had been elected Sacrist of the Monastery in 1321, a position which he held for the next twenty years. During sixteen years of this time John de Hotham had been Bishop, and during the whole of the time John de Crauden, Prior of the Monastery. ^^ From both of these men Alan de Walsingham evidently received not only cordial sympathy but most munificent support in the great and costly works with which during their rule he was enriching the Monastery. For Bishop Hotham he designed and built the beautiful decorated arches of the Choir of the richest middle pointed type, but inasmuch as it took the place of the Norman Choir preserving the 135 Norman proportions, the whole cost of which, amounting to ;^2034, I2S. 8fd., was borne by the Bishop, and for him too in all probability he designed the lovely Chapel in Ely Place, Holborn, on the manor secured by the Bishop for the Monastery. For Prior Craudon he built the still lovelier Chapel attached to the Priory, ^^ — "novam capellam mirandi decoris," in use to this day for the Mattins and Evensong of our Kings' School, and the "Fair Hall" opposite the Chapel, built possibly to entertain Queen Philippa, whose friend Prior Crauden^'^ was, and to whom she gave on her visit to Ely with the King, her jewelled robes of state, powdered with golden squirrels which she had worn at her Thanksgiving after the birth of the Black Prince, "and which," says the Chronicler, "three of them were made by the Prior into three copes, embroidered with the arms of S. Etheldreda, and two of them afterwards into a cowl and six tunics by his successor, Prior .Alan de Wal- singham, ' qui honestissime fecit apparari.' " For Prior Crauden also Alan built in connection with the Prior's Chapel " a study for books," a portion of which, with its ancient fireplace, still exists in the house which was origin- ally "the olde Hall" of the Prior's Palace, a portion of the Monastery built by Abbot Simeon in the Norman times, and now occupied by the Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, our Cathedral Treasurer. The great Guest Hall of the monastery, now the Deanery, was also at this time either rebuilt by Alan or very considerably restored, and "Gent Hall" an intrusion on the aisle of the Infirmary. Indeed there are few remains of the old 136 Monastery which do not show traces of the work of the masons of Alan de Walsingham and Prior Crauden. On the 13th January 1336 Bishop John de Hotham died, and was buried in the centre of that part of the Presbytery which he himself had caused to be erected. The exact place of his tomb he had chosen " quasi spiritu prophetico." "For on a certain day," so says the chroni- cler," " when John the Bishop had been celebrating Mass in the Church at the High Altar, after Mass, returning to lay aside his pontifical robes in the vestry, it happened that his pastoral staff broke at the very place where now he is buried. "Whereupon, turning to the Prior who followed him, he said, ' Prior, here shall be the place of my burial, and thou also here at my feet afterwards shall be buried.' " The splendid monument, said to have been the largest and most sumptuous in the Cathedral, which was erected on this spot in the Bishop's honour, was also Alan's work. It consisted of an altar tomb, adorned with alternate panels of single and treble niches, the lesser of which were filled with statues, and the larger with paintings, representing the history of the Creation and the Fall of Man. Upon it was a figure of the Bishop, in alabaster, and above it a stately canopy and watching loft, surmounted by an elabo- rate candelabra of seven branches. The tomb was placed immediately behind the Choir altar, and the overarching canopy probably served in a somewhat similar fashion to that of S. Frideswide at Oxford, as a watching loft for the white marble shrine of S. Awdrey, whose silver reliquary, blazing with many jewels, crystal, and pearl, and onyx, 137 and beryl, and amethyst, and chalcedony, flashed out beyond in Northwold's Presbytery. The tomb, denuded of its superincumbent figure, and with the sculptured work of its niches all defaced, now stands between the two pillars of the Presbytery on the south side of the High Altar. The watching-loft — the so-called S. Awdrey's shrine of modern times — also stands on the North side of the Presbytery. And now, in the vacant space where once stood this sumptuous tomb, on the floor of the present Choir, the resting-place of the two men is marked by two massive slabs of grey marble, the Bishop, with the Prior at his feet." On the brass of the Bishop's slab are simply two shields, containing his own arms and that of his See, and an inscription, copied from that of Elizabeth's time, which gave the wrong date of his death, and claimed for him the building of the Lantern. On John de Crauden's slab the ancient matrix has been filled with a beautifully designed floriated cross in brass, at the foot of which is represented the kneeling figure of the Prior, and round the edge, on a continuous scroll, the ancient epitaph as given by the monkish chronicler : — " Hanc aram decorat de Craudene tumba Johannis Qui fliit hie Prior, ad bona pluria pluribus annis, Presulis hunc sedes elegit pontificari Presulis ante pedes ideo meruit tumulari." In 1 34 1, four years after the Bishop, Prior Crauden died, and was succeeded by his friend the Sacrist. And so for twenty more years, his great buildings finished, Alan ruled the Monastery, and added to its possessions, i* •38 . Aw 6 re\V3 :$> b rin c . Twice during that time, at the voidance of the see, on the deaths of Bishops Montacute and Lisle, Alan de Walsing- ham was nominated Bishop by the monks, but their right of election was ignored by the Pope. At the age of threescore years and ten Alan died — in the year 1364 it is usually said, though Browne Willis, I know not on what authority, says 1373 — and was buried in the great Church he had loved and served so well. On the great slab above his grave, just outside the Choir and within the circle of the morning light as it falls across the great octagon, — his noblest monument, — the Convent placed a brass efBgy of Brother Alan, and in spite of Pope, represented it with the Episcopal Mitre on his head and Crozier in his hand, and at its foot they carved this epitaph: — " Flos operatorum, dum vixit corpore sanus Hie jacet ante Chorum Prior entumulatus Alanus, Annis bis denis vivens fuit ipse sacrista Plus tribus his plenis Prior ens perfecit at ista ; Sacristariam quasi funditus edificavit Mephale, Brarae etiam huic Ecclesia cumulavit, Pro veteri Turre, quK quadam nocte cadebat, Hanc Turrim proprie, quam cernitis hie faciebat Et plures edes quia fecerat ipse Prioris Detur ei sedes Casio pro fine laboris." And so let us leave the three friends among the greatest of the benefactors of Ely Minster — two resting within the Choir beyond the lights of the great Dome, and one, the greatest of all, resting at its threshold. For all three men let us give God thanks, but especially for him, whose abounding glory of natural gifts, embodied in ^39 visible grandeur and beauty, has for centuries uplifted the hearts of his fellow-countrymen to the reverent worship of Almighty God, and whose faithful work still remains to teacji to many generations, we may hope, of English craftsmen, this simple lesson — I will end as I began with John Ruskin's words — "that we are not sent into this world to do anything into which we cannot put our hearts. We have certain work to do for our bread, and that is to be done strenuously : other work to do for our delight, ^nd that is to be done heartily. . . . There is dreaming enough, and earthliness enough, and sensuality enough in human existence without our turning the few glowing moments of it into mechanism : and since our life must at the best be but a vapour that appears for a little time and then vanishes away, let it at least appear as a cloud in the height of Heaven, not as the thick darkness that broods over the blast of thg furnace and rolling of the wheel." A CONVENT DIED. WITH MMi 3 SEAL. 140 NOTES TO LECTURE 11 I. The first mention of Alan's name seems to be in the follow- ing amusing passage from Walsingham's History ("Historia Anglicana Thomse Walsingham : Edward II. 1314," page 138 in the edition in the Rolls series) describing the visit of Edward II. to Ely, and his determination to solve the problem whether the Shrine at Ely or the Shrine at S. Alban's really contained the body of the English Protomartyr. Alan de Walsingham, be- cause of his skill in the goldsmith's art, is required by the king to open the Shrine. The following is the passage : — " In crastino Diei Palmarum, Rex iter versus insulam Eliensem arripuit ; ubi solemnitatem Paschalem tenuit nobiliter et festive. Quo tempore, Elienses mentientes se corpus habere Sancti Albani, Anglorum Protomartyris, manifestissime confutavit coram regni nobilibus et monachis dicti loci. Jam cum ad alleviandum moram suam in Monasterio oculis diversa subjicert, fanaque videre vellet ibidem, tandem incidit menti ejus; ut videret quid esset contentum in feretro quod ' Beati Albani ' vocant, in ecclesia memorata. Dixitque Episcopo, qui tunc aderat, Elyensi ; ' Scis,' inquit — ' quod fratres mei apud sanctum Albanum corpus ejusdem Martyris putant veraciter se habere, et in hoc loco dicunt monachi se dicti Sancti corpus tenere ; per animam,' inquit, ' Dei, volo videre in quo loco reliquias sancti corporis debeo potissimum venerari.' Cumque Presul verba Regis Priori et fratribus retulisset, illi, velut exsanques efFecti, quid responderent, quid facerent, nesciebant; ex una parte timentes amittere tantum thesaurum, si verum esset quod apud eos foret : ex altera con- vinci de mendacio metuentes, quia hoc praedicaverant se habere^ 141 QfiottB (o Sitduxt on Nesciebant enim pro tunc quid in dicto feretro continebatur. Episcopus, videas suorum consternationem, animavit eos, monens ut considerent quia non ad auferendum tantum thesaurum, sed venerandum. Rex aspectum reliquiarum requisivit. Ventum est igitur in ecclesiam : et feretrum solutum et apertum est per quendam monachum ' Alanum de Walsingham ' dictum, qui postea, prcficientibus meritis. Prior f actus est illius ecclesia : qui et ipse peritus erat in opere aurifabrili, et ideo ad solvendum feretrum tunc vocatus. Rex vero, cum vidisset cunctos clavos extractos, et feretrum' patifaciendum accessit et levavit oper- culum manu sua. Et ecce ! vident locellum ilium, a summo usque deorsum, quodam panno villoso ita occupatum, ut nihil posset aliud continere. In superiori vero parte vesti- menti, conspiciunt cruoris coagula dense repersa, ita nova, ita recentia, quasi predie fuissent efFusa. Constat banc vestem fuisse caracallam quam Sanctus Albanus, in conversione, acceperat a Sancto Amphibalo, magistro suo, in signum religionis : in quo idem Martyr sententiam subiit capitalem. Et fas est credere quod at honorem sancti, divino miraculo sanguis ejus sic in hac veste servatus, sicut in pulvere sui sepulchri per multa ssecula legitur conservatus. Cujus pulveris massam, in qua rudebat adhuc sanguis martyris, Sanctus Germanus, Altissiodorensis episcopus, secum abstuiit, et detulit ad Natale secum Altissiodoro, capellam construens in honorem Martyris memorati. " Rex igitur et omnes assistentes, de tanto miraculo stupefacti proni corruerunt in terram : et facta est non parva hassitatio quis accederet ad deponendum operculum et feretrum contingendum. Tandem, Rex ipse, costeris animosior, operculum detraxit ad locum suum : et tunc primo cognoverunt Elyenses quid de Sancto Albano haberent, quid non haberent, cum occulata fide cernerent in dicto feretro, praeter caracallam, nihil omnino contineri. Rex vero, hilarior efFectus de rei comperta veritate, dedit illic dona varia residuum temporis quo mansit ibidem duceus in summa 142 laetitia, frequenter conferens de merito Martyris Albani, et gloria, et judicans non sine divina factum providentia ut in duobus locis tam celebribus specialis veneratio Martyris haberetur. Et ait Eliensibus ; ' Gaudete de Dei munere, gaudete de tanti Martyris meritis et sanctitate : quia, si prout dicitis, hie Deus per ilium plura facit miracula ratlone vestis, credatis quod apud Sanctum Albanum ampliora facit miracula, ratione corporis illic santissimi quiescentis.' " Cf. also Matt. Paris Vita Alfrici undecimi abbatis Ecclesise S. Albani, 2. These Rolls, which number 288 in all, are dis- tributed among the most important officers of the convent as follows : — Rolls, (l.) Camerarius, or Treasurer of the Monastery, 8 Edward III. to 23 Henry VI. . . . -33 (2.) Feretrarius, Henry V. and VI. . . .5 (3.) Custos Capella Maria, 30 Edward III. to Henry VII. 14 (4.) Granatarius, or Steward of the Granary, I Edward II. to Henry VIII. . . . . -53 (5.) Elemosinarius, or Almoner, I Edward III. to Henry VI. 13 (also a Book of the Elemosinarius). (6.) Hortillarius ...... 8 (7.) Precentor, 3 Edward III. to Henry VIII. . . 10 (8.) Sacrist, 8 of which are Alan de Walsingham's, 16 Edward II. to 13 Edward III. . . -44 (9.) Cellerarius, 8 Edward I. to Edward IV. . -39 (10.) Pitanciarius, 3 Edward III. to Henry VIII. . . 17 (11.) Rosarius . . . . . ■ ^3 (12.) Thesaurarius . . . . . 29 Total . . ^ »43 (^XoUb (o BtciviU on 3- Camerarius Roll of 8 Edward III. (1334) reduced to the form of a modern balance-sheet. Receipts Arrears, .... From the Treasury for the customary payment! (liberacione), summer and winter. From the Church of Wycham, . „ „ Hawkston, From rents in Downham, „ „ Lakynhythe, From a certain elder orchard in Ely, From rents in Elm and Coidham, ,, ,, Wisbech and LeveringtoUj „ „ Newnham, Sundries, From garden fruit and herbage. Payments Tithe, .... Alms on the death of a monk, . The Warden for his cloak. To his colleague for tunic. To the deacons and sub-deacons, To the Pitanciarius for pittances. To the Prior for cloth sack. To the Prior for his livery. For the " O et oUa," £2 8 9 To the Bishop for boots Oblations, For the bloodlettings, For gifts to guests, pellice, and leggings, 144 62 13 4 12 7 "i 28 9i 3 3 4 6 8 I I 10 4 4 £107 4 9i ■ £1 6 II 10 13 4 13 4 4 16 8 10 2 I 5 I 6 I I 16 10 8 (^tan U l^a^Bin$^m Stipends, .... Clothing of the Convent, Expenses of the House, ,, strangers, &c., for the minuti. Balance carried forward, A o 4 87 18 iij o 6 9J 050 ;£l04 12 II 2 II Io| £io7 4 9J 4. " Pro et olla" The following are all the entries in the Ely Camerarius Rolls of this curious item : — 8 Edward III. Datum sacristi pro O et olla 13/4- Species pro conventu ad O et olla 7/1. 9 Edward III. In O et olla speciebus et cervisia emptis 1 6/1. 10 Edward III. Rogerc^ de Saxmundham pro O et olla pro Stallis factis 1 3/4. 11 Edward III. Liberati pro 00 et olla Rado de Saxmundham 1 3/4. 20 Edward III. Solut' ad opus novi chori pro OO et olla 13/4. 31 Edward III. In OQ et olla 13/4. 32 Edward III., pro OO et olla 1 3/4. K I TWO CANOPIES FROM THE STALLS (JfiokB to Bitciuxt on 34 Edward III. appears under the distinct Titulus " O et oUa " — solut' pro O et oUa 13/4. Neither the Titulus nor mention of item appears again until 12 Richard II., when under titulus "O et olla" the item is " nil." No further mention in the Camerarius Rolls, but in the Precentor's Rolls there are three entries under this head — 13 Edward III. pro O et olla 1 3/2 J; 15 Edward III. fabricae novi chori /^^ pro O et olla et convocacione Conventus; and 15 Henry VIII. expns le OO hoc anno 8d. 5. Fuller's " Church History," vi. book, page 299. 6. Fuller's " Church History," vi. book, page 298. 7- " Qui quidem frater Johannes (de Wysbech) in honore semper virginis Mariae in Festo Annunciationis suae fabricam dictse capellse incepit anno domini mcccxxi incepit. Cujus fabricse lapidem primum posuit vir venerabilis et artiHciosus frater Alanus de Walsingham tunc temporis supprior Elyensis " (" Anglia Sacra," i. 651). John de Wysbech had the entire charge of the erection of this chapel for twenty-eight years and thirteen weeks. He died of the plague on the 1 8th June 1 349. From the fourteen extant Computus Rolls of the Custos Capellae Beatae Mariae Virginis, ranging from 30 Edward III. to 4 Henry VII., the following list of Custodes has been compiled : — 1 32 1. John de Wisbech. 1350. Ralph Rysing. 1356. Will, de Copham. 1364. John de Walsingham. 1367. Thos. de Stokton. Wm. Thetford. 1379. Peter de Norwyes. 138 1. William de Thetford. 1383. John Bukton. 1399. Will, de Thetford. 146 1418. 1419. 1420. 1423. 1426. 1444. 1446. 1453- 1467. John de Fyncham. Henry Langham. Thos. Ranieseye. John Hatfeld. Steph. Walsingham. Thos. Welles. Roger Wysbech. Nicholas Derby. Roger Whyte. Rd. Lynne. @fan be TX?af0in3$am John Hadnam. 1479. Robt. Colville. Gilbert Lakynheth. 1487. Wm. Tylney. Thos. Welles. 1488. Thos. Downham. 1470. Rd. Barber. 1499. Will. Colchester. 1478. Thos. Denver. 1451- Mich. Barnyngham 8. That the great east window is a later insertion of Bishop Barnet we gather from the following item in the Sacrist's Roll of the 48 Ed. iii. (1374) : — "De receptis de executoribus domini Johannis Barnet nuper episcopi eliensis ad facturam cujusdam fenestrae in capella Beatse Marias juxta magnum altare factae in anno precedente xx. li." Beneath this window there are the remains of an elaborate canopied Reredos, which was erected in the 13 Richard II. (1390). The Sacrist Roll of that year is a mere fragment, but it contains a summary of the money spent during four years in building a Reredos of Burwell stone. The following is the entry : — " Item. In feodo magistri Roberti de Wodehirst, magistri predicti operis per ann. iiii. li. preter mensam et robam ex conventione xxxiii. li. xvs. vd. ... In i poole cont' xxiv. ped ' ad magistrum Rob' ad meusurandum opus suum iiiid." 9. Sculptures of the Lady Chapel at Ely. Published Nutt, Strand, London, 1 895. 10. " Anglia Sacra," i. 643-4. 11. " Cathedral Cities of Ely and Norwich," drawn and etched by R. Farren, with an Historical Introduction by E. A. Freeman, D.C.L. 12. Among the many details which Canon Stewart has ex- tracted from the Sacrist Rolls, few are perhaps more interesting than those which record the payments made for the construction of the wooden lantern and its supporting Dome. From the Roll of the 8 Edward III. (1334) it would appear that the heaviest item in that year was a sum of ^41, 19s. lod., paid to carpenters H7 (JXoUb (o Btduu on and sawyers who were working at the lantern, under the super- intendence of William de Houk. Eight carpenters were .boarded at the Prior's expense for nine weeks, while employed in raising the heavy timbers of the upper story of the new Companile. These are the items : — " Expensae domus. Mem™- quod viii carpentarii steterunt in mensa cum famulis Dni per ix sepf pro exaltatione magnarum postium in novo choro. In cxviii. cleys emptis pro steyringe xviiis. ii.d. : pretium cleye id. ob., plus in toto xid. In . . . nayle viiis. viiid. pro qualibet duoden' cariand' a novomercato usque Ely ixd. plusin toto ixd. In empt* pro steyringes per vices xiiid. In i ligamine ferreo fabri- cando de ferro domini pro le bekerel cum termine . . . et i barre elong' pro magnis postibus exaltandis ixd. In i serrura empta pro postis in le viz in novo campanile iid. In gunfis factis pro eodem iiid. In Curialitate data carpentariis per vices et sara- toribus, ut patet per parcellas xxiis. viid. Item. Soluti eisdem pro (? Nialo) ex conventione xiiiis. Summa Ixvs. viiid. The great posts here mentioned are no doubt the great angle timbers of the wooden octagon, which still, after five centuries, remain in their original position. Indeed Sir Gilbert Scott in one of his reports to the Dean and Chapter at the time of the repair of the Lantern in 1862, says that he had the satisfaction of proving that the greater part of the timber work was original, " having from the bottom to the top the carpenter's marks of Walsingham's workmen, by which having prepared their work in the field, they were enabled to put it together in its place." It is recorded ("Anglia Sacra," i. 644) that to find eight sufficiently large and sound oak trees to form the great angle posts, Alan had much trouble, " searching far and wide and with the greatest difficulty finding them at last, paying a great price for them, and by land and sea transporting them to Ely." Mr Kett, the Cam- bridge builder, who repaired the woodwork, under Sir Gilbert 148 Scott in 1862, tells me that he made accurate measurements of these angle posts at the time, and that they are 63 feet long, giving a sapless scantling of 3 feet 4 inches by 2 feet 8 inches. It would be impossible, he added, to procure such oak trees in England to-day. This giant tower of wood, itself nearly 80 feet in height, of which these eight great oak trees are the skeleton, suspended as it is at a height of 94 feet from the ground, over an aperture 74 feet in diameter, containing a prodigious quantity of timber and lead, is a master- piece of mechanical skill and ingenuity. The principle of its construction is briefly this. The eight angle posts, forming, as I have said, the skeleton of the Lantern, are framed into an octagonal oak curb, each side of which is 13 feet in length, giving a clear internal diameter of 29 feet 6 inches. The octagonal sides of this kerb are set obliquely to the faces of the stone octagon. This oblique setting of the lantern enables two radial diagonal struts to be fixed to each of the eight angle posts, their lower ends resting on corbels 32 feet below, fixed in the walls, immediately above the capitals of the pillars, from which spring the arches of nave, transepts, and choir, thus securing irresistible abutment and wind braces. The skill evinced by this radial principle cannot be overrated. The vaulting ribs of the apparent dome, as seen from below, carry of course none of the weight of the Lantern, and are indeed a merely ornamental casing to the radial struts which do the real work. The infinite variety of curved lines of these vaulted ribs is mainly due to the oblique setting of the regular octagon of the Lantern in relation to the irregular stone octagon below, though there is no doubt also a certain twisting and distortion of the ribs caused by the summer heat of five centuries. Level with the lower kerb of the Lantern, though of course invisible from below, a floor of oak joists is constructed, also radial probably for wind-brace effect ; and again at a further height of eighteen 149 Qto^ea ^0 Butuxt on feet, level with the sill of the Lantern windows, and just below the topmost external parapet of the stone octagon, a second radial framework is constructed, forming a roof to the outer octagon. Above this level 15 feet higher rises the fan vaulting of the Lantern as seen from below ; the ribs radiating into a magnificently carved oak boss, representing the Christ in Bene- diction, the central point of which is 152 feet 6 inches from the pavement below. The Bell Chamber above this vault carries up the full height of the Lantern another 30 feet. THE LANTERN BELLS. It has been doubted by some whether this uppermost storey of the Lantern was ever intended as a Bell Chamber. But that, at any rate, it was used as such, the following two interesting quotations will, I think, prove. The first is from quaint old Fuller. In his "Worthies of England," Book I. 149, speaking of Ely Minster, he says : — " The Lantern therein built by Bishop Hotham, wherein the labour of twenty years, and five thousand ninety-four pounds, eighteen shillings tenpence halfpenny farthing was expended is a masterpiece of architecture. When the bells ring, the woodwork thereof shaketh and gapeth (no defect, but perfection of struc- ture) and exactly chocketh into the joints again ; so that it may pass for the lively emblem of the sincere Christian, who though he hath motum trepidationis of fear and trembling, stands firmly fixed on the basis of a true faith." And the second quotation is this from Bishop Harvey Goodwin. In a footnote to his essay entitled the " Recollections of a Dean" in Dean Howson's volume of "Cathedral Essays," p. 21, the Bishop says, " It was a question when I first went to Ely, and when the restoration of Alan de Walsingham's Lantern was undertaken as a memorial to Dean Peacock how the bells in the Lantern were rung ; in fact, some bold sceptics questioned whether there ever were any bells, notwithstanding distinct documentary evidence of their existence. One day while the work of restoration was going on, a carpenter (Thomas Holmes, elected Bedesman of the Cathedral 1 894) told me that he had found the marks of the ropes : and he showed me, upon one of the vertical beams forming the south side of the Lantern, three parallel grooves which had evidently been worn by ropes. My remark was, * If these be the marks of the bell-ropes, there ought to be four, as I know that there were four bells ' ; a little examination soon brought to light the fourth rope mark. I then directed the carpenter to remove some of the wooden groining below, in order that we might see where the rope-marks' pointed : he did so, and we found that they pointed to the base of the eastern column of the arch of the south transept. Here, therefore, stood the brother, whose business it was to chime the bells : from the position occu- pied by him the ropes would clear the stalls which then extended under the Lantern ; and to complete the story I found in the discovery the explanation of two marks in the pillar near which the chimer stood. I had never been able to guess what they were, but I now found that they were the marks of the pegs upon which the ends of the ropes were twisted when not used for chiming. Thus the problem of ringing the bells in Ely Lanterrk was completely solved." The documentary evidence to which Bishop Goodwin alludes is, however, itself quite conclusive as to the existence of bells in the Lantern in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth cen- turies. In the Sacrist Roll of 31 Edward III. (1357) new ropes were bought for bells in both the Lantern tower and the great West tower : — " In xii cordis emptis pro campanis in utroque campanile xxxiii s." In the Roll of II Richard II. (1387) money was paid for hanging bells " super chorum," as well as for repairs of machinery in " le olde stepil"; and again in the QiottB to Buiuu on Roll of 17 Edward IV. (1477): — "In l clapyr ad quartam campanam in Lanterna Emend' et faciend' xvi d." Still later I Henry VIII, (1509) : — " In denarius solutis pro quatuor cordis pro campanis in lucerna (Lanterna) et aliis necessariis, vs. iid." And at the Dissolution of the Monastery we are told there were " six bells great and small in the Lantern," beside the same number " in the great steple." Finally, in Essex's report on the condition of the Lantern in 1757, he recommends " that the old bell-frames and other lumber be taken out of the Lantern." It may be interesting to record the names of the six bells in " the great steeple," which from the Sacrist Rolls of 16 Edward II. (1322) and 19 Edward III. (1345) we find were " Bannse, Peter, Jesus, John, Mary, and Walsingham," the last four being cast four years after Alan de Walsingham had been elected Prior. 13. Sacrist Roll 13 Edward III. (1339): — "Item. Soluti Johanni de Burwell pro una imagine tallianda super le principale keye volte superioris ii s. et ad mensam Dni." 14. For full description of these legends see note 14, p. 72, to previous lecture. 15. The contemporary sculptured portraits of the three friends are among the most interesting personal memorials in the Cathedral. They occur at the extremities of the hood-mouldings of the four smaller arches of the octagon, opening obliquely into the aisles, which are finished with most vigorously carved heads. Two of these on the south-western arch are obviously grotesques, but the other six are as obviously portraits. The two heads on the north-eastern arch have always been said to be portraits of Queen Philippa and Edward III. ; on the south-eastern arch, of Bishop Hotham and Prior Crauden, and on the north-western arch of Alan de Walsingham, and of some secular personage with long hair, traditionally thought to be Alan's master mason, but whether Peter Quadratarius, or Thomas Attegrene, is not «52 said. All these heads, with one exception, alas ! are most life-like and characteristic. The heads of the king and queen and the master mason are specially vigorous : Bishop Hotham's is just such as we might expect in the portrait of a Lord Chancellor, who is declared by the historian to be " a prudent and pious man, but of no learning." The head of Prior Crauden too is especially delightful,- a strong, handsome face, dignified, benig- nant, pleasant, a full, frank, eloquent eye, a mouth intelligent and firm, and yet with a merry smile, lurking unmistakably in its corner, altogether such a man as we feel might not only rightly be Queen Philippa's friend, as the chronicler says, "propter amabilem et graciosam ipsius afFabilitatem et eloquentiam " (" Anglia Sacra," i. 650), but one also to whom, through twenty years of the loyal subordination due from Sacrist to Prior, the intrepid originality and genius of Alan might nevertheless look for the steady sympathy and ungrudging confidence of the friend and father. The one head, however, which one would most wish to see, that of Alan himself, is mutilated and spoilt. It is very disappointing. For one cannot help feeling that the vigorous hand of the sculptor, who has given us so life-like a picture of the Prior, must surely have intended to give us a worthy portrait of the bright, keen, sensitive artist face, as we must imagine it, of the man whom his contemporaries called " Flos operatorum vir venerabilis et artificiosus Frater." 16. "Anglia Sacra," i. 649, and a Roll of 18 Edward 11. (1325), where among the expenses of the year is an item showing that Prior Crauden's Chapel was being built at that time : — " In nova constructione Capellae et Camerae Domini Prioris cxxxviii. li. viii. s. v.d. In donis, x. li. xix s. iiii d. unde ad novam fabricam ecclesiae et capelloe vi. li." 17. The whole description in the "Anglia Sacra" of this model Prior, his benign government of the Convent, the saintliness and sweetness of his character, his nightly vigils in the little chapel, ^53 (rtofe0 (o Btdnu on his many prayers for the good of his church and brethren, his munificence, his princely hospitality, his learning, his stateliness and dignity, his friendship with Queen Philippa, is so touching, and written evidently with so tender and sympathetic a pen, that I cannot refrain from quoting the whole passage : — " Frater namque Johannes de Craudene, Prior Elyensis, dilectus Deo et hominibus, cujus memoria in benedictione sit sempiterna. Diebus enim suis cum omni pace et tranquillitate ac sacrae religionis dulcedine, sicut pastor pacificus, toto cordis conamine conventum suum tractavit caritative. Ipse enim fabricari fecit (Alanus de Walsingham) ad hospitium Prioris, novam capellam mirandi decoris, in qua Deo vota laudis ex afFectu reddit cordis ; ubi etiam nocturnuas excubias ac spirituales medi- tationes per dies et noctes frequentius exercebat. Nam sicut illi, qui continue secum erant a secretis, testati sunt, quod qualiter nocte consuevit assurgere et Capellam suam solus adire, nisi magna praepediretur infirmitate j ubi caepit diutius orare et preces Deo multiplices cum gemitu cordis efFerre : ac se et Ecclesiam suam et omnia Ecciesiae negotia Deo devote recommendare. Ipse autem pulcher erat aspectu et corpore formosus, ac in oculo omni apparuit gratiosus. Ita quod vener- abilis Domina Philippa, nobilis Anglorum Regina, ipsum in amicitiam prosclaram collegit et familiaritatem, tum propter amabilem et graciosam ipsius affabilitatem et eloquentiam, tum propter gratam et multum sibi acceptabilem in quodam adventu suo apud Ely susceptionem ac solempnem et splendidam mensalem procurationem, necnon et munerum magnorum in fine sibi et suis largicionem." 1 8. Anglia Sacra, i. 650. PRIOR CRAUDEN 19. The memorial slab to Bishop Hotham is new ; but the slab of Prior Crauden is the ancient slab from his altar tomb, which was removed by Bishop Gunning soon after the Restora- tion. Mr Hardman restored the brass and inscription upon the ancient matrix. 20. One of the most important of these possessions is that of the Manor of Mephale, which is also mentioned in Alan's epitaph. An extremely interesting Roll of 35 Edward III. (1361) gives full particulars of this purchase, and a complete list of the contributions by each monk in the convent towards the purchase-money, headed by the Prior. How keen the Con- vent must have been to secure this manor is evident from some of the items in the list of donations, e.g. ' de vestibus venditis,' and following entries. The Roll is headed : — "Pro perquisitione manerii de Mephale cum advocatione ecclesie et pro mortificatione ejusdem facienda." Reduced to the form of a modern Balance-Sheet, the Roll reads as follows : — Subscribers within the Convent. Alan de Walsingham, Prior, £66 13 4 Thos. de Stokton, sub-prior. 6 Robert de Sutton, sacrist, 8 13 4 Fr. Wm. Bordeleys, 13 4 Rd. de Ixworth, , 10 Fr. John de Welles, 2 Fr. Wm. de Spaldyng, ° 13 4 Fr. Peter de Norwych, I Fr. Robert de Ixworth, 10 Fr. John de St. Ives, 13 4 Fr. Wm. de Sneterton, 10 Fr. Roger de Hamerton, 10 ^55 QiottB (o Buiuvt on Fr. Henry de Wykes, £o lo o Fr. Wm. de Ryston, I o o Fr. Simon de Banneham, . o 13 4 Fr. John de Walsyngham, 13 4 Fr. Simon de Broughton, 10 Fr. Thomas de Aldeburgh, 200 Fr. Wm. de Aldeby, 10 Fr. John de Ely, . 100 Fr. William de Hadham, . 060 Fr. Wm. de Welles, 10 Fr. John de Bukton, 100 Fr. Thomas de Somersham, 068 Alii fratres de Conventu, 100 £986 But this is wrongly cast up in the Roll as . ^^97 6 o Other Donations {^Donationes Forinseca). Ecclesia de Sutton, . . . . ^^24 o o Extra Cancellariam,^^r manus Cancellariorum, . 600 Graciae fratris Ade de Lynstede, . . 24 o 12 Bladum Manerii de Mephale vendit, . . 20 o o John de Wesenham, . . . .1300 Juliana Hundreder pro pitancia Robt. quondam viri sui, . . . . .100 Alexander Wygeron, . . . . 200 John Deynes, Propositus de Sutton, . . 100 Symon West, „ Wycham, . . o 13 4 Fr. John de Gernewelle pro pedis argenti furatis, o 13 4 John Lyomis, ". . . . .100 Fr. Thos. de Bytham, pro pitancia sua, . . 100 Laurence de Conwye, pro cipho suo, . . 0134 156 Ofan U lX}dBiYi$^cm Legacy by William de Stantestede, „ William West, „ Thos., clericus Johannis Brisote, de vestibus fr. Rd. de Soham venditis, de 12 pedis et 22 coclearibus argent, venditis ex Refectorio de consensu Prioris et Conventus, de 5 veteribus Cyphis murreis vendit ex Refector, cum cypho fFris Rt. de Bury, Extra Thesaurariam Prioris et conventus. Extra eandem Thesaurariam, pro I messuagio et placea vacua perquirendis de Thos. Chene in Mephale, £500 100 13 4 1 8 5 II 19 5 280 23 6 8 10 17 2 Total Receipts, . ;^254 o o Expenses. Perquisitio manerii de Mephale. To Master Thos. de Elteslee, Senior, Rector Ecclesie de Landbeche and Dns. Nicholas West, Rect. of S. Andrew Hyston, attorneys of Sir Henry Coleville, Ad vendendum maner' de Meph. cum advoca- tione ecclesie post mortem diet. Sir Henry — pro perquisitione diet, maner' et advocationis una cum stauro et blado in diet, manerio existentibus et ad diet, maner. pertinentibus . . . (pro bladis et stauro, ;^3o) . . ;£'236 13 4 (Salva dominae Johannae nuper uxori dni Willi de Colne militis quadam annua pensione 20 mar- carum argent, pereipiend. annuatim ad totam vitam diet. Johannae.) To John Chene for messuage and vacant place in Mephale, quondam Willi Muchet, . . 500 ^57 QlottB (o &utuxt on Pro tnortijicatione manerii. Wm. de Wysbeche going to London and back for a brief (the brief was l8d.) ' ad quod damnum' with horse and boy, 5 days, . . . £0 7 5I Wm. de Wysbeche going to London and back con- ferring with the king's Escaetor, giving him the brief and inquiring its virtue, 7 days, . o 7 llj Soluti clerico Escaetoris pro dicto precepto habendo Ballivo Libertatis, . • . 020 Fratres Robt. de Sutton (sacrist) and John de Ives, senior, going to Waterbeach to Escaetor "ad inquirendum virtute brevis et pro hominibus de Jurati, . . . . .198^ To the clerk, Roger de Harleston ' scribenti vere- dictum Inquisitionis, . . . 020 Wm. de Storford Escaetor of the king ' pro labore suo ' (preter i. pipam vini de Ely), . . 200 Wm. de Repynghall, his clerk, . . . 0134 Philip Norman, Ballivus Libertatis, . . 0134 " Famulis eorundem," . . . .020 Dati hominibus de Inquisitione, . . . 2 15 o Robt. de Sutton and Wm. de Wysbeche going to London and back " pro carta dmi. Regis impetrand. de licencia perquirendi diet, maner., de Willo de Wysbeche capellano et Rd. de Warenton, clerk," . . o 13 4 Soluti diversis clericis de cancellaria et aliis hom- inibus auxil pro copia inquisitionis habenda extracancellariam et pro predict, carta licencie habenda et scribenda, . . . o 12 10 Dno. David WoUor pro auxilio suo, . . 100 pro feodo diet, carte de licencia habend. in cancellaria 168 I hanaper pro dicta carta custodienda, . . 003 ^5^ Wm. de Wysbeche going to Cambridge ad loquend cum Joh. Chene pro tenemento ab eo empto, ..... £o Total expenses . £2$^ ip " Et de 5^d. quos soluit super computum et quietus est." 21. The epitaph of Alan de Walsingham is quoted by Wharton in the " Anglia Sacra," i. 684, word for word as I have given it in the text of my Lecture. He places it beneath the title — " Epitaphium tumulo illius inscriptum sequitur," The words, however, seem to be part of a still larger fragment of verse, quoted, with variations and omissions in several of the MS. copies of the " Historia Eliensis." The most complete form is as follows : — Hsc sunt Elys, Lanterna, Capella Maris, Atque Molendinum, mulmm dans vinea Vinum. Continet insontes, quos valiant undique pontes Hos ditant montes, nee desunt flumina, fontes. Nomen ab anguilla . Insula nobilis ilia. Vos qui regnorum vidistis opus variorum Hunc scitote Chorum pre cunctis esse decorum, Quern frater Alanus fecit Constructor humanus Tunc Sacrista pius, nunc Prior egregius, Flos operatorum ... etc (as in text of lecture). The first four lines of this poem are quoted by Wharton as a motto on the back of the title page of the " Historia Eliensis," i. 592, with a title " Carmen Anonymi Historise Eliensis prae- missum ; " and the concluding lines " Flos operatorum," etc., as I have said, as Alan's epitaph on page 684. The copy in the British Museum (MS. Cotton, Titus Al) quotes the first two lines and the fourth, omitting the third, and then, after a blank space of five lines, proceeds with the epitaph " Flos oper- atum . . ." INDEX Abbotts of Ely, xviL-xxxix., sove- reign rights, 2 1 Abingdon, 107 * Acts of the Saint,' sculptures, 1 6, 17, 70, 85 ; 1 5th century painting, 84, 85, 86 Acta Sanctorum, 56 ^deldrethestowe, 76 ^Iflaed, the Lady, xxii., 89, 90 ; the Ely tapestry, 9 1 ^Ifnoth, 90 ^theldrytha, see Etheldreda. ^thelwold, Bishop of Winchester, XX., 21, 26, 100 Alan de Walsinghara, 97 ; birth, 98; monk at Ely, 98, 141; sacrist, 98, 108, 115, 123 ; prior, 98, 1 30 ; fall of great tower, 124; building of octagon, 125-135; his death, 139; epitaph, 139, 159; portrait, 153 Alban, S., his shrine, 41 Aldred, 1 2, see Etheldreda Alfred, King, 26 Amyot, John, 130 Andecta Anglo- Saxonica, 89 Anglia Christiana Society, 55 Anna, King, 14; death, 15, 69 Apse, Norman, of choir, 34 Athelstane, King, 26 L I Athelstane, Bishop, xx., 91 Attagrene, John, master mason, 1 30, Augustine, Saint, of Canterbury, 1 2 Awdrey, Saint, see Etheldreda Awdrey's, S., Well, 83, 84 B Babington, C. C, ancient Cam- bridgeshire, 53 Bacon, Roger, 98 Balsham, Bishop Hugo de, xxx., his seal, 94 Barnett, Bishop, 147 Barton farm and S. Awdrey's Well, 84 Becket, Archbishop Thomas, his name erased in Ely MS., 55 Bede, the Venerable, 12, 13, 23; poem on S. Awdrey, 1 3 Bells, 150, 151 Benedictine rules, 107 Benedict, S., 80 Bentham, Mr, 92 Bishops of Ely, xvii.-xxxix., sove- reign rights, 21, 22 BoUandus, 58 Botolph, Saint, 9 Brandon, 99 Bread, 113 Bridget, S., her house at Kildare, 1 8 61 3^^^;^ Brie, Monastery, i8 Brithmer, the Ceorl, and King Cnut's sledge, 5, 52 Brithnoth, Ealdorman, 29, 88, 89, 90, 92 ; his great size, 93 ; death words, 30, 90 ; benefactions, 30, 89 Brithnoth, first abbott, 29 Bruce, Robert, 98, 99 Brunelleschi, 129 Brythstan, story of his remarkable release, 78, 79, 80 Bucton, Prior John, xxxiv. Burwell, John of, 124 Byrtwold, 90 Cambridge, 99 Camerarius, 100, 143 Capgrave, life of S. Awdrey, 66 Catharine's, S., chapel, xxvii. Cellerarius, loi, 107,108, iii, 143 Chad, S., 20 Chancellor to King, 29 Charters, early, 88 Chatteris, 59, 79 Chaucer, 98, 120 Chelles, monastery of, 1 5, 1 8 Cnut, Danish King, visits Ely, 5, 30; his song, 49, 50, ji, 52 Coldingham, 16 Cotton MSS., 14, 66 County Palatine, 21 Crauden, Prior, 115, 135, 136, 137. 138. 152. 154 Crowland, 9, 11, 25 Custos Capellx S. Marix, 116, 1 43 Cuthbert, Saint, 1 2 16 D Danelaw, the, 88 Dante, 98, 120 Deanery, 114, 136 Debenham, 30 Diet Rolls, 108, III, 112, 114 Ditton, 91 Domesday Book, 12 Drayton's Polyolbion, 53 Dugdale's Embanking, 52 Dunstan, S., xviii., 26, 29, 89 Durham Rites, 105 Eadgar the Peaceful, xviii., 21, 26 ; his charter, 29, 33 Eadward the Confessor, 30, 33 Ealdormen, 88, 89 Eanfled, 69 Eanswith, Patron Saint of Folke- stone, 69 Earconbert, 69, 70 Ebba, Abbess, 16 Ecgrice, 15, 68 Ecgfrid, second husband of S. Awdrey, 15, i6, 69 Edilbrihtus of Kent, 54, 69 Ednodus, 91 Edwin, 15, 68 Elemosinarius, 143 Elfgar, 91 Elsin, Abbott, 91 Ely Chapel, Holborn, 1 36 Ely, derivation of name, 9, 10, 54 ; destruction by Danes, 25 Ely, Isle of, extent of, 6, 7, 8, 21 3nbe;c Ely, monastery, ancient church built by Augustine, ii, 54; Porta, xxxiv., xxxv. Emma, Queen, xxii., 30, 49 Eormenilda, 24, 37, 69, 123 Etheldreda, Saint, name, 1 2 ; born, 14; baptized, 14; first marriage, 15; second marriage, 15, 70; takes veil, 16, 72; flight from Coldingham, 17, 73 ; her staff, buds and bears fruit, 17, 74,75 ; founds religious house at Ely, 1 7 ; her death, 23, 77, 82, 83; her first translation, 23, 24, 81, 82 ; her shrine, 24, 25, 26, 81, 137 ; her second translation, 34; her third translation, 37 ; her genea- logy, 69 Ethelfled, 26, 69 Ethelhere, 66, 69 Ethelred, King, 30, 69 Exning, birthplace of S. Awdrey, 14 Fair Hall, The, 136 Fakenham, 99 Felix, Bishop of Dunwich, 14 Felix of Crowland, 54 Fen scenery, 2, 6, 8, 9, 52, 53, 81 Fenland, 53 Feretrarius, 143 Fontevrault, 18 Franchise, Royal, of Isle of Ely, 2.1 Fratry House, or Refectory, 114 Freeman, Professor, 33, 38, 93, 94, 125, 126, 129 Frideswide, S., 48, 67 Fuller, Thos.,on tawdry chains, 81 ; on Ely feasts, 114; on octagon bells, i$o Fynkel, Masga de, wine merchant, 113 Galilee Porch, xxviii., xxix. Galilee Transept, 37 Gent Hall, 136 Giotto, 98 Glastonbury, 29 Godfrey, Prior, 94 Goodrich, Bishop, 42, 55 Goodwin, Dean, on the bells, 1 50, 151 Granatarius, 112, 143 Grantchester, 82 Gregory, Monk of Ely, his verses on S. Awdrey, 14, 66 Guest Hall, The, no, 136 Guthlac, Saint, 9 H Haddenham, 87 Hardy, Sir T. D., Descriptive Catalogue, 55, 66 Hartshorne, Mr Albert, 85 Helfwin, Bp., 91 Henry II. at Ely, xxvi., 41 Henry III., xxviii. Herbert of Losinga, 34 Hereric, 66, 69 Hereswitha, 14, 66, 69 Hereward, i, 33, 94 ^2, Jnbe;: Hervey, Bishop, xxyi., 54, 58, 59, 60 Hexham, Church of, 1 2 Hilda, Abbess of Whitby, 12, 14, 18,67,69 Historical MSS. Commission, Re- port of, 55 Holborn, 113 Hortillarius, 143 Hotham, Bp,, xxxii., 135, 137 Houk, WiUiam de, 130 Hugo de Balsham, cf. Balsham Hugo de Northwold, cf. Northwold Huna, Saint, 9, 78 Iconography of Lady Chapel, 119 Isle of Ely, cf. Ely Infirmary, xxvii., xxix. James, Dr Montagu, book, on Lady Chapel, 119 John of Beverley, 1 2 John de Fontibus, xxviii. K Kerrick, Mr^ Librarian, 85 Kinefrid, physician to S. Awdrey, 78,82 Kilkenny, Bp., xxx. Kirkeby, Bp., xxxii. Lady Chapel, the, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120; sculpture, 147 Lambeth Sign Book, 112, 113 Lightfoot, Bishop, his " Northern Church," 67 Liber Eliens'u, 11, 33 ; description of, 54, 55, 56 ; Bollandist Copy, 56, 57, 58 ; titles of chapters in IIL Book, 58, 66 Liberty of Etheldreda in Suffolk, 23 ; appointment of Coroner by Dean and Chapter, 23 Liberty of the Isle, 21, 22 Longchamp, Bishop, xxviii. Luda, de, Bishop, xxxii. M Magee, Archbishop, his sermon on S. Awdrey, 17 Malarte, Robert, 79 Maiden, Battle of, 29; Ballad of, 92 Malvesy wine, 1 1 3 Matilda, Queen, 80 Mepal, 155 Mercia, 1 5, 68, 69 Minutio, the blood-letting, 105, 106, 107, III Montacute, Bp., xxxiv. Morris, William, 123 Morton, Bp., xxxvi. N Nigel, Bishop, xxvi., 54, 56, 61, 62, 63, 65 Northwold,' Hugo de, Bishop, XXX., 37, 38, 41 ; his Chantrey, 38 ; his seal, 94 164 3nbej»; Obedientary Rolls, lOO, 143, 155 Octagon, the, 1 25-1 35 ; construc- tion, 1 48- 1 50 "OetOlla," 105, 144, 145 Olaf, 89 "Q Sapientia!" I05 Osmund, Swedish Bp., 91 Oswald, 15 Oswy, King of Northumbria, 15, 68,69 Ovin, Saint, his cross, 19, 87 ; house-thegn of S. Awdrey, 20, 86 ; with S, Chad, 20, 86 Palmer's Way, 99, 100 Penda, King of Mercia, 11, 15, 68 Peterborough, 10, 25, 126 Petrarch, 98 Philippa, Queen, 1 36 ; portrait sculpture, 152 Pilgrim's Staff, budding of, 76 Pitanciarius, 143 Portus Pusiilus, 49 Precentor, 1 43 Presbytery, the, xxxi., 38, 41, 43, Prior's Hall, the Old, xxv., 136 Priors of Ely, xxvii.-xxxix., sove- reign rights, 21, 22 Pugin, Welby, 120 R Ramsey, 9 ; Abbot of, 52, 89 Rattendune, 91 Reliquary, silver, 42 Repauiatio Etheldredce, 76 Reredos, modern, by Sir Gilbert Scott, 43 ' Richard, Abbott, 34 Ridel, Geoffrey, Bishop, 37 Rosarius, 143 Rolls of Monastery, 100, 143 Rowe, Mr Reynolds, plans of Octagon, 131 Ruskin, Seven Lamps, 97, 1 23, 140 Quadratarius, Peter, 130, 153 Sacrist, 143 San Sophia, 126 Sawtrey, 9 Saxon Church, 34 Scharf, Sir George, 85 Sculptures, "Acts of the Saint" in Octagon, 16, 17 ; full descrip- tion, 72-86 Sexburga, 15, 23, 37, 69, 77, 81, 124 Shrine, S. Awdrey's, 23, 25, 26, 30. 34. 37» 41. 42, 43> 137 Sigebert, 15, 68 Simeon, Abbott, xxv., 33, 34, 94; fall of his tower, 123 Skeat, Professor, Note on Cnut's Song, 49, 50, 51 Soham, 91 Spalding, Richard of, 10 1 I Spinney, 9 165 'JnUjc Stanley, Dean, on Shrine of Becket, 44.94 Stephen, King, Charters, 6i, 62, Stewart, Canon, 5$ ; his architec- tural History of Ely, 94, 131 Stukely, Dr, 87 Subscription List of Monks, 155 T'awdry chains, story of, 79, 80, 81 Theodwyn, Abbott, 42, 94 Thesaurarius, 143 Thomas, Monk of Ely, 1 1 Thorney, 9 Thorpe, Mr, "Analecta Anglo- Saxonica," 89 Thurstan, Abbott, 33, 94 Tondbert, first husband of S. Awdrey, 14, 15, 87 Van Eyck, 85 W Walkelin, Abbott of Winchester, 33 Walmer, 90 Walsingham, Alan de, cf. Alan Walsingham Green Way, 99,. lOO Walsingham, Our Lady of, 99, lOO Wentworth, 113 Werburga, 24, 37, 69 West, Bp., his Chapel, 92 Westminster, 80 West Wratting, xxii., 30 Wikings, the Danish, 25 Wikings, the Norwegian, 29 Wilfrid of York, 5, 12, 16, 20, 21, 71, 72. 77 Winford, 87 Winwaed, battle of, 15, 68 Wisbech, John de, 146 Wren, Sir Christopher, xxxix. Wright's Biographia Britt. Liter- aria, Vol. I., 54 Wulstan, Archbp.; 91 166 1 JL'L m ^Xs ^^K^^ mi PRINTED EY TURNBULL AND SPEARS. EDINBURGH