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THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
SHRINK OF EDWARD THK CON FI-'.SSOK. 
 
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 Milliam HnDrews. 
 
 LONDON : 
 WILLIAM ANDREWS & CO., 5, FARRINGDON AVENUE. 
 
 1S98. 
 
preface. 
 
 THIS volume of new studies on old subjects 
 is sent forth with a hope that it will form 
 an acceptable contribution to the history of the 
 Church of England. 
 
 My thanks are tendered to my contributors 
 for their valuable co-operation cheerfully given. 
 Special mention must be made of my friend, the 
 Rev. Geo. S. Tyack, b.a., who has written largely 
 for my pages, and has ever been ready to assist 
 me in solving obscure points in my studies. 
 
 Mr. Chas. J. Clark, publisher, London, has 
 kindly placed at my disposal the charming pictures 
 which appear on pages tf and 41 ; the Rev. 
 Francis Haslewood, f.s.a., the one inserted on 
 page 203 ; the Rev. J. B. Clare, b.a., the one 
 which appears on page 217; and to these gentlemen 
 I am greatly obliged. The illustrations of the 
 article by Mr. T. Tindall Wildridge are mainly 
 from his own drawings. 
 
 In conclusion I have only to add that if the 
 work wins a welcome similar to that accorded to 
 my previous productions, prepared on the same 
 plan, I shall have every reason to feel grateful. 
 
 William Andrews. 
 The Hull Press. 
 
Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Stave-Kirks. By the Rev. Geo. S. Tyack, b.a. - - - I 
 Curious Churches in Cornwall. By the Rev. W. S. Lach- 
 
 Szyrma, M.A. - - - - - - - - 21 
 
 Holy Wells. By Cuming Walters 29 
 
 Hermits and Hermit-Cells. By the Rev. J. Hudson Barker, 
 
 b.a. 68 
 
 Church Wakes 97 
 
 Fortified Church Towers. By William Andrews - - 105 
 The Knights Templars : their Churches and their Privi- 
 leges. By J. Rogers Rees 112 
 
 English Medieval Pilgrimages. By W. H. Thompson - 129 
 
 PILGRIMS' Signs. By the Rev. Geo. S. Tyack, b.a. - - 145 
 Human Skin on Church Doors. By the Rev. Geo. S. 
 
 Tyack, B.A. 158 
 
 Animals ok the Church, in Wood, Stone, and Bronze. 
 
 By T. Tindall Wildridge 168 
 
 Queries in Stones. By the Rev. Francis Haslewood, f.s.a. - 201 
 
 Pictures in Churches. By the Rev. Geo. S. Tyack, b.a. - 205 
 Flowers and the Rites of the Church. By the Rev. 
 
 Hilderic Friend --------- 227 
 
 Ghost-Layers and Ghost-Laying. By the Rev. R. Wilkins Rees 241 
 
 Church Walks. By the Rev. W. B. Russell Caley, M.A. - 269 
 
 The Westminster Wax- Works. By William Andrews - - 275 
 
 Index 297 
 
THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 5tave*1kirfcs. 
 
 By Rev. G. S. Tyack, b.a. 
 
 IN architecture, " wood should be used exter- 
 nally only on the smallest and least 
 monumental class of buildings," and that from the 
 fact that it is " dark in colour, liable to warp and 
 split, and combustible." So we read in a standard 
 work on the art, and the propriety of the state- 
 ment will be generally admitted. Yet in any 
 primitive society, surrounded by abundant growing 
 timber, and supplied only with rude tools, wood 
 must almost invariably be more commonly used 
 as a building material than stone or brick. Its 
 readiness to hand, the comparative ease of 
 working it, and, when wrought into serviceable 
 lengths, of transporting it, would all be arguments 
 in its favour ; while its want of durability would 
 be little felt by a race, which, having no certain 
 records of a remote past, was correspondingly 
 unaccustomed to provide for a distant future. 
 
2 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 It would be a mistake, however, to conclude 
 that only people in the rudest state reared wooden 
 buildings. In every country, and at every time, 
 the country districts, remote from the wealth and 
 from the art of the more populous centres, are 
 compelled by want of means, in cases where the 
 resources of the peasantry only can be relied 
 upon, to employ such local materials as are the 
 cheapest ; and in their simplicity they are content 
 therewith. Thus it happens that in every land 
 that was, or is, rich in forests, we find traces of 
 timber erections in the past, and even in the 
 present instances of them, more or less numerous 
 in proportion as the growth of civilization has left 
 untouched the simple tastes of the people, and the 
 spread of population has not encroached upon the 
 primeval woods. 
 
 The building of wooden churches is, perhaps, 
 the most striking illustration of this position, in 
 that the faithful of all times and climes have been 
 wont to bestow upon their sanctuaries the highest 
 efforts of their art. Yet the earliest Christians of 
 Cyrene, situated as they were amid the deserts of 
 Libya, far removed from quarries, or indeed from 
 trees of any magnitude, built or wove their 
 churches, according to the testimony of Sulpicius 
 
STAVE-KIRKS. 3 
 
 Severus, at the beginning of the fifth century, of 
 small rods or withes. 
 
 Similarly we are not surprised to find in 
 countries like Norway and Russia, countries no 
 less noted for the abundance of their forests than 
 for the primitive simplicity of their peasantry, 
 that wooden churches are far from being 
 uncommon even to this day, although they are 
 now rapidly giving place to more durable 
 structures. 
 
 In the former country there are several 
 examples dating from the eleventh and twelfth 
 centuries, and of a quaintly barbaric style of 
 architecture. One at Urnes is remarkable for 
 having on its external timbers much characteristic 
 runic carving, such as is frequently found on 
 monumental stones in northern Europe, but has 
 survived in wood only in this, and a few other 
 Norwegian churches. Urnes Church measures 
 only sixty-five feet by twenty-four, and in this 
 respect is not greatly different from the other 
 village churches of the same class, all beino- but 
 small. The largest, and one of the most curious 
 of them, is at Hitterdal, and measures eighty- 
 seven feet by fifty-seven. Its extraordinary 
 conglomeration of roofs, pinnacles, and gables, is 
 
4 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 utterly unlike anything civil or ecclesiastical with 
 which the rest of the western world is familiar, 
 and suggests a Chinese pagoda rather than a 
 Christian church. A still more fantastic example 
 is at Burgund. 
 
 The wooden churches of Russia, of which 
 there are many in the villages, are constructed, 
 like Canadian log-huts, of round logs laid one on 
 another horizontally, the only dignified feature of 
 their exterior being the bulb-shaped dome, found 
 everywhere in the country, from the cathedrals of 
 the Kremlin, to . the humblest hamlet church. 
 There is a good mediaeval example near Kostroma, 
 in Eastern Russia, where the aisles are separated 
 from the nave by wooden pillars with square 
 capitals, the nave itself being covered with a 
 " waggon " roof. 
 
 Turning now to our own country, and recalling 
 the fact that it, too, was once clothed with wide- 
 spreading forests, and inhabited even in Christian 
 times by a simple-minded people, whose inter- 
 course with the more cultured continent was but 
 slight, we rather expect than otherwise to find 
 evidence of an equally primitive style of architec- 
 ture. And the evidence forthcoming is abundant. 
 
 In Roman Britain, as we know, there were 
 
STAVE-KIRKS. 
 
 some few stone churches, for we have probable 
 remains of them in Canterbury and at Dover ; 
 but it is noteworthy that such remains are confined 
 to the south-east corner of the country, where 
 
 HITTERDAI- CHUKCH, NORWAY. 
 
 continental influence would be most felt. The 
 Venerable Bede speaks of a time " when there 
 was not a stone church in all the land, but the 
 
6 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 custom was to build them all of wood." It may 
 be that his statement is too sweeping, but doubt- 
 less it was literally true of Northern England and 
 Southern Scotland, the districts with which the 
 saintly monk of Jarrow was most intimately 
 familiar. 
 
 Legend has it that the first Christian church 
 built in the island was a wattle shed, erected by 
 S. Joseph of Arimathsea at Glastonbury ; and 
 another legend tells of a church made of boughs 
 only, wherein lay the body of S. Cuthbert, until 
 so much of the stately Cathedral of Durham was 
 completed as to allow of his relics being translated 
 thither. The site of the earlier shrine, immediately 
 beneath the east-front of the cathedral, is still 
 occupied by a little church, S. Mary-le-bow, that 
 is, according to this rather doubtful derivation, 
 S. Mary of the boughs. 
 
 More definite evidence is borne by our early 
 ecclesiastical historians. Bede tells us that 
 Edwin, King of Northumbria, having been 
 converted by the preaching of S. Paulinus, " was 
 baptized at York, on the holy day of Easter 
 (A.D. 627), being the 12th day of April, in the 
 Church of S. Peter the Apostle, which he himself 
 had built of timber, whilst he was being catechised 
 
STAVE-KIRKS. 7 
 
 and instructed for baptism. In that city also he 
 appointed the seat of the bishopric of his teacher 
 and bishop, Paulinus. But as soon as he was 
 baptized, he took care, by the advice of the said 
 Paulinus, to build in the same place a larger and 
 nobler church of stone, in the midst whereof that 
 same oratory which he had first erected should be 
 enclosed." 
 
 The same writer records that when Finan 
 succeeded S. Aidan in 652 as Bishop of Lindis- 
 farne, he built a church in the island ; " Yet, after 
 the manner of the Scots, he made it, not of stone, 
 but of hewn oak, and covered it with reeds." 
 Subsequently Eadbert, who became bishop in 
 688, "took off the thatch, and covered it, both 
 roof and walls, with plates of lead." 
 
 William of Malmsbury makes mention of a 
 wooden church, or stave-kirk, as the old English 
 name was, at Dutlinge, in Somersetshire; and of 
 the same material were reared the earliest monastic 
 establishments of the country with their churches. 
 Ingulphus tells us that Croyland Abbey was 
 originally built of logs and planks, joined and 
 worked with great skill and accuracy, and roofed 
 with lead. King Alfred's abbey - church at 
 Aethelingey was of timber ; and King Edgar in 
 
8 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 a charter granted to Malmsbury Abbey, expresses 
 his intention, as a thank-offering for the prosperity 
 given him by God, of restoring " the sacred 
 monasteries in which, they being composed of 
 rotten shingles and worm-eaten boards, divine 
 service was neglected." Canute granted a charter 
 in 1032 to the Abbey of Glastonbury, which was 
 given " in the wooden church in the King's 
 presence." 
 
 The nomenclature of a few places seems to point 
 to the existence of stave-kirks. The venerable 
 Bede explains the name of Whitherne, or White 
 House (Candida Casa), in Galloway, by the fact 
 that S. Ninian built there a stone church, the 
 whiteness of the newly-cut stone being in marked 
 contrast to the darker timber structures with which 
 the folk were familiar. S. Ninian, who built this 
 church in 397, had been educated in Rome, and 
 was the friend of S. Martin of Tours ; hence his 
 knowledge of the use of stone was gained abroad, 
 and he is even said to have obtained masons from 
 Tours to undertake the work. In Cheshire and 
 in Kent we have villages named Woodchurch, 
 and in Yorkshire a Woodkirk, both of which 
 terms, although they may possibly mean the 
 " Church in the wood," seem more probably to 
 
STAVE-KIRKS. 
 
 point to the existence of wooden churches, perhaps 
 at a time sufficiently late to make them somewhat 
 remarkable. 
 
 Another illustration of the prevalence in primi- 
 tive times of wooden architecture is provided by 
 
 early stone work, 
 which is formed on 
 obviously wooden 
 ^ J designs. There are 
 tombs in Egpyt 
 whose walls are 
 simply a reproduc- 
 tion of square 
 beams placed side 
 by side perpen- 
 dicularly.and others 
 in Lycia in which 
 the very mortices 
 Jp and pins of a timber 
 structure are im- 
 chukch tower, eari.s nARTON. itated in the more 
 
 durable material. But examples more cognate to 
 our subject are supplied by some of the church 
 towers of Saxon times. The fine tower of Earl's 
 Barton Church, in Northamptonshire, is a case in 
 point. The long pilaster-like slips and the 
 
io THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 transverse bars distinctly suggest the bracing of 
 a timber building, and the balusters of the windows 
 look far more like the work of the turner than of 
 the mason. Somewhat similar " turned " work 
 may be seen in the doorway of Monkwearmouth 
 Church, erected in the seventh century by Benedict 
 Biscop, and the "timber-bracing" decoration occurs 
 again in the tower of S. Peter's, at Barton-on- 
 Humber, Lincolnshire. It thus appears evident 
 that our forefathers were so far familiar with 
 stave-kirks of some pretentions to size and dignity, 
 that even when intercourse with the continent had 
 taught them to rise a step higher in architectural 
 art and to build in stone, it was still some time 
 before they could throw aside the models to which 
 custom had wedded them, and before they learnt 
 the capabilities of the new material. 
 
 Records are found of the existence of stave-kirks 
 in various places, besides those very early ones to 
 which reference has been made. Domesday Book 
 tells of one at Bigland, in Yorkshire, and there 
 were others at North Elmham and at Shernbourn, 
 in Norfolk. A wooden chapel survived at Bury 
 S. Edmund's until 1303; S. Aldhelm's, Durham, 
 standing in 998, the Ladye Chapel at Tykford, 
 and that at Spalding so late as 1059, were all of 
 
STAVE-KIRKS. u 
 
 wood ; as also, to name a continental instance, 
 was S. Stephen's at Mayence in ioii. 
 
 So far no allusion has been made to existing 
 examples of the stave-kirk in England, yet there 
 are several such, among which the right of priority 
 
 GREKNSTKAD CHURCH, A.D. IOI3 (AS IT WAS IN 1748) 
 
 " Vetusta Monumenta." 
 
 on the grounds both of antiquity and interest must 
 be given to the little Church of Greenstead, in 
 Essex. This curious survival of a distant age is 
 said to have been constructed in the first place as 
 a temporary shrine for the relics of S. Edmund, 
 
12 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 the king and martyr. The story of the various 
 translations of these relics brings to our notice 
 more than one wooden church. The saintly king 
 was done to death by the heathen Danes on the 
 20th day of November, 870, and his body was 
 first laid to rest in a wooden chapel at Hoxne in 
 Suffolk, where it lay " in terra defossus " until 903, 
 when it was taken, as yet untainted by decay, to a 
 splendid shrine in a larger wooden church at 
 Bedrichesworth, thenceforth known as Bury S. 
 Edmunds. Another incursion of the Danes under 
 Turkill, in 1010, drove the monks of Bury from 
 their house, and they took with them in their 
 flight to London, as the most precious of their 
 possessions the relics of Edmund the " kyng, 
 martyr, and virgyne." Three years later they 
 were able to make their way back to their monas- 
 tery along the ancient road which ran from London 
 to Bury through Oldford, Abridge, Stapleford, 
 Greenstead, Dunmow, and Clare ; and it was 
 during this journey that, according to an apparently 
 well-grounded tradition, the wooden shrine at 
 Greenstead was erected. The manuscript Life 
 and Passion of Saint Edmund (now in Lambeth 
 Palace Library) asserts that " a certain resting- 
 place near Stapleford received his body on 
 
STAVE-KIRKS. 13 
 
 its return from London," and another ancient 
 account says that it "rested near Aungre (Chipping 
 Ongar), where a wooden chapel remains to this 
 day in memory of S. Edmund." 
 
 The original chapel was only twenty-nine feet 
 nine inches long by fourteen feet wide. A few 
 courses of brick form the groundwork, and on 
 these are placed rough-hewn timbers, consisting 
 of half-logs placed perpendicularly. At the top 
 these logs are cut away to thin edges which 
 fit into a groove in upper transverse beams which 
 bear the roof. The wood is still sound though so 
 time-worn that authorities differ as to its being 
 oak or chestnut. The tower, built of horizontal 
 timbers is of a later date, and the brick chancel 
 dates only from Tudor times. There is no sign 
 of any window having been allowed for in the 
 original building, the former windows in the roof, 
 with the present roof, being no part of the pre- 
 Norman structure. There may have been an 
 east window, which was removed when the 
 chancel was added ; or, if the little chapel was at 
 first intended only as a temporary shelter for the 
 body of S. Edmund, it may have been actually 
 windowless at the first. The porch and two stout 
 buttresses are also modern additions to this 
 
14 
 
 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 simplest of churches, which evidently had in its 
 first state no attempt at decoration of any kind. 
 
 In Cheshire are several important and interest- 
 ing examples of stave-kirks, although none 
 can compete with Greenstead in antiquity. 
 Lower Peover has one dating from the days of 
 Henry II., formed of crossed timbers and plaster- 
 
 LOWER I'EOVER CHURCH. 
 
 work. It has a nave and aisles, and a chancel 
 with aisles, the tower alone not being of timber. 
 Marton Church, built in the fourteenth century, 
 does not admit even of this exception, being 
 wholly of wood ; oak columns separate the nave 
 from the aisles, and oak arches bear up the 
 timbers of the roof. The belfry, within which 
 
STAVE-KIRKS. 
 
 l 5 
 
 hang three bells dating respectively from 1598, 
 1663, and 1758, is a most skilful application of 
 the material employed to the necessary purposes 
 of stability and strength. 
 
 Chadkirk, also in Cheshire, was probably 
 originally a building of similar construction, but 
 in successive alterations and repairs stone has 
 pushed out the earlier wood, though the porch, 
 
 
 
 >.ii s '" 
 
 MAKTON CHURCH. 
 
 the bell-cote, and most of the east wall are still of 
 wood, and the east window retains its wooden 
 mullions. 
 
 We open a wide field, however, when we touch 
 on churches partially of wood. In former times 
 the English carpenters, artists in wood they 
 might more strictly be called were pre-eminent, 
 
i6 
 
 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 as witness some of the splendid wooden roofs, 
 and other architectural details that have come 
 down to our own days. The roofs of Peter- 
 borough and Ely cathedrals, the stalls at Salisbury, 
 the dean's cloisters at Windsor, the screens in the 
 Palace Chapel at Chichester, and in S. John's 
 Hospital, Winchester, all amply attest the skill of 
 the English craftsman in bygone days. It was 
 
 rtfe- 
 
 CHADKIRK CHURCH. 
 
 natural, therefore, that such skill should frequently 
 have been called into play in those, and other 
 ways, in the building of churches. 
 
 In Essex we find some striking instances of 
 wooden spires. At Blackmore is one built in 
 three diminishing stages, the two upper ones of 
 timber, laid horizontally in the topmost, and 
 
STAVE-KIRKS. 
 
 19 
 
 perpendicularly in the middle stage. Each storey 
 has a projecting roof, and the whole is crowned 
 with a spire. Antiquaries have suggested that 
 the tower of the neighbouring: church of Mar- 
 garetting may have been designed by the same 
 architect, the external form being to some extent 
 similar, and the internal arrangement of timbers 
 so as to secure the 
 utmost strength being 
 equally ingenious. Stock 
 Church, also in Essex, 
 has another instance of 
 a cleverly constructed 
 wooden tower. 
 
 Ribbesford, in Wor- 
 cestershire, has wooden 
 arcades in the nave ; 
 and the churches of 
 Newland, in the same 
 county, and of Newtown 
 in Montgomeryshire, are both largely of wood. 
 The number of wooden porches and lychgates of 
 the country, many of them excellent in design, is 
 legion. 
 
 Many of our stave-kirks were doubtless taken 
 down to make way for noble structures of stone, 
 
 TIMBER WORK OF TOWER OF MARGARETTING 
 CHURCH. 
 
20 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 but naturally the action of the weather on timbers 
 not always perfectly seasoned has destroyed many, 
 and fire has accounted for the destruction of not 
 a few. The knowledge that most of the churches 
 of the time were but wooden buildings will explain 
 the wholesale burning of them, which the Danish 
 marauders accomplished apparently so easily, 
 when they descended on the eastern counties. 
 And the wonder is that so many traces of the 
 simple stave-kirks of our forefathers should have 
 weathered so succesfully the storms of time. 
 
T 
 
 Curious Cburcbes of Cornwall. 
 
 By Rev. W. S. Lach-Szyrma, m.a. 
 HERE are few counties in England where 
 
 we can better study the past in the present 
 than in Cornwall. Side by side we see the last 
 improvements in machinery in the mines, and the 
 monuments of the most remote antiquity, perhaps, 
 the new school of antiquaries say, as old as the 
 Father of History, or indeed a great deal older, 
 for they belong to the Bronze or later Stone age 
 before the Aryan Celts had come to this part of 
 Western Europe, and when a sort of broad-headed 
 Lappish savages inhabited the Cornish moorlands 
 and the English forests. In fact, in Cornwall you 
 find remains which elsewhere in England are 
 curious and very rare indeed. Why ? 
 
 I. The granite of Cornwall is one of the most 
 enduring of stones. What is made of it may last, 
 with decent treatment, two or three thousand 
 years in excellent condition. So the cromlechs, 
 the hut circles, the menhirs of the aboriginal 
 Euskarians of Britain remain in admirable con- 
 dition, though perhaps older than Rome itself, or 
 
22 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 the dawn of ancient Greek civilization ; and still 
 more, Christian antiquities made in granite may 
 be expected to survive. 
 
 2. The people, until recent times, had a strong 
 prejudice against injuring antiquities or ancient 
 remains. Of course this was most intense with 
 regard to Christian antiquities, but certainly the 
 peasants have often preserved the secular remains 
 of the "old men" for fear of being "ill-wished." 
 Hundreds of useful evidences of the past have 
 therefore been handed down to us from this 
 reason ; and in church matters not only stone 
 carving, but wood work and stained glass have 
 been well preserved for our age. One chief 
 advantage Cornwall has, is that Puritanism and 
 iconoclasm was never very strong there. In the 
 seventeenth century, there was not much harm 
 done to ancient monuments or churches. Causes 
 at work in other counties did not avail here. 
 
 First among the curious churches in Cornwall, 
 we will consider St. Neot five miles from 
 Liskeard. It is a wonderful old-world place, 
 where one can dream of the Middle Ages, and 
 see the thoughts and feelings of the Merrie 
 England of the Middle Ages, not in mere repre- 
 sentation like the unreal Old London, or Old 
 
CURIOUS CHURCHES OF CORNWALL. 23 
 
 Manchester of exhibitions, but in mediaeval work, 
 partly done by fifteenth century artists. The 
 windows of St. Neot have few rivals of their 
 kind in England, and were very fairly restored 
 some time ago. They are fifteen in number, and 
 represent : 
 
 1. The Life of St. George the patron of 
 
 England. 
 
 2. The Life of St. Neot, the local saint. 
 
 3. A group of Cornish saints in the Young 
 
 Women's window. 
 
 4. The Creation. 
 
 5. Some Old Testament scenes. 
 
 The work is rough, and South Kensington 
 might not quite approve of some of the drawing, 
 but it is archaic, quaint, in parts devotional, and 
 thoroughly mediaeval in spirit. Each window has 
 a name and a title, probably from its origin, and 
 each window is a study in itself. In the St. 
 George's windows we have the wonderful 
 adventures of the saint, e.g., his fighting, his 
 killing the dragon, his being taken prisoner by the 
 Gauls, his torments and martyrdom. 
 
 St. George held an important position in the 
 popular life of English patrin in the past, and the 
 war cry " St. George and Merrie England," and 
 
24 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 the cross of St. George, still inscribed in our 
 Union Jack, and carried to every colony and over 
 every sea, waving in every battlefield of English 
 soldiers, and on every British ship, attests the 
 power of the St. George legend (possibly a myth 
 of the victory of Christianity over evil) in the 
 England of the past. Here it stands, storied in 
 quaint form, in rich colouring on the painted 
 glass. The St. George legend was a living thing 
 in popular life in Cornwall, as in other English 
 counties. There, as well as in Dorset and York- 
 shire, the drama of " St. George and the Turkish 
 Knight " was performed even to our own times. 
 I have seen it myself acted, not many miles from 
 St. Neot at Christmastide, by the Cornish miners, 
 but believe it has now (like many other harmless 
 and picturesque customs) died out before Board 
 Schools and Methodism (which looked on it as 
 "carnal and popish.") 
 
 The St. Noet legend is of less general, but 
 more local interest. It contains some quaint 
 animal legends, and brings us into contact with 
 some of the strange ideas of our mediaeval 
 ancestors. 
 
 If the interior of St. Noet brings so vividly 
 before us the home life and popular thought of 
 
CURIOUS CHURCHES OF CORNWALL. 25 
 
 mediaeval England, the exterior of St. Austell is 
 only a little less instructive. In most of our old 
 parish churches the niches we have were fitted 
 with figures, but iconoclasm has ruined them all. 
 St. Austell seems in the old time to have been a 
 place outside popular movements, and forgotten 
 by Puritans and iconoclasts. Now it has become 
 a centre of life, but the old statues in the niches, 
 and especially the remarkable symbol of the 
 Blessed Trinity on the tower shows us what 
 scores of old English parish churches were like in 
 the olden time. 
 
 If the windows of St. Neot are wonderful, the 
 frescoes of Breage are almost as striking. They 
 are only of recent discovery, i.e., in 1890. The 
 most remarkable is a huge figure of our Blessed 
 Saviour, whose precious blood is depicted as 
 flowing over the various implements of industry, 
 e.g., the reaping hook, scythe, shuttle, cart. This 
 is supposed to imply the sanctification of human 
 labour by the Incarnation a most important 
 doctrine. There is also a gigantic fresco of St. 
 Christopher some 12 feet high, also of smaller 
 ones of St. Coventin, St. Mylor, St. Germo (the 
 patron of the adjacent parish), and St. Michael 
 the Archangel. In every way Breage is a 
 
26 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 charming old place with fine air and scenery. It 
 is not, as yet, sufficiently known to tourists. 
 
 The legend of the patron is that she was an 
 Irish princess, sister of King Germo, who was 
 induced by St. Patrick to accept Christianity ; 
 full of enthusiasm, he gave up his kingdom, was 
 consecrated a bishop, and then went as a 
 missionary in West Cornwall, taking his sister, 
 St. Breaca with him, who here seems to have 
 founded a religious house. It is interesting to 
 find that one of the best working guilds for 
 women is at St. Breage, a continuation of the old 
 religious house for women. St. Breaca is said to 
 have acted as a midwife to her female converts, 
 but St. Germo or Germochus, was revered as an 
 ex-king by his people. St. Germo's chair (pro- 
 bably of a far later date than his, i.e., 450) was 
 probably a tradition of the stone throne on which 
 the voluntarily exiled monarch sat. The whole 
 legend is held by some critics to be suspiciously 
 like that of Gautama Buddha in India, but is none 
 the less interesting to folk-lorists on that ground. 
 St. Germo is supposed to have lived about 450, i.e., 
 over a century before Augustine landed at Ebb's 
 fleet in Kent in fact as far removed from his 
 time as the age of George II. is from our day. 
 
CURIOUS CHURCHES IN CORNWALL. 27 
 
 The westernmost and the southernmost churches 
 in England, i.e., Sennen and Landewednack, in 
 which parishes the Land's End and Lizard are 
 contained, both are curious churches worth 
 seeing. Sennen has a quaint fresco of New 
 Jerusalem, a headless statue of St. John the 
 Baptist, and a font with a date on it, not common 
 in the Middle Ages. In Landewednack we have 
 a church partly built of serpentine. 
 
 At Buryan, we have what is said to be a 
 memorial church, reared by King Athelstan as a 
 thanksgiving for his conquest of Cornwall, and a 
 place from which he saw the Scilly Isles. Here 
 is a grand screen, beautifully painted, of the early 
 Renaissance period. What a wealth of beauty 
 there must have been in those mediaeval screens. 
 In Devon and Cornwall, those we have make us 
 wish that more had been preserved. 
 
 Gunwallo church is built near the sea, in a 
 quaint position. It is said to have been vowed 
 to God by a merchant in peril of the sea, and 
 marks the first place of land he reached. In 
 Gwennap, we have a campanile near the church. 
 At Paul, we have a church on English soil burnt 
 by the Spaniards in 1595, and famous as the only 
 churchyard in Europe which marks the death 
 
28 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 place of a language. The old Cornish language 
 died out in this parish in the last century. The 
 last person who professed to speak it fluently was 
 Dolly Pentreath, of Mousehole, in this parish. A 
 tomb was erected to her memory by Prince 
 Lucien Bonaparte. The subject of how the 
 language died out, and of whether Dolly Pentreath 
 knew as much of the old tongue as she professed, 
 has been much discussed. We cannot deal with 
 the question here, but we believe it is without 
 doubt that the last persons who spoke Cornish are 
 buried in Paul churchyard, and that it is certainly 
 the only death place of a language in England, 
 and probably in Europe (as where and how the 
 old Prussian and other extinct tongues died out is 
 not quite certain). With this death place of a 
 European tongue we leave the curious churches 
 of Cornwall, advising our readers when they have 
 the chance to see these old Cornish churches for 
 themselves. They well repay a visit. 
 
Ibolv Mells. 
 
 By Cuming Walters. 
 
 THAT water should be regarded by primitive 
 man with a species of reverence is easily 
 explicable. Whether it be the sea, the rivers, or 
 the deep cool wells, we find the savage and the 
 semi-civilised races regarding them with super- 
 stitious awe, and not unfrequently designating 
 them as divinities. In the age of myths every 
 river had its presiding goddess and its nymphs, 
 to whom oblations were due. Various pleasing 
 legends arose from this initial idea, only one of 
 which we may now stay to notice, inasmuch as we 
 are able to quote Milton's fine lines in illustrating 
 the point. We refer to the legend of Sabrina 
 and the river Severn, told in the luxurious lines 
 of " Comus," wherein the nymph is depicted as 
 swaying "smooth Severn stream" with "moist 
 curb," in consequence of which 
 
 " The shepherds at their festivals 
 Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays, 
 And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream 
 Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils." 
 
30 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 Some early tribes venerated the rivers as their 
 chief or only deities ; others simply regarded them 
 as the abodes or the refuges of the gods. The 
 Swedes believed that the Pagan gods fled to the 
 rivers when defeated by Christianity. 
 
 The savage, investing everything in nature 
 with personality, peopled the wells and streams 
 with benign or malignant spirits as his mood or 
 fancy dictated. Christianity did no more than 
 substitute the name of a saint for the indigenous 
 water-kelpie, and Chad, Winifred, Margaret, 
 Catherine, Anthony, and many others figured in 
 the place of the early myths. 
 
 Thus, one of the most curious and interesting 
 chapters in history is that which shows how the 
 shrewd Christian missionaries of old grafted 
 Pagan customs upon the religion they brought 
 over. Christianity borrowed from heathendom 
 for purposes of good policy, and the wells at 
 which idolatry had flourished, were transformed 
 into the shrines of saints. The old gods were 
 supplanted, and yet no violence was done to a 
 faith to which early man clung with the utmost 
 tenacity. In the records of hagiology we find 
 with what consummate skill and ingenuity the 
 missionaries worked, purging the wells of 
 
HOLY WELLS. 31 
 
 supposed demons, consecrating them to higher 
 and more beneficent uses, inspiring a grateful 
 and reverent regard in their virtues, and 
 making them the means of keeping alive the 
 names of the saints of the church. None of the 
 reformers worked harder to achieve this object 
 than Cuthbert, Columba, and Chad. The task 
 was made easier by the undoubted healing and 
 sanative powers of the wells ; the prophets were 
 not preaching a vain thing. Even in the grossest 
 of the water-superstitions there is an underlying 
 truth, and nature's marvels when rendered into 
 folk-lore become the outward signs and mani- 
 festations of o-ood and evil deities. There is no 
 folly in primitive creeds, only in the incomplete 
 and limited expression of them. Behind all 
 shadowy and grotesque superstitions lies the 
 primal law, the original truth, recognized by the 
 child-mind of undeveloped man. 
 
 " When wells were dedicated to Christian 
 saints," writes Mr. Jas. M. Mackinlay (in " Folk- 
 lore of Scottish Lochs and Springs "), ** the latter 
 were usually considered the guardians of the 
 sacred water. This was natural enough. If, for 
 instance, St. Michael was supposed to watch over 
 a spring, why should not his aid have been sought 
 
32 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 in connection with any wished-for cure? It is 
 interesting, however, to note that this was not so 
 in every instance. In many cases the favourite, 
 because favourable, time for visiting a sacred 
 spring was not the festival of the saint to whom 
 it was dedicated, but a day quite distinct from 
 such festival. Petitions, too, were frequently 
 addressed not to the saint of the well, but to a 
 character possessing fewer Christian attributes. 
 All this points to the fact that the origin of 
 well-worship is to be sought, not in the legends of 
 mediaeval Christianity, but in the crude fancies of 
 an earlier Paganism." 
 
 Water is, moreover, the symbol of purity, and 
 from very ancient times its use in connection with 
 religious ceremonies can be traced. The lustral 
 or purifying water was prescribed both for private 
 and public acts of sanctification, and to this day 
 the holy water, blest by the priest, enters largely 
 into the rites of the Roman Catholic and the 
 Oriental churches. The ordinances of the Jewish 
 law in regard to water were approved and 
 sanctioned by our Lord when he instituted 
 baptism by the sprinkling of water upon the head. 
 The Romans had an annual religious feast in 
 honour of the nymphs of the wells, when odes 
 
HOLY WELLS. 33 
 
 were sung and floral wreaths brought to garnish 
 the waters. The feast was known as Fontinalia. 
 
 Relics of Paganism may be found in the 
 nomenclature of wells in England, Gloucester- 
 shire having a Woden's Well, Yorkshire a Thor's 
 Well, and so forth. Wherever the Celtic element 
 is, there will be found the superstition concerning 
 water leading to strange rites, and sometimes to 
 appalling sacrifices. 
 
 The Franks offered human sacrifices to those 
 rivers they were about to cross, and in Wales 
 horses were annually sacrificed at St. George's 
 Well, near Abergelen. Bulls, sheep, cats, and 
 other animals were also offered up to pacify or 
 please the well-gods in other places. Coins, 
 vases, and silver spoons were frequently offered 
 as tribute to the tutelary deities. That the 
 waters annually required a number of victims was 
 a fixed article of belief, and hence arose the 
 terrible custom in some parts of never attempting 
 to save a drowning person. The rivers Tyne, 
 Spey, and Dee, among others, had a specific 
 number of animal or human victims allotted to 
 them every year, and in Orkney and Shetland 
 the belief prevailed that unless sacrifices were 
 made to appease the water-gods a terrible 
 
34 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 revenge would be taken upon the inhabitants. 
 Sir Walter Scott refers to this belief in " The 
 Pirate," when Bryce the pedlar is solemnly 
 warned not to save a shipwrecked sailor, lest the 
 rescued man should bring " some capital injury " 
 upon him. To save a sinking man was, in the 
 idea of the ancients, an act of impiety and a 
 dangerous defiance of the will or decree of the gods. 
 
 The subject of well-worship naturally divides 
 itself into two sections ; first, the examples, and 
 second, the origin and significance. In order the 
 clearer to understand the latter, it is advisable to 
 commence with typical instances of the custom as 
 it prevails throughout Great Britain and Ireland. 
 When we have observed the various forms of 
 well-worship and the rites associated with it, we 
 shall be able to draw conclusions with greater 
 certainty, though it may here be premised that 
 the subject is an obscure one, and has occasioned 
 considerable difference of opinion among the 
 students of folk-lore. I propose to allude to 
 some of the best known holy wells in Great 
 Britain, and to their legends and the customs 
 connected with them, and then to proceed to the 
 likeliest explanation of the whole matter. 
 
 Mr. Hope's summary of Holy Wells in 
 
HOLY WELLS. 35 
 
 England, in his valuable work on that subject, is 
 important as showing their prevalence throughout 
 the country, no county being without examples. 
 Yorkshire heads the list with 67 ; then comes 
 Cornwall with 40 ; Shropshire has 36 ; North- 
 umberland 35 ; Staffordshire 30 ; Cumberland 26 
 Derbyshire 24; Oxfordshire 19; Middlesex 16 
 Devonshire 14 ; Hampshire 1 1 ; Somerset 1 1 
 while the rest of the counties are represented by 
 single figures. These figures, however, are com- 
 parative rather than complete. 
 
 The favourite saints (next to " Our Lady '') to 
 whom the Holy Wells are found dedicated are 
 St. Margaret, St. Chad, St. Anne, St. Helen, 
 St. Cuthbert, St. John, St. Peter, St. Augustine, 
 St. Bede, and St. Hawthorn. 
 
 Like some of the incantations of old which, 
 according to tradition, sometimes produced the 
 results desired and sometimes had results exactly 
 the reverse, the holy wells could injure as well as 
 benefit the persons resorting to them. Tasso and 
 Petrarch tell of springs whose waters caused 
 whomsoever should drink of them to die of mad 
 laughter. In England there were wells which 
 cured, and wells which caused, insanity. Some 
 added to the years of life, and some subtracted 
 
36 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 from them ; some possessed the magic elixir 
 which would prolong existence indefinitely, but 
 alas ! those wells were always inaccessible. 
 
 The holy wells of Cornwall are really a study 
 in themselves. Their history begins with, or 
 at all events is intimately connected with, the 
 history of the Druids, who were strong believers 
 in the supernatural potentiality of natural springs. 
 Cornwall was one of the first parts of England 
 to accept Christianity, and the missionaries found 
 it politic not to interfere with the deep-rooted faith 
 of the people in their sacred wells, each with a 
 guardian spirit. But with much adroitness a 
 patron saint was substituted for the kelpie, and 
 small chapels or oratories were built near the 
 sacred places. The saints whose names were 
 given to the wells are often not of any consider- 
 able reputation out of Cornwall ; to nearly all of 
 them fantastic miracles are attributed. Divin- 
 ation is largely credited by means of certain rites 
 connected with the wells, and here we may have 
 a relic of Druidical teaching, for the Druids were 
 strong on prophecy by means of incantations at 
 the well-side. At Our Lady of Nant's Well the 
 future can be made known by casting a palm 
 cross into the water on Palm Sunday ; and at the 
 
HOLY WELLS. 39 
 
 Holy Well at Gulnal the health of relatives and 
 friends can be ascertained by the bubbling up of 
 the water when a question is asked. Other 
 superstitions are still more curious. By bathing 
 in the Cam Brie Well, near Redruth, a man for 
 ever avoided the risk of being hanged. This 
 convenient well must have been in high favour in 
 olden times. The drinking of the waters of the 
 Well of St. Keyne, popularised in Southey's 
 greatly over-rated ballad, enabled a man about to 
 be married to be master for life over his wife 
 but woe to him if his wife drank first or " took a 
 bottle to church." Other of the wells belong to 
 the healing or medicinal class, and here we come 
 to a mingling of fact with superstition, though 
 we should strongly doubt the power of the waters 
 of St. Nun's Well to cure insanity. It appears, 
 however, that the patients were " boussed " or 
 tossed into the cold water until "they forgot their 
 fury." Half-drowned men might well be cured 
 of their violence in this way ; the marvel is that 
 they remembered anything. The virtue of the 
 well may have had less to do with the cure than 
 the persistence of the application. 
 
 In that extremely interesting and informing 
 volume, "Ancient and Holy Wells of Cornwall," 
 
40 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 by M. and L. Quiller-Couch, an account is given 
 of about ninety-six holy wells in that county 
 alone, and even that list is not supposed to 
 be exhaustive. The late Mr. Thomas Quiller- 
 Couch, whose notes are chiefly used in the 
 volume, made a pilgrimage of several months' 
 duration to the sacred springs. Some of them 
 he found to be little more than names and 
 traditions ; others had no history, or the history 
 was lost, but the majority were still legend- 
 haunted, the abode of superstition, the scenes 
 of quaint ceremonies, and connected by name 
 with the early Christian saints. " In places the 
 most remote and secluded," he wrote, "the old 
 pisky tutelage of pre-historic date still clings to 
 and protects them, and still claims to dispense the 
 virtues of the water . . . My humble aim is 
 to save, within my very small tether, all that 
 continues to us of a nearly extinct faith, its 
 material remains, and its legendary fragments." 
 The Cornish saints were almost wholly from 
 Ireland and Wales, and the worship and ritual 
 connected with the Cornish springs is almost 
 identical with that in those two countries. No 
 doubt the most popular, because the most 
 singular, is the Well of St. Keyne, and the 
 
HOLY WELLS. 
 
 4i 
 
 history of the pure and beautiful woman whose 
 name it commemorates is full of charm. She 
 hoped, as it is worded, " to benefit the world by 
 giving to woman a chance of equality with her 
 
 MKNACULim.K WELL. 
 
 lord and master," hence the peculiar powers of the 
 spring which she blessed, and by the side of 
 which she died. Menacuddle Well, of which we 
 
42 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 give an illustration, belongs to a totally different 
 class, being wholly medicinal. It is near St. 
 Austell, and is in private grounds. The water 
 obtained a high reputation for purity and health- 
 giving properties, and weakly children were 
 regularly bathed in it. The people ascribed 
 mystical virtues to the spring, and trusted to it 
 for the total cure of ulcers and other diseases. It 
 was a " pin well " also, and brought good luck to 
 those who wished as they threw crooked pins into 
 the granite basin. 
 
 The illustration of the Well of St. Keyne and 
 of Menacuddle Well are from the charming volume 
 entitled " Ancient and Holy Wells of Cornwall," 
 by M. and L. Quiller-Couch, and have been kindly 
 lent to us by the publisher, Mr. Chas. J. Clark, 
 4, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, W.C. 
 
 The Rev. R. S. Hawker's ballad of the 
 " Doom- Well of St. Madron," tells us of a visit 
 of King Arthur who was bidden by the monks to 
 try the ordeal 
 
 " Plunge thy right hand in St. Madron's Spring, 
 If true to its troth be the palm you bring ; 
 But if a false vigil thy fingers bear, 
 Lay them the rather on the burning share." 
 
 The man of pure heart came out unscathed, 
 
HOLY WELLS. 43 
 
 but the traitorous Mordred's hand was scalded by 
 the furiously bubbling water when he also sub- 
 mitted to the test. In regard to this same well, 
 Mr. Borlase, the great authority on all folk-lore 
 and antiquities connected with Cornwall, says 
 " Here people who labour under pain, aches, and 
 stiffness of limbs, come and wash ; and many 
 cures are said to have been performed. Hither, 
 also, upon much less justifiable errands, come the 
 uneasy, the impatient, and the superstitious, and 
 by dropping pins or pebbles into the water, and 
 by shaking the ground round the spring so as 
 to raise bubbles from the bottom at a certain time 
 of the year, moon, and day, endeavour to settle 
 such doubts and injuries as will not let the idle 
 and the anxious rest." 
 
 There is no doubt that the Pool of Bethesda, 
 which figures so prominently in one chapter of the 
 New Testament, was a Holy Well in the usual 
 meaning of the term. Its virtues bore a strong 
 resemblance to the particular curative properties 
 of many wells in Great Britain, the waters being 
 efficacious in diseases affecting the limbs. It may 
 well be compared with that most famous of all 
 the holy wells in this island, the Well of St. 
 Winifred at Holywell. 
 
44 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 Saint Winifred was a virgin who lived in the 
 seventh century in a nunnery founded by her 
 uncle, a holy man and a priest, named Beuno. 
 She was of noble family, her father being the 
 second man in the kingdom of North Wales. 
 Winifred was observed by Caradoc, Prince of 
 Wales, who was struck by her beauty, and sought 
 her in marriage. She refused him, and he 
 endeavoured to carry her away by force. Then, 
 says the legend, she fled towards the church, 
 pursued by the prince, who, in overtaking her, 
 drew out his sabre in his rage, and struck off her 
 head. The severed head bounded down the hill, 
 entered the church door, and rolled to the foot of 
 the altar where Beuno was officiating. Where the 
 head rested a spring of uncommon size and purity 
 burst forth ; a fragrant moss (now called St. 
 Winifred's hair) adorned its sides, and her blood 
 spotted the stones, which, like the flowers of 
 Adonis, annually commemorate the facts by 
 assuming- colours unknown to them at other 
 times. It has been discovered, however, that this 
 moss is not peculiar to the spring at Holywell ; a 
 similar growth is found in Carnarvonshire. As 
 for the redness of the stones at the bottom of the 
 basin it is found to be due to a moss which 
 
HOLY WELLS. 45 
 
 Linnaeus termed Bissus Jolithus. It causes any 
 substance to which it adheres to have the appear- 
 ance of being smeared with blood, and if rubbed 
 it yields a smell like violets. Linnaeus believed it 
 to be serviceable in eruptive disorders. But to 
 return to the miracles of St. Winifred. The head 
 was picked up by Beuno, who at once offered 
 up prayers and intercessions for the restoration 
 of the ill-fated virgin's life. His petitions were 
 heard ; the head joined again to the body ; and 
 St. Winifred lived fifteen vears longer in the 
 highest repute. Miracles were wrought at her 
 tomb as well as at the sacred well. 
 
 In 1774 the following account, which I think 
 fully deserves quotation for more than one reason, 
 was written of the Well of St. Winifred : 
 "As to the legend of St. Winifred, it is more 
 than enough to discredit it that Giraldus, who 
 seldom misses either a miraculous well or an 
 extraordinary story, when they come in, should 
 yet be silent as to both ; and this, too, though he 
 passed a night at a religious house near the place. 
 But besides his, there is also as deep a silence 
 amongst all our ancient historians. There is, 
 however, a chapel dedicated to this St. Winifred, 
 hewn out of the solid rock, and very neatly adorned, 
 
46 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 that stands over the spring, which rises with 
 great force, and runs afterwards with such rapidity 
 as to turn a mill. It is from various circumstances 
 probable that this is not so properly a fountain as 
 a subterraneous current diverted hither by miners 
 in working the rocky hill, and therefore Giraldus 
 Cambrensis, though he says not one word of 
 either saint or well, helps us to a good account 
 of the surprising coldness of the bath by telling us 
 a silver mine had been wrought or sought for 
 thereabouts. Be that as it will, the name of Holy 
 Well is ancienter than that of St. Winifred, and 
 might very naturally induce the monks of Basing- 
 werk, to whom by that name it had been granted, 
 to frame the legend of Winifred and her martyr- 
 dom for that purpose. Independent of all that, 
 it is an admirable spring, and deserves to be 
 called the principal one of its kind." In 1784, the 
 tourist, Pennant, found the roof of the chapel 
 overlooking the well hung with crutches of 
 cripples who had been cured. " In the summer," 
 he said, " persons are to be seen in the water, 
 in deep devotion, up to their shins for hours, 
 sending up their prayers, or performing a number 
 of evolutions round the polygonal well, or thread- 
 ing the arches a prescribed number of times." 
 
HOLY WELLS. 47 
 
 This custom was fatal to Sir George Peckham, 
 of whom it is recorded that in visiting the well in 
 1635, ne " continued so long repeating his pater 
 nosters and ' Sancta Winifreda, ora pro me,' 
 that the cold struck into his body, and after his 
 coming forth of that well he never spoke more." 
 It is worth noting as a matter of history that St. 
 Winifred's Well was visited by King James II. 
 in 1688, and he "received for his pains the shift 
 worn by his great-grandmother at her execution." 
 
 Of miracles wrought at the wells we have 
 numerous traditions, and a great variety of 
 subjects and experiences is provided. We will 
 give some typical instances, varying from the 
 sublime to the ridiculous, and proving that local 
 gossip was occasionally mixed with ancient 
 legends. 
 
 On the authority of Richard Baxter, the divine, 
 we learn that there was a well at Oundle, in 
 Northamptonshire, which could emit drum-like 
 sounds when great historic events were in 
 progress. He heard it " drum " when the Scots 
 came into England, and was told it "drummed" 
 again when King Charles II. died. The reason 
 of this is hard to understand. 
 
 St. Tecla's Well, in Denbighshire, was believed 
 
48 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 to have the special and peculiar virtue of curing 
 epilepsy by transferring the complaint to a cock 
 or a hen. The patient went to the well after 
 sunset, washed himself in the well-water, and 
 made an offering of fourpence. Then he walked 
 three times round the well, repeating the Lord's 
 Prayer each time. If the patient were a man, he 
 carried a cock in his arms on these occasions ; if 
 a woman, she carried a hen. After due observance 
 of these formalities at St. Tecla's Well, the patient 
 went to the church, crept under the altar, used the 
 Bible for a pillow and the communion cloth for 
 a coverlet, and slept in the sacred place all night, 
 keeping fast hold of the bird all the time. Next 
 morning the patient made a further offering of 
 sixpence, and departed, this time leaving the bird 
 in church. If the bird died, it died of a disease 
 which had been transferred to it ; if it survived, 
 the patient had to seek another remedy, or regard 
 his case as hopeless. 
 
 The " Ebbino- and Flowing Well," near Settle, 
 has characteristics which must naturally have 
 excited attention and wonderment in olden times. 
 A rapid change in the level of the water can be 
 observed by the visitor, and for a long period 
 many theories were vainly advanced to account 
 
HOLY WELLS. 49 
 
 for the phenomenon. At length one, Thomas 
 Hargreaves, constructed an imaginary model on 
 the principle of the double syphon, and supposed 
 to represent the syphon-like conduits of the rock. 
 As this model imitated the action of the water it 
 was regarded as affording the long-sought explan- 
 ation. About the well a quaint legend clings, 
 having something in common with various other 
 legends connected with fountains, streams, and 
 springs. A satyr pursued a lovely maiden ; she, 
 breathless and exhausted, prayed the gods to save 
 her, and was immediately converted into the well, 
 and t^he rising and falling waters represent the 
 panting of her virtuous breast. Variations of 
 this legend exist in great quantity. 
 
 Two hundred years ago, Dr. Knerden made 
 record of the custom of dropping pins into wells, 
 notably into that dedicated to St. Helen, at Brindle, 
 in Lancashire. On August 18th, which was the 
 Saint's day (Helen being the famous Empress 
 who defended the persecuted Christians of Britain 
 after her marriage with Constantine), the people 
 assembled and cast pins into the holy water, a pin, 
 especially a crooked one, being believed to be 
 peculiarly acceptable to the saints, and even to 
 the Virgin Mary. There are "Pin Wells" in 
 
50 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 many parts of England and Wales, and so great is 
 the efficacy of the offering that those who drop 
 the pins may wish for what they like with the 
 certainty of having their desire gratified. 
 
 It thus became customary for the Pin Wells to 
 be much resorted to by sighing maidens and 
 dejected lovers, as well as by people in search of 
 "good luck." A new superstition also arose that 
 whenever a new pin was dropped into the well all 
 those which had been cast in previously rose to 
 greet it. Eye-witnesses could be produced to 
 attest to this fact. Why saints and fairies should 
 be so easily propitiated by so small an offering, 
 however, is more or less a mystery. By throwing 
 pins into the Holy Well at Rorrington, Shropshire, 
 the villagers believed that they would enjoy good 
 luck, and be preserved from being bewitched. 
 
 It is not only crooked pins that are in favour as 
 offerings or as a means of divination. Occasion- 
 ally the presents take a more costly form. To 
 Saint Helen, the guardian saint of a well in 
 Yorkshire, pieces of cloth are most acceptable. 
 The belief prevails that weakly children can be 
 cured of their infirmities by dipping them in St. 
 Bede's Well, Jarrow, and meanwhile dropping 
 crooked pins in the water. The pins were held 
 
HOLY WELLS. 51 
 
 to be equally efficacious at Sefton, in Lancashire, 
 to test the fidelity of lovers, and at St. Dwynwen's 
 Well, in Anglesey, to prevent love-sickness. 
 
 The hypothesis has been ingeniously set forth 
 that the offering of pins, pebbles, twigs, and 
 rags, was not primarily a thank-offering but an 
 endeavour on the part of primitive man to 
 effect a union or connection between himself, the 
 worshipper, on one part, and the divinity or 
 genius of the place on the other. But this seems 
 a far-fetched theory, and an ignoring of the 
 meaning more obvious and close at hand. Just 
 as the warrior of old hung his buckler or casque 
 in the temple of his gods, just as the victors in 
 the Olympian games brought their wreaths to 
 the sacred places, just as to-day thank-offerings 
 are placed in the church, so in early times 
 tributes, rich and poor, were brought to the 
 holy wells by those who had received or still 
 sought benefits. As for the common use of 
 pins in these observances, it is well-known that 
 to these simple articles a great deal of superstition 
 has attached, and an inordinate amount of magical 
 properties been attributed. The professor of 
 folk-lore solves the mystery of the offering by 
 declaring that "country girls imagine that the 
 
52 THE CHURCH TREASURY 
 
 well is in charge of a fairy or spirit who must 
 be propitiated by some offering, and the pin 
 presents itself as the most ready or convenient, 
 besides having a special suitableness as being 
 made of metal." This cannot be taken as final. 
 Pins were neither cheap, ready, nor convenient, 
 centuries ago when the custom was observed. 
 I incline to the belief that the pin-offering was 
 originally a costly one, and that a pin-superstition 
 led to the general adoption of the custom. In 
 addition to all this it must be remembered that 
 the holy wells of Great Britain may be divided 
 into groups, and that in certain defined sections 
 of the country observances obtain which are not 
 met with, or only met with in isolated cases, else- 
 where. The pin-wells are one separate group ; 
 garland- wells are another ; rag- wells are another. 
 A map might be drawn portioning out these 
 districts. Then there are wishing-wells and 
 medicinal-wells, and again we may find the two 
 sorts fairly well grouped in different districts. 
 Distinctive elements of worship and ritual are to 
 be traced in these districts, and the conclusion 
 arrived at is that though there were common 
 influences at work, there were various origins 
 and developments of the custom. The ultimate 
 
HOLY WELLS. 53 
 
 height of well-worship is represented in the 
 " animal god " which Celtish imagination evolved 
 as the animating element of the waters. " From 
 the small beginnings," writes Mr. Laurence 
 Gomme, " where the survival of some ancient cult 
 is represented by the simple idea of reverence 
 for certain wells mostly dedicated to a Christian 
 saint, through stages where a ceremonial is faintly 
 traced in the well-dressing with garlands, decked 
 with flowers and ribbons ; where shrubs and 
 trees growing near the well are the recipients of 
 offerings by devotees to the spirit of the well ; 
 where disease and sickness of all kinds are 
 ministered to ; where aid is sought against 
 enemies ; where the gift of rain is obtained ; 
 where the spirits appear in general forms as 
 fairies, and in specific form as animal or fish, and 
 finally, it may be, in anthropomorphic form, as 
 Christian saints ; where priestesses attend the 
 well to preside over the ceremonies ; with the 
 several variants worshipping at every stage, and 
 thus keeping the whole group of superstition and 
 custom in touch one section with another ; with 
 the curious local details cropping up to illumine 
 the atmosphere of Pagan worship, which is so 
 evidently the basis of reverence for wells there 
 
54 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 is every reason to identify this cult as the most 
 widespread and the most lasting in connection 
 with local natural objects." 
 
 From " Pin Wells " we now come to the wells 
 at which the ceremony of " dressing " takes place. 
 The decoration of the five wells at Tissington, 
 near Ashborne, Derbyshire, has acquired consider- 
 able notoriety in consequence of the elaborate 
 and imposing nature of the ceremonial. On Holy 
 Thursday in Ascension week the whole village 
 devotes itself to the festival. The inhabitants 
 keep open house, and indulge in general 
 rejoicings. Garlands of newly-gathered flowers, 
 or boards covered with soil and fantastically 
 arranged with floral mosaic work, are arranged 
 about the wells ; and after service at church a 
 procession is formed, and the shrines are visited. 
 Various sacred services are performed, the psalms 
 for the day being read and hymns sung ; then the 
 bells are rung, and music is rendered in public 
 by bands. The proceedings are strongly re- 
 miniscent of the Roman and Greek customs of 
 building altars near springs, and worshipping the 
 o-oddess Flora at the beorinnino- of the month of 
 May. There is little question of this being a 
 genuine survival of a very ancient, and probably 
 
HOLY WELLS. 
 
 55 
 
 Pagan, practice one that is found in varied 
 forms in other parts of England, as well as 
 throughout Europe. 
 
 Well-flowering, or well-dressing, in the May- 
 time of the year is not the least charming of 
 
 .1- 
 
 THE TOWN WELL, TISSINGTON. 
 
 the many observances or rituals connected with 
 the sanctified waters. To visit a well at sunrise 
 in the month of May was deemed most propitious, 
 and neither the interdict of the Council of Tours 
 nor the imposition of penances by King Egbert, 
 
56 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 nor the proscriptions of the early saints, nor the 
 prohibitions of the bishop, could abolish the 
 " heathenish practices." There is no doubt 
 that although the Christian Church tolerated the 
 re-dedication of the wells to the saints, it 
 regarded well-worship with much aversion and 
 with some dread. All authorities agree that the 
 custom was discountenanced by the missionaries 
 and their successors, who, however, finding it 
 impossible to eradicate a belief so deeply rooted 
 in the minds of the Celtish races, wisely gave to 
 the custom of well-worship a newer and higher 
 significance. 
 
 At Droitwich there was a salt well which was 
 annually " dressed " on the day of the tutelary 
 saint. One year the custom was omitted, and 
 the spring dried up soon afterwards. The custom 
 was revived the following year, and the water 
 again burst forth. The righteousness of the 
 " dressing " was thus established beyond all 
 cavil. 
 
 St. Chad's Well, Lichfield, was named after 
 the evangelist whose custom it was, so tradition 
 says, to stand naked in the water and pray. 
 The stone upon which he stood is still to be 
 seen. The well was "dressed," and the Gospel 
 
HOLY WELLS. 57 
 
 was read to the assembled people on Ascension 
 Day, until the beginning of the present century. 
 
 The Holy Well, near Dalston, Cumberland, 
 was the scene of religious rites on stipulated 
 occasions, usually Sundays. The villagers as- 
 sembled and sought out the good spirit of the 
 well, who was " supposed to teach its votaries 
 the virtues of temperance, health, cleanliness, 
 simplicity, and love." 
 
 There is little doubt that well-worship originally 
 had a direct connection with sun-worship ; hence 
 arose the custom of visiting the wells for special 
 purposes at times when the sun was rising, 
 setting, or exactly overhead. In some cases, too, 
 the patient had to " turn round with the sun," in 
 order to obtain his desire from the well. 
 
 A spiritual significance also attached to 
 some of the traditions. The man who declared 
 that the spirit of wisdom lay at the bottom of 
 Mimir's well no doubt knew the use of symbolism. 
 Those who told of marvellous transformations 
 after a visit to, and a use of, pure, stimulating, 
 
 life-giving water instinctively spoke truth, even if it 
 were cast in the form of allegory. To the soiled, 
 the weary, the feverish, the struggling pilgrims of 
 old, there can be no question that the wells 
 
58 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 appeared to be enchanted, and of their potentiality- 
 mysterious fables would arise. 
 
 Cursing wells, Prophetic wells, Demon wells, 
 and wells of mysterious origin, numerous as they 
 are, may be very briefly dealt with. I select a few 
 examples : 
 
 An olden records runs " At Funthill Episcopi, 
 higher towards Hindon (Worcestershire), water 
 riseth and maketh a streame before a dearth of 
 corne, that is to say, without raine, and is 
 commonly looked upon by the neighbourhood as 
 a certaine presage of a dearth, for example, the 
 dearness of corne in 1678." Here we have the 
 water, by some phenomenal means, becoming 
 voluntarily prophetic. 
 
 The best known " Cursing - well " is that of 
 St. Elian in Denbighshire, where by casting a 
 pin and a pebble into the water a man may cause 
 an enemy to pine away and die. To ensure the 
 doom falling upon the right enemy the name of 
 the person cursed must be inscribed upon the 
 pebble. 
 
 Leland in the sixteenth century found a strange 
 legend attached to St. Oswald's well at Oswestry. 
 A supernatural origin was ascribed to the waters, 
 for it was said that when the saint was martyred 
 
HOLY WELLS. 
 
 59 
 
 an eagle snatched away one of his arms from the 
 stake, and eventually let it fall where the spring 
 subsequently gushed forth. This is a famous 
 wishing well, and anyone may have his or her 
 legitimate desire by bathing the face in the water, 
 or casting a twig into the well. 
 
 
 
 THE HALL WELL, TISSINGTON. 
 
 St. Cuthbert's well, Bellinofham, Northumber- 
 land was the scene of an extraordinary and much- 
 famed " cure " in the twelfth century, when a 
 foolish girl who loved frippery and fine dress was 
 
6o THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 given a lesson of unusual severity. It seems that 
 she had determined to finish making a rich and 
 costly garment instead of going to church, when 
 suddenly her left hand contracted "so that she 
 could not move the fingers to open the hand, nor 
 could those who were with her draw away by 
 force the cloth she grasped." She was bidden to 
 drink of the water of St. Cuthbert's well and spend 
 a night in prayer. This injunction was obeyed, 
 and during- the night St. Cuthbert himself came 
 and restored the girl's hand. To him, and to the 
 water of the well, was the cure therefore attributed. 
 
 At Wavertree there is a well at the bottom of 
 which lay, not truth, but a devil. All travellers 
 were supposed to give alms on drinking ; if they 
 omitted to do so a sardonic laugh from the devil 
 sounded in their ears. An inscription over the 
 well, dated 1414, runs " Qui non dat quod 
 habet, Daemon infra videt." This is improved 
 upon in the case of a well situated between 
 Ruckley and Acton where, according to popular 
 belief, the devil and three of his imps are to be 
 seen in the form of frogs. 
 
 There is (or was) a holy well in Ireland in 
 which lay a sacred trout, and was much resorted 
 to by reason of the marvellous cures it wrought. 
 
HOLY WELLS. 61 
 
 At Kilmore two black fish, which never get larger 
 or smaller, are the guardian spirits of the well. 
 At Tober Kieran the well is inhabited by two 
 beautiful trout. One was caught by a soldier, 
 when it immediately turned into a woman. In 
 awe the man loosed his hold ; the woman sank 
 back into the water, and turned into a trout again. 
 The Holy Well, or Blood Spring, at Glaston- 
 bury is supposed to have its source in the Chalice 
 of the Last Supper which was buried on the 
 hillside by Joseph of Arimatha^a. The legend 
 has been many times cast into verse, and is fit for 
 a poet's theme. The crystal water, we are told, 
 bubbles up incessantly, affected neither by frost 
 nor drought, and defying man's invention to 
 direct its course or find its origin : 
 
 " No hill supplies 
 Its shining wateis; straight from out the cup 
 It springs, and shall spring ceaselessly, for aye 
 A gift, a miracle, from God to man." 
 
 It is chalybeate water, and the iron in it is easily 
 oxidised as it becomes exposed to the atmosphere. 
 It thus leaves a red deposit on the stones it passes 
 over and these spots are known as " blood drops," 
 and regarded as confirmation of the legend of the 
 origin of the spring. The water is decidedly 
 
62 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 medicinal. Mr. Hope in his exhaustive work on 
 " The Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of 
 England " (1893) ascribes a two-fold origin to such 
 legendsand traditions. They are, he says, sacred and 
 pagan the sacred being derived from the miracles 
 recorded in Scripture, and the Pagan being due to 
 the primitive belief in Naturalism. As primitive 
 man advanced in his Natural Religion he associ- 
 ated each specific deity with attendants, and thus 
 around the well-gods were grouped the nymphs 
 and naiads. The prevalence of the belief seems 
 to be world-wide. Magic powers were invariably, 
 and as a matter of course, attributed to medicinal 
 wells, and their peculiar properties were regarded 
 as the characteristics of the presiding or guardian 
 deities. 
 
 A quaint old writer in a disquisition on the 
 mineral springs of Great Britain, pertinently sums 
 up the matter by showing how in process of time, 
 religion came to have a share in remedial and 
 beneficial usages, and " those places in which the 
 first preachers of Christianity (who in the next age 
 were all canonised) had commonly baptized their 
 converts were supposed to have a certain degree 
 of sanctity, and were from thence styled Holy 
 Wells. The monks improved upon this, and in 
 
HOLY WELLS. 63 
 
 their fictitious legends attributed miraculous pro- 
 perties to certain springs, in some of which they had 
 discovered medicinal virtues. At the Reformation, 
 as if all things introduced or commended by the 
 Papists were infected with Popery, the use of these 
 wells was unaccountably run down, till man's mind 
 being settled by degrees, reasons again recom- 
 mended what had been discredited by superstition : 
 for undoubtedly there was not less folly in refusing 
 to make use of springs and lakes, because their 
 virtues were attributed to false causes by Divines, 
 than to decline their assistance because physicians 
 disagree about their contents. The all-wise 
 Creator has given us waters for drink and for 
 physic, and it is an act of Religion to point out 
 and preserve the memory of these blessings." 
 And so forth, in the same commendable strain of 
 common sense. 
 
 Folk-lorists can tell us of the universality of 
 water-worship among the Celtic races, of the 
 reasons which led them to regard wells and 
 springs and rivers with veneration, of the Pagan 
 rites which were afterwards adapted to Christian 
 customs, of the direct connection between well- 
 worship and rain-worship and sun-worship, of the 
 inner meanings of the legends concerning wells 
 
64 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 and miraculous cures, and the survival to this day, 
 in various forms and disguises, of the archaic 
 creeds and ceremonials. The maiden who seeks 
 a good husband at the well-side, the peasants who 
 sing their songs and cast pins into the water, the 
 mothers who dip their babes in the healing springs, 
 the crowds who bedeck the wells with flowers, 
 are all perpetuating the time-old superstitions of 
 primitive man. 
 
 " What ethnography has to teach of that great 
 element of the religion of mankind, the worship 
 of well and lake, brook and river, is," says Dr. 
 Tylor, " simply this that what is poetry to us 
 was philosophy to early man ; that to his mind 
 water acted not by laws of force, but by life and 
 will ; that the water-spirits of primeval mythology 
 are as souls which cause the water's rush and rest, 
 its kindness and its cruelty ; that, lastly, man 
 finds in the being which, with such power, can 
 work him weal and woe, deities with a wider 
 influence over his life, deities to be feared and 
 loved, to be prayed to and praised, and 
 propitiated with sacrificial gifts." 
 
 Well- worship has been identified with the 
 agricultural life of aborigines who had not been 
 able to conceive or develop higher ideas of deities. 
 
HOLY WELLS. 65 
 
 The superstition prevailed throughout England, 
 and in Ireland no religious place was without its 
 holy well. As the cult is everywhere found to be 
 prevalent, special reasons have to be sought to 
 explain it, for no local or isolated factors will 
 suffice. Some great dominating force must have 
 been operative to have such wide-spread results, 
 and we have to consider whether well-worship 
 " originated from above and spread downwards 
 among the people until it became universal, or 
 whether it began from the people and penetrated 
 upwards." We have next to discover whether it 
 was itself a primitive creed, or the outcome of 
 other creeds or forms of worship. It can be 
 ascertained that it was incorporated into the 
 Roman Catholic ritual ; but on the other hand, 
 the Saxon clergy forbade the people to continue 
 the ancient and decidedly popular custom. Mr. 
 Laurence Gomme thinks the facts tend to show 
 that well-worship did not become prevalent by the 
 agency or through the medium of the Christian 
 Church ; neither does he think it is due to the 
 influence of Aryan culture, which received rather 
 than generated it. 
 
 These quaint superstitions linger in rural spots ; 
 the legends are cherished, the naiads, the fauns, and 
 
66 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 the water-saints are subjects of firm faith and on 
 the whole we need not regret that these things are 
 so. Few of the ancient survivals are less harmful 
 and more poetic. The lover of romance and 
 sentiment, and even the least susceptible to the 
 charms of nature, will never grow weary of the creed 
 which tells him that the sparkling waters are the 
 haunt of laughing nymphs or listening saints, and 
 that in the glint of streams, or the placidity of 
 deep, cool wells may be detected the reflection of 
 the visage of the attendant sprite. There is some- 
 thing too felicitous in the idea to abandon it 
 willingly ; something too alluring in the fancy to 
 submit it to a too rigid analysis of science. A 
 wealth of mediaeval lore has gathered about the 
 revered places where the watersprings bubble, and 
 they preserve the names of many blessed men and 
 women, who, by their good deeds, deserve so 
 delightful a memorial. For ourselves we are 
 ready to say, let benedictions still be uttered by 
 the water's edge, let the old wells still be decked 
 with mottoes and wreaths, let the villagers still 
 assemble to offer alms or to receive, and even let 
 the crooked pins still be dropped to propitiate a 
 patron saint, or to satisfy a shy maiden's anxiety as 
 to the devotion of her lover. These are the super- 
 
HOLY WELLS. 67 
 
 stitions and observances which are rather to be 
 encouraged than despised, for they link us with 
 generations of the past, and in pleasant, unoffend- 
 ing form draw continuous attention upon those 
 places of balm and refection which our ancestors 
 not unfittingly deemed consecrated, and to which 
 they therefore rendered homage or worship 
 "simple and more dignified than a senseless 
 crouching before idols." 
 
Ibetmtts arto Ibcrmtt^CcIls. 
 
 By The Rev. J. Hudson Barker, b. a. 
 
 MY book is the Nature of created things. 
 In it, when I choose, I can read the 
 words of God." Such was Antony's answer to the 
 enquiry of the Greek philosopher or sophist who 
 wondered how he could possibly live without books. 
 
 In that answer lies the keynote of much that 
 seems to us inexplicable about the life of the 
 hermits. The truest of their kind were Nature 
 lovers. Their years were "bound each to each 
 by natural piety." 
 
 Anchorites and hermits like Paul and Antony 
 of the Thebaid were the Wordsworths and Austins 
 of ancient times, who saw and understood the 
 beauties of God in the cliffs and cascades of the 
 wilderness and the opening buds of the garden, 
 even though they were not, like modern poets of 
 nature, able to impart with their pens to others 
 the thoughts inspired by mountain, rock, and sea. 
 There has always been a certain class of men and 
 women who has found the essence of life's enjoy- 
 
HERMITS AND HERMIT-CELLS. 69 
 
 ment in solitary meditation, or who has seen the 
 highest motive of life to be the recognising of God 
 in the works of Nature. 
 
 Quite apart from Christianity the spirit of the 
 hermit is natural to some. Even in the philoso- 
 phies of Greece we find the Stoics and Cynics 
 studiously keeping apart from their fellows lest 
 sympathy and contact with others should be a 
 source of contamination. The wizards and witches 
 of the dark ages are probably lineal descendants 
 of the recluses of some old-world religion of fairies 
 and goblins and nature worship. No one can read 
 Sir Edwin Arnold's " Light of Asia," without at 
 once being reminded, in Buddha's history, of the 
 hermits of Christianity, while the fakirs of modern 
 India prove that the spirit of the hermit is not 
 confined to times nor limited to certain areas. 
 
 Again and again has the world at its crises had 
 its course marvellously altered by the unveiling of 
 one of these veiled prophets the coming forth into 
 the light of common day from the darkness of retire- 
 ment for the stemming of warfare, for the relief of 
 those afflicted with pestilence, or for the righting 
 of wrongs, of some hermit who, having learned to 
 control his own will, is fittest to control the will 
 of others. 
 
70 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 Then the spirit of the hermit has appeared in a 
 new light when giving vent to all the pent-up 
 energies acquired by years of solitary retirement 
 and meditation, as though he would atone for his 
 seeming want of sympathy with his fellows by a 
 superabundant supply in emergencies. Even so 
 in Chrysostom's early days the hermits came from 
 their Syrian retirement and gained for Antioch 
 pardon for the insult to the Statues. The Nitrian 
 hermits came to nurse the plague-stricken Alex- 
 andrians, and Peter the Hermit fired the world 
 with enthusiasm for the First Crusade. 
 
 There is something wildly fantastic and often 
 sensationally romantic in the histories of hermits, 
 yet beneath the sentiment and beneath the romance 
 lies a reality a stern reality of will's endeavour 
 to amputate from life the worst passions of nature, 
 and often with them those which make nature 
 loveable. There is a forgetfulness on the part 
 of the hermit that the parable of the tares may be 
 applied to the microcosmos of man's own 
 individual soul no less really than to the harvest 
 field of God's world. 
 
 Yet the hermit life was often in earlier times 
 possibly an absolute necessity to many who 
 entered upon it. Even in Anselm's day the secular 
 
HERMITS AND HERMIT-CELLS. 71 
 
 life, synonymous with that of sin, or the religious 
 life of ascetic rule were the only alternatives. 
 With all its flaws and its alienation from social life, 
 the system of the hermit emphasised the grandest 
 principle of the christian ethics unselfishness 
 and both in the Grecian and Roman communities 
 made practical what S. Paul himself dared not 
 even hint at the abolition of slavery ; for it 
 taught that there was no disgrace in manual labour, 
 and it taught this not merely in theory but in 
 practice, when the cultured courtiers of the Byzan- 
 tine or Roman palaces retired to sow and reap on 
 the banks of the Nile, or nurse the sick in the 
 pestilential slums of the great cities. 
 
 The origin of the name " hermit " is interesting. 
 Its form in the writings of Jerome and in Latin 
 deeds of the Middle Ages show its derivation at 
 once from ep?]/ios desert, for they adopted the word 
 >7/ut?/s straight from the Greek Fathers. The 
 hermit is essentially one who lives in the desert. 
 Writers with a classical tinge kept the original 
 form as late as Milton. In " Paradise Regained " 
 we read : 
 
 "Thou Spirit, who led'st this glorious Eremite 
 Into the desert, his victorious field." 
 
 Though Spenser his predecessor in a pretty 
 
72 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 description of a hermitage and chapel spells the 
 word "hermite." # 
 
 However, the Anglicised form had been used 
 long before. In the original of Sir George Lan- 
 castre's patent from Henry Earl of Northumber- 
 land in the 23rd year of Henry VIII., of the 
 Conygarth with the Hermitage of Warkworth, it 
 is repeatedly called interchangeably " Armitage" or 
 " Harmytage." In Dan Michel of Northgate's 
 curious old " Ayenbite of Inwit," written in Kentish 
 dialect about 1340 a.d., we come upon the word 
 "ermitage" in the quaint parable of how the priest in 
 the temple of Mahomet was converted into a monk 
 of Christ, though synchronously with this Sir John 
 Mandeville uses the other form in his " Voyage." 
 " At the desertes of Arabye he went into a chapelle 
 where a eremyte dwelt." By and by, in the same 
 chatty book, the word is prefixed with the aspirate 
 when he tells why Mahomet cursed wine, t 
 
 " And so befelle upon a nyght, that Machomete was dronken 
 of gode wyn, and he felle on slepe, and his men toke 
 Machometes swerd out of his schethe whils he slepte and 
 therewith thei slowgh this heremyte, and putten his swerd 
 al blody in his schethe a3en. And at morwe, when he 
 fond the heremyte ded, he was fulle sory and wroth, and 
 wolde have don his men to deth ; but thei alle with on 
 
 * Fairy Queen, Bk. vi., Canto v. 
 t " The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundeville," ch. xii. 
 
HERMITS AND HERMIT-CELLS. 73 
 
 accord seyde that he himself had slayn him, whan he was 
 dronken, and schewed him his swerd alle blody ; and he 
 trowed that thei hadden seyd soth. And then he cursed 
 the wyn, and alle tho that drynken it." 
 
 In the history of Monasticism, hermits hold two 
 distinct positions. In the first place hermits 
 themselves gave rise originally to communities of 
 monks. The example of one hermit drew others 
 into the desert beside him, and so the Ccenobitic 
 monastery became naturally evolved. In the 
 second place, under the evolved monastic system, 
 some continually sighed for stricter rules and 
 more solitary meditation, and so, withdrawing 
 from the common life of the brotherhood, took 
 up their abode in some cell, perhaps near to the 
 monastery. Such was the case with St. Cuthbert, 
 who, withdrawing from the monastery of Lindis- 
 farne, took up his abode in the cell of Fame 
 Island. 
 
 Great master-minds, like St. Martin of Tours, 
 have led the van by first being hermits them- 
 selves, then founding Ccenobitic monasteries have 
 subsequently retired to some more secluded spot 
 among the mountains, or on some almost in- 
 accessible ocean rock. Hence it is often difficult 
 in investigating the origin of a hermitage near 
 
74 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 unto an abbey, to decide whether the cell was 
 established first, and then led to the formation 
 of the neighbouring abbey, as the Cell of Godric 
 led to the founding of Finchale, near Durham, 
 or whether an abbey was founded first, and then 
 cells branched off from it, for the retirement of 
 those, who, like St. Cuthbert, wished for further 
 seclusion, or for the missionary extension of 
 religion in dark places. Such possibly was the 
 cell formed at Westoe, as a branch from J arrow, 
 and to the self-same status probably was J arrow 
 itself degraded afterwards, when it became simply 
 a subordinate cell dependent upon the Abbey 
 of Durham. 
 
 In Mediaeval England hermits seem often to 
 have played the important part of officiating 
 minister in places far from Abbey churches. 
 Indeed for the matter of that, parish priests in 
 lonely spots have in much later times really led 
 hermit lives. 
 
 In the latter part of the twelfth century, in 
 the time of Hugh de Baliol, of Bywell Hall, 
 a certain hermit called Walter de Bolebec gave to 
 the monastery of Kelso his hermitage and church 
 of St. Mary's, in the waste and forest south of 
 Hexham, probably at Slaley. From which we 
 
HERMITS AND HERMIT-CELLS. 75 
 
 should judge that he had been the ministering 
 spirit of the foresters, herdsmen, and moss- 
 troopers of that region, until he founded for 
 the Praemonstratensian canons the Abbey of St. 
 Mary's, at Blanchland, in 1 1 75. 
 
 Generally with the hermit's cell was a little 
 chapel or oratory in which he could perform his 
 own devotions, and to which he might invite 
 the neighbouring cottagers to join him. Such 
 seems to have been the object of the hermitage 
 built at the end of the bridge at Stockport, in 
 Cheshire, with its oratory of the fourteenth 
 century. 
 
 To traverse the history of Christian hermits we 
 must go to Eastern countries, ever the natural 
 home of ascetism and mysticism, which are 
 always tinged with fanaticism there, whether 
 found in Jewish Essene or later Montanist. 
 
 The first recorded Christian hermit who pro- 
 minently practised seclusion from his fellows was 
 Paul of the Thebaid, whose life and miracles 
 are so enthusiastically narrated by St. Jerome, 
 the greatest advocate and promoter of asceticism, 
 both for men and women, that the world has ever 
 known. 
 
 Partly contemporary with Paul is Antony, 
 
76 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 whose life, written by St. Athanasius, reads 
 more like a romance of the Arabian nights, with 
 the wondrous tales of demonology and animal 
 subjection to the hermit's will. Antony, in his 
 ruined castle by the Red Sea, thought himself the 
 first and best of hermits when he reached the 
 age of ninety, but it was revealed to him that 
 there was beyond him, and better than he, a 
 hermit whom he must visit. After marvellous 
 adventures with hippocentaurs, fauns, and satyrs, 
 he arrived at the cave of Paul, whom he found to 
 be 113 years old. An inseparable friendship 
 sprang up between these two heroes of fasting 
 and vigil, which lasted until Antony looked upon 
 the form of the dead Paul still kneeling in prayer 
 in his little oratory with stiffened hands uplifted 
 to the skies, finding him even as the servants 
 of David Livingstone (a man of modern times, 
 but tinged with much of the good old hermit 
 spirit which caused him to cut himself off from 
 the luxuries of home life, that he might further 
 the crusade of Christianity in the desert wilds 
 of South Africa) found their master. 
 
 The example of these hero hermits was quickly 
 followed by numbers, until the Thebaid of Egypt 
 and the Nitrian Desert were thickly populated 
 
HERMITS AND HERMIT-CELLS. 77 
 
 with self-abnegating martyrs severing themselves 
 from human love and human hope, as well as 
 human sin. 
 
 The system spread rapidly into Syria, ripe ever 
 for a revival of the Essene School, insomuch that 
 soon it was difficult to get candidates for 
 ordination, for the secluded life of meditation was 
 held in higher esteem than the active missionary 
 life of priesthood. The pages of " De Sacer- 
 dotio " show how difficult it was to uproot this 
 doctrine even from the mind of St. Chrysostom, 
 himself a hermit forcibly dragged to ordination 
 and an active life. 
 
 But the growing error of the unpardonable 
 nature of sin after baptism, caused yet more 
 stringent application of ascetic exercises to 
 prevent the yielding to passion, and developed 
 that strange wild phase seen in the pillar saints, 
 whose characteristic it was to raise themselves 
 upon some solitary pillar many cubits high, and 
 perhaps only three feet in diameter, and there 
 undergo all changes of weather and all dreadful 
 horrors, until the gruesome details make one 
 sick to read them, and wonder that human will 
 could so overmaster the feelings as to endure 
 such torments voluntarily. But if the feelings 
 
78 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 were blunted and overmastered, so was the 
 intellect ; for the illusions, the visions, and even 
 the miracles of these and other hermits are but 
 the " frothy working of a mind diseased." 
 
 Simeon Stylites was the pioneer of these pillar 
 saints, and received his surname from this fact. 
 The little monologue by Lord Tennyson, called 
 after him, gives anyone who can read between the 
 lines a singularly vivid picture of the inner work- 
 ing of his soul, and the motives that led to 
 this strange life. Simeon was imitated by 
 very many, and the fame of his saintliness and 
 pseudo-miracles caused a perfect forest of pillars 
 to begin to rise throughout Syria, some of the 
 occupants of which even outsimeoned Simeon in 
 the tenacity of their endurance. 
 
 The spirit of the hermit passed to the Latin 
 world, but here it received a modulation due 
 partly to the general legal constitution of the 
 Latin world, partly to the Augustinian Theology 
 of the age, and the solitary hermit founded the 
 Ccenobitic monastery, with its rules and order 
 without the wild impetuous fanaticism and mystic- 
 ism that marked the Eastern monk. 
 
 The monks of the west, in the spirit of the 
 west, tended to the study of men and human 
 
HERMITS AND HERMIT-CELLS. 
 
 79 
 
 nature, and the works of man in literature 
 and art. Yet some there are imbued with a love 
 of Nature in her wildness, who can meditate on 
 God and His works better in solitude, and so 
 we find still the hermit leaving his monastic cell, 
 and taking up his abode in mountain cave, or on 
 some rocky islet even in the west. 
 
 Again as in the east the Eremitic system is the 
 
 HERMITS AND HERMITAGES. 
 
 check to serfdom ; side by side with the over- 
 weening- Norman baron is the baronial abbot 
 laying aside his robes of office, and passing out 
 to the hermit life, tilling the ground, digging out 
 his cell, and showing it is no disgrace to work, 
 but a glory. 
 
 In England, we more frequently find instances 
 
80 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 of the Anchorite, who has a little chamber in 
 connection with some abbey or church, wherein 
 he dwells. Sometimes he immures himself so 
 that he cannot get out, and is fed through some 
 hole in his enclosure. 
 
 The picture we give of " Hermits and Hermit- 
 ages" is from a M.S. Book of Hours, executed for 
 Richard II. (British Museum, Domitian, A. xvii., 
 folio 4 v.). "The artist" says the Rev. Edward 
 L. Cutts, " probably intended to represent the 
 old hermits of the Egyptian desert, Piers 
 Ploughman's 
 
 " Holy eremites 
 That lived wild in woods 
 With bears and lions;" 
 
 but after the custom of mediaeval art, he has 
 introduced the scenery, costume, and architecture 
 of his own time. Erase the bears which stand 
 for the whole tribe of outlandish beasts, and 
 we have a very pretty bit of English mountain 
 scenery. The stags are characteristic enough of 
 the scenery of mediaeval England. The hermitage 
 on the right seems to be of the ruder sort, made 
 in part of wattled work. On the left we have the 
 more usual hermitage of stone, with the little 
 chapel bell, in the bell-cot on the gable. The 
 
HERMITS AND HERMIT-CELLS. 81 
 
 venerable old hermit, coming out of the doorway, 
 is a charming illustration of the typical hermit, 
 with his long beard, and his form bowed by age, 
 leaning with one hand on his cross-staff, and 
 carrying his rosary in the other." 
 
 The hermitage or reclusorium at Hambledon, 
 Hants., is connected with a large thirteenth 
 century church. Built in the angle between the 
 tower and the west end of the south aisle, its date 
 is probably of the fourteenth century. It con- 
 sisted of two large rooms, one above the other. 
 The upper one, of which the floor is now 
 removed, shows a drain pipe still remaining 
 through the wall to the exterior, and this room 
 probably the recluse would use as his ordinary 
 dwelling-room and kitchen. There was a door in 
 the upper room leading by a gallery through the 
 south aisle to the parvise of the adjacent porch, 
 so that our friend had the use of three good-sized 
 rooms. The original wooden door in the wall 
 of the parvise still remains. Nothing has been 
 ascertained as to the person for whom this 
 hospitium was erected. He is spoken of in some 
 old documents at Winchester as the hermit at 
 Hambledon, but the size of the rooms points to 
 some different manner of life to that usually 
 
82 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 followed by a recluse. He may have been the 
 sacristan, or conductor of the church music, or 
 in some other way devoted his time and talents 
 to the service of the church. There is no 
 outer door, but access was obtained from the 
 church of which the building" is now used as the 
 vestry. 
 
 Another anchorage at Walpole St. Andrews, 
 Norfolk, is a much smaller edifice, and seems 
 meant as a convenient receptacle for a devotee 
 to immure himself therein alive. This cell of a 
 holy man was probably much resorted to by 
 superstitious dwellers in marshland. 
 
 Against the north wall of the church of Ss. 
 Mary and Cuthbert, at Chester-le-Street, was 
 formerly an anchorage of four rooms. In later 
 times this was used as the vicaragfe. 
 
 Similar instances are found at Durham 
 Cathedral. Over the great north doorway, with 
 its dragon -head knocker, was a little room, 
 wherein stayed two monks, ever ready to go 
 down and open the door for the refugee when 
 he rang the knocker of sanctuary. Again 
 between the north aisle of the choir and the Nine 
 Altars was a grand porch called the Anchorage. 
 " Here dwelt an anchorite, whereunto the priors 
 
HERMITS AND HERMIT-CELLS. 83 
 
 very much resorted, both for the excellency of the 
 place, as also to hear mass, standing so con- 
 veniently unto the high altar, and withal so near 
 a neighbour to the shrine of St. Cuthbert." 
 
 There was a regular service in the Salisbury 
 Manual for the walling in of anchorites. 
 
 Even women thus immured themselves, like 
 those three nuns at Kingston Tarrant, in Dorset- 
 shire, for whom the thirteenth century "Ancren 
 Riwle" was written. 
 
 Hagioscopes in the north or south side of the 
 chancel from little chambers behind in so many 
 churches testify to the frequency of these 
 immured anchorites. This, indeed, was the 
 common form of hermit in the south and midland 
 counties, and to this kind the darker aspects of 
 the ascetic hermit, unhealthy Christianity, 
 weakened intellect, and demoralised humanity, 
 essentially belong. 
 
 The Fen district in its ancient state, provided 
 scope for hermits of the type of Antony and Paul. 
 There in the rich, wild, green pasturage, sur : 
 rounded by marshes covered with water-lilies, and 
 swarming with pike and perch, where the 'king- 
 fishers dart and the wild ducks plunge, St. Guthlac 
 made his hermit home in the seventh century. 
 
84 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 He had been a warrior, but he had grown tired 
 of slaying and sinning, and so he left his ancestral 
 and princely home for the little green mound 
 where he made his cell, and whereon, after fifteen 
 years of self-abnegation, of starvation, ague, and 
 fever had sent him to his long home, there arose 
 the magnificent Abbey of Crowland. Over another 
 of these fen heroes, St. Botolph, arose another 
 shrine, and round it gathered the town which still 
 bears his name, Botolph's town or Boston. 
 
 But it is the mountainous North, and especially 
 the romantic crags and dells of the borderland, 
 that in England proved the best ground for the 
 nature-loving hermit in his purest and holiest 
 form. All over the north country there are 
 dotted places which still go by the name of 
 Armitage or Hermitage, showing plainly the 
 nature of the quondam inhabitant. Similarly in 
 Scotland and Ireland the prefix kil, kel, or cul, 
 shows at once the place where once upon a 
 time there was no habitation but the " cell " of 
 some hermit, or a group of " cells " of the ancient 
 British form of monastery anterior to the intro- 
 duction of the Benedictine rule. 
 
 There is no history that is truer than that 
 gained from place-names. 
 
HERMITS AND HERMIT-CELLS. 85 
 
 Here is the hermitage at St. John's Lee, near 
 Hexham, a gentleman's residence, with splendid 
 gardens, and some of the finest beeches in 
 England, but its name shows that this was the 
 spot whither St. John of Beverley used to retire 
 for weeks of meditation and devotion from the 
 busy life of the Hexham Abbey in the seventh 
 century. From some similar cause no doubt 
 comes the name of the Hermitage, the residence 
 of Sir Lindsay Wood, at Chester-le-Street. 
 
 From a hermitage in Eskdale, near Whitby, 
 Godric, a native of Walpole in Norfolk, came 
 to Durham, during the bishopric of Flambard 
 (1099- 1 128). Acting as verger at St. Giles', and 
 listening to the lessons of the children at the school 
 of St. Mary-le-Bow, he learnt the psalter by heart, 
 and once more sought retirement in a cell he con- 
 structed for himself on the north bank of the 
 Wear, near the spot where the handsome ruins of 
 Finchale now stand. 
 
 His biography by Reginald, dedicated to Hugh 
 Pudsey, reminds us very much in its extravagant 
 demonology and miracle-working, of the lives 
 of Paul and Antony. Again we hear of the 
 extreme steps taken for self-discipline, but a new 
 feature is added ; night after night, even in the 
 
86 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 cold winter months, St. Godric will stand up to 
 his neck in the icy Wear all the night through, 
 just as St. Drycthelm of Melrose did in the river 
 Tweed in Bede's day, and as Charles Reade 
 makes his hero do in that finest of all historical 
 novels "The Cloister and the Hearth." 
 
 North of Durham and Finchale, just before 
 reaching Gateshead, we come to Ayton Bank, 
 respecting which there is a very interesting 
 document in existence : - 
 
 " Heremitarium de Eighton. 
 
 "Johannes dei gra. Dunelm. Episcopus omnibus ad quos 
 presentes literse pervenerint salutem Sciatis quod de gratia 
 nostra speciali concessimus Roberto Lamb, Heremitae, unam 
 acram vasti nostri ad finem borealem villae de Eighton juxta 
 altam viam ducentem, versus Gateshead vid. ex parte 
 occidentali dictae viae prope rivulum descendentem de fonte 
 vocato Scotteswell pro quadam Capella et Heremitagio per 
 ipsum ibidem in honore S. Trinitatis edificandis, habend. et 
 tenend. eidem Roberto ad terminum vitae suae de elemosina 
 nostra libere et quiete ab omni servitio seculari ad serviendum 
 Deo ibidem et orando pro nobis et pro predecessoribus ac 
 successoribus nostris. 
 
 In cujus &c. Dat. apud Dunelm 20 die Maii Ao. Pont. 
 Sexti Rot. Fordam Ao 6, 1387." 
 
 The life of St. Cuthbert shows him a hermit 
 at Doil, in Scotland, in his early days, and again 
 in his declining years on the rocky Fame Island, 
 where the seabirds learn to love him. The 
 
HERMITS AND HERMIT-CELLS. 87 
 
 miracles alleged about him and other hermits in 
 respect to wild animals, are not hard to under- 
 stand when we consider the wonderful scope 
 they had for the practical study of Natural history, 
 and how marvellous their knowledge would 
 appear to the untutored visitors. But for ages 
 the miracle-working of St. Cuthbert, and of the 
 spirit of St. Cuthbert, was believed in by the 
 superstitious northerners of mediaeval times, and 
 had they not proof for ocular demonstration ? 
 When the storm subsided, throughout which the 
 ringing of St. Cuthbert's hammer had been heard, 
 and they went upon his island, did they not pick 
 up the beads which he had wrought ? We know 
 them to be simply the entrochi of Geology, but 
 they did not, and so they called them Cuthbert's 
 beads, just as they called the ammonites of 
 Yorkshire, Hilda's petrified serpents. 
 
 Away in the bosom of the Cumbrian hills, on a 
 little island near the centre of Derwentwater, still 
 stand the ruins of the little chapel built over the 
 shrine of St. Herbert, the intimate friend of St. 
 Cuthbert. On that island St. Herbert spent his 
 hermit life, visited occasionally by his friends 
 (perhaps from Crosthwaite, where St. Kentigern 
 had established his Cumbrian mission), who, 
 
88 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 starting from the little pine-clothed promontory 
 on the eastern side of the lake, bequeathed to it 
 the name of the " Friars' Crag." There in the 
 scene so loved by Wordsworth, St. Herbert 
 closed his life on the self-same day as his friend 
 St. Cuthbert, on his rocky isle. Thus was their 
 prayer strangely answered. 
 
 St. Cuthbert is the typical hermit of the sea. 
 Others besides him have found in the sad sound 
 of its waves and the ever-changing lights upon 
 its surface, groundwork for passive contemplation 
 and perpetual prayer. St. Brendan found it on 
 the bosom of the ocean, seeking the land of rest, 
 the " Promised Land." St. Regulus found it on 
 the shores of Fife, when he landed with the relics 
 of Scotland's patron saint, and established his 
 hermitage on the spot where, in later years, grew 
 the city of St. Andrews. 
 
 Coquet Isle, off Warkworth Harbour, was itself 
 a cell of retirement, belonging to the Benedictine 
 monks of Tynemouth. 
 
 But the mention of Warkworth brings us to the 
 most entrancingly romantic of all the hermit stories, 
 the pathetic tale so graphically told by Bishop 
 Percy, in the style of the old Northumbrian Ballads. 
 
 Nowhere in the world is there a more interesting 
 
HERMITS AND HERMIT-CELLS. 89 
 
 anchorage, both for its architectural design and its 
 origin, than Wark worth Hermitage. 
 
 There lived at Bothal Castle, about the time of 
 Edward III., a young chieftain of the name of Sir 
 Bertram, whose love for the heiress of the house 
 of Widdrington was reciprocated, and moreover 
 was approved of by the lady's parents. But before 
 consenting to marriage she required her suitor to 
 prove his valour, and sent him a helmet for use 
 against the Scots. In a subsequent border raid, 
 Sir Bertram was sorely wounded, and was carried 
 to Wark Castle by the Tweed, to be healed. His 
 promised bride, hurrying across the Cheviot moor- 
 lands to nurse him was captured by a Scottish 
 nobleman who had been an unsuccessful suitor for 
 her hand, and her attendants were killed. A week 
 later, Sir Bertram recovering, in anxiety at no 
 tidings reaching him from the lady, goes to her 
 home and finds that she had set out for Wark. 
 No trace of her whereabouts being discovered, he 
 comes to the conclusion that some mosstroopers 
 have carried her off. Consequently, he and his 
 brother set out in different directions under disguise 
 to seek her. By chance, unknown to each other, 
 they discover her prison about the same time. 
 The brother in highland disguise is just carrying 
 
9 o THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 her off to safety at night when Sir Bertram in 
 minstrel garb comes upon them and slays his 
 brother, and the lady, discovering the mistake too 
 late, throws herself between them and is herself 
 slain. Henceforward the luckless victim of these 
 sad circumstances, having been with difficulty 
 restrained from committing suicide in his frenzy, 
 gave himself up to the hermit life of fasting and 
 prayer. 
 
 His friend, Earl Percy, gave to him the se- 
 questered spot on the north bank of the Coquet, 
 near Warkworth, where he spent his fifty remaining 
 years in excavating in the solid freestone rock a 
 beautiful little Gothic chapel, which still remains, 
 in architecture of the style of Edward III.'s time. 
 
 The little grotto contains three apartments, 
 which have been named the chapel, the sacristy, 
 and the antechapel. Outside of these by mason- 
 work the hermit's (or probably his successors') 
 dwelling-room and bed-room were built. 
 
 The chapel is still entire ; the other apartments 
 have been partly broken by the fall of rock. 
 
 The chapel is about eighteen feet long, with a 
 width and height of about seven-and-a-half feet. 
 At the east end, reached by two steps, is a hand- 
 some stone altar, having the upper plane edged 
 
HERMITS AND HERMIT-CELLS. 
 
 9i 
 
 with moulding. In the centre of the wall behind 
 is a niche for a crucifix, with the remains of a glory. 
 On one side of the altar is a beautiful Gothic 
 
 
 I'AKKWOKTll IIKKMI'l A(.l-.. 
 
 window, which admitted light to the sacristy. On 
 the opposite side is a cenotaph bearing the recum- 
 bent effigy of a lady. 1 ler feet rest upon the figure 
 
92 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 of a dog, as the symbol of fidelity. Beneath is the 
 figure of a bull's head, the crest of the lady's family. 
 Kneeling at the foot of the tomb, with his head 
 resting on his right hand, is the figure of the hermit. 
 A door in the chapel led to an inner apartment 
 containing an altar like that in the chapel, and a 
 recess in the wall for the reception of a bed, 
 whereon one of moderate size might sleep. This 
 then was the hermit's own sleeping apartment. 
 Above the entrance to it is a shield, cut in the 
 stone, and sculptured thereon are the cross, the 
 crown, and the spear, as emblems of the Passion. 
 
 Leaving the chapel, we turn and look at the 
 inscription, now illegible, but which once ran : 
 " Fuerunt mihi lacrymae meae panes die ac nocte," 
 and it seems like the motto not of this hermit alone 
 but of every genuine hermit throughout Christen- 
 dom ; "My tears have been my meat day and 
 night." 
 
 Outside we find the hermit's well, and a rock- 
 hewn flight of steps to the left of the grotto, leading 
 to the summit of the cliff, where he had his little 
 garden, and whence he might gaze across the Vale 
 of Coquet. This garden is now covered thick 
 with oaks. 
 
 A series of hermits followed him in line, until 
 
HERMITS AND HERMIT-CELLS. 93 
 
 the Reformation swept away hermitages and 
 anchorages along with the monasteries. 
 
 The last hermit at Warkworth seems to have 
 been Sir George Lancastre, to whom was granted 
 by the Earl of Northumberland a patent of twenty 
 marks a year and other privileges in consideration 
 of his daily prayers for the Earl and his ancestors 
 in 1532. This document is still extant. 
 
 At Knaresborough, Yorkshire, still remains an 
 interesting example of a hermitage. It is known 
 as St. Robert's Chapel, and is hewn out of the 
 rock, at the bottom of a cliff. We give pictures 
 of the exterior and interior of the chapel. The 
 chapel appears to have also been the hermit's 
 living-room. Our illustrations are from Carter's 
 " Ancient Architecture." 
 
 The Reformation swept away almost all vestiges 
 of the technical religious hermit from England, 
 but it cannot kill the spirit of the hermit. Sub- 
 sequently we find it exhibiting itself in very 
 eccentric forms in our country. 
 
 In 1696 died John Bigg, the hermit of Denton. 
 Formerly clerk to the regicide Judge Mayne, at 
 the Restoration he retired to a cave, and lived on 
 charity, though he never asked for anything but 
 leather, which he kept patching on his already 
 
94 
 
 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 overladen shoes. These remarkable shoes were 
 preserved, one in the Ashmolean Museum, and 
 the other at Denton Hall. 
 
 In 1863 there was living near Ashby-de-la-Zouch 
 an eccentric character who named himself " The 
 old Hermit of Newton Burgoland." His mania 
 
 was political rather 
 than religious. His 
 own motto was "True 
 hermits throughout 
 every age have been 
 the firm abettors of 
 freedom," and the 
 actions of his life 
 were all intended to 
 exhibit some political, 
 social, or religious 
 symbolism. The gar- 
 ments which he wore, 
 and the plots in which 
 his garden were laid out, all symbolised some quaint 
 idea. Thus one hat of helmet shape represented 
 the idea " Fight for the birthright of conscience, 
 love, life, property, and national independence." 
 Another of his twenty symbolic hats shaped like a 
 beehive represented the thought " The toils of 
 
 EXTERIOR VIEW OF ST. ROBERT'S CHAPEI 
 KN A RES BOROUGH. 
 
HERMITS AND HERMIT-CELLS, 
 
 95 
 
 industry are sweet ; a wise people live at peace." 
 To such a weak aimless end had the hermit 
 
 life decayed. 
 
 We give an illustration of the funeral of a 
 
 hermit, which is one of a group in a fine picture of 
 
 "St. Jerome," by Cosimo Roselli (who lived from 
 
 1439 to 1506), in the ^ 
 
 National Gallery. "It 
 
 represents," says the 
 
 Rev. Edward L. 
 
 Cutts, in his "Scenes 
 
 and Characters of the 
 
 Middle Ages," " a 
 
 number of hermits 
 
 mourning over one of S 
 
 their brethren, while 
 
 a priest, in the robes 
 
 proper to his office, 
 
 stands at the head of 
 
 the bier and says 
 
 prayers, and his deacon stands at the foot holding 
 
 a processional cross. The contrast between the 
 
 robes of the priest and those of the hermits is lost 
 
 in the woodcut ; in the original the priest's cope 
 
 and amice are coloured red, while those of the 
 
 hermits are tinted with licrht brown." It will be 
 
 INTERIOK VIEW OF ST. KOBKKT S CHAPEL, 
 KNAKKSBOROUGH. 
 
96 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 observed that he is to be interred without a 
 coffin, which was customary amongst members of 
 religious orders in bygone times. 
 
 Yet, since nothing dies, but only all things 
 change, all that was great and good in the hermit 
 spirit has but passed on into other forms, for still 
 we find poets of nature and self-denying souls, and 
 even the hermit form itself may phcenix-like arise 
 
 FUNERAL SERVICE OF A HERMIT. 
 
 again out of the ashes of the frivolity and secularism 
 of the age as an overstrained reaction from the 
 past, as it did of old. Who can tell ? 
 
 It will not seem more strange to us than it did 
 to the calm-souled fellow-christians of Paul and 
 Antony, or the Roman contemporaries of Jerome 
 and Eustochium. 
 
Church TKilakes. 
 
 IT is not often that we can trace back so old 
 and wide-spread a custom as the observance 
 of wakes to its origin. A letter from Pope 
 Gregory to the Abbot Melito in 60 1, seems, 
 however, to give us the commencement of the 
 history of them in England. "The idol temples 
 are not to be . destroyed," he says, "but let the 
 idols in them be destroyed. Let holy water be 
 blessed and sprinkled in these temples ; let altars 
 be built and relics be placed there : and since they 
 are accustomed to slay many oxen in sacrifice to 
 demons, let them, on the anniversary of the dedi- 
 cation, or on the birthdays (i.e., the days of the 
 martyrdom) of the holy martyrs, construct booths 
 around those churches which were formerly 
 temples, and celebrate the solemnity with religious 
 festivity." The name ivake, in Old English zvaec, 
 is equivalent to vigil, and arose from the custom 
 of reckoning church festivals, from sunset to sun- 
 set, the night being largely spent in early times in 
 watching and prayer. 
 
 The custom thus begun for religious purposes 
 
98 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 soon developed a distinctly secular side. In the 
 case especially of churches dedicated in the name 
 of some more than usually popular saint the people, 
 not only of that parish, but from all the country- 
 side, flocked to the festival. Itinerant vendors of 
 wares, large and small, found that the concourse 
 gave them an excellent opportunity for trade ; and 
 those who could " turn an honest penny " by 
 catering for the amusement of the public were not 
 less quick in seizing the occasion. 
 
 The religious services of the festival were not 
 forgotten or omitted, but the buisness and jollifica- 
 tion of the time became such prominent features 
 of the wake as to largely obscure its sacred aspect, 
 and to call frequently for measures of restraint. 
 So early as King Edgar's reign a Canon was 
 enacted warning thepeople not to spend in drunken- 
 ness and debauchery the season specially designed 
 for devotion and prayer. Othobon, the Papal 
 legate, issued certain Constitutions in 1268, one 
 of which forbade the setting out of stalls for mer- 
 chandise within the walls of the Church, from 
 which we may judge how far the business side of 
 the wake had intruded upon the devotional. An 
 Act of Edward I. (13, Edw. I., c. 6) goes further, 
 by forbidding fairs and markets to be held in 
 
CHURCH WAKES. 
 
 99 
 
 churchyards. In Scotland, too, measures had to 
 be taken to secure decency of behaviour at these 
 gatherings. The Provincial Synod enacted in 
 1225 that "dances and games which engender 
 lasciviousness be not performed in churches and 
 churchyards," and also that "wrestling matches or 
 
 A COUNTRY WAKE (WELFORD, WARWICKSHIRE). 
 
 sports be not suffered to take place there upon 
 any of the festivals." In 1448, Henry VI. forbade 
 any fairs to be held or merchandise to be displayed 
 on the great festivals of the christian year. 
 
 By these means some of the more unseemly 
 customs, which at one time accompanied the 
 
ioo THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 wakes, were cut off, and the sacred enclosure of 
 the churchyard, and still more of the church itself, 
 was defended to a great extent from profane uses ; 
 but even this was not easily achieved. So late as 
 1 57 1, we find Grindal, Archbishop of York, in 
 Injunctions issued to the laity of the Northern 
 Province, ordering " that the minister and church- 
 wardens shall not suffer any lords of misrule, or 
 summer lords or ladies, or any disguised persons 
 or others in Christmas or at May games, or any 
 minstrels, morrice-dancers, or others, at rush- 
 bearings, or at any other time to come unreverently 
 into any church or chapel or churchyard, and there 
 dance, or play any unseemly parts with scoffs, 
 jests, wanton gestures, or ribald talk, namely in 
 the time of divine service, or of any sermon." 
 The conclusion of the paragraph is curiously 
 worded, since it is obviously not intended that 
 these things were allowable in church at other 
 times. 
 
 The rush bearing, mentioned in this Injunction, 
 is practically the same as the wake, the gathering 
 and bringing of rushes wherewith to strew the 
 floor of the churches, being one of the details 
 preliminary to the celebration of the annual parish 
 feast. 
 
CHURCH WAKES. 101 
 
 Kept, as far as possible, beyond the bounds of 
 holy ground, the village carnival lived on from 
 year to year ; surrounded with much of the rough 
 jocularity, both in word and deed, which character- 
 ized the bygone time, but nevertheless not without 
 its pleasing features. There was much meeting 
 of ancient gossips, many a gathering of life-long 
 friends around the cottage hearth, or beneath the 
 sheltering elms of God's Acre. 
 
 " And all the village train, from labour free, 
 Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree, 
 While many a pastime circled in the shade, 
 The young contending, while the old surveyed ; 
 And many a gambol frolicked o'er the ground, 
 And sleights of art, and feats of strength went round." 
 
 In time, however, as " Merrie England" was 
 changed more and more each succeeding gener- 
 ation into " Busy England," the multiplicity of 
 these holidays was felt to be somewhat of a 
 grievance, and an attempt was made to meet the 
 case by ordering that all dedication festivals 
 throughout the country should be celebrated on 
 one day, namely on the first Sunday in October. 
 This was enacted by Convocation in 1536, with 
 the result, not that the wakes were transferred, 
 but that many of them dropped out of observance. 
 The village feast, however, still lives in many 
 
102 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 districts, and many fairs also keep alive the 
 memory of the wake of earlier days ; the feast-day 
 of the patron saint of the parish, the patronal 
 rather than the dedication festival, being the day 
 with which they are usually connected. With the 
 usual conservatism of the rustic mind, however, 
 the country-folk have in many, perhaps in most 
 instances, declined to accept the alteration of the 
 Calendar in 1752, so that the actual observance of 
 the Saint's Day, and the parish feast or fair, are 
 now frequently eleven days apart. 
 
 In the old times, when travelling was difficult 
 and expensive for the rich, and well-nigh impossible 
 for the poor, all that the peasant or the artisan 
 saw of life, beyond the monotonous round of his 
 daily toil, was at the wake. " There were, at 
 these times," as we gather from King James I.'s 
 Declaration concerning Laivfull Sports, ''dancing 
 either of men or women, archery for men, leaping, 
 vaulting, and other such harmless recreation," as 
 well as the " carrying rushes to the church for the 
 decoring of it, according to old customs." All 
 such amusements Charles I., in reissuing his 
 father's declaration, asserts to be right and proper 
 at the feast of the "dedication of churches, 
 commonly called wakes." But besides these, 
 
CHURCH WAKES. 103 
 
 interludes, plays, and masques were performed 
 for the entertainment of the crowd. Thomas 
 Heywood, in an Apology for Actors, published in 
 1612, asserts that "in divers places of England 
 there be towns that hold the privilege of their 
 fairs and other charters by yearly stage-plays, as 
 at Manningtree, in Suffolk, Kendall in the north, 
 and others." In Manchester, at the wake, the 
 pageant of Robin Hood, Maid Marion, and Friar 
 Tuck was exhibited, and that too, it is said, 
 within the church, the priests organizing it, and 
 the churchwardens making themselves responsible 
 for the expenses. Mediaeval England was fond 
 of dramatic displays. The mummers, morrice- 
 dancers, plough-jacks, and other ministers of 
 harmless revelry were all more or less histrionic 
 in their performances, and pageants and miracle- 
 plays were performed in many places with an 
 elaboration and costliness that seem to us 
 remarkable. 
 
 More objectionable were the cruel games too 
 often introduced, such as bull or bear-baiting, 
 cock-fighting, and such like ; and these, in spite of 
 the better views of our duties towards the brute 
 creation, which unquestionably prevail to-day, 
 lived on in some places till comparatively recent 
 
io4 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 times. Bulls and bears were baited at Eccles, 
 where was held one of the most famous wakes in 
 the country, until the year 1834, and cock-fighting 
 was also a popular sport there. 
 
 In recent years, with the revived regard for the 
 Holy Days of the Church, Saints' Days are far 
 better observed than was recently the case, and 
 attempts have been made in several cases to 
 emphasize the recurrence of the patronal feast-day 
 of the parish, by organizing rural sports, cricket 
 matches, and so on. If we can attain something 
 of the realization of the "parochial family" once 
 more, as it was felt at the old wakes, when old 
 and young, rich and poor, met together for the 
 common purpose, first of worship, and then of 
 harmless recreation, and at the same learn by 
 experiences to avoid the excesses of former days, 
 we shall have done something towards the revival 
 of Merrie England. 
 
jfortifiefc Cburcb (Towers. 
 
 By William Andrews. 
 
 IN these peaceful days it is not easy to fully 
 realise the terrible times when warfare cast a 
 gloom over the land. Our forefathers had not 
 only to fear foes from foreign shores, but had to 
 protect themselves against the inroads of the 
 Scotch and Welsh. 
 
 Strong castles were conspicuous in all parts of 
 the country. These were often the strongholds 
 of petty tyrants and disturbers of public peace. 
 The warlike owners of the castles with their armed 
 retainers were often at strife with their neighbours, 
 and even the king on the throne was defied. 
 
 Castles were not the only fortified places. 
 Church towers, more especially in the border 
 counties of Cumberland and Hereford, and the 
 border districts of southern France, were strongly 
 built, and offered a place of safety in the time of 
 need. The best extant example in England is the 
 tower of Great Salkeld Church, Cumberland. 
 It has only one door, and that opens into the nave, 
 
106 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 and this is iron-plated towards the church, and at 
 the inside are strong iron bars, when fastened, 
 rendering it almost impossible to break through. 
 Here the ancient town armour was kept, and here 
 the helmet, breast-plate, etc., belonging to other 
 days and to old-fashioned warfare, appear to be 
 in their proper place in this ancient stronghold. 
 At Burgh-on-the-Sands, in the same county, is an 
 old fortified church tower. It was here that 
 Edward I. died, on July 7th, 1307. At the time 
 of his death he was preparing to wage war in 
 Scotland. The church of Annan, on the Scottish 
 side of the Solway was as strongly fortified as 
 Burgh. This was not the only fortified church 
 on the borders of North Britain. 
 
 Some interesting notes on this theme were 
 written by Mr. John A. Cory, Architect, County 
 Surveyor of Cumberland, for a meeting of the 
 Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and 
 Ireland, held at Carlisle, in July, 1859. Res- 
 pecting Newton and Arlosh church, on the coast 
 of Cumberland, a few miles to the west of Burgh, 
 and in the parish of Holme-Cultram, some 
 important facts were given. "This curious 
 example," said Mr. Cory, "is of especial interest, 
 because the date of the construction has been 
 
FORTIFIED CHURCH TOWERS. 107 
 
 ascertained. The Abbot of Holme had obtained, 
 in 1 30 1, a grant from the bishop, for building 
 a church at Shenburness, at that period a place 
 of consequence for supplies for the forces engaged 
 against the Scots. Shortly afterwards, however, 
 the town was destroyed by the inroads of the 
 sea; and in 1309, John de Halaughton, bishop of 
 Carlise, granted licence to the abbot to build a 
 church or chapel within the territory of Arlosh, 
 which, subsequently to the removal of the town 
 thither received the name of Newton, which it 
 still bears. In consequence of the frequent 
 hostile invasions and depredations of the Scots, 
 to which special attention is made in the bishop's 
 charter, the church then built was so constructed 
 as to appear more like a fortress than an 
 ecclesiastical structure. The doorway is only two 
 feet seven inches wide, all the windows are more 
 than seven feet from the ground, and not one, 
 even in the east end of the church, measures more 
 than one foot in width, and three feet four inches 
 in height." The tower has in it a fire-place, and 
 at this stronghold every precaution was made for 
 safety in the event of protection being required. 
 In the church tower of Burgh is a fire-place, and 
 in other towers we have found traces of them. 
 
108 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 According to popular tradition, the noble tower 
 of Bedale church has proved a place of refuge 
 when the Scotch were spreading misery with the 
 sword in the district. It is clearly built for 
 defence, having a portcullis at the foot of the 
 staircase. Strange to state the portcullis was lost 
 sight of, till it fell from the effects of a stroke of 
 lightning. All communication with the clock 
 bells were stopped until it was hacked away, and 
 this was not done without considerable labour. 
 
 Another Yorkshire church tower built for 
 defence was the one at Middleham. Richard 
 III., Duke of Gloucester, took an interest in this 
 church, and intended making it a collegiate 
 church, and to endow it, but this was frustrated 
 by his death at Bosworth. From the time of 
 Richard III. down to 1856, the Incumbent 
 was called a Dean, but since that year he is 
 designated a Rector. We orather from the 
 
 o o 
 
 " History of the North Riding," published 1859, 
 that the tower is furnished with a fire-place, 
 constructed in comparatively modern times of 
 Early English tombstones, etc. The Rev. Luke 
 Cotes, Dean from 17 18 to 1741, is said to have 
 lived in this tower for some time, to avoid arrest 
 for debt. He was involved in pecuniary em- 
 
FORTIFIED CHURCH TOWERS. 109 
 
 barrassments, caused by his repewing the church, 
 the cost of which his parishioners refused to 
 pay. 
 
 At Melsonby, Yorkshire, is another fortified 
 church tower. It is described as " a Norman 
 keep in miniature." In this tower is a square, 
 aperture, said to be designed for passing in 
 provisions to supply the garrison when located 
 here, or perhaps for supplying a recluse, of whose 
 habitation some traces remain. 
 
 The inhabitants of Newcastle-on-Tyne are 
 justly proud of the elegant steeple of their 
 Cathedral, formerly the parish church of St. 
 Nicholas. "Other towns" says Mr. R. J. 
 Charlton in his "Newcastle Town," "can show 
 copies of our famous original, but all are far behind 
 it. It is the surprise and admiration of strangers 
 and the constant delight of the townsmen of 
 Newcastle." In 1804, the Rev. Joseph Dacre 
 Carlyle, the then vicar of the town, in a letter to 
 his churchwardens said of the steeple "It is a 
 fabric, in my opinion, the most beautiful that 
 exists in the world which surpasses the cathedral 
 of St. Sophia at Constantinople, the mosque of 
 Sultan Saladin at Jerusalem, the church of St. 
 Peter at Rome, even the temple of Minerva at 
 
no THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 Athens." Newcastle in the Civil Wars espoused 
 the Royalist side, and in 1644 for ten weeks was 
 besieged. Under the singular courage and ability 
 of the Mayor, Sir John Marley, the town with 1500 
 fighting men held out against some 30,000 soldiers 
 serving the Parliament. The Earl of Leven was 
 enraged at being kept so long at bay by so small 
 a force, and declared that if the town did not 
 immediately surrender he would destroy the spire 
 of St. Nicholas' Church. Sir John Marley was 
 equal to the occasion and filled the lantern of the 
 tower with Scotch prisoners. According to 
 Bourne the old historian of the town, Sir John 
 made reply to Earl Leven's threats by declaring 
 "that they would upon no terms deliver up the 
 town, but would to the last moment defend it. 
 That the steeple of St. Nicholas was indeed a 
 beautiful and magnificent piece of architecture, 
 and one of the great ornaments of their town, but 
 yet should it be blown into atoms before ransomed 
 at such a rate. That, however, if it was to fall, 
 it should not fall alone ; that the same moment he 
 destroyed the beautiful structure, he should bathe 
 his hands in the blood of his countrymen, who were 
 placed there on purpose either to preserve it from 
 ruin or to die along with it." The spire was 
 
FORTIFIED CHURCH TOWERS. in 
 
 saved, but later, the town, after remarkable 
 resistance was taken. 
 
 During the Civil War, Bradford, Yorkshire, 
 was on the side of the Parliament, and when the 
 King's troops besieged the town, the church was 
 improvised by the inhabitants as a sort of fortress, 
 and to protect the fabric the tower was hung round 
 with wool-packs. 
 
 Under the shadows of the old fortified towers 
 many tales of terror have been told of bygone 
 times. The towers are links in the chain of 
 history joining the peaceful present to the peril- 
 some past. 
 
be Iknigbts templars: tbeir Gburcbes 
 anfc tbeir privileges. 
 
 By J. Rogers Rees. 
 i. THE TEMPLARS. 
 
 THE Templars, with other similiar religious 
 Orders, were born of the Crusades. All 
 that Christians held dear in the Holy Land was 
 being either ruthlessly swept away or shamefully 
 desecrated by the unbelievers, and throughout 
 Europe a great cry went up " What can we do ? 
 What shall we give ? " The Crusades were the 
 answer ; and out of the Crusades arose the mighty 
 Order of the Red Cross Knights. It originated 
 in the determination of two French Knights, Hugo 
 de Payens and Godefroi de St. Omer, to devote 
 their services to the protection of pilgrims as they 
 travelled along the infested roads of Palestine. 
 Seven other French Knights associated themselves 
 in the work, and the nine accordingly pledged 
 themselves to live without personal property, in 
 obedience and chastity, according to the rule of 
 the Canons Regular. Apt and expressive was 
 
THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. 
 
 "3 
 
 the title they obtained, at this time, of " Poor 
 Soldiers of Christ ;" for everything connected 
 with them was of the utmost plainness and 
 simplicity. Their garments were white (the dis- 
 tinguishing feature of the Order the red cross 
 was not assumed until the time of Pope Eugenius 
 III.) ; and whilst furs 
 were forbidden them, 
 lambs' or sheeps' skins 
 were permitted in winter 
 time ; but whatever the 
 dress, it was made in 
 the simplest pattern, so 
 that it might be put on 
 or off with readiness. 
 Flesh food was per- 
 mitted them but three 
 times a week, except at 
 Christmas, Easter, and 
 the Feast of the Virgin ; 
 whilst for bedding- a 
 pillow, a piece of sacking, and a single coverlet 
 were deemed sufficient for each. Every knight 
 was ordinarily called to attend upon the holy 
 offices at the regular hours ; if prevented he 
 was to say thirteen pater-nosters for missing 
 
 A KNIGHT TEMPLAR. 
 
1 1 4 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 matins, nine for missing vespers, and seven for 
 each of the other hours. 
 
 Their ancient badge was the Lamb : a seal 
 attached to a charter of A. D. 1304, now in the 
 British Museum, has the Lamb bearing the flag, 
 with the legend around it : Testis Agni ; but 
 before the Templars took this device they seemed 
 to have used that of a horse, with two men riding 
 upon it, a rude woodcut of which is to be seen in 
 the 1640 folio edition of Matthew Paris. Their 
 red cross was that now known as the Maltese, 
 with its eight points, which, as to form, was 
 subsequently taken by the Hospitallers, who had 
 at first used the patriarchal cross. Their banner, 
 which they called Beau-Seant, was, according to 
 Favine, " halfe white and halfe blacke, because 
 they were, and shewed themselves wholly white 
 and fayre towards the Christians, but blacke and 
 terrible to them that were miscreants." What 
 Beau-Seant means no one seems to be able 
 to say with certainty ; Froude thought it 
 originated in an old cry of the Burgundian 
 peasantry, and was originally adopted by the 
 Knights as " a sort of link with the old home." 
 
 But the humility and poverity of the Templars 
 appear to have been but short-lived. Bravery 
 
THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. 115 
 
 was an undoubted characteristic of the Order ; 
 and in those days armed force in the service 
 of what was considered unarmed truth, was bound 
 to be well recompensed. Accordingly, privileges 
 and indulgences, wealth and power, were poured 
 into the laps of the " Poor Soldiers of 
 Christ," with the usual results. When Richard 
 Cceur de Lion was once being preached to, and 
 urged to give up his three favourite daughters, 
 pride, avarice, and voluptuousness, he unhesitat- 
 ingly answered that he had already bestowed 
 pride on the Templars. Their wealth soon 
 became enormous, and in almost every part of 
 Europe they were found established, and in 
 possession of churches, chapels, tithes, farms, 
 villages, mills, rights of pasturage, of fishing, of 
 venery, and of wood. " They had also, in many 
 places, the right of holding annual fairs, which 
 were managed, and the tolls received, either by 
 some of the brethren of the nearest houses or by 
 their donates and servants. The number of their 
 preceptories was, by the most moderatecomputation, 
 rated at 9,000 ; # and the annual income of the 
 Order at about six millions sterling an enormous 
 
 * Matthew Paris tells us their possessions included nine thousand 
 manors and sixteen thousand lordships. 
 
n6 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 sum for those times ! Masters of such a revenue, 
 descended from the noblest houses of Christen- 
 dom, uniting in their persons the most esteemed 
 secular and religious characters, regarded as the 
 chosen champions of Christ, and the flower of 
 Christian knights, it was not possible for the 
 Templars, in such lax times as the twelfth and 
 thirteenth centuries, to escape falling into the 
 vices of extravagant luxury and overweening 
 pride." # William, Archbishop of Tyre, writing 
 from Jerusalem, about the end of the twelfth 
 century, says : 
 
 " Quorum res adeo crevit in immensum, ut hodie, trecentos 
 in conventu habeant equites, albis chlamydibus indutos : 
 exeptis fratribus, quorum pene infinitus est numerus. 
 Possessiones autem, tarn ultra quam citra mare, adeo dicuntur 
 immensas habere, ut jam non sit in orbe christiano provincia 
 quae proedictis fratribus suorum portionem non contulerit, et 
 regiis opulentiis pares hodie dicuntur habere copias." f 
 
 Being so wealthy, they naturally became the 
 bankers of those days ; and the several branches 
 of their establishment soon became storehouses of 
 treasure, which were faithfully preserved for, and 
 in due course rendered back to, their rightful 
 owners. Matthew Paris tells us that when Hubert 
 
 * Secret Societies of the Middle Ages, 1848 Edition, p. 252. 
 t Will. Tyr. lib. xii., cap. 7. 
 
THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. 117 
 
 de Burgh, Earl of Kent, was disgraced and 
 committed to the Tower, the King, hearing of the 
 wealth of Hubert in the custody of the Templars, 
 summoned to his presence the Master of the 
 Temple, and endeavoured, by threats and other- 
 wise, to obtain from him the aforesaid money. 
 The refusal, however, was unmistakeable ; the 
 answer was that " money confided to them in 
 trust they would deliver to no man without the 
 permission of him who had intrusted it to be kept 
 in the Temple." And so it remained until the 
 King had extorted an assignment of it from the 
 imprisoned Hubert, when "the king's clerks, and 
 the treasurer acting with them, found deposited in 
 the Temple gold and silver vases of inestimable 
 price, and money and many precious gems, an 
 enumeration whereof would in truth astonish the 
 hearers." Other curious trusts were reposed in 
 the Order. In Jerusalem, the crowns of the Latin 
 kingdom were kept in a large chest, fastened with 
 two locks, the keys of which were kept, one by 
 the Grand Master of the Temple, and the other 
 by the Grand Master of the Hospital. 
 
 Some idea of their power may be gathered 
 from the following incident. Henry III., com- 
 plaining of their wealth and pride, said to their 
 
n8 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 Grand Prior in England : " You prelates and 
 religious, but especially you Templars and 
 Hospitallers, have so many liberties and charters, 
 that your superabundant possessions fill you with 
 pride and madness. Those things, therefore, 
 which have been hastily and imprudently granted 
 by our predecessors, must be prudently and 
 deliberately recalled. I will infringe both this 
 charter and others, which I or my predecessors 
 have rashly granted." But mark the Templar's 
 reply : " It is far from thee, O King, to utter 
 such an absurd and ungracious word. As long as 
 thou observest justice thou art a King ; when thou 
 infringest justice thou wilt cease to be so." Henry 
 failed to fulfil his threat. 
 
 The wealth and pride of the Templars were the 
 causes of their downfall in the early days of the 
 fourteenth century. It is an interesting chapter 
 of history, but limited space prevents our dwelling 
 upon it at any length just here. Fuller, in his 
 Holy War, quaintly puts it: "As Naboth's 
 vineyard was the chiefest ground of his blasphemy, 
 and as in England, Sir John Cornwall, Lord 
 Fanhope said merrily, not he, but his stately house 
 at Ampthill, in Bedfordshire, was guilty of high 
 treason, so certainly their (the Templars') wealth 
 
THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. 119 
 
 was the principal cause of their overthrow." He 
 continues to say that no lives would have been 
 taken on the Continent if their lands could have 
 been secured otherwise, but the mischief was, the 
 honey could not be got unless the bees were 
 burnt, and the honey was surely sufficient to 
 tempt rapacity. When De Molay, the last 
 Grand Master of the Order, came to Paris, prior 
 to his trial, he brought with him no less than 
 twelve mules' load of gold and silver. 
 
 All the world was asked to believe that the 
 Templars were suppressed because they were 
 infidels and blasphemers, given to debauchery, 
 and steeped in crime. Students, however, should 
 give close attention to all pertinent points, and 
 form their own judgment on the matter. 
 
 A curious sequel to the suppression of the 
 Order is on record. When De Molay was being 
 burnt to death in Paris, he raised his voice and 
 summoned his persecutors to meet him straightway 
 before the judgment-throne of God. A year and 
 one month afterwards, the Pope was attacked by 
 illness and quickly died. Before the same year 
 was closed, King Philip of France died of a 
 disease which had baffled his medical attendants, 
 and the informant, on whose evidence the 
 
i2o THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 Templars had first been arrested, was hanged for 
 fresh crimes. Raynouard, summoning up the 
 matter, says : " History attests that all those who 
 were foremost in the persecution of the Templars, 
 came to an untimely and miserable death." 
 
 II. THEIR CHURCHES AND HOUSES. 
 
 The churches and preceptories of the Templars 
 were not built after one uniform plan, as is some- 
 times supposed. They were erected to suit the 
 exigencies of the times, the customs of the 
 countries in which they were situated, and the 
 geographical peculiarities of the various districts 
 in which they lay. Preceptories were sometimes 
 castles, sometimes ordinary manor-houses ; and 
 the churches as a rule were by no means 
 characterised by the graceful outline and pro- 
 portions of the Temple Church of the Metropolis. 
 
 In the early days of the Order, before the 
 Templars were wealthy enough to possess 
 buildings of their own, they used the Church of 
 the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and from this 
 fact some antiquaries have concluded that the 
 round church, wherever found, is evidence of the 
 building-hand of the Red-Cross Knights, working 
 after the model of the church they originally 
 
THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. 
 
 worshipped in. They say : " Wherever you find 
 a round church, you may conclude it belonged at 
 one time or another to the Templars." This, how- 
 ever, is not correct. Take, for instance, the case 
 of one of the few round churches that of Little 
 Maplestead, in Essex. The whole of the parish, in- 
 cluding the church, was 
 given to the Hospitallers 
 by Juliana, daughter of 
 Robert Dosnel, as early 
 as A.D. 1 185, and con- 
 tinued intheirpossession 
 until the suppression of 
 the religious houses by 
 Henry VIII. in the 16th 
 century. It never be- 
 longed to the Templars. 
 Of course some of 
 the circular towers and 
 round churches were 
 once the properties of 
 the Red-Cross Knights.* The Temple in London 
 
 * " It is very doubtful whether any of the round churches in this country 
 were originally complete rotundas. Certainly the Temple Church was not ; 
 for the oblong building on the South Side, pulled down some years ago, was 
 undoubtedly a portion of the original design . . . and the later specimen 
 of the kind at Maplestead had the square and the round parts built at the 
 same time." (Cottingham, quoted in Burge's Temple Church, p. 14.) 
 
 A KNIGHT HOsriTAU.EK. 
 
122 THE CHURCH TREASURY 
 
 was theirs, and so was the church at Acre with its 
 round tower, "the scene of the death struggle of 
 the band of gallant Templars who fought to the 
 last in defence of the Christian faith in Palestine ;" 
 but we must disabuse our minds of the idea that 
 all round churches, or rather round towers at the 
 west ends of square churches, carry undoubted 
 indications of their having once been in the 
 possession of the Templars. 
 
 The Temple church in London appears to have 
 taken upwards of fifty years in building. The 
 circular part of it was consecrated by Heraclius, 
 Patriarch of Jerusalem, in 1184 ; but the body of 
 the church, as it now stands, was not consecrated 
 until 1240, when King Henry III. was present at 
 the ceremony. The feverish haste of modern 
 contract work was unknown in those days, when 
 men with noble ardour devoted all, " money, 
 time, thought, hope, life itself to raise for God 
 and man, shrines as worthy of God as human 
 hands could raise, and fit and able to lift man's 
 thought and hope beyond earth, and lead it on 
 heavenward." The building has experienced 
 many vicissitudes : in order to efface all evidence 
 of the Popish faith the early Puritan lawyers had 
 it well white-washed : it narrowly escaped the 
 
THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. 123 
 
 flames in 1666 ; was beautified in 1682, and so on. 
 But "in the year 1706, the Church was wholly 
 new white -washed, gilt and painted within, and 
 the pillars of the round tower wainscoted with a 
 new battlement." The effigies were also " new 
 cleaned and painted." This was restoration with 
 a vengeance ! In short, from the times of James 
 and Charles I. down to the middle of the present 
 century the Temple Church was disfigured by 
 " incongruous innovations and modern embellish- 
 ments, which entirely changed the ancient 
 character and appearance of the building, and 
 clouded and obscured its elegance and beauty." 
 Lamenting this, a writer in the Gentleman s 
 Magazine for May 1808 said : " If a day should 
 come when pew lumber, preposterous organ-cases, 
 and pagan altar-screens are declared to be 
 unfashionable, no religious building, stript of such 
 nuisances, would come more fair to the sight, or 
 give more general satisfaction to the antiquary, 
 then the chaste and beautiful Temple Church." 
 The looked-for day came at length, and in the 
 year 1840 the societies of the Inner and Middle 
 Temple determined to give their attention to the 
 whole matter. Galleries and screens, wainscoting, 
 partitions and pews were thrown out, paint and 
 
i2 4 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 white-wash scraped away ; and in a little while 
 the ancient Gothic Church of the Knights 
 Templars " stood forth in all its native purity and 
 simplicity, and astonished and delighted the 
 beholder by the harmony of its proportions and 
 its fairy-like beauty, and gracefulness of form." 
 
 We have already noticed the immense wealth of 
 the Templars ; and as a detailed enumeration of 
 their various houses would occupy an altogether 
 disproportionate number of our pages, we must 
 content ourselves by pointing out to our readers 
 where they may obtain information on the subject. 
 A list of possessions, chiefly foreign, will be found 
 on pp. 242-252 of Secret Societies of the Middle 
 Ages, (London: Nattali, 1848); the works of 
 Dugdale and Tanner will furnish particulars of 
 English properties ; whilst the admirable chapter 
 on " The Rise, Extension, and Suppression of 
 the Order of Knights Templar in Yorkshire," 
 in Kenrick's Papers on Archeology and History 
 (London: Longman, 1864), will prove of great 
 service to those really interested in the subject. 
 The Knights Hospitallers in England, issued by 
 the Camden Society as their 1855 publication, has 
 much information regarding the transferred 
 Templar-possessions in the hands of the Hospit- 
 
THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. 125 
 
 allers in 1338. Addison's Knights Templars 
 (London: Longman, 1842) must also be consulted; 
 whilst much incidental information is to be found 
 in the pages of the several works, English and 
 Continental, on the history of the Knights 
 Hospitallers. It is hardly necessary to extend 
 our list ; the genuine student will soon add to it 
 according to his own fancy or requirements. 
 
 III. THEIR PRIVILEGES. 
 
 In the year 1162, Pope Alexander III. issued 
 his famous bull confirming the rights and 
 privileges already enjoyed by the Templars, and 
 granting them other and new powers and im- 
 munities. It is a somewhat lengthy document, 
 from which we extract the following items : 
 
 a. Permission is granted them to elect their own Master : 
 ' No man shall be set in authority over the brethren . . . 
 except he be of the religious and military order ; and has regularly 
 professed your habit and fellowship ; and has been chosen by 
 all the brethren unanimously, or, at all events by the greater 
 part of them.' 
 
 b. They are freed from ecclesiastical interference : ' Hence- 
 forth it shall not be permitted to any ecclesiastical or secular 
 person to infringe or diminish the customs and observances of 
 your religion and profession . . . No ecclesiastic or secular 
 person shall dare to exact from the Master and Brethren of the 
 Temple, oaths, guarantees, or any such securities as are 
 ordinarily required from the laity . . . .We prohibit all 
 
i26 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 manner of men from exacting tithes from you, in respect 
 of your moveables or immovables, or any of the goods and 
 possessions appertaining unto your venerable house.' 
 
 c. But they were not only exempted from tithes : they were 
 permitted to take them : ' As to the tithes, which by the advice 
 and with the consent of the bishops, ye may be able by your 
 zeal to draw out of the hands of the clergy or laity, and those 
 which with the consent of the bishops, ye may acquire from 
 their own clergy, we confirm to you by our apostolic authority.' 
 
 d. They are permitted to chose their own priests : ' It shall 
 be lawful for you to admit within your fraternity, honest and 
 godly clergymen and priests, as many as ye may conscientiously 
 require ... so that ye ask them from the bishop, if they 
 come from the neighbourhood ; but if, peradventure, the 
 bishop should refuse, yet nevertheless ye have permission to 
 receive and retain them by the authority of the holy apostolic 
 see. ... As regards the cure of souls, they are to occupy 
 themselves with that business so far only as they are required. 
 Moreover, they shall be subject to no person, power, or 
 authority, excepting that of your own chapter. ... It 
 shall be lawful for you to send your clerks, when they are 
 admitted to holy orders, for ordination, to whatever Catholic 
 bishop you may please.' 
 
 e. Their cemeteries were to be free from the interference of 
 the regular clergy. 
 
 J. They were to have (what soon conferred on them immense 
 power) the privilege of causing, in times of excommunication, 
 the churches of what towns and villages they passed through 
 to be thrown open once a year for divine service. 
 
 It need hardly be said that such powers soon 
 brought the Order into antagonism with the 
 regular clergy. It was stated at a general council 
 
THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. 127 
 
 held at the Lateran, in n 79, that "the Templars 
 and Hospitallers abuse the privileges granted 
 them by the Holy See ; that the chaplains and 
 priests of their rule have caused parochial 
 churches to be conveyed over to themselves 
 without the ordinaries' consent ; that they ad- 
 minister the sacraments to excommunicated 
 persons, and bury them with all the usual cere- 
 monies of the church : that they likewise abuse 
 the permission granted the brethren, of having 
 divine service said once a year in places under inter- 
 dict, and that they admit seculars into their frater- 
 nity, pretending hereby to give them the same right 
 to their privileges as if they were really professed." 
 
 The privilege of Sanctuary was thrown around 
 their dwellings ; and several papal bulls sternly 
 forbade anyone laying hands either upon the 
 persons or property of those flying for refuge to 
 Temple houses. 
 
 Even the tenants of the Templars could reckon 
 up their benefits ; and in order that these might 
 be known to all men, they erected crosses on 
 their houses, thus proclaiming that they were 
 free from several of the duties and services of the 
 ordinary tenant. In the city of Leeds the cross 
 still remains on some houses, once the property 
 
i28 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 of the Templars, the inhabitants of which were 
 free of the obligation to grind at the Soke mill. 
 
 Some of the returns made by the Templars for 
 Ofifts to their Order are interesting-. Camden tells 
 us that the Templars, in gratitude for the 
 munificent gifts of Roger de Mowbray, conferred 
 on him and his heirs the privilege of pardoning 
 at any time any of the brethren exposed to public 
 penance for transgressions against the rules of 
 the Order, provided they came and acknowledged 
 their crime before their benefactor. 
 
By W. H. Thompson. 
 
 PILGRIMAGES amongst Christians appear 
 to have begun about the fourth century of 
 our era. At first the Holy Land was the destina- 
 tion of the faithful, but gradually other places 
 came into vogue, notably Rome, the centre of 
 western Christianity, and the famous shrine of St. 
 James, of Compostella. During the latter part of 
 the Saxon period there was quite a rage for foreign 
 pilgrimages, especially to Rome. Hence it was 
 Charlemagne wrote to King Offa of Mercia " con- 
 cerning the strangers, who for the love of God, 
 and the salvation of their souls, wish to repair to 
 the threshold of the blessed apostles {i.e. Rome), 
 let them travel in peace without any trouble." 
 Again in the year 1041 King Canute made a 
 pilgrimage to the City of the Seven Hills, and 
 met the Emperor Conrad with other princes, from 
 whom he obtained for all his subjects, whether 
 merchants or pilgrims, exemption from the heavy 
 tolls usually exacted on the journey. 
 
130 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 The number of those, however, who could afford 
 the leisure time and the cost, entailed by a journey 
 to Rome, or the Spanish shrine of St. James, 
 must have been comparatively limited. The rich 
 of no occupation might, or the very poor who 
 chose to abandon all lawful labour and live on 
 charity. But to the mass of the population, such 
 pilgrimages were impossible. Not so those to our 
 English shrines, which later, came so much into 
 fashion, and which were open to multitudes who 
 could not undertake the lengthier expeditions. In 
 popularity, first ranked that to the tomb of St. 
 Thomas a Becket at Canterbury, popular not only 
 in England, but all over Europe. The next in 
 general estimation was Our Lady of Walsingham, 
 in Norfolk. But nearly every great monastery 
 and many a cathedral had its famous shrine, to 
 which the faithful might resort. There was St. 
 William at York, St John at Beverley, St Hugh 
 at Lincoln, St. Cuthbert at Durham, St. Swithin 
 at Winchester, St. Edmund at Bury, besides 
 many others, where the devout might pray, and 
 whither they might bring their offerings. 
 
 It is not surprising to us that these pilgrimages 
 became so popular, when we learn the panacea 
 for physical infirmities offered, and the spiritual 
 
ENGLISH MEDIAEVAL PILGRIMAGES. 131 
 
 pardons and immunities which were held out to 
 those who undertook them. Besides, to many they 
 were a pleasant holiday, combined with a religious 
 function. Indeed in the course of time, the home 
 pilgrimages generally partook largely of the holi- 
 day character. Not that for one moment we 
 would infer there were none who took up the 
 pilgrim staff in other than a festive spirit. Num- 
 bers there doubtless were, who, with all sincerity, 
 thus sought to atone for an evil past, or to obtain 
 some future blessing. Yet, with Chaucer for our 
 authority, we venture to assert, that by the four- 
 teenth century, whatever may have been their 
 original intent, these shorter pilgrimages had 
 become largely divested of any really sacred 
 character. 
 
 We would not close our eyes to the change 
 which has passed over our religious ideals since 
 Chaucer's days, brought about by the Reformation 
 and the spread of the Puritan spirit. We know 
 well enough, how the sober and the gay, the 
 serious and the ridiculous, were then interwoven 
 in the national life and thought. One only needs 
 to study the sculptures of our old churches, with 
 their grotesque figures placed amidst the most 
 sacred and solemn surroundings, to understand 
 
132 
 
 THE- CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 something of this incongruous mediaeval spirit. 
 And yet after making every allowance, we main- 
 tain that in the majority of cases, eventually the 
 pilgrimages became little more than a pleasant 
 summer's excursion. The travellers appear to 
 have taken every precaution to make the journey 
 
 as agreeable as possible. 
 Far from begging their 
 bread, they put good store 
 of money in their purses at 
 starting, ambled on horse- 
 back in easy stages along 
 green lanes, and lived well 
 at comfortable inns all along 
 the way. There was a 
 certain costume appropriate 
 to pilgrims, which old writers 
 speak of as " pilgrim weeds." 
 The especial insignia were 
 the staff and scrip. The 
 
 PILGRIM IN HAIR SHIRT, AND CLOAK. rr r '11 
 
 stan was not of an invariable 
 shape. On a fourteenth century gravestone at 
 Haltwhistle, in Northumberland, it is like a rather 
 long walking-stick, with a natural knob at the top. 
 Usually it was a staff from five to seven feet long, 
 turned in a lathe, with one knob at the top, and 
 
ENGLISH MEDIEVAL PILGRIMAGES. 133 
 
 another a foot lower down. Sometimes beneath 
 the lower there was a hook or staple, to which a 
 water-bottle or small bundle might be attached. 
 The same kind of staff is to be found in ancient 
 illuminated manuscripts in the hands of beggars 
 and shepherds, as well as pilgrims. The scrip 
 was a small bag slung at the side by a cord over 
 the shoulder, to contain the 
 traveller's food and necess- 
 aries. Sometimes it was 
 made of leather, but probably 
 the material varied according 
 to individual taste. 
 
 Often the pilgrim is repre 
 sented with the scallop shell. 
 In an old wood-cut, illus- 
 trating Erasmus' " Praise of 
 Folly," he appears with it 
 
 attached tO his hat. The pilgrim (from " Praise of Folly"). 
 
 scallop shell had, however, more especial reference 
 to the shrine of St. James of Compostella, being 
 the badge of that particular Spanish saint. Sir 
 Walter Raleigh makes reference to it, in his well- 
 known lines : 
 
 "Give me my scallop shell of quiet, 
 My staff of faith to walk upon, 
 
134 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 My scrip of joy, immortal diet, 
 My bottle of salvacion ; 
 My gown of glory, hope's true gauge, 
 And thus I'll take my pilgrimage ; 
 Whilst my soul like quiet palmer, 
 Travels to the Land of Heaven." 
 
 Though, however, the conventional pilgrim as 
 a rule, is represented with robe, hat, staff, and 
 scrip, it is by no means clear, that the actual 
 pilgrim always bore them. Chaucer, who gives 
 the most minute details as to the costume of the 
 characters in his Canterbury Tales, does not, so 
 far as we remember, mention any of these things. 
 The Knight 
 
 " Of fustian wore a jupon " (guernsey). 
 The squire 
 
 " Short was his gowne, with sleeves long and wide." 
 The Yeoman 
 
 " Was clad in coat and hood of greene." 
 The Merchant was in motley : 
 
 "And on his head a Flander's beaver hat." 
 The only one of Chaucer's pilgrims, who bore 
 anything of religious insignia, was the Pardoner : 
 " A vernicle had he sewed in his cap." 
 The vernicle the kerchief of St. Veronica on 
 the original of which the sacred countenance was 
 said to have been miraculously imprinted by Our 
 
ENGLISH MEDIAEVAL PILGRIMAGES. 
 
 i35 
 
 Lord as He trod the Via Dolorosa, was borne by 
 those who had made a pilgrimage to Rome ; and 
 the Pardoner, the poet tells us : 
 
 " Straight was comen from the court of Rome." 
 The chief sign of the Canterbury pilgrims 
 was the ampulla (a flask). The legend was 
 that the monks carefully collected from the 
 pavement the blood of 
 
 the blessed St. Thomas, 
 and that it was preserved 
 as a sacred relic. A 
 lady visiting the shrine, 
 
 M 
 
 /( >, 
 
 begged for a drop of /-^ 
 the precious fluid, and iGS 
 this being used as a 
 medicine, worked a won- 
 derful cure. Naturally 
 the tidings of the miracle 
 
 THE CANTEKBUKY AMPULLA. 
 
 became noised abroad, 
 and as time went on, the pilgrims were not satisfied 
 unless they too shared the same benefit. A drop 
 of the blood was mixed with a chalice full of water, 
 so as not to offend the senses. According to the 
 monkish writer, who records many of the miracles, 
 it wrought extraordinary cures. Vast crowds 
 came to partake of the strange medicine, and 
 
136 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 those who came were also anxious that their 
 friends at home should in turn share the privi- 
 lege. At first the liquid was placed in wooden 
 vessels, but these were split by it, and many 
 fragments of the broken vessels were hung about 
 the martyr's tomb. At length the thought came 
 into the head of a certain young man to make 
 little flasks (ampullae) of lead and pewter. And, 
 wonderful to relate, the miracle of the breaking 
 ceased. Then was it known that it was in these 
 vessels the fluid was designed to be carried. 
 Some of these curious relics still exists. There is 
 an example preserved in the museum at York. 
 The principal figure is a somewhat stern repre- 
 sentation of the saint ; above is a crude illustration 
 of the shrine, and round the margin a rhyming 
 legend : " Optimus egrorum, medicus fit Thoma 
 bonorum," which is thus translated " Thomas is 
 the best physican for the pious sick." 
 
 Second only in importance to the shrine of St. 
 Thomas at Canterbury, was that of Our Lady 
 of Walsingham. Pilgrims flocked to it from all 
 parts of England, and even from abroad. No 
 less than five English kings paid their devotions 
 in person there. For hundreds of years an 
 excellent road, or pilgrim's way, was maintained 
 
ENGLISH MEDIEVAL PILGRIMAGES. 137 
 
 through the East Anglian counties leading to the 
 spot. Thither came the critical Erasmus, and he 
 has left some of his impressions on record. Half 
 serious, half sceptical, it is not easy to know 
 exactly in what light the keen scholar regarded 
 all the reputed wonders of the place. Of the 
 scholarship of the monks he had no exalted 
 opinion, for he tells us that in his time they did 
 not know Greek from Hebrew. Erasmus des- 
 cribes the holy places, the various chapels and 
 sights. For besides the venerated image of Our 
 Lady, Walsingham contained many celebrated 
 relics, such as the Virgin's milk, and a finger- 
 joint of St. Peter. In one of his colloquies he 
 writes : " Presently a man's finger is exhibited 
 to us, the largest of three ; I kiss it, and then I 
 ask whose relics were these? He says, St. 
 Peter's. The Apostle? I ask. He said yes. 
 Then observing the size of the joint, which might 
 have been that of a giant, I remarked that St. 
 Peter must have been a man of very large size. 
 At this one of my companions burst into a laugh, 
 which I certainly took ill, for if he had been quiet, 
 the attendant would have shewn us all the relics. 
 However we pacified him by offering a few 
 pence." 
 
138 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 Of the northern pilgrimages, one of the most 
 famous was that to the shrine of John of Beverley, 
 the Anglo-Saxon saint. It had many notable 
 visitors in its day ; amongst others Henry the 
 Fifth, who came thither after the Battle of 
 Agincourt. The reason for the journey was a 
 story noised abroad at the time, to the effect that 
 the shrine of St. John on the day of the great 
 conflict, had exuded blood. Whether the King 
 believed the legend or not, we cannot decide, but 
 he was a good Catholic, and so we may assume 
 he probably accepted it in good faith. Anyhow 
 the following year he made a pilgrimage to 
 Beverley in commemoration of the great victory 
 which the English arms had achieved, and we 
 trow left the minster considerably richer for 
 his visit and offerings. 
 
 The custom was for pilgrims to travel to their 
 destined shrines in companies. Of such a party 
 Chaucer has left us an inimitable picture in the 
 Canterbury Tales. They appear to have done 
 their best to make the road agreeable to one 
 another. Chaucer make mine host of the Tabard 
 say : 
 
 " Ye go to Canterbury God you speed, 
 The blissful martyr quit you your mede ; 
 
ENGLISH MEDIEVAL PILGRIMAGES. 
 
 139 
 
 And well I wot as ye go by the way, 
 Ye shapen you to talken and to play, 
 For truly comfort and worth is none, 
 To riden by the way dumb as a stone." 
 
 Each pilgrimage, we are told, had its gathering 
 
 cry. This cry, in the early morning, the pilgrims 
 
 shouted as they left the town, or villages, where 
 
 I UK CANTERBURY H1LGRIMS. 
 
 they slept overnight. It acted as a muster call 
 for the pilgrims who were bound to the same 
 shrine. The common custom was, for the party 
 to hire a few singers and musicians, to enliven the 
 journey. Before reaching a town they used to 
 
14 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 draw themselves into procession, and then, with 
 music, to pass through the streets. The songs 
 which the pilgrims sang, whilst on their journey, 
 strictly should have been of a sacred character, as 
 should also the stories that were recited, but 
 frequently, they were very much otherwise. The 
 songs were often love songs, and though 
 Chaucer's "poor parson" preached a sermon, the 
 majority of the stories told on such a pilgrimage, 
 were probably of a light, or even loose, descrip- 
 tion. The following picture, from Foxe's " Acts 
 and Monuments," if not very friendly, is certainly 
 amusing". 
 
 " When diverse men and women will go thus 
 after their own willes, and finding out one pilgrim- 
 age, they will order with them before, to have 
 with them both men and women, that can well 
 synge wanton songs ; .and some other pilgrims 
 will have with them bagge-pipes, so that every 
 towne they come throwe, what with the noise of 
 their singing, and with the sound of their pipyng, 
 and with the jingling of their Canterbury bells, 
 and with the barking out of dogges after them, 
 they make more noise than if the Kinge came 
 there away, with all his clarions, and many other 
 minstrelles. And if these men and women be a 
 
ENGLISH MEDIEVAL PILGRIMAGES. 141 
 
 moneth on their pilgrimage, many of them shall be 
 a half year after great janglers, tale-bearers, and 
 liars.*' 
 
 We must take such a statement as this with 
 considerable reservation. There doubtless was an 
 admixture of good and evil, for the reader will 
 perceive by this time, that the mediaeval pilgrim- 
 age was practically equivalent to the modern 
 tour. To refer for a while to the longer religious 
 journeys ; such as those to the Holy Land, or the 
 shrine of St. James of Compostella, it is strange 
 how like the personally conducted tours of the 
 nineteenth century, were these pilgrimages in 
 later pre- Reformation times. The "personally con- 
 ducted " was quite an extensive business. The 
 " patronus," as the conductor was called, chartered 
 a ship, provisioned it, and conducted the pilgrims 
 from the place of embarkation and back, at so 
 much per head ; feeding them by the way, 
 arranging for their safe conduct, leading them in 
 a body to the various shrines, and pointing out 
 the different objects of interest and devotion on 
 the journey. An English traveller in the fifteenth 
 century counted eighty such pilgrim vessels lying 
 at once in the harbour of Corunna, thirty-two of 
 them English. 
 
142 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 One of the books which Caxton printed was 
 " Informacion for Pylgrmes into the Holy Londe," 
 a sort of fifteenth century Murray, or Baedecker. 
 This curious work serves to shew that really 
 the gulf between the mediaeval pilgrim and the 
 nineteenth century tourist was by no means so 
 wide as some people might be led to suppose. 
 The passenger, for instance, was to look well after 
 his berth on board, and see that he did his utmost 
 to minimise the troubles of sea-sickness. "In a 
 ship or caryk, choose you a chamber as nigh the 
 middes of the ship, as ye may. For there is least 
 rolling or tumbling, to keep your brain or stomach 
 in temper." 
 
 He was also to take care the " patronus " did 
 not get to the windward of him in the victualling. 
 
 " Also see that the sayd patron geve you every 
 day hote mete twyse at two meeles. The fore- 
 noon at dyner, and the afternoon at supper. And 
 that the wyne that ye shall drynke be good, and 
 the water fresshe and not stinkyng, yf ye come to 
 have better. And also the byscute." 
 
 He was counselled to provide himself with a 
 few extras. He was advised to take some wine 
 of his own, and half-a-dozen hens or chickens, 
 besides various other things. 
 
ENGLISH MEDIEVAL PILGRIMAGES. 143 
 
 " Also I counsell you to have wyth you out of 
 Venyse (that is, to purchase whilst at Venice) 
 confections, comfortatives, grene gynger, almondes, 
 ryce, fygges, . reysons, grete and smalle, which 
 shall doo you grete ease by the waye. And 
 pepyr, saffron, cloves and mace a few, as ye 
 thynke need. And loaf sugar also." 
 
 "Also take wyth you a lytell caudron, a 
 fryenge panne, dysshes, platers, sawcers of tree, 
 cuppes of glasse, a grater for brede, and such 
 necessaryes." Evidently it was not intended the 
 pilgrims should journey fasting, eating sparingly 
 of the coarsest food, drinking nothing but water, 
 travelling in rags, or with peas in their shoes. 
 
 Caxton's "Information " is severely practical and 
 scrupulously minute. Fourteen days in the Holy 
 Land was the time stipulated for in the covenant 
 with the patron. It was reckoned that all the 
 most important places could be " done " in that 
 time, allowing four days for the journey from Jaffa 
 to Jerusalem and back. " Ten Days at Jerusalem" 
 would have been the modern advertisement. The 
 fees for admittance to the various spots, to be 
 visited en route, are clearly stated in this 
 pilgrim's vade mecum. When these directions 
 are read, it is not so difficult to understand how 
 
144 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 Chaucer's Wife of Bath, besides making several 
 minor tours, had been three times to Jerusalem. 
 Furthermore we are enabled to more thoroughly 
 see the reason why these pilgrimages were so 
 popular. They had their supposed spiritual 
 benefits, but in addition to these, and the pleasure 
 of beholding the wonders of strange countries, the 
 traveller enjoyed several useful temporal advan- 
 tages. If he were a priest, he drew his stipend 
 all the time he was away, provided his absence 
 did not exceed three years. If a layman, he was 
 exempted from all taxes and public burdens. 
 Once the cross was sewed upon his shoulder, and 
 he had received the blessing of the church, no 
 one could sue him for debt in any temporal court, 
 for he was under the especial protection of S. 
 Peter and the Pope. It thus came to pass that 
 fraudulent bankrupts were often found in the 
 company of those who proceeded on pilgrimage 
 to the Holy Land. 
 
pilartme' Signs. 
 
 By the Rev. Geo. S. Tyack, b.a. 
 
 THE idea of pilgrimage, the making of 
 journeys to spots consecrated by the lives 
 and deaths of holy persons, seems to appeal to a 
 sentiment common to the hearts of men. Hero- 
 dotus tells us of an annual pilgrimage which took 
 place in ancient Egypt. The Semitic races, with 
 the exception of the Hebrews, journeyed yearly to 
 Aphaca and to Hierapolis in Syria, in honour of 
 Astarte ; and the Jews by divine command thrice 
 every year went up to Jerusalem to keep the great 
 festivals of their faith. The practice exists at the 
 present time more commonly among the Moham- 
 medans and the Buddhists than elsewhere, the 
 former congregating yearly at Mecca in numbers 
 sometimes amounting to eighty thousand persons, 
 and the latter at Kandy and Adam's Peak, in 
 Ceylon. The devotees of Brahminism also have 
 their pilgrimages to Orissa. 
 
 Amongst Christian nations pilgrimages have 
 
 been but seldom undertaken, at any rate on a large 
 
 10 
 
146 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 scale, in modern times, although the alleged appear- 
 ance of our Lady at Lourdes, and the miraculous 
 cures affected there in consequence, have to some 
 extent revived their popularity in some parts of 
 Latin Christendom. Of the prominence given to 
 these acts of devotion in Mediaeval Europe, it is 
 scarcely needful to speak ; two facts, which 
 illustrate it, are known unto all men, namely that 
 the pilgrimages to the Holy Sepulchre led to the 
 epoch-making wars of the Crusades, and that those 
 to the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury gave 
 us our first great English poem. 
 
 Those, however, were only two out of many 
 places which attracted pilgrims in the middle ages 
 in oreater or less numbers. The tomb of St. 
 James at Compostella in Spain was one of the 
 most famous shrines in Europe, next to which in 
 popularity probably came that of St. Martin at 
 Tours in France. Most countries had one or 
 more spots well known as the resort of pilgrims. 
 In Italy the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul at 
 Rome, and the Holy House at Loretto, attracted 
 a crowd of travellers from all parts of the west. 
 Switzerland saw them wending their way to 
 Einsiedeln, Austria to Mariazell, France to St. 
 Denis, and Scotland to St. Andrews. England 
 
PILGRIMS' SIGNS. 147 
 
 also had many celebrated shrines besides that of 
 St. Thomas a Becket; and Westminster, Hereford, 
 Peterborough, St. Alban's, St. David's and other 
 cities were all visited by companies of pilgrims 
 anxious to pay their devotions at the holy places 
 which they contained. 
 
 We are at present concerned with the badges 
 or signs which were to be bought at most of the 
 chief resorts of pilgrims, and which the purchaser 
 wore sewn on his cloak or in his hat, as a proof 
 that he had fulfilled his vow, or performed his 
 penance by the pilgrimage. 
 
 These signs consisted of plates or brooches, 
 generally of lead or pewter, stamped with some 
 design appropriate to the place of their origin. 
 The pilgrim returning from Rome carried a little 
 medal graven with the Cross-keys ; he from 
 Mount Sinai bore on his cloak the wheel of 
 St. Catherine ; but the man who had visited the 
 holy places of Jerusalem placed in his hat, or 
 bound to his staff, two small palm-branches, 
 whence he was known as a palmer, while a 
 cockle - shell denoted one who had been to 
 Compostella. 
 
 Numbers of metal brooches bearing the effigies 
 of popular Saints, and once used as pilgrims' 
 
148 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 signs have been found in various parts of Europe, 
 and no doubt the sale of them formed at times no 
 inconsiderable source of revenue to the churches 
 containing the shrines. It would appear, in fact, 
 that the clergy were protected by the civil 
 authorities in the monopoly of their production. 
 Leaden images of the Blessed Virgin were issued 
 as signs of a completed pilgrimage to the Church 
 of St. Mary Magdalene and St. Maximin, in 
 Provence : and in 1354 a Royal ordinance was 
 promulgated by the sovereigns of Sicily, Louis 
 and Johanna, forbidding their manufacture out- 
 side the convent. Another variety of the sign 
 issued at this place, has the figure of St. Mary 
 Magdalene, accompanied by her traditional 
 emblem, the box of precious ointment, kneeling 
 at the Saviour's feet. The arms of Anjou and 
 Provence and a Latin inscription indicate the 
 place of issue. 
 
 The cathedral of Amiens claims that to it 
 was translated in 1206 the head of St. John 
 Baptist. The relic was preserved on a great gold 
 dish a foot in diameter, adorned with precious 
 stones ; and it speedily became an object of 
 veneration throughout the surrounding districts. 
 The pilgrim's sign commemorating a visit to this 
 
PILGRIMS' SIGNS. 
 
 149 
 
 head, is a circular medal or brooch, on which is 
 rudely depicted a priest bearing the head, while 
 an acolyte with a taper stands on either side. 
 Around the edge runs the legend: " Hie est 
 
 SIGNUM FACIEI BeATI JOHANNIS BaPTISTE Ami " 
 
 (this is the sign of the face of Blessed John 
 
 Baptist of Amiens). Other signs from places 
 
 where relics of the same saint were said to have 
 
 been preserved have 
 
 been found. In one 
 
 the face of St. John 
 
 fills the whole medal, 
 
 another (discovered 
 
 at Canterbury) has 
 
 a full-length figure 
 
 holding the lamb, or 
 
 Agnus Dei. 
 
 Among English 
 saints none gained so 
 much popular favour as St. Thomas of Canterbury, 
 and several signs used by Canterbury pilgrims have 
 come to light. One is in the form of an effigy of 
 the Archbishop in episcopal vestments, and with 
 the right hand raised in benediction, riding upon 
 a horse. Another, somewhat similar, represents 
 him carrying the processional cross, the mark of 
 
 PILGRIMS' SIGN. FROM THE CATHEDRAL OK AMIENS. 
 
i5 
 
 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 his ecclesiastical dignity, while an attendant leads 
 the horse. A sign of quite a different type 
 consists simply of the bust of the martyr, 
 episcopally vested, with the name beneath. 
 
 For the benefit, no doubt, of poorer pilgrims, 
 smaller and simpler devices were also adopted. 
 We find little circular brooches merely stamped 
 
 with a " J" or with 
 a head wearing a 
 mitre, or a head dis- 
 tinguished by the em- 
 blem of St. Thomas, 
 a sword. Another 
 circular sign has again 
 the head surrounded 
 by the legend Caput 
 Thome. Amongst 
 these cheaper tokens 
 is one with a pin 
 behind for affixing it 
 to the cap ; this one is a small effigy of the Arch- 
 bishop in full canonicals, bearing his crosier in the 
 left hand, and raising the right in benediction. A 
 more ornate specimen is oval, having the figure of 
 St. Thomas seated, and holding his archiepiscopal 
 cross. Pilgrims to Canterbury are said, not only 
 
 PILGRIMS SIGN FROM CANTERBURY. 
 
PILGRIMS' SIGNS. 
 
 151 
 
 to have themselves worn badges such as these, 
 but also to have put small bells on the harness of 
 their horses. These had running as a legend 
 round the rim, the words " Campana Thome," 
 and no doubt they suggested the popular name of 
 the flower, known as the Canterbury bell. 
 
 It has been suggested that the signs which 
 consist onlv of the head of St. Thomas are 
 
 PILGRIMS SIGNS, PROM HUKV ST. EDMUNDS. 
 
 probably commemorations of a visit to that part 
 
 of the Cathedral of Canterbury where the head 
 
 alone had its shrine, separate from that in which 
 lay the body. 
 
 St. Edmund, " king, virgin, and martyr," 
 was long one of the most popular of English 
 
 saints. His relics were enshrined at Bury St. 
 
152 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 Edmund's, and his sign was a crowned head in 
 an ornamental border. Another sign emanating 
 from this abbey was made on the model of the 
 silver pennies and groats of the time, and bore on 
 the obverse the head of St. Nicholas, and on the 
 reverse a cross with the opening words of a hymn 
 to St. Edmund. The reputation of St. Edward 
 the Confessor was more widely spread and more 
 enduring. A sign not unlike a modern breastpin 
 was sold to Westminster pilgrims, consisting 
 of a king's face, with a pin for fastening it. 
 King Henry VI., whose unfortunate career, and 
 mysterious death, stirred up on his behalf a share 
 of public sympathy, gained for a short time a sort 
 of pseudo-canonization at Windsor, and it was 
 even asserted that miracles were wrought at his 
 tomb. Pilgrimages accordingly took place thither, 
 and an appropriate sign was struck, the figure of 
 a king, crowned, and holding in either hand the 
 orb and the sceptre, while a stag crouches at his 
 feet. 
 
 The popular shrine of Our Lady of Walsing- 
 ham issued figures of the Madonna and the Holy 
 Child, or of small ampullae, or vases, stamped 
 with a crowned W. 
 
 Other signs which may be mentioned are the 
 
PILGRIMS' SIGNS. 153 
 
 figure of a mitred abbot, and the name St. 
 Lennard, probably from St. Leonard's Priory, 
 York ; a royal head with the name Kenelm, from 
 the shrine of St. Kenelm, king and martyr, at 
 Winchcombe, Gloucestershire ; a brooch with 
 figures of St. Fiacre, his sister Syra, and St. 
 Faro of Meaux, from the shrine of the first-named 
 saint near Paris ; St. Eloi working at his anvil, 
 while a horse stands by, from 
 Noyon. Signs have also been 
 found of the Three Kings of 
 Cologne (a star), of St. Nicholas, 
 of St. Laurence, of St. Olaf of 
 Denmark, of our Lady of 
 Bologne, and of St. Christopher, 
 as well as others with a crucifix 
 upon them. 
 
 Several signs have been found 
 of doubtful origin, the one here 
 engraved being an example. It is the full-length 
 figure of a bishop, in full eucharistic vestments, 
 standing in the act of benediction, while below is 
 the word " Fordom." Some have thought it a 
 sign of St. Leonard, owing to the manacle on his 
 right arm ; others deem it a figure of John de 
 Fordham, Bishop of Durham from 1382 to 1388, 
 
i54 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 and subsequently of Ely, where he was interred. 
 Offerings are said to have been made at his tomb 
 there. It is, however, suggested that fordom, or 
 " for-doom " may mean " false judgment," and 
 refer to something in the life of an unrecognized 
 saint. 
 
 Pilgrimage to some of these shrines was 
 rewarded with special privileges, and the pilgrims 
 thereto were regarded with peculiar reverence, 
 much as a Mohammedan whose green turban 
 announces the accomplishment of the journey 
 to Mecca, is regarded by his less fortunate 
 fellows. There are stories of prisoners, during 
 the times of the long wars between France and 
 England, having been released on their captors 
 noticing that they wore the pilgrims' sign of Our 
 Lady of Roc-Amadour, in Quercy. This was a 
 medal having the Blessed Virgin enthroned on 
 the obverse, and St. Amadour on the reverse. 
 The shrine of St. James of Compostella, in Spain, 
 was brought into special eminence by the fact that 
 the Spaniards were forbidden to join in the 
 Crusades, so long as they had not succeeded in 
 fully exterminating the Moorish infidels from 
 their own country ; and in those circumstances 
 a journey to Compostella was accounted an 
 
PILGRIMS' SIGNS. 155 
 
 equivalent to one to the Holy City. The shell, 
 which formed the usual sign of this pilgrimage, 
 was sometimes reproduced in metal, and occasion- 
 ally had a figure of St. James upon it. The 
 effigy of the Saint alone was also in use. 
 
 When so much honour accrued to the wearers 
 of these badges, it is not surprising to find 
 evidence that some people were not unwilling to 
 gain the reputation of pilgrims without the danger 
 and toil of the pilgrimage. We find, therefore, no 
 less than three Popes, in three different centuries, 
 namely, Alexander II. (106 1-1073), Gregory IX. 
 (1227- 1 241), and Clement V. (1305-1 3 14), issuing 
 bulls empowering the Archbishop of Compostella 
 to excommunicate anyone who sold signs of St. 
 James at other places than within that city. 
 
 The literature of the Middle Ages has many 
 
 allusions to the use of these pilgrims' signs. The 
 
 supplement to the Canterbury Tales which is 
 
 but little later in date than the famous Tales 
 
 themselves tells us how, after venerating the holy 
 
 relics shown to them, the pilgrims 
 
 "Then, as manere and custom is, signes there they bought, 
 For men of contre should know whome they had sought. 
 Eche man set his silver in such thing as they liked, 
 And in the meen while the miller had y-piked 
 His bosom ful of signys of Canterbury brochis." 
 
156 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 In the Vision of Piers Ploughman, a pilgrim is 
 described as having visited all the noted places of 
 pilgrimage, and as wearing the marks which 
 proved his wanderings. He had " seten on his 
 hatte," or on his cloak, the " Signes of Synay," 
 the " Shells of Galice," the " Keyes of Rome. 
 
 Giraldus Cambrensis tells us that after passing 
 through Canterbury on his way to London, he 
 wore the signs of St. Thomas hanging about his 
 neck, and Erasmus, in a colloquy on " Pilgrimage 
 for Religion's Sake," makes one of his characters 
 ask " But what kind of apparel is that which 
 thou hast on ? Thou art beset with semi-circular 
 shells, art covered on every side with images of 
 tin and lead." To which the reply is, "I visited 
 St. James of Compostella, and returning I visited 
 the Virgin beyond the sea, who is very famous 
 among the English." 
 
 Louis XL, King of France, was greatly given 
 to the wearing of these leaden signs, a fact to 
 which, it will be recalled, Sir Walter Scott makes 
 frequent allusion in " Ouentin Durward." 
 
 By a transition, natural enough to frail human 
 nature, these signs, from being merely records of 
 a meritorious act completed, came to be looked 
 upon as charms, as if through them some part 
 
PILGRIMS' SIGNS. 157 
 
 of the blessing was continued to the wearer, 
 which the pilgrimage was supposed originally to 
 have procured. 
 
 As works of art these signs are for the most as 
 worthless as they are in intrinsic value, but as 
 surviving relics of a custom now scarcely known 
 in England, and as illustrations of such early 
 writers as Chaucer and others, they are full of 
 interest. 
 
Ibuman Skin on Cbnrcb Boors. 
 
 By the Rev. Geo. S. Tyack, b.a. 
 
 THOSE were wild and stormy days for 
 England when the Black Raven of the 
 marauding Dane hovered on her eastern coast, 
 and ever and anon swooped with relentless talons 
 on the devoted land. Time had been when the 
 English themselves had in a similar manner 
 harried and harassed the British who held these 
 lands before them, but with the change of the 
 times, their character had changed also. The 
 sons of the White Horse and descendants of the 
 hardy Norsemen had become tillers of the soil, 
 and patient toilers in life's ways : while they 
 feared no more the thunder of Thor's hammer, nor 
 gloried in the fierce fame of fight that Odin loved, 
 for they had knelt to the White Christ, and 
 called themselves His men. 
 
 Yet how hardly can a man, or even a race of 
 men become wholly emancipated from the failings 
 of their former selves ! How, under terrible 
 provocation, the fierce nature of the wild Viking 
 
HUMAN SKIN ON CHURCH DOORS. 159 
 
 showed itself through the civilised and Christian- 
 ised Englishman, this page of history shows. 
 For up and down the country in places mostly 
 near the east coast, but one at least, nearer the 
 west, the gruesome legend runs, that stung to 
 ungovernable rage by the continuous assaults of 
 the Danes, in whose pathway farmstead, and 
 village, and abbey, went up in flames, and 
 specially horrified at the way in which shrine and 
 priest were desecrated and slain, the English 
 took once and again an awful vengeance on their 
 ruthless enemies. As the farmer nails the rook 
 to his barn door for a warning to all the tribe, so 
 the maddened English seized the poor wretch 
 who had fallen into their hands, stripped from his 
 quivering limbs his skin, and nailed it on the door 
 of the church which he had sacrilegiously 
 violated. 
 
 A legend of such brutality, one would gladly 
 dismiss as too horrible to be true, but the story 
 rests on more than a legendary foundation. 
 
 There are at least six places in England 
 where the church doors have been overlaid with 
 human hide. These are Hadstock, Copford, and 
 Castle Hedingham, in Essex ; the cathedrals of 
 Rochester and of Worcester ; and Westminster 
 
160 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 Abbey. Fragments of the skins have been taken 
 from all these doors, except those of Castle 
 Hedingham and Rochester, and have been sub- 
 mitted to microscopical examination by experts, 
 who have in each case declared that it was 
 unquestionably human skin. For the other two 
 cases tradition only exists. Beneath the iron 
 scroll-work on the Norman doors of the parish 
 church of Castle Hedingham leather, like parch- 
 ment in appearance, has been found, and the local 
 legend says it is the skin of a man. The writer 
 of this article is not aware that it has ever been 
 thoroughly examined. The only allusion to the 
 matter with respect to Rochester seems to be an 
 entry in the diary of Samuel Pepys. Under 
 April ioth, 1 66 1, he writes, "Then to Rochester, 
 and there saw the Cathedrall, which is now fitting 
 for use, and the organ there a-tuning. Then 
 away thence, observing the great doors of the 
 church, as they say covered with the skins of the 
 Danes." It is strange that a tradition of that 
 kind, rife only two hundred years since, should 
 now have entirely died out. Yet such is the case, 
 and only the proverbial curiosity of Pepys in noting 
 the smallest details that came under his notice, 
 makes the story worthy of record and regard. 
 
HUMAN SKIN ON CHURCH DOORS. 161 
 
 We have then six of these gruesome instances, 
 four of which are fully substantiated. Legend 
 describes the skins at Worcester, Hadstock, and 
 Copford, as those of Danes ; and the microscope 
 has shewn that in each case it once belonged to 
 a fair-haired man, such as the Northmen were. 
 The hide at Castle Hedincrham is said to be that 
 "of a foreign robber," who attempted to sack the . 
 church ; which probably is another slightly less 
 precise version of the same story. The West- 
 minster case must be treated separately, as it will 
 occur to everyone that no hostile Danes have 
 harried us since S. Edward the Confessor reared 
 his glorious abbey. 
 
 This much we know for certain concerning the 
 Danish incursions, that their ships came fre- 
 quently to the Eastern coast of the country, and 
 that Essex, as well as the neighbouring counties, 
 suffered from their attacks, and, moreover, they 
 occasionally ventured down the channel, and 
 assailed the west coast also, and ran up the 
 Severn, not only as far as Worcester, but even 
 further. 
 
 The most complete form of the story is the one 
 
 extant at Worcester. It relates that the Danes, 
 
 having landed near the city, from which most of 
 
 11 
 
i6 2 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 the peaceful burghers had fled on their approach, 
 looted the houses and the great church, and 
 then made off to their long ships. The heavy 
 sanctus bell of the cathedral, abandoned, one may 
 suppose, by the rest of the marauders as too 
 cumbersome to carry off, seemed to one man a 
 desirable acquisition, and he lingered behind his 
 comrades to get it. Presently, before he was 
 able, loaded as he was, to join the retreating 
 Danes, the townsmen returned. Doubtless from 
 a distance they had been witnesses of many 
 outrages, and right and left along their streets 
 they now saw signs of the violence of their foes ; 
 and in the heat of their rage and indignation 
 they came upon the sacrilegious wretch upon 
 whose shoulder was the sanctus bell. 
 
 We will not try to picture the final scene ; the 
 Englishmen's blood was up, the Dane was caught 
 redhanded in theft and sacrilege, and moreover 
 there was probably not a man in all the throng 
 who did not burn under a sense of some private 
 wrong inflicted on him by the pirates. Upon 
 the devoted head of the one the misdeeds of all 
 were visited ; and his skin, in attestation of his 
 guilt and of his doom, was fastened to the church 
 door. 
 
HUMAN SKIN ON CHURCH DOORS. 163 
 
 Such is the story which is told with more or 
 less fullness in every instance ; it is always a 
 Dane who suffers, and always for a robbery of the 
 Church. An old rector of Copford, in writing 
 some " Church Notes," says that such a story was 
 told to him concerning Copford Church in the 
 year 1690, and that his informant, an aged man, 
 had heard it when he was a boy. 
 
 It is not an unusual occurrence for a tradition, 
 springing, it may be, from a historical foundation 
 in one district, to get transferred in some way to 
 others with which it has no real connection. But 
 we are debarred from thinking that all these 
 stories have sprung from one original, by the fact 
 of the presence of the skin in each instance. No 
 skin now remains upon the Copford door, the 
 last vestiges having been removed about the year 
 1843 or ^44; a new door was also erected in 
 1846 at Hadstock, to which the fragments of skin 
 that still adhered to the old one were not trans- 
 ferred. The great door of Worcester Cathedral 
 was also long since removed, but it is still pre- 
 served, and portions of the human hide may yet 
 be seen. Fragments from Worcester, Hadstock, 
 and Copford are also preserved in the Museum of 
 the Royal College of Surgeons, Lincoln's Inn ; 
 
164 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 and other authenticated pieces are in the hands of 
 public or private collectors of antiquities. 
 
 A difficulty in accepting the legend in all its 
 details arises from the computed age of the door 
 in some of these instances. Some hold that the 
 old doors of Worcester date back no earlier than 
 the fourteenth century ; others, however, assign 
 them to the Norman, or even to the Saxon period. 
 Since they are evidently very ancient, and show 
 signs of having been altered since they were first 
 made, they may perhaps date from the Saxon 
 time, but have been fitted afresh to new require- 
 ments, arising from Cathedral alterations in a later 
 century. 
 
 Another detail is affected by the fact that the 
 introduction of the use of a sanctus bell is 
 attributed to William of Paris in 1097, or to 
 Cardinal Guido in 1200. 
 
 Whether the special act of sacrilege was the 
 theft of a sanctus bell, or of some other article of 
 church furniture ; whether the robber were Saxon, 
 Norman, or Dane ; the presence of the human 
 hide is a witness for the truthfulness of the most 
 terrible part of the story. 
 
 The skin found on the doors at Westminster 
 Abbey recalls another incident. The doors in 
 
HUMAN SKIN ON CHURCH DOORS. 165 
 
 question are four in number, and are the three 
 leading into the re-vestry, and one into the Chapel 
 of the Pyx, anciently the royal treasury. Here, 
 as in other instances cited, the skin has been 
 worn by the action of time, or peeled by the 
 curiosity of visitors, from the more exposed portions 
 of the surfaces, but under the iron clamps and 
 hinges it has been preserved, and scientific 
 examination has decided definitely in favour of its 
 claim to be human skin. 
 
 The Westminster story, which the late Dean 
 Stanley recalls in his " Historic Memorials of 
 Westminster Abbey," and which he deems to be 
 sufficiently supported by facts, is as follows : " In 
 the year 1303, King Edward I. was in Scotland, 
 prosecuting that war of subjection which was so 
 nearly successful, when news came to him that 
 his store of ' the sinews of war,' which had been 
 placed in the Treasury at Westminster, had been 
 stolen. Six years before, having exhausted his 
 supplies in his almost continuous hostilities with 
 Wales, Scotland, and France, the King had 
 to raise fresh sums for the prosecution of his plans 
 of conquest. Both clergy and laity had seized the 
 opportunity to press for redress of grievances, and 
 the King had confirmed Magna Charta and the 
 
166 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 Charter of Forests, and had in other ways com- 
 plied with their demands. It is reasonable, there- 
 fore, to suppose that in return the people had 
 contributed liberally to the needs of the Kingdom, 
 and that a large amount of money in consequence 
 lay at Westminster. 
 
 " On the discovery of the robbery, forty-eight 
 monks of the Abbey, together with the Lord 
 Abbot himself, were arrested and thrown into the 
 Tower, where they were kept while a thorough 
 investigation of the circumstances took place. 
 The result was the acquittal and release of most of 
 the accused ; it was, however, proved that one, 
 Richard de Podicate, had made off with the 
 money, being aided and abetted by persons of no 
 less position in the Abbey than the sub-prior and 
 the sacristan. Upon these men condign punish- 
 ment was inflicted, after such sort, it would appear, 
 that fragments of their skin to this day remain at 
 Westminster as a warning to the robbers of 
 Church and State." 
 
 In all these cases we find a record of a barba- 
 rous and hideous punishment inflicted for an 
 aggravated act of robbery. In the earlier instances 
 cited, the crime was sacrilege, the furniture of the 
 Church itself being carried off; in this last one, 
 
HUMAN SKIN. 167 
 
 the resources of the State were plundered after 
 they had been placed in a measure under the 
 protection of the Church, and the thieves were 
 those whose duty it was to guard them. It would 
 probably be useless to seek for statutes which 
 ordered, or customs which sanctioned, such a 
 frightful doom as that of flaying alive, even in 
 those rough days, and in the cases of such crimes. 
 In the earlier instances, it is more probable that it 
 was the summary act of a mob stung to frenzy by 
 repeated wrongs, and in the last, the judgment of 
 a stern and justly indignant monarch, to whom a 
 life spent in bloodshed had left but little pity for 
 the agony of those who baulked his will, or 
 marred his schemes. 
 
animals of tbe Gburcb, in Woofc, Stone, 
 ant) Bron3e. 
 
 By T. Tindall Wildridge. 
 
 THE presence of the animal representations 
 so frequent in ecclesiastical architecture, 
 and in some degree the forms of those repre- 
 sentations, are mainly due to the deterioration at 
 a remotely ancient period of the purer worship 
 of a great deity the sun. Of this god, adored 
 by early man, various material forms were used 
 as symbols, to which in many instances the 
 worship contracted. The poets by their personi- 
 fication of attributes and emblematic figures were 
 the first to impose the yoke of literalism upon 
 mankind, which the priests, by their different use 
 of exactly the same means in a more advanced 
 mental atmosphere, did much to remove. The 
 early churchmen, following the pagan leaders 
 of thought, saw in every creature, its functions 
 and its characteristics, the symbol of a spiritual or 
 moral meaning applicable to man and his destiny. 
 Some symbols are great and enduring types, 
 others insignificant and more or less absurd. 
 
ANIMALS OF THE CHURCH. 169 
 
 Students of ecclesiastical zoology owe a debt 
 of gratitude to Mr. E. P. Evans for his book* on 
 the subject, which can henceforth scarcely be 
 touched without reference to the work. It is not 
 easy to explain the unreal, or to classify what 
 seem at first sight the fanciful conceptions of a 
 non-system in which every worker, were he tyro 
 or master, was justified in evolving fresh concep- 
 tions and combinations, though none appears to 
 have fully availed himself of the liberty. Classic 
 art and lore are two of the chief channels by 
 which symbolic representations reached Western 
 Europe, and the want of precision or determina- 
 tion in the present subject is much akin to the 
 vagueness and contradiction abounding in classic 
 mythology itself. Thus the Greeks had three 
 hundred epithets, mostly attributive, and wonder- 
 fully diverse, for Jupiter ; with the Greeks the 
 left hand was unlucky, but with the Romans both 
 lucky and unlucky. So in mediaeval symbolism the 
 proneness to use the same figure for quite opposite 
 purposes, according to the fancied exigencies of 
 the moment, has left us a multitude of casual half- 
 meanings from which to sift a reasonable scheme. 
 
 * Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiastical Architecture, by E. P. Evans. 
 William lleineman, London, 1896. 
 
170 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 The cause, doubtless, of such a curious state of 
 things being possible in classic times was the final 
 popular semi-absence of real belief in the care or 
 interest the gods had in man, or belief even in the 
 existence of the myriad gods themselves. As the 
 channel was muddy, the waters proved not clear. 
 We cannot accept Grimm's decision that the 
 whole mystery of the use of animal symbolism had 
 its root in an ancient animal-worship founded on 
 fear. In support of the attribution of supernatural, 
 and therefore sacred, character to the brutes, it is 
 alleged that they were not called by their real 
 names, but propitiated by various flattering epithets, 
 as "gold foot," " broad brow," " flash eye," " forest 
 brother," and the like. Yet there may not be in 
 the use of such terms anything but the hereditary 
 outcome of the poetic temperament which 
 characterises the Aryan race, the tendency of 
 which was to speak of things by an attribute 
 rather than a name, by allusion than by statement. 
 Thus, long before the founding of Athens, the 
 Aryan poet described the dawn clouds as red 
 cows, and noonday clouds as flocks of sheep. So, 
 too, in later classic days, when it was sought 
 to convey the idea of a man being hanged, he was 
 shewn seated in a swing ; the word prison was 
 
ANIMALS OF THE CHURCH. 171 
 
 rarely used, house being employed instead ; 
 Acteon was not shewn metamorphosed into a stag 
 torn by dogs, but simply seated on a deer-skin ! 
 This poetic hinting survives to our day, and in 
 mediaeval representation is best exampled by the 
 manner in which the martyrs are delineated, each, 
 for the most part, hale and hearty, but bearing the 
 instrument or means by which he met his death. 
 Gothic crudeness stepped in when St. Thomas, to 
 all appearance with the usual epidermis, is shewn 
 carrying his rlayed-off skin in a basket. Other 
 considerations are not wanting which weigh 
 against the assertion of ancient man's universal 
 fear of the beasts. The earliest art work of man 
 yet discovered is a rude sketch scratched upon 
 a bone ; it is a picture of the chase, in which Man 
 is the hunter. In every phase of savagery extant, 
 Man is the hunter, not the hunted. Even under 
 such extreme conditions as go to prove fear, as in 
 the case of the Indian tiger, the fear is not 
 veneration ; it is a fear qualified by intense hatred 
 and the employment of traps, pitfalls, and 
 other anti-worship engines. Where supernatural 
 character is credited, as in the case of the hyena, 
 there is a fear of killing him, but he is not wor- 
 shipped. Moreover, in innumerable instances of 
 
172 THE CHURCH TREASURY 
 
 animal-worship, the gods include animals, birds, 
 and insects, as well as trees, plants, minerals, etc., 
 that have in nature neither marked noxious or 
 beneficial influence. In all real animal worship 
 there may be a large element of the idea of 
 incarnation, but this would probably be late, and 
 added to the primaeval teachings of symbolism. 
 Had fear been essential to animal worship, those 
 beasts only which are night prowlers and powerful 
 would, we might expect, be found as the objects 
 of worship. 
 
 The line of the symbolists seems to be 
 unbroken. When the early Gothic builders 
 began their labour, they found ready to their 
 hands a rich collection of ornament come down 
 from the Classic, which had in its turn seized and 
 mannerised the designs of the East. But when 
 the builders of Western Europe woke up to the 
 consciousness of how much could be done in archi- 
 tecture with ornament, and evolved the Decorated 
 style, they took not only all that was to be found 
 in the work of their predecessors but ran through 
 wider fields of literature and folk-lore and of 
 Nature, entering with zeal, and according to their 
 various national idiosyncracies, renewing what they 
 found, in lasting forms of wood, stone, and bronze. 
 
ANIMALS OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 173 
 
 In one sense compound forms might be said to 
 be, par excellence, "the Animals of the Church," 
 for they are to be met scarcely anywhere else but 
 within the Church's jurisdiction. Though outside 
 the scope of this article, one example may be given. 
 It represents a goat or sheep's head hooded, with 
 the body of a goose and the feet of a beast of prey. 
 It is from a door moulding at Notre Dame, Paris, 
 and is an instance of the 
 difficulties which beset 
 classification of mere 
 fruits of fancy. 
 
 Many of the subjects 
 of the mediaeval church- 
 carver are derived from 
 symbols of sun-worship. 
 One of the most fre- 
 quent and recognisable 
 of these is a design 
 found on classic tombs, Asiatic cylinders, ancient 
 tesselated pavements, etc., the sun-myth in which 
 the powers of darkness watch the altar of the sun, 
 being simply figurative of each day being en- 
 vironed by nights. The general delineation is 
 that of two eagles, but occasionally they are dragons 
 or griffins, and in the numerous instances where we 
 
 GOAT-HKAI). NOTKE DAME, FAKIS. 
 
i74 
 
 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 meet the subject in our churches, the altar form is 
 lost or mis-represented. In a capital of Roman- 
 esque work at Berne, the devourers of day are 
 two wyverns, i.e., eagles whose tails are those 
 of scorpions or dragons. The altar has shrunk 
 into a fruit at which they peck. In a miserere 
 carving in Ripon Minster we find the fruit form 
 of the same type of blackberry appearance, with 
 a deep calyx but developed into a whole tree of 
 t- ^^ clusters. Other carvings 
 
 -^~~^i^^m^\ ar e similar. In one in 
 Beverley Minster the dark 
 devourers are shown as 
 two swans, the ara here 
 being retained as either 
 a circular altar-form, from 
 which the birds peck at 
 the ashes of the fire, or as 
 a vase of seed, according as we believe the artist 
 to have, or have not, known his subject. Whether 
 the fool's hooded head, at which two birds peck 
 (also at Beverley) may be regarded as Sol is 
 questionable, though it will bear such interpre- 
 tation. 
 
 In the dragon we have a great figure, belonging 
 to the cult of sun-worship. He was the principle 
 
 DARKNESS DEVOURING LIGHT, 
 ST. MARTIN'S. BERNE. 
 
ANIMALS OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 175 
 
 of darkness, and his chief name in the old sun- 
 myth was Typhon. Whether there is any founda- 
 tion for his general form to be found among the 
 terrible reptiles of the Pliocene age, which the 
 geology of the future may shew to have slightly 
 overlapped the advent of Man, can scarcely, with 
 safety, be conjectured, yet the similarity of type 
 met in all ages and countries would seem to point 
 to something more than the ordinary transmission 
 
 DARKNESS DEVOURING LIGHT, BEVERLEY. 
 
 of an invented idea of what never was. The 
 form of the dragon may be said to be that of a 
 long-necked crocodile, winged and with supernal 
 activity and malignity ; there are, however, a large 
 number of variants. In the old myth, Typhon is 
 the desert, or winter, the period of darkness ; he is 
 slain by Horus (f/ur, light, from the Sanscrit usk, 
 to burn) the sun-god, i.e., the approach of Spring. 
 Horus became a personal god with the Egyptians, 
 
176 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 who held his festival, consonantly with his 
 attributes, at the beginning of Spring, the precise 
 day being the 23rd of April. The Greeks fed 
 their fancy with the same myth covering the same 
 natural phenomenon ; Horus became Apollo who 
 slew the Python ; Perseus, the dragon-killer, is 
 another personification of the sun as the winter- 
 slayer. Thence descending to the middle ages, 
 we find the same thing figured by the legendary 
 slaughter of the dragon Fafnir by the hero 
 Sigurd. Here the subject received a kind of 
 sub-division in ancient times. Floods were the 
 most disastrous effects of winter, and in the 
 greater care of land in the middle ages, these 
 were especially noticed and fought against. 
 Mediaeval records teem with accounts of floods, 
 embanking, and the like. Now the great danger 
 of a river flood is found constantly alluded to as 
 a dragon, and various persons, who more or less 
 effectually embanked, or otherwise prevented 
 the recurrence of floods, are stated to have slain 
 dragons. Even in the classic figurative history, 
 the Python is said to have been the name of 
 a river, and the evil thing slain by Perseus was 
 a water-dragon. Of the mediaeval dragons slain 
 by the saints (who took the place of the classic 
 
ANIMALS OF THE CHURCH. 177 
 
 heroes in fable and story) two have names. One 
 
 of these was the Dragon Gargouille, which 
 
 ravaged the country round the Seine, and was 
 
 said to have been slain by St. Romain of Rouen. 
 
 Gargouille simply means a waterspout or gutter, 
 
 and is the same word as the Gargoyle of our 
 
 churches. The other was the Dragon Tarasque, 
 
 which St. Martha killed at Aix-la-Chapelle. 
 
 Tarasque is a word derived from the verb tarir, 
 
 to drain, to dry up. There was another dragon 
 
 which had its haunt in the Loire, and was slain 
 
 by St. Florent. St. Philip slew a dragon at 
 
 Hierapolis ; three saints, St. Cado, Maudet, and 
 
 Paull, slew Breton dragons ; St. Keyne slew the 
 
 Cornish dragon, while Donatus, Sts. Clement of 
 
 Metz, George, Margaret, Michael, and Samson, 
 
 Archbishop of Dol. and Pope Sylvester, all similarly 
 
 distinguished themselves. Some of these are 
 
 merely local, but among them is, doubtless, more 
 
 than one instance of the cropping up of the old 
 
 sun-myth. The survivor is certainly St. George, 
 
 who definitely representing Horns and Apollo, is 
 
 a notable instance of Christian adoption of a 
 
 Pagan myth in its concrete form. The dragon 
 
 borne in the Rogation processions is Typhon 
 
 himself. Whether the word George (i.e., Earth- 
 
 12 
 
178 
 
 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 worker) was selected as an allowable attribute of 
 the sun may be open to objection, but St. 
 George's day is the 23rd of April, as in the 
 case of Horus, who also was shewn mounted in 
 Egyptian presentments. The 
 carving here drawn is, how- 
 ever, of a St. George who has 
 dismounted, and is given as 
 affording a good example of 
 what is sometimes seen in the 
 paintings of the middle ages and 
 elsewhere the insignificant 
 size of the vanquished reptile. 
 This carving- is on one of the 
 interesting bench ends in the 
 choir of Holy Trinity Church, 
 Hull. 
 
 Where St. George slew the 
 Dragon, is not known, for it 
 has been shewn that the 
 Dragon's Hill, in Berkshire, is 
 an incorrect assignment, the 
 "dragon" there killed, being the Celtic Pen- 
 dragon Naud, defeated and slain by Cedric the 
 Saxon. 
 
 In its later symbolism as shewing the evil one 
 
 ST. GEORGE AND DRAGON, HOLY 
 TRINITY CHURCH, HULL. 
 
ANIMALS OF THE CHURCH. 179 
 
 as a person, the dragon form is largely utilized 
 with considerable modifications, to render the 
 figure more or less human, a very suggestive 
 necessity ; the example is one of the numerous 
 similar figures which adorn the Cathedral of 
 Notre Dame, Paris. 
 
 Not often is the dragon shewn without wings ; 
 a seat-carving at Beverley shews him thus, while 
 on his back is seated a hare, the appropriate 
 symbol of (among other things, including libid- 
 inousness) timidity. The hare 
 has evidently the whip-hand of 
 the evil one, and it is only 
 necessary to find a name for 
 the halter or reins with which 
 he is being: g-uided, to offer a 
 forcible lesson. SATAN - NOTRE DAME - FAK,S - 
 
 Dragons are perhaps the most prolific of all the 
 designs, for there can be no doubt at any time of 
 the signification of the figures ; a lion may mean 
 the good or the bad, but a dragon is ever evil. 
 Devouring; men, in combat with lions, with mon- 
 sters, with men, and with one another, or merely 
 mocking Creation with their ugliness, dragons are 
 ubiquitous. The word dragon is derived through 
 the Latin draco, and the Greek drakon, from the 
 
180 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 Sanscrit dric, to see, from the power the reptile 
 was said to have of destroying, like the basilisk, 
 by the glare of its terrible eyes. 
 
 The Serra is a sea-dragon, which, excepting in 
 the head, has all other characteristics of those 
 of a goose or swan. An example at Beverley has 
 in its breast the face of a man. The original 
 Serra is a winged saw-fish. 
 
 The dragon was a Keltic ensign. Henry VII. 
 
 HARE AND DRAGON, BEVERLEY. 
 
 in honour of his Welsh descent made it one of the 
 supporters of the royal arms ; it retained its place 
 until the accession of James I., who supplanted it 
 with the unicorn. 
 
 The lion may be said in the abstract to be 
 symbolic of sovereignty or power, and its use or 
 accompanying decoration determine whether it is 
 intended as a type of good or evil. 
 
 The lion affords, in one of its frequent church 
 
ANIMALS OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 symbols met on the continent, a curious instance 
 of erroneous natural history. It was believed 
 that the lioness brought forth her young dead, 
 and that after three days the lion by howling over 
 them woke them to life, and this led representa- 
 tions of the incident to be taken as a suitable 
 symbol of Christ and the Resurrection. Perhaps 
 the belief arose, from a 
 hasty observation of the 
 fact that the male lion 
 sometimes kills his new- 
 born young. Usually 
 the female drives him 
 away for a short time to 
 obviate the catastrophe. 
 The lion was also fabled 
 never to close its eyes, 
 a belief engendered by 
 its nocturnal habits. 
 This peculiarity led to 
 its being placed at the doors of the sanctuaries, 
 either as figures at the sides of the approach, 
 or as heads in the knocker or hagoday. The 
 persistency of design of these bronze knockers 
 is somewhat curious. In many, the lion's head 
 is shewn with a human head at the opening 
 
 KNOCKER AT ADEI. CHURCH. 
 
l82 
 
 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 at the mouth. This may simply be devised to 
 keep the ring-knocker in its place, or it may 
 be a sort of hell's mouth, and have a symbolical 
 meaning, warning the fugitive taking refuge in 
 the sanctuary, or perhaps his pursuers, of the 
 penalties of trespass. But too much stress must 
 
 not be laid upon this, 
 as it is so evident that 
 they are either from 
 one another, or have a 
 common original. Thus 
 we see at Adel church, 
 Yorkshire, All Saints', 
 York, and St. Gregory's, 
 Norwich, three bronze 
 knockers, all of the four- 
 teenth century, in which 
 every detail is of the 
 same design. The lion 
 mask, without the human 
 head in the mouth, is 
 seen in the earlier hagoday at the south door of 
 Durham Cathedral, dating from 1140. 
 
 All the above examples have sharp-pointed 
 ears ; it is interesting to compare the fine lion 
 knocker of Mayence, which has round ears, and 
 
 KNOCKER AT ALL SAINTS' CHUKCH, YORK. 
 
ANIMALS OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 183 
 
 though in other respects similar to the Durham 
 hagoday, is evidently of much later date. 
 
 The lion at the feet of the recumbent effigies 
 on tombs, signified at one time that the soul had 
 its foot on Satan, but later, was the indication of 
 robust hope, confidence, and vigilance : hence a 
 dog occasionally holds the place. A lion at 
 Hazeley, Oxfordshire, caresses the foot of the 
 mailed effigy. 
 
 The representations 
 of hell's mouth by the 
 open jaws of a beast, 
 most frequently use the 
 dragon, but sometimes 
 the lion is met. The 
 lion is generally to be 
 taken as the emblem of 
 the resurrection, and is 
 assigned as the emblem of St. Mark, because 
 his chief object was to give an account of the 
 resurrection of Christ. 
 
 The cat has no high significance, and is 
 generally found in domestic or folk-lore subjects 
 of a comic nature. Two examples are given from 
 Beverley. In one a monkey, having doubtless 
 observed some process of combing or currying, 
 
 KNOCKKK, ST. GREGORYS C1IUKCH, NORWICH. 
 
THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 occupies itself with combing a cat. In the other 
 we have evidence of the long continuance of our 
 nursery rhyme : 
 
 " Hey diddle, diddle, 
 The cat and the fiddle," 
 
 which probably supplies a meaning to the 
 
 " diddle " portion of the distich. A cat is 
 
 charming four mice with 
 the dulcet strains of the 
 viol, while apparently 
 she keeps a watchful 
 and appreciative eye 
 upon the largest and 
 fattest. A companion 
 carving shews her 
 seizing her prey. In 
 a miserere at Wells 
 Cathedral, a carving of 
 earlier date also shews 
 us the mediaeval cat 
 
 and fiddle. Probably the verse is the relic of a 
 
 metrical satire on the worship of the moon. 
 
 Another Wells carving shews us a hawk preying 
 
 upon a hare. 
 
 The dog is seen at Beverley helping himself 
 
 to a fish from a cooking pot, while a man turns 
 
 KNOCKER, DURHAM CATHEDRAL, 
 
ANIMALS OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 from a blazing fire to chastise him ; in another 
 carving a dog is gnawing a bone. The dogs we 
 find in carvings of the middle ages, appear to be 
 a breed more robust than the ren or greyhound, 
 but of that species. 
 
 The character of the monkey was well grasped 
 by mediaeval artists, in whose time, indeed, the 
 animal was more common as a household pet 
 than at present. The 
 same series of carvings 
 at Beverley as that from 
 which the cat is taken, 
 includes a monkey riding 
 a horse, pursued by the ^^^i 
 enraged owner, another 
 holding a child in swad- 
 dling clothes, another 
 examining a bottle after 
 the manner of the doctor 
 prognosticators, another chasing a cat with a club ; 
 while a good carving illustrates the story of the 
 pedlar who was attacked by apes, who held him 
 down while they distributed his hamper of wares. 
 Others shew him being trained under the whip, 
 playing the bagpipes while a bear dances, and using 
 a cat as bagpipes by biting its tail. There is also 
 
 [.KIN KNOCKER, MAYENCE. 
 
i86 
 
 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 an example of what appears to be the cynocephali 
 (simia innus) or dog-headed monkey, regarded by 
 the Egyptians as a sacred animal. A seat- 
 carving at Bristol shews a monkey on horseback, 
 running off with stolen bags of grain. 
 
 The pedlar scene and the ape doctor is also 
 shewn at Manchester and Bristol, where likewise 
 are stone sculptures of the ape and fox episodes. 
 The pig is frequently met in church ornament, 
 
 as probably being an 
 animal very familiar to 
 the sight of the artists, 
 as well as possessing 
 considerable symbolic 
 import. It is most 
 often used in burlesque 
 representations. At 
 Durham, Ripon, and 
 Beverley choirs, are dances of pigs, in which 
 the sow plays the bagpipes while her little ones 
 trip their light fantastic hoofs. The Beverley 
 carving is supported by two other pig-sculptures, 
 in one a sow is shewn saddled, in the other 
 playing a harp. There is a significance in this, for 
 a pregnant sow was sacrificed yearly at the winter 
 solstice, in, it is said, honour of Mercury, the 
 
 MONKEY AND CAT, BEVERLEY. 
 
ANIMALS OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 187 
 
 inventor of the harp. The Druids also sacrificed 
 a sow at the winter solstice, doubtless a relic of 
 sun-worship. A pig was sacrificed by the 
 Athenians at the commencement of the delibera- 
 ture and judicial assemblies held bi-monthly, and 
 with them a sow, being, it is said, a corn- 
 destroyer, was sacrificed yearly to Ceres. The 
 hog is the symbol of St. Anthony, stated to have 
 been in his youth a 
 swineherd, and the 
 smallest pig of a litter 
 is sometimes called an 
 "Anthony pig." The 
 example engraved is 
 from one of the 
 croches or elbow 
 rests in the Choir of 
 Beverley Minster. 
 
 The beaver when 
 met in church work is generally found in a 
 curled up and apparently sleeping attitude. But 
 the meaning of the position is that the animal 
 is biting off the castoreum bags, which it was 
 tabled to do when hunted, so that its pursuers 
 might take them, the object of their chase, 
 and so relinquish further pursuit. The town 
 
 THE CAT AM) THE PIDDLE, BEVERLEY. 
 
188 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 arms of Beverley shew the beaver in the 
 posture for this self-excision. It is also met there 
 as a cognizance in the Minstrel's Chain, and on a 
 seal, as having wings, displayed, and a carving 
 of it on a bench end in the minster shews the 
 same disposition. The beaver is a symbol of 
 Christ in the point of view of self-sacrifice. 
 
 The earliest carving of an elephant in England 
 is said to be at Exeter. A miserere at Beverley 
 Minster, in which the animal bears a howdah, 
 
 and one or more bold 
 carvings on the heads of 
 bench-ends in the same 
 church are among the 
 very few examples of 
 church representations 
 of elephants. The ele- 
 phant is one of the attributive names of Buddha, 
 and is an emblem of Christ. Mediaeval natural 
 history relates that the female elephant brought 
 forth her young in the water, in which respect it 
 is a symbol of baptism. It is also sometimes an 
 emblem of chastity. 
 
 Deer are generally shewn in simple natural 
 attitudes and situations. A hart or hind signified 
 solitude, and is the emblem of St. Hubert, like- 
 
 THE CAT AND FIDDLE, WELLS. 
 
ANIMALS OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 189 
 
 wise of St. Julian and St. Eustace. Hunting 
 scenes are not uncommon. 
 
 The camel is the symbol of submission ; it 
 appears on seat carvings at Boston and Beverley. 
 
 The serpent symbolizes, as well as the evil 
 principle, also regeneration, and the love of 
 Christ. In Egyptian and classic arts, the serpent 
 signified reviving health, as in the beautiful 
 
 HAWK AND HARK, WELLS. 
 
 symbolic figures of the well-known Portland or 
 Barberini Vase of late classic date. 
 
 The otter and the ichneumon, as slayers of the 
 crocodile, are figures of the power of Christ 
 exercised against Satan. 
 
 The panther is a symbol of Christ, so also is 
 the plover. 
 
 The wolf signified lewdness ; the hyena un- 
 natural vice. 
 
igo THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 The squirrel is a figure of the striving with 
 man of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 The unicorn, "whose horn is worth a city' 
 says the Gules Horn Book of 1609, on account 
 of its being an infallible detectant and counter- 
 acter of poison, and a certain cure for epilepsy, 
 was considered to live only in remote solitudes. 
 The only hope of slaying or securing him was to 
 use as bait a pure maiden, in whose lap he would 
 
 l'IG HEVERLEY MINSTER. 
 
 nestle his head, and sleep to his destruction. 
 Thus it became the symbol of chastity and purity, 
 and was the emblem of the Virgin Mary, of 
 St. Agatha, and St. Justinia. The horns, 
 anciently prized as those of the unicorn, where it 
 has been possible to submit them to modern 
 examination, prove to be those of the narwhal. 
 Like the lion the unicorn signified both the good 
 
ANIMALS OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 191 
 
 and bad, according to the inversion of meaning. 
 The unicorn is not very frequent as a church 
 animal. The example drawn, which is one of 
 three at Beverley, is given because of its graceful 
 horse-like form. 
 
 The sheep is often shewn in pastoral scenes, 
 as shearings, etc. The cow and horse also 
 generally figure in simple episodes of every- 
 day life. 
 
 WIT AND WEIGHT, MONKEY, ELEPHANT AND 1>IG, BEVERLEY MINSTER. 
 
 Two rams in the Beverley choir butt at each 
 other so that their horns each form half of the 
 astronomical sign ^f (Aries, the Ram). 
 
 The bear is generally treated as an animal 
 familiar to the sight of the artists in situations 
 of training, conveyance, trick performing, baiting, 
 and is shewn muzzled. In a few cases the bear is 
 used symbolically as a type of Satan. 
 
 The whale, in some departments of oriental 
 
192 
 
 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 lore, is fabled to bear up the world, and that there 
 is a constant chance of its diving, to which it is 
 persuaded by the evil one, and so overwhelming 
 the globe. This whale takes the place of the 
 turtle or tortoise in Indian and the serpent in 
 Scandinavian mythology, and points to the deluge 
 theory, and perhaps tends to shew an early and 
 forgotten appreciation of the gradual change of 
 poles, and the necessary consequences, so admir- 
 ably embodied in one of 
 Huxley's most sugges- 
 tive Lay Sermons. 
 
 No account of the 
 church animals would 
 be complete without 
 mention of the fox 
 Reynard the crafty 
 whom all affect to 
 condemn, but who is 
 respected for his successes, and is the most 
 popular and most sung of all the animals. 
 
 In the fox-carving- here drawn, the fox is 
 shewn, without robes, in a pulpit, preaching to 
 a goose and a cock ; his forepaws and what they 
 may have held are broken off; but the cunning 
 conveyed into his countenance preaches the whole 
 
 UNICORN, UEVKR1.EY MINSTER. 
 
ANIMALS OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 x 93 
 
 lesson. There are many similar examples ; at 
 Beverley Reynard is in full canonicals ; among 
 the misereres of the lesser church of Beverley 
 (St. Mary's), at Boston, Bristol, Nantwich, Ripon 
 and Sherborne, are carvings of the fox preaching 
 or hanging. Here also he is carved as prowling 
 near two sleeping geese ; as being hanged on a 
 square gallows by a number of birds ; as being 
 resuscitated by an ape, who unties the rope from 
 
 THE PREACHING FOX, RIPON. 
 
 his neck, the rope terminating, to shew his awaken- 
 ing, in a Wake knot. 
 
 It would be interesting to find the original 
 of the design in which the fox is shewn preaching 
 to a congregation of geese, while he is addressing 
 them, as appears by a label, in these words : 
 " Testis est mihi Deus, quam cupiam vos omnes 
 visceribus meis," from the first chapter of 
 Philippians. In all the preaching scenes, this 
 
 somewhat improper punning address may be 
 
 13 
 
i 9 4 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 supposed to be uttered. It is noted as met in 
 carving, in stained glass, and in manuscripts. 
 
 Perhaps the oldest animal carving in this 
 country is at Aldborough Church, Yorkshire (St. 
 Bartholomew, probably originally Holy Trinity), 
 built by Ulf, a Danish or Saxon lord of Holder- 
 ness, who died in the reign of Edward the 
 Confessor. It represents, in somewhat graceful 
 lines, three animals, which appear to be a pair 
 and their little one. Their species is so doubtful 
 
 that they may be either 
 
 vulpine or bovine. 
 Snails are occasionally 
 
 met in church decoration. 
 
 A snail at Boston is being 
 saxon animals, aldborough. driven up a hill by a 
 
 monk ; another at Beverley is being stabbed by 
 a fashionably-attired gentleman of the fifteenth 
 century. These are of different import from the 
 mention of the snail in the romance of Reynard, 
 where he is the standard-bearer, because he could 
 so well scale walls ! The Papal Church claimed 
 to drive away snails by means of excommunicatory 
 cursing. 
 
 The eagle, like the lion, affords a multitude of 
 symbolisms. Its marked change of plumage after 
 
ANIMALS OF THE CHURCH. 195 
 
 moulting gave rise to the fable of its renewing its 
 youth by plunging into a pool, used as the symbol 
 of baptism, and by cremation. This latter idea, 
 evolving the phoenix, gives another chief emblem 
 of sun-worship. The Jews regarded it as an 
 emblem of the renewal of life, as did the Romans, 
 who carved it upon their burial-urns. There are 
 curious coincidences in the language-changes of 
 the words which are instances of the vagueness 
 of symbolic cults. The Hebrew word chul 
 means both sand and phcenix, and the Greek 
 for both phcenix and palmtree is the same. 
 The confusion is seen in Job xxix. 18, and Psalm 
 xcii. 1 2, and in numerous carvings where the 
 phcenix is shewn seated on a palmtree. Both are 
 used in Christian art as symbolic of regeneration. 
 The pelican, "whose sons are nurs't with bloode," 
 was a favourite subject of the wood-carver. The 
 bird's alleged habit of drawing blood from its own 
 breast to feed its young, caused it to be taken as 
 the special emblem of Christ, and the symbol 
 generally of Christian piety. Considerable trouble 
 has been taken to shew that the pelican is an error 
 for flamingo, because the latter bird can produce 
 from the crop a blood secretion in an act of 
 feeding, and because many ancient sculptures 
 
196 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 shew the bird as much resembling a flamingo as a 
 pelican. The pelican cannot be thus surrendered. 
 There is no bird from a dodo to a crow which the 
 inaccuracy of the church artist has not, in one 
 instance or another, made his pelican resemble 
 more than the actual pelican form. The true 
 explanation is that the pelican's beak is tipped 
 with red or a reddish colour, its breast is 
 frequently bare of feathers, and it has a habit 
 of reposing its beak on its neck and breast, giving 
 a considerable impression of self-wounding. In 
 suggesting a re-reading as " flamingo " it was 
 not taken into account that the pelican was said 
 to feed its young with blood from its breast, 
 and that the idea is one of sacrifice. Thus in 
 " Birds Forbidden : " " She stabbeth deep her 
 breast, self murtheresse through fondnesse to her 
 broode," as parents do everyday. Moreover, it is 
 not necessary to find exact prototypes for all the 
 attributes of the church animals, though frequently 
 they have a foundation in imperfect observation 
 of natural features. The seat of the Archbishop 
 of York, in Beverley Minster, has a beautiful 
 example of this symbol, and there is another on 
 the canopy. The seat of the Precentor of the 
 Minster has also, among other things, the same 
 
ANIMALS OF THE CHURCH. 197 
 
 subject, with the young pelicans in a basket. It 
 is also the subject of a miserere at Boston. 
 
 The cock was the emblem of St. Peter ; and of 
 vigilance, of the Resurrection, courage, and 
 liberality. Among the Beverley misereres are 
 two cocks sparring on a barrel, a literal rendering 
 of the old expression, cock-a-hoop. In another a 
 cock is carved above the words clericus fabrici ; 
 this was John Sparke, who, in 1520, would, no 
 doubt, have the supervision of the execution of 
 these misereres. The vigilant bird is a well- 
 chosen emblem to associate with a clerk of works. 
 The cock, like the dragon, was a Welsh badsfe. 
 Mr. Evans has misunderstood the above name, 
 reading Sparke as " Wake," and points an 
 inference in connection with the bird and the 
 name. John Sparke was the Receiver-General 
 and Warden of the Fabric of Beverley Minster. 
 The examination of some others of the Beverley 
 carvings by Mr. Evans appears to have been 
 hasty, as his description in those cases are not 
 marked by his usual accuracy. The cock was a 
 Welsh and Gothic badge. The cock was dedi- 
 cated to Apollo, Mars, and Mercury, and was 
 sacrificed to Esculapius ; all these, however, are 
 one and the same, the solar deity, and the 
 
198 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 connection is the salutation given by the cock to 
 the rising sun. 
 
 The owl is the symbol of wisdom, emblem of 
 Minerva, and the tutelary bird of Athens, but 
 mediaevally the symbol of darkness and unbelief, 
 and, like the raven, a symbol of the Jews. At 
 Beverley it is seen attacked by a posse of smaller 
 birds, as not infrequently occurs in nature. 
 
 The hawk is most frequently seen in what may 
 be termed natural scenes. At Wells a hawk is 
 preying upon a hare ; at Beverley it is hunting a bat. 
 It is curious to note that the hawk in mediaeval 
 carving has generally a round and parrot-like 
 head, the true falcon shape being rarely achieved. 
 Both the crow and the turtle-dove signify 
 constancy and devotion, having alike the reputa- 
 tion of never taking a second mate. 
 
 The heron is a type of wisdom, the thrush of 
 the grace of God. 
 
 The partridge, from a supposed or real inclina- 
 tion to rear the young of others, is a type of 
 benevolence. 
 
 The hen and chickens is the emblem of God's 
 providence, and one of the special emblems of 
 Christ ; it was frequently adopted as a device in 
 mediaeval times. 
 
ANIMALS OF THE CHURCH. 199 
 
 The raven was the symbol of concord and long 
 life ; but also in the later, and more involved, 
 symbolism of the Fathers, typifies the Jews. 
 
 The dove was the type of conjugal fidelity ; of 
 rest, peace, and salvation ; and every portion of 
 its frame had its special lesson. 
 
 Birds in general were considered symbolic of 
 the souls of martyrs ; souls in general are shewn 
 by the nakedness of the figures. 
 
 The fish is frequently met in the church. It 
 was the symbol of chastity and one of the emblems 
 of the Virgin Mary, as well as of Christ; the Greek 
 word being used as the sacred acrostic, thus : 
 
 I esus 
 
 Jesus 
 
 C hristus 
 
 Christ 
 
 TH eou 
 
 of God 
 
 U ios 
 
 the Son 
 
 S oter 
 
 Saviour. 
 
 The elliptical or ovoidal form of the fish is used 
 as an emblem known as the Vesica Piscis (fish- 
 bladder) ; windows were made of this form, and it 
 has been held that it is not without muliebraic 
 reference. 
 
 The fish in classic mythology was credited with 
 acting as the ferryman to bear the souls of the 
 dead to the islands of bliss. It was a symbol of 
 
2oo THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 Venus (and hence of the Virgin Mary, who took 
 in Christian imagery the place of Aphrodite), and 
 the use of Friday as a fish-eating day gave it the 
 name it bears, dies veneris (French, vendredi), akin 
 to the Saxon Fria-day, Fria being the Germanic 
 equivalent of Venus. An eagle seizing a fish from 
 the water is to be seen on the Norman doorway 
 of Ribbeford Church, Worcestershire ; the same 
 is met among Keltic symbols, the attributed 
 meaning being taking of the elect by Christ. 
 
 Other animals are met in church carving, but 
 the chief have been mentioned, and sufficient to 
 illustrate man's aptitude for seizing on material 
 forms to enforce on his fellows some spiritual or 
 moral sentiment, or some fact scarcely patent to 
 the general intelligence. We have, especially, 
 seen that where long descent could be traced, 
 mediaeval symbolism rises out from the ashes of 
 ancient myths, which can sometimes be seen to be 
 relics of great primaeval conceptions. 
 
Queries in Stones. 
 
 By the Rev. Francis Haslewood, f.s.a. 
 
 MANY of our Parish Churches bear, in their 
 architectural details, traces of customs and 
 usages which, though general in early times, have, 
 in the course of centuries, not only become obsolete, 
 but their exact character is now wholly unknown. 
 For example, low side-windows are still a subject 
 for controversy among well-known antiquaries, 
 and several niches and squints still remain, the 
 exact use of which have baffled some of our most 
 learned authorities upon sacred archaeology. To 
 these may be added the gargoyles which abound 
 on the exterior, and the curiously carved grotesque 
 figures which often disfigure the interior of many 
 of our village churches. A remarkable example 
 of this is to be found in what is now a remote 
 village, though possessing a charter for a weekly 
 market, granted by Queen Elizabeth. The church 
 is that of Smarden, situate in the Weald of Kent, 
 about nine miles from Ashford. Here, in this 
 remarkable church (dedicated to S. Michael), 
 
202 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 popularly known as the "Barn of Kent" (from 
 the singular construction of its wide roof without 
 side aisles or tie beams), is found a Grotesque 
 Head, in the north wall of the nave, near the 
 eastern end, at about eight feet from the ground. 
 It is supported by two corbels of early character, 
 and the figure, though without shoulders, 
 has hands distending the mouth. On the arms 
 are bracelets. The material of which it is carved 
 is Bethersden marble, a stone found in the locality, 
 which takes an excellent polish, and on this account 
 the fonts in several neighbouring parishes are 
 formed of it. The use of this curious head, which 
 cannot be described as comical, is open to con- 
 jecture, as to whether it was in some way connected 
 with the mediaeval superstitions in regard to 
 exorcism, gargoyles on the exterior of churches 
 being known to have such reference. There are 
 no other figures of a similar nature in any part of 
 the church ; and in this particular spot it certainly 
 could not have been introduced by way of ornament, 
 as the monster is hideous in the extreme. Another 
 suggestion has been offered, namely, that it had 
 some connection with the Easter and Whitsun ales. 
 Those who favour this theory quote as an example 
 the figure on the porch of Chalk Church, Kent, 
 
QUERIES IN STONES. 
 
 203 
 
 which is supposed to illustrate the humours of a 
 church ale. Then again, these church ales afford 
 matter for speculation, but very little seems to be 
 really known about them. Popular belief goes to 
 
 GKOTKS(,)UK FIGURE, SMAKUEN .CHUKCH. 
 
 show that in pre-reformation times the church 
 then, as in our own clay, was constantly requiring 
 funds, and these were partly raised by the sale of 
 ale, then the common English beverage, just as 
 
2o 4 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 money is obtained in this nineteenth century by 
 selling tea at the refreshment stalls, so general at 
 the bazaars held for charitable purposes. An 
 engraving of the grotesque head is given in the 
 " Memorials of Smarden," which we reproduce. 
 
 Our thanks are due to the writer of the foregoing notes for 
 the loan of the illustration used in this chapter. 
 
 Editor. 
 
pictures in (Eburcbes. 
 
 By the Rev. Geo. S. Tyack, b. a. 
 
 TO the thoughtful man of to-day it must be 
 almost inconceivable that so much con- 
 troversy should ever have raged about the use 
 of pictures in churches. At the present time 
 there is scarcely even a nonconformist com- 
 munity that has not practically admitted the 
 propriety of their use, although in some quarters 
 an illogical, indeed an incomprehensible, dis- 
 tinction seems to have been drawn between 
 transparent pictures in the windows, and paintings 
 on the walls. The Puritans of past centuries 
 were most narrow-minded in their condemnation 
 of art, but they were also more consistent. To 
 them apparently all art was a sacrament of the 
 devil, whereby he entangled and ruined the souls 
 of men. Milton, it is true, felt the hallowing 
 influences of art, and in his 77 Penseroso sings the 
 praise of architecture, painting, and music 
 
 " Let my due feet never fail 
 To walk the studious Cloisters' pale, 
 And love the high embowered roof 
 With antique pillars mossy proof, 
 
2o6 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 And storied windows richly dight 
 
 Casting a dim religious light ; 
 
 There let the pealing organ blow 
 
 To the full-voiced quire below, 
 
 In service high and anthem clear, 
 
 As may with sweetness through mine ear 
 
 Dissolve me into ecstacies, 
 
 And bring all heaven before mine eyes." 
 
 But these were the thoughts of the young Milton 
 of twenty-five or six, the author of the Mask of 
 Comus, and the entertainment Arcades ; not of 
 that man of sterner mould whom we meet in his 
 later works. 
 
 It was natural that in the first centuries the 
 Christians should exhibit great caution in the use 
 of pictures. The Jews who had embraced the 
 new faith clung for the most part tenaciously to 
 the details of the older law, and to those traditions 
 which their " eldars " had founded upon it, as is 
 abundantly proved by many passages in the Acts 
 of the Apostles and the Pauline Epistles. On 
 the other hand the church would certainly realize 
 that great care was needed in the treatment of 
 converts from Paganism, accustomed to the 
 worship of all manner of sculptured or painted 
 idols, lest even pictures symbolical of the 
 Christian faith should be abused rather than 
 
PICTURES IN CHURCHES. 207 
 
 used. That the primitive church was not, 
 however, afraid to employ art as a handmaid, 
 is proved by the Roman catacombs. The 
 Catacomb of St. Priscilla, dates from Apostolic 
 times, or at latest only just subsequently to them, 
 the Catacomb of St. Callixtus is probably the 
 next in age, and is not very much later ; and in 
 these, as well as in other sections of these sacred 
 Christian cemeteries, pictures meet us on all 
 hands. Simple studies of Our Lord as the Good 
 Shepherd, examples of the emblematic vine, and 
 other subjects not beyond the talents of a poor 
 and largely illiterate community, are some of the 
 first specimens of Christian art. Representations 
 of Old Testament scenes, more or less emblematic 
 in treatment, and later of New Testament persons 
 and events, followed. 
 
 There is evidence, it must be admitted, of a 
 local suspicion of the use of pictures even in 
 early times, for which there may have been 
 special and local reasons. A council held at 
 Elvira, in Spain, in the year 305, passed a canon 
 declaring that " pictures ought not to be in 
 churches, lest that which is worshipped and 
 adored be painted upon the walls." Yet in less 
 than a century we have the description written by 
 
208 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 St. Paulinus (who curiously enough had spent 
 much time in Spain) of the elaborate pictures in 
 his church at Nola in Italy. Scenes from Old 
 Testament history adorned the walls, and in 
 the apse was an emblematic design of the Holy 
 Trinity, and another of the Cross. " In all its 
 mystery," says the saintly bishop, "shines forth 
 the Trinity ; Christ stands in the lamb, the 
 Father's voice thunders from Heaven, and as a 
 dove flies forth the Holy Ghost." The Cross 
 was encircled with a crown of light, and the 
 Apostles typified by a flock of doves. These 
 pictures were in mosaic, as were many, if not 
 most, of the early icons in the west, while those 
 in the east are more commonly the work of the 
 painter. 
 
 Amongst early writers of authority who refer 
 to pictures in churches, we find St. Augustine of 
 Hippo, who speaks of figures of St. Peter and St. 
 Paul, of the martyrdom of St. Stephen, and the 
 sacrifice of Abraham. Asterius, Bishop of 
 Amasea, tells us that close to the spot where 
 the relics of St. Euphemia, the martyr, were 
 preserved, "the painter by means of his art, and 
 to the best of his abilities, exactly portrayed on 
 his canvas the martyr's whole history, and hung 
 
PICTURES IN CHURCHES. 209 
 
 it in such a position as to be seen by all." The 
 purpose of these pictures is plainly set forth by a 
 disciple of St John Chrysostom, St. Nilus the 
 Abbot, namely, "that they who cannot read the 
 Holy Scriptures, may be able as they look upon 
 the picture to call to mind the noble acts of those 
 who have served God with sincerity," and for 
 this reason the same saint advised the prefect 
 Olympiodorus " to fill the holy temple on all sides 
 with Scripture pictures by the hand of the most 
 skilful artist." 
 
 According to some authorities pictures were 
 hung in very early times in the portico of the 
 church, especially for the contemplation of peni- 
 tents, who were not suffered to advance further 
 into the sacred precincts. An example, which 
 reminds one of this practice, exists at Lutter- 
 worth, where three figures are depicted in fresco 
 above the northern door. The local tradition 
 describes them as Queen Phillippa, King Edward 
 III., and John of Gaunt, and avers that the 
 Queen, countenanced by John, is requesting the 
 King to confer the rectory of Lutterworth on 
 John Wyclif. Another account describes the 
 two male figures as those of Edward II. and 
 
 Edward III. The style of the work is that of 
 
 14 
 
2io THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 the later fourteenth century, and the subject 
 must be admitted to be very doubtful. A not 
 uncommon design for the decoration of the 
 wall over the north door was a figure of St. 
 Christopher bearing the child Christ. 
 
 Encouraged by the church a great school of 
 artists sprung up in Mediaeval Europe, to whom 
 we owe an incalculable debt of gratitude. The 
 glorious works of the monastic painters, Fra 
 Angelico, Fra Fillipo, and Fra Bartolomeo, of 
 Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci, of 
 Duccio, Botticelli, Correggio, of Raphael, Gior- 
 gione, and a hundred more, were most of them 
 produced for the decoration of churches or other 
 ecclesiastical buildings. As illustrations it must 
 suffice to quote the world-famed frescoes of 
 Michael Angelo in the Sistine chapel at Rome, 
 the glowing witnesses to the faith of Fra 
 Angelico at Florence, and the Last Supper of 
 Leonardo da Vinci in a convent at Milan, made 
 familiar by means of countless copies. Many 
 examples originally painted for the decoration of 
 churches have found their way in modern times 
 into museums and picture galleries in England or 
 abroad, but every traveller in Europe, and 
 especially in Italy and Spain, is aware of the vast 
 
PICTURES IN CHURCHES. 211 
 
 amount of splendid art still to be seen in the 
 cathedrals and monastic churches there. 
 
 Undoubtedly our own country, although pro- 
 ducing no mediaeval painter of mark, availed 
 herself to the full of such opportunities as were 
 afforded her, for the pictorial decoration of her 
 churches. Very few old pictures remain to us, 
 and not many traces or fragments even still 
 exist, but there are enough to show that our 
 forefathers appreciated and used this common- 
 sense method of instruction, until the torrent 
 of Genevan influence in the sixteenth century 
 devastated the sacred art of the country. 
 
 The almost incredible suspicion with which all 
 art was regarded by the continental reformers is 
 illustrated by the correspondence of Christopher 
 Hales with some of them. He had given orders 
 for the portraits of six German Protestants to be 
 painted and sent to him, but complains that one 
 Master Gualter had "'retained four of them, . . . 
 because there is some danger lest a door shall 
 hereafter be opened to idolatry." He remon- 
 strates in consequence with Gualter, and ex- 
 presses himself as " greatly surprised " (as indeed 
 he well might be) " that Burcher should persist in 
 thinking that portraits can no wise be painted 
 
212 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 with a safe conscience, and a due regard to 
 godliness." When such men as these, fanatical in 
 ignorant scrupulosity, were allowed to advise the 
 bishops and doctors of the English church, there 
 is small wonder that an iconoclastic outbreak was 
 the result. Hooper, in his " Declaration of 
 Christ and His Office" (first published in 1547) 
 admits indeed that "the art of graving and 
 painting is the gift of God " ; but he goes on to 
 make the illogical distinction by which so great a 
 means of religious instruction is specially excluded 
 from the church, the home of religion. " To 
 have the picture or image of any martyr or 
 other," he says, " so it be not put in the temple 
 of God, nor otherwise abused, it may be suffered." 
 In the same spirit, Nowell, Dean of St. Paul's, in 
 a catechism published in 1570, while allowing 
 that the second commandment in the Decalogue 
 does not " wholly condemn the arts of painting 
 and portraiture," yet deduces from it the teaching 
 "that it is very perilous to set any images or 
 pictures in churches." When ideas like these 
 were rife, it will cause no surprise to find Hooper 
 issuing, in 1 55 1, injunctions to the clergy of the 
 diocese of Gloucester, to the following effect : 
 " Item, that when any glass windows within any 
 
PICTURES IN CHURCHES. 213 
 
 of the churches shall from henceforth be repaired, 
 or new made, that you do not permit to be 
 painted or purtured (portrayed) therein the image 
 of any saint ; but if they will have anything 
 painted, that it be either branches, flowers, or 
 posies (mottoes) taken out of the holy scripture. 
 And that ye cause to be defaced all such images 
 as yet do remain painted upon any of the walls of 
 your churches, and that from henceforth there be 
 no more such." 
 
 Then doubtless began the glorious era of 
 whitewash, during which such figures and pictures 
 as could not be taken away and destroyed were 
 daubed over with lime. Thus in the accounts of 
 St. Giles's, Reading, for the year 1560, we find 
 an entry, " For white liming the roode, id." 
 
 Here and there, nevertheless, an ancient 
 painting yet remains to us ; some few have been 
 recovered by the removal of the layers of white- 
 wash under which they had been long concealed ; 
 and something has been done in recent years to 
 supply the places of some that have been lost. 
 
 In the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral is a 
 quaint {minting representing the Nativity of St. 
 John the Baptist. St. Elizabeth lies on a couch 
 with the infant Forerunner in her arms, while the 
 
2i 4 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 father, St. Zacharias, seated at a table, writes on a 
 scroll his statement that the child's name is John, 
 to the evident astonishment of the assembled 
 neighbours. 
 
 At Catheld, Norfolk, some very interesting 
 frescoes have been preserved, by which the space 
 above the arcade on both sides is adorned. The 
 seven sacraments, the seven deadly sins and their 
 appropriate punishments, and various other sub- 
 jects are here depicted. 
 
 In the Galilee Chapel of Durham Cathedral are 
 two figures, perhaps St. Cuthbert and St. Oswald, 
 which have not been certainly identified. In 
 cleaning the walls of the parish church of Crowle, 
 Lincolnshire, at its restoration some ten years 
 since, a mural painting was discovered ; but un- 
 fortunately, before steps could be taken for its 
 preservation, it crumbled away. 
 
 One subject, which apparently was formerly 
 popular in England for the adornment of the space 
 above the chancel arch, was the Last Judgment, 
 known as a Doom. 
 
 One such exists in the Chapel of the Holy Cross 
 at Stratford-on-Avon, having been discovered in 
 1804. The happiness of the blessed, and the 
 tortures of the lost are represented with most 
 
PICTURES IN CHURCHES. 215 
 
 realistic force, but the effect produced on a modern 
 spectator is scarcely the one aimed at by the artist. 
 A better example is met with at Lutterworth. 
 The Saviour Himself appears at the top seated in 
 glory upon a rainbow, while two angels with 
 trumpets summon the quick and dead to meet 
 Him. Beneath is the earth, represented as a 
 brown expanse, on which a multitude of graves 
 are seen, from which the dead are issuing some 
 as skeletons only, some as complete bodies. Two 
 larger angels bearing scrolls are depicted, one on 
 either side of the arch. 
 
 A Doom discovered at Wenhaston, Suffolk, in 
 1892, is especially noteworthy, both on account of 
 the strange manner in which its existence was 
 discovered, and for the intrinsic merits of the 
 composition. It is painted upon an oak par- 
 tition which fills up the arch above the chancel 
 screen, and is said by competent judges to have 
 been executed about the year 1480. At the 
 Reformation the great crucifix, or rood, with the 
 figures of St. Mary and St. John, which formerly 
 stood against it, were taken down, and the painting 
 was whitewashed, so that all trace, and in time all 
 memory, of it disappeared. About i860 a hole 
 was cut through one side of this boarding to allow 
 
216 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 of the passage of a stove-pipe, and, in 1892, the 
 whole screen was pulled down as of no architectural 
 or antiquarian interest, taken to pieces, and thrown 
 into the churchyard, with a view to being entirely 
 removed. By a piece of extraordinary good 
 fortune the following night was exceedingly wet, 
 and by the succeeding morning no small amount 
 of whitewash had been swept from the boards by 
 the pelting rain, and portions of the painting 
 stood manifest to the astonished eyes of the 
 workmen. It is needless to add that after this 
 all the oak was carefully cleaned and replaced, the 
 colours being wonderfully bright, and the whole 
 forming- one of the most interesting Dooms extant. 
 In the middle is a blank space, marking the 
 portion originally covered by the rood; and similar 
 reminders of the figures of St. Mary and St. John 
 are on either side. Above the right arm of the 
 cross is seated the Lord upon a rainbow, as in the 
 Lutterworth Doom ; while kneeling in supplication 
 to Him on the left side are the Blessed Virgin 
 and St. John Baptist, the latter identified by his 
 "raiment of camel's hair." The rood with its 
 attendant statues naturally divides the lower por- 
 tion of the picture into four sections, and of this 
 the artist has availed himself in arranging his 
 
PICTURES IN CHURCHES. 219 
 
 subject. On the right side of the shaft of the cross 
 is St. Peter, robed as a pope, receiving the souls 
 of a king, a queen, a cardinal, and a bishop. Still 
 further to the right is a castellated double gateway, 
 at which angels are seen admitting the blessed. 
 On the left-hand side of the rood we see St. Michael 
 weighing souls, while the Devil, "the accuser of 
 the brethren," stands by with a scroll containing 
 presumably his accusations against them. At the 
 extreme left a huge head with gaping jaws, the 
 usual mediaeval method of suggesting hell-mouth, 
 appears, into which the lost souls are dragged and 
 pushed. At intervals, in the main design, bodies 
 are seen rising from their graves. For clearness 
 it ought perhaps to be added that the terms right 
 and left are used above as in heraldry, for the 
 opposite sides of the painting, not of the spectator. 
 The portion of the oak which has been cut away 
 contained the figure of an angel summoning the 
 world to judgment, part of his arm and his trumpet 
 being still visible. Several scrolls are inserted in 
 the composition, the lettering of which has dis- 
 appeared, but no doubt their inscriptions were 
 of the usual kind in such pieces ; " Come, ye 
 blessed," " Depart, ye cursed," in the Latin of the 
 Vulgate. 
 
22o THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 Another Doom, painted like this one on a 
 panel, is preserved in the triforium of Gloucester 
 Cathedral. 
 
 In the parish church of South Leigh is an 
 elaborate scheme of pictorial decoration dating 
 from the fifteenth century. The Doom occupies 
 its usual place over the chancel arch, but spreads 
 itself also over the nave walls. Over the arch we 
 have the resurrection of the just and the unjust, 
 who are summoned by angels robed respectively 
 in white and in black, together with Hell-mouth 
 and the usual accessories. Heaven is depicted 
 on the north wall of the nave ; a castellated 
 gateway, at which stands St. Peter with his keys, 
 gives admission to the celestial city, the towers 
 and spires of which are seen in the distance. On 
 the south wall of the nave we see St. Michael the 
 Archangel engaged in weighing the souls, and the 
 mystical figure of the " woman clothed with the 
 sun," and having the moon under her feet, is also 
 introduced. On the east wall of the chancel 
 another subject is treated, namely the Annun- 
 ciation : on the south side of the window is a 
 figure of the Blessed Virgin, standing with 
 upturned eyes and holding a lily, while the divine 
 Dove is seen descending upon her. It seems 
 
PICTURES IN CHURCHES. 22l 
 
 probable that the effigy of St. Gabriel must at 
 one time have stood on the opposite side, or at 
 any rate that such was the intention. On the 
 north wall of the aisle of the church is a painting 
 of St. Clement of Rome, in full episcopal vest- 
 ments, with an anchor, the emblem of his 
 martyrdom by drowning. The picture of the 
 Annunciation is the latest of these paintings, all 
 of which were coated with whitewash, and some 
 of them overlaid also with other paintings of a 
 later date. 
 
 At the restoration of Blyth Church, near 
 Retford, a doom was discovered in the usual 
 position and of the common type ; every effort 
 proved unfortunately fruitless towards preserving 
 it when it was exposed to the air, but a 
 photograph was taken of it before its final 
 disappearance. 
 
 About fifteen years ago some quaint paintings 
 were discovered on the south wall of the chancel 
 in the little parish church of Easby, near 
 Richmond, Yorkshire ; the subjects being the 
 appearance of the angels to the shepherds, the 
 visit of the Magi, the taking down from the 
 Cross, the entombment of our Lord, and the 
 Resurrection. 
 
222 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 Above the arches of the organ-screen at Exeter 
 Cathedral is a series of thirteen curious paintings 
 of ancient date, representing some of the most 
 striking scenes in scriptural history, such as the 
 Creation, Paradise, the Deluge, Solomon's 
 Temple, and events in the life of our Lord, 
 concluding with the descent of the Holy Ghost at 
 Pentecost. 
 
 It will have been noticed that of all subjects 
 the Doom was obviously the most common in 
 England, and in considering the value of these 
 paintings as instruments of popular instruction, it 
 must be remembered that, in all the instances 
 here quoted, and probably invariably, they stood 
 in- close connection with the Rood. The 
 Wenhaston Doom is peculiar in having had the 
 great crucifix actually fastened to it, but in the 
 other cases the Rood undoubtedly stood on a 
 screen beneath it. The whole arrangement would 
 therefore form a singularly complete expression of 
 the redemptive work of Christ. 
 
 In recent years steps have been taken in 
 several places to revive the use of pictures in our 
 churches. The mosaic enrichment of St. Paul's 
 Cathedral is a noble example, and when com- 
 pleted the work will add immensely to the beauty 
 
PICTURES IN CHURCHES. 223 
 
 of that splendid, but formerly rather dingy pile ; 
 the parish church of Darlington possesses a 
 reredos or altar-piece, consisting of a picture in 
 mosaic on a large scale. 
 
 It has often been maintained that our some- 
 what damp climate, and the smoky atmosphere of 
 our towns, form almost insurmountable barriers 
 to the use of frescoes in modern England ; but 
 experiment seems to have proved the contrary. 
 To name one or two cases in which this form of 
 mural decoration has been successfully employed, 
 reference may be made to the designs by the 
 late Mr. Gambier Parry in Ely Cathedral, and 
 paintings in St. Andrew's, Stoke Newington, 
 St. John's, Isle of Dogs, St. Peter's, Bourne- 
 mouth, St. Anne's, Derby, and elsewhere. 
 
 At Womersley, near Doncaster, is a curious 
 picture in tiles, recently inserted in the south 
 wall, the subject being the institution of the 
 Eucharist. It is of foreign origin. 
 
 One set of pictures commonly found in Roman 
 Catholic churches, and with increasing frequency 
 in English (Mies, is the Stations of the Cross. 
 As a rule these fourteen incidents in the Passion 
 of the Saviour are treated in a way that, as art, 
 is contemptible. Some few specimens, are how- 
 
224 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 ever excellent ; and when one remembers the 
 dogmatic value of the facts set forth, and the 
 pathos of that divine tragedy, one cannot but 
 feel that art has here subjects worthy of its 
 highest efforts. Antwerp Cathedral has a fine 
 set of the Stations ; and in England one of the 
 best is at All Saint's, Scarborough. 
 
 On the continent we expect, of course, to find 
 many excellent examples of paintings in churches, 
 besides those altar-pieces and pictures to which 
 allusion has already been made. Time has told 
 its tale upon many examples, as on Leonardo da 
 Vinci's " Last Supper," and neglect and careless- 
 ness are found there as well as at home, but 
 actual violence has not been offered to eccle- 
 siastical art abroad to the same extent as was the 
 case in England. Time would fail, therefore, to 
 discuss in any detail the instances that may be 
 met with in continental churches. The works of 
 Mrs. Jameson, and of others, have familiarized us 
 all with many of the most important of them. 
 
 It will not be out of place to mention here a 
 rather striking form of decoration employed in 
 some continental cathedrals on great festivals. 
 This consists of the display of large pictures 
 worked in tapestry. At Rouen they are stretched 
 
PICTURES IN CHURCHES. 225 
 
 around the columns in the nave, where besides 
 their value as teachers, they add a useful warmth 
 of colour to the place. At Brussels a similar 
 custom prevails, but the tapestries, in this case 
 framed, are hung between the pillars of the choir. 
 In the choir at Aix, in Provence, are some 
 tapestries stolen from St. Paul's by the Puritans, 
 and sold in 1656. 
 
 In conclusion, the words of a layman on the 
 use of pictures in churches are well worth quoting. 
 " I should like to be told why a man may not 
 look at a picture in church. Nobody wishes to 
 put doing so in the place of attending to the 
 service, or of listening to the sermon, even 
 though the pictures be more eloquent and in- 
 structive. Why may not a man attend to all if 
 he likes ? Objections can only be based upon 
 what may be called the meeting-house theory 
 about churches ; the theory that a church is 
 intended to be used at certain specified times, and 
 for public worship and preaching only, which 
 ended, the congregation are to be turned out, and 
 the place locked up till next ' service time.' . . . 
 The parish church should be not only the place 
 of public worship, but also the place of private 
 
 meditation and prayer. Every parishoner should 
 
 15 
 
226 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 have free access to it at all reasonable times. 
 Nay, it ought to be made interesting to attract 
 him, and instructive to teach him when 
 attracted." # 
 
 Such is surely common-sense, and is one more 
 plea for the acceptance of the position, surely also 
 common-sense, that the employment of art in all 
 its forms, and in the highest degree attainable, is 
 not a mere luxury, not a simple question of 
 ornament, but a necessary element in the 
 education of our race. 
 
 * Modern Parish Churches, by J. T. Micklethwaite, f.s. a. , Architect, 
 King& Co., 1874. 
 
flowers anfc tbe IRites of the Cburcb. 
 
 By the Rev. Hilderic Friend. 
 
 THE sources of great rivers are often lost in 
 the mists of far off mountains. It is thus 
 with many popular usages. We may reasonably 
 suppose that in the earliest and most distant ages 
 man was wont to propitiate the object of his fear 
 or worship by offering such things as were most 
 pleasing to his own senses. Was he fond of flesh, 
 the gods would share his tastes. Did he love 
 fruit, so would they. Were fresh and fragrant 
 flowers pleasing to his eye and sense, then the 
 deity would find a similar pleasure in their use. 
 Hence we find that in heathen lands the 
 ceremonial use of flowers is practically universal. 
 We also find flowers associated with present-day 
 Buddhism, just as they were with the old time 
 religions of Assyria and Egypt. The lotus was 
 formerly, as it is even now, constantly associated 
 in the East with religious rites, and anyone who 
 is familiar with the temples of India and China, 
 Burmah and Japan will recall the fact that the 
 
228 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 lotus-pool is one of their most frequent and 
 indispensable adjuncts. And just as the lily and 
 pomegranate found their way into the temple 
 service and had their expressive symbolism, so in 
 the Western church, represented by the Greek 
 and Russian, Roman and English branches, 
 numerous flowers have at different times been 
 utilized. 
 
 It has been thought that after the Reformation 
 and the Dissolution of monasteries, when the 
 spirit of puritanism, and the reaction against 
 excessive ritual prevailed, the ceremonial use of 
 flowers fell into decay. Our records, however, 
 rather tend to show that there was a revival of 
 old-time usage in this respect during and after the 
 time of Elizabeth. This is easily accounted for. 
 The ritual of the church had firmly grasped the 
 national sentiment. 1 1 had led to the multiplication 
 of altars and vestments, of lights and ornaments, 
 of symbols and ceremonies. The churches were 
 rich in marketable goods. The plate, relics, 
 and vestments, were of costly material, the gifts of 
 the wealthy and the loyal, or of those who wished 
 to expiate wrong ; and an impecunious exchequer 
 could easily be enriched by the wholesale appro- 
 priation of such things under the pretence that 
 
FLOWERS AND RITES. 229 
 
 they fostered superstition and idolatry. When, 
 therefore, candles were forbidden, altars were cast 
 down, chalice and pyx were confiscated, and 
 gorgeous vestments were declared needless, a 
 sense of baldness and coldness pervaded the 
 sanctuary, and the heart yearned for some ex- 
 pression of emotion. Hence it is that we now 
 find entries in the old account books for the 
 purchase of flowers in the place of entries for 
 candles and wax. 
 
 Thus, to give at present one example only ; 
 whereas the Churchwardens' Accounts for the 
 Parish of St. Petrock, Exeter, up till the time of 
 Elizabeth contain numberless entries relating to 
 font tapers, candles called "Judas Candells," 
 chrismatories, pyxes and holy water vessels, after 
 that date we find instead entries "for bayes and 
 fiowres in the church," and " for roasemary and 
 bays to be put aboute the church." From that 
 time the usage has steadily grown, until it has 
 come to be regarded, by conformist and non- 
 conformist alike, as almost a necessity that at 
 certain seasons of the year flowers should be 
 employed. 
 
 I shall briefly sum up the uses of flowers in 
 churches by reference to the occasions and manner 
 
230 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 of their use, and the kinds of flowers most in 
 request, with the reasons for their selection. 
 
 The principal occasions upon which flowers have 
 been employed in the church are three : (i) the 
 great church Festivals : Christmastide, Easter, 
 and Whitsuntide ; (2) the Dedication day, when 
 special services were held in honour of the saint to 
 whom the church owed its name ; (3) other notable 
 days, including May-day, Palm Sunday, Corpus 
 Christi Day, St. Barnaby's Day, Trinity Sunday, 
 the Day of St. John the Baptist, and others. That 
 Christmastide should be a season of special 
 rejoicing and consequent ritual cannot be a matter 
 of surprise. Old books relating to church usages 
 abound with proof that the season was one of 
 unusual festivity, and while the home was enlivened 
 with everything in the way of floral decoration 
 which the season afforded, the church shared in 
 the adornment. The account books of St. Mary- 
 at-Hill, London, shew that, in i486, fourpence was 
 expended on " Holme and ivy at Christmas Eve." 
 Holme was the old name for holly, from the 
 Anglo-Saxon holen, but we must not suppose that 
 the holly bush was so named because it was a holy 
 plant. The churchwardens of St. Lawrence, 
 Reading, in 1505, paid twopence " for the holy 
 
FLOWERS AND RITES. 
 
 231 
 
 bush agayne Christmas," and similar disbursements 
 are on record for many other churches. The 
 practice of adorning the church with garlands and 
 flowers was not, however, confined to Christmas. 
 St. Martin, Outwick, supplies us with an entry to 
 the effect that there was paid in 1524 " for brome 
 agaynst Ester, id." The amount seems small, 
 but its value was greater then than now. St. 
 
 
 
 
 ^^r^m^mo^mi, _ ..w 
 
 
 
 ^JMf t * ***j 
 
 >*%. i^iwA , 
 
 
 I^^IJI 
 
 
 
 
 p5' 
 
 
 
 
 (From a photo, by Rev. Hilderic Friend). 
 
 OCTAGONAL KONT AT BOLTON, CUMBERLAND, WITH EASTER DECORATIONS. 
 
 Mary's Church, also in London, was more lavish. 
 In one year the churchwardens paid, about this 
 period, the sum of 3s. for three great garlands 
 made of roses and lavender for the crosses, and 
 three dozen other garlands for the choir, for the 
 Easter decorations. 
 
232 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 Whitsuntide was also one of the seasons of 
 special rejoicing. The stitchwort (Stellaria 
 holostea) has sometimes been spoken of as the 
 special flower of this season, and its local names 
 in different parts of the country seem to indicate 
 as much. I have reason, however, to believe that 
 it is rather to be associated with White Sunday 
 the day on which the candidates (those who were 
 adorned with white raiment, symbolic of purity) 
 were required to appear in church. We may 
 remind our readers that a brief account of the day 
 may be found, with much other useful information 
 bearing on this theme, in Brand's Popular Anti- 
 quities. Numerous entries are found in old records 
 relating to garlands at Whitsuntide, while in more 
 than one county benefactors left a plot of ground 
 that the grass might be mown for strewing the 
 church at this season of the year. The custom of 
 strewing rushes has been frequently alluded to, 
 but does not come within the scope of my present 
 essay. 
 
 The custom of decorating the church on dedica- 
 tion day is well established. As each church has 
 its own patron saint or saints it will readily be seen 
 that there is scarcely a day in the year when some 
 sanctuary or other is not made bright with floral 
 
FLOWERS AND RITES. 233 
 
 garniture. Such events, however, are of purely 
 local interest. We may therefore pass by this to 
 notice a few of the other events on which the use 
 of flowers was required. On Palm Sunday the 
 triumphal entry into Jerusalem is celebrated, and 
 since the palm is not an English tree other plants 
 have been pressed into service. A dictionary of 
 plant names will show that many other shrubs 
 besides the willow are locally known as palms. 
 The willow, however, from its general prevalence, 
 as well as from the fact that its catkins are usually 
 in their prime about this season, " bears the palm." 
 In 1536 we find it recommended, among other 
 things, that " vestments for God's service, holy 
 water, candles on Candlemas Day, palms on Palm 
 Sunday, and other laudable customs " be continued 
 in the church. In 1548 we read that "the cere- 
 mony of bearing palmes on Palme Sunday was 
 left off, and not used as before." The people, 
 however, were loth to give up their old usage, and 
 between 1630 and 1640 enquiry was to be made 
 by authority whether there be any superstitious 
 use of crosses, palms, or other memories of idola- 
 ters. In some Roman Catholic countries it is still 
 customary to employ sprigs of boxwood for palms 
 on this occasion. It was so formerly in England, 
 
234 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 while yew, myrtle, and olive have also here and 
 elsewhere found place. At the beginning of the 
 sixteenth century we find several churches, in- 
 cluding All Hallows, Staining, and St. Martin, 
 Outwich, London, entering accounts for " palme 
 and box flowers " or " flowers and yow " ; also 
 " Item for box and palme on Palme Sunday ; Item 
 for gennepore (juniper) for the church, 2d." 
 
 On St. John the Baptist's Day many floral rites 
 were observed. The sun was now at its zenith of 
 splendour, and John was "a burning and shining 
 light." St. John's wort is still the popular name 
 for one genus of plants {Hypericum) which blossom 
 at this season, and have a truly solar appearance. 
 Then there was Corpus Christi Day a festival 
 widely observed. Thereon the churches were 
 nicelv decorated ; flags were brought forth, torches 
 were garnished with flowers, and garlands were 
 lavishly employed. It must have cost some of our 
 churches a large sum annually in the days when 
 flowers were regularly purchased for these and 
 similar uses. To-day the tendency is for loving 
 hands to render voluntary service, while in some 
 sanctuaries a special box is placed near the main 
 entrance, clearly described as a receptacle for 
 offerings to be used in the purchase of flowers for 
 
FLOWERS AND RITES. 235 
 
 regular use on the altar, or for periodical decora- 
 tion. Among the many other occasions to which 
 reference might be made, perhaps St. Barnaby's 
 Day is the most noteworthy. The reason is that 
 June 11th, the day on which S. Barnabas is held 
 in honour, represents that period of the year when 
 the day is longest and the night is shortest : 
 
 " . . . . Barnaby bright, 
 
 The longest day and shortest night." 
 
 Hence we read of " Rose garlands and lavender 
 for St. Barnabas, is. 6d.," and " For rose garlandis 
 and Woodrove garlandis on St. Barnebe's Day, 
 1 id."' Also " Item, for 2 doss, de bocse garlands 
 for prestes and clerkes on St. Barnebe's Daye, 
 is. iod." 
 
 This latter entry suggests an enquiry into 
 the modes of use. Flowers were lavishly 
 and frequently employed, but in what manner 
 were they disposed, or to what uses were they 
 put? It would be utterly impossible in a single 
 chapter to answer this question in detail. 
 Naturally the altar has always claimed first 
 attention. The accounts of the steward of the 
 Corpus Christi Guild, Leicester, contain the 
 following entry for the year 1525-6: "Item 
 for garnyshing off the awter, iiis. iiiid." This 
 
236 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 custom of adorning the altar is now in some 
 churches perpetual rather than occasional. The 
 rood-loft was also decorated. We are told that 
 " At Charlton-on-Otmoor, in Oxfordshire, there 
 is a rood-loft of finely-carved oak, probably of the 
 time of Henry the Seventh, upon which the 
 original colour and gilding is yet to be seen. On 
 this rood-loft it is the custom to place a garland, 
 formed upon a large wooden cross, on May-day ; 
 which garland remains there until the following 
 year, when it is renewed with fresh flowers and 
 leaves, occupying the position of the ancient 
 Holy Rood of former ages. It was formerly the 
 custom to carry this cross in procession round the 
 village before finally depositing it in its resting- 
 place in the church." I have already adduced 
 evidence that the cross was garlanded at Easter 
 with wreaths made of roses, lavender, and other 
 sweet herbs. In the old-time church there were 
 frequently numerous crosses of various sizes 
 belonging to one edifice. Some of these stood 
 on the altars which were also numerous ; one or 
 more occupied the rood-loft, while yet others were 
 carried in procession. This will be clearly 
 gathered from a brief inspection of the inventories 
 of church goods, compiled in the time of Edward 
 
FLOWERS AND RITES. 237 
 
 VI., as well as from other official records. Then 
 we have "garlands for the choir," or quire, 
 decorations for pews and pillars, wreaths for 
 suspending from the walls, deckings for the 
 torches, and, by no means least noteworthy, 
 garlands for the priests. From Polydore Vergil 
 and others we learn that formerly, not only was it 
 customary to decorate the church with flowers, 
 but the priests also performed the service, on 
 certain high days, crowned with flowers. This 
 was notably the case at St. Paul's Cathedral, 
 London, and more particularly on the feast-day of 
 the patron saint. At St. Mary's, in i486, the 
 sum of is. iod. was paid for two dozen garlands 
 of box for the priests and clerks on St. Barnabas' 
 Day, and frequent items are found in other 
 accounts of a similar character. We shall recall 
 the action of the priests of Lycaonia, who brought 
 garlands and oxen with which to celebrate their 
 worship. 
 
 It remains to say a word respecting the flowers 
 employed or tabooed on these festive occasions. 
 Individual preferences might Gfo for something 
 the season of the year regulated many things, 
 while religious and old-time associations did the 
 rest. Some (lowers have, by universal consent, 
 
238 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 been regarded as peculiarly appropriate for cere- 
 monial uses. The daffodil appearing just at the 
 season of Lent, naturally lends itself to the church 
 decorator. Holly and ivy must of necessity be 
 in special request at Christmastide, the rose has 
 always been regarded as seasonable, whenever it 
 could be obtained, while the lily is universally 
 typical of the Virgin. Lavender and bay are 
 sweet and fragrant. St. John's wort comes just 
 at the right season for celebrating the saint whose 
 name it bears, the hellebore, or winter rose, is 
 significant of, and dedicated to St. Agnes, and 
 comes at a season when flowers are rare. Purity 
 is well represented by the snowdrop, the passion- 
 flower (though a modern introduction) has readily 
 taken hold of English feeling and sentiment, the 
 willow serves for Palm Sunday, while the 
 innocent and beautiful blossoms of the primrose 
 and woodruffe, the fragrant flowers of the violet, 
 and the showy compound heads of the marigold, 
 each present their own features of attractiveness. 
 There are not many flowers which come amiss. 
 A few are excluded on account of their disagree- 
 able odour, and it is believed that the mistletoe 
 has been generally tabooed on account of its 
 heathen associations, though its name is fre- 
 
FLOWERS AND RITES. 
 
 239 
 
 quently introduced into the doggerel of the past 
 two centuries as one of the plants employed in 
 church decorations at Christmas. 
 
 The ceremonial use of flowers has of recent 
 
 (From a phots, by Rcr. Hilderic Friend). 
 
 ROMAN FONT AT CKOSS CANONBV, CUMBERLAND, WITH EASTER DECORATIONS. 
 
 years greatly revived. In village, town, and city 
 the ancient or modern sanctuary may be seen at 
 frequent intervals from New Year to Christmas 
 brightened with blossoms or decorated with ever- 
 
2 4 o THE CHURCH TREASURY 
 
 greens, while in many cases the altar is daily 
 adorned with fresh flowers whenever they can be 
 obtained. At Easter especially, when the 
 anemone and blue-bell, the primrose and violet 
 are in profusion, font and altar, pillar and pew 
 are frequently covered with a lavish profusion of 
 flower and foliage, and last year as I went the 
 round of a number of village churches in Lakeland 
 I was able to take numerous photographs of fonts 
 and chancels thus adorned. The two illustrations 
 supplied herewith are samples of what may be 
 seen. 
 
 It has well been said that of all customs, that of 
 adorning the " Holy Place of the tabernacle of 
 the most High " with flowers and wreaths at 
 Christmas and other festivals of the Christian 
 year, " speaks of the simple faith and fervent love 
 of our ancestors, more strongly than any other," 
 at those times of the year when the beauties 
 of nature prompted men to look up " From 
 Nature unto Nature's God," and we trust the 
 usage will long continue as a tribute of love and 
 devotion. 
 
<Sbost>Xaper0 ant) (Bbost^Xaping. 
 
 By the Rev. R. Wilkins Rees. 
 
 INCREDIBLE though it may seem it is none 
 the less true, that a canon authorising 
 exorcism under episcopal licence is still a part 
 of the ecclesiastical law of the Anglican church. 
 The writer does not suppose, however, that any 
 present occupant of the episcopal bench has 
 received an application for a faculty, notwith- 
 standing the fact that we live in an age of 
 Mahatmas, second-sight, visions, clairvoyance, 
 astral planes, and other wonders. 
 
 One of the most interesting descriptions of ghost- 
 laying is supplied by " An Account of an Appari- 
 tion, attested by the Rev. William Rudall, 
 Minister at Launceston, in Cornwall," written in 
 1665. But before extended reference is made to 
 the strange experiences therein alluded to, the 
 concluding paragraph of the account shall be 
 given in full : "To the ignorance of men in our 
 age in this particular and mysterious part of 
 
 philosophy and religion namely, the communica- 
 
 16 
 
242 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 tion between spirits and men not one scholar 
 out of ten thousand, though otherwise of excellent 
 learning, knows anything of it, or the way how 
 to manage it. This ignorance breeds fear and 
 abhorrence of that which otherwise might be of 
 incomparable benefit to mankind." 
 
 G. S. Gilbert, in his " Historical Survey of 
 Cornwall," refers at length to Rudall's story, 
 but the extremely fascinating narrative, " The 
 Botathen Ghost," from the versatile pen of the 
 late Rev. R. S. Hawker, Morwenstow, is unques- 
 tionably the best account of all. It would seem that 
 Parson Rudall's " Diurnal " fell by chance into Mr. 
 Hawker's hands, and it is hardly possible to 
 imagine that the manuscript could have received 
 more skilful treatment or more sympathetic 
 attention. The unusual character of Rudall's 
 " Diurnal," together with the particulars it con- 
 tains in connection with ghost-laying, will be 
 adequate excuse for what, otherwise, might be 
 considered undue quotation. 
 
 " A singular infelicity," says the learned 
 Launceston parson, " had befallen young Master 
 Bligh, once the hopeful heir of his parents and of 
 the lands of Botathen. Whereas he had been 
 from childhood a blithe and merry boy, ' the glad- 
 
GHOST-LAYERS AND GHOST-LAYING. 243 
 
 ness,' like Isaac of old, of his father's age, he had 
 suddenly, and of late, become morose and silent 
 nay, even austere and stern dwelling apart, 
 always solemn, often in tears," but at last he 
 disclosed the secret cause that he was haunted 
 by the spirit of one Dorothy Dinglet. At the 
 urgent request of his friends and a resident clergy- 
 man the lad made a confidant of Parson Rudall, 
 and eventually went with him to the field still 
 pointed out where he was in the habit of 
 meeting the apparition. Rudall himself there 
 saw the ghostly visitor, and on returning to the 
 house promised the boy and his parents that, 
 when he had fulfilled certain business elsewhere, 
 he would come back and take orders to assuage 
 the disturbances and their cause. 
 
 The diary thus proceeds: "January 7, 1665. 
 At my own house, I find, by my books, what 
 is expedient to be done ; and then, Apage 
 Sathanas ! 
 
 "January 9, 1665. This day I took leave of 
 my wife and family, under pretext of engagements 
 elsewhere, and made my secret journey to our 
 diocesan city, wherein the good and venerable 
 bishop then abode. 
 
 "January to. Deo gratias, in safe arrival at 
 
244 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 Exeter ; craved and obtained immediate audience 
 of his lordship ; pleading it was for counsel and 
 admonition on a weighty and pressing cause ; 
 called to the presence ; made obeisance ; and 
 then by command stated my case the Botathen 
 perplexity which I moved with strong and 
 earnest instances and solemn asseverations of that 
 which I had myself seen and heard. Demanded 
 by his lordship, what was the succour that I had 
 come to entreat at his hands ? Replied, licence 
 for my exorcism, that so I might, ministerially, 
 allay this spiritual visitant, and thus render to the 
 living and the dead release from this surprise. 
 ' But,' said our bishop, 'on what authority do you 
 allege that I am intrusted with faculty so to do ? 
 Our Church, as is well known, hath abjured 
 certain branches of her ancient power, on grounds 
 of perversion and abuse.' ' Nay, my lord,' I 
 humbly answered, ' under favour, the seventy- 
 second of the canons ratified and enjoined on us, 
 the clergy, anno Domino 1604, doth expressly 
 provide, that : " No minister, unless he hath the 
 licence of his diocesan bishop, shall essay to 
 exorcise a spirit, evil or good." Therefore it was, 
 I did here mildly allege, ' that I did not presume 
 to enter on such a work without lawful privilege 
 
GHOST-LAYERS AND GHOST-LAYING. 245 
 
 under your lordship's hand and seal.' Hereupon 
 did our wise and learned bishop, sitting in his 
 chair, condescend upon the theme at some length 
 with many gracious interpretations from ancient 
 writers and from Holy Scripture, and I did 
 humbly rejoin and reply, till the upshot was that 
 he did call in his secretary, and command him to 
 draw the aforesaid faculty, forthwith and without 
 further delay, assigning him a form, insomuch 
 that the matter was incontinently done ; and after 
 I had disbursed into the secretary's hands certain 
 moneys for signitary purposes, as the manner of 
 such officers hath always been, the bishop did 
 himself affix his signature under the sigillum of 
 his see, and deliver the document into my hands. 
 When I knelt down to receive his benediction, he 
 softly said, ' Let it be secret, Mr. R. Weak 
 brethren ! weak brethren ! ' 
 
 "January 11, 1665. Therewithal did I hasten 
 home and prepare my instruments, and cast my 
 figures for the onset of the next day. Took out 
 my ring of brass and put it on the index-finger of 
 my right hand, with the scutum Davidis traced 
 thereon. 
 
 " January 12, 1665. Rode into the gateway at 
 Botathen, armed at all points, but not with Saul's 
 
246 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 armour, and ready. There is danger from the 
 demons, but so there is in the surrounding- air 
 every day. At early morning then, and alone, 
 for so the usage ordains, I betook me towards 
 the field. It was void, and I had thereby due 
 time to prepare. First, I paced and measured 
 out my circle on the grass. Then did I mark my 
 pentacle in the very midst, and at the intersection 
 of the five angles I did set up and fix my crutch of 
 raun (rowan). Lastly, I took my station south, 
 at the true line of the meridian, and stood facing 
 due north. I waited and watched for a long time. 
 At last there was a kind of trouble in the air, a 
 soft and rippling sound, and all at once the shape 
 appeared, and came on towards me gradually. I 
 opened my parchment-scroll and read aloud the 
 command. She paused, and seemed to waver 
 and doubt ; stood still ; then I rehearsed the 
 sentence again, sounding out every syllable like 
 a chant. She drew near my ring, but halted at 
 first outside, on the brink. I sounded again, and 
 now at the third time I gave the signal in 
 Syriac the speech which is used, they say, 
 where such ones dwell and converse in thoughts 
 that glide. 
 
 " She was at last obedient, and swam into 
 
GHOST-LAYERS AND GHOST-LAYING. 247 
 
 the midst of the circle, and there stood still, 
 suddenly. I saw, moreover, that she drew back 
 her pointing hand. All this while I do confess that 
 my knees shook under me, and the drops of 
 sweat ran down my flesh like rain. But now, 
 although face to face with the spirit, my heart 
 grew calm, and my mind was composed. I knew 
 that the pentacle would govern her, and the ring 
 must bind, until I gave the word. Then I called 
 to mind the rule laid down of old, that no angel 
 or fiend, no spirit, good or evil, will ever speak 
 until they have been first spoken to. N.B. 
 This is the great law of prayer. God Himself 
 will not yield reply until man hath made vocal 
 entreaty, once and again. So I went on to 
 demand, as the books advise, and the phantom 
 made answer, willingly. Questioned wherefore 
 not at rest? Unquiet, because of a certain sin. 
 Asked why, and by whom ? Revealed it ; but it 
 is sub sigiilo, and therefore nefas dictu ; more 
 anon. Inquired, what sign she could give that 
 she was a true spirit and not a false fiend ? 
 Stated, before next Yule-tide a fearful pestilence 
 would lay waste the land, and myriads of souls 
 would be loosened from their flesh, until, as she 
 piteously said, 'our valleys will be full.' Asked 
 
248 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 again, why she so terrified the lad ? Replied : 
 ' It is the law ; we must seek a youth or a maiden 
 of clean life, and under age, to receive messages 
 and admonitions.' We conversed with many 
 more words, but it is not lawful for me to set 
 them down. Pen and ink would degrade and 
 defile the thoughts she uttered, and which my 
 mind received that day. I broke the ring, and 
 she passed, but to return once more next day. 
 At even-song, a long discourse with that ancient 
 transgressor, Mr. B. Great horror and remorse ; 
 entire atonement and penance ; whatsoever I 
 enjoin ; full acknowledgment before pardon. 
 
 "January 13, 1665. At sunrise I was again 
 in the field. She came in at once, and, as it 
 seemed, with freedom. Inquired if she knew my 
 thoughts, and what I was going to relate? 
 Answered, ' Nay, we only know what we perceive 
 and hear ; we cannot see the heart.' Then I 
 rehearsed the penitent words of the man she had 
 come up to denounce, and the satisfaction he 
 would perform. Then said she, ' Peace in our 
 midst.' I went through the proper forms of 
 dismissal, and fulfilled all as it was set down and 
 written in my memoranda ; and then, with certain 
 fixed rites, I did dismiss that troubled ghost, 
 
GHOST-LAYERS AND GHOST-LAYING. 249 
 
 until she peacefully withdrew, gliding towards the 
 west. Neither did she ever afterward appear, 
 but was allayed until she shall come in her second 
 flesh to the valley of Armageddon on the last 
 day." 
 
 One further entry in Rudall's " Diurnal," under 
 date July 10, 1665, must be given : " How sorely 
 must the infidels and heretics of this generation 
 be dismayed when they know that this black 
 death {i.e. the Great Plague), which is now 
 swallowing- its thousands in the streets of the 
 great city, was foretold six months agone, under 
 the exorcisms of a country minister, by a visible 
 and suppliant ghost ! " 
 
 Of the apparent sincerity of this record there 
 can be little doubt, and the facts contained in it 
 are referred to with, at least, a certain amount of 
 credence even to the present day. But Parson 
 Rudall's narrative of the Botathen ghost by no 
 means exhausts the ghost-laying stories of the 
 south-west of England, and in the remaining 
 part of this chapter a selection is given indicating 
 various methods and connected with various 
 localities. 
 
 All tourists to the Lizard district will remember 
 Mullion church, if but for the superior carvings 
 
250 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 quaintly and diversely designed which adorn its 
 ancient benches. In the chancel is a tablet to the 
 memory of Thomas Flavel, a former vicar of the 
 parish, who died in 1682, and on the brass 
 immediately beneath it is the curious inscription : 
 
 " Earth, take thine Earth, my Sin let Satan havet. 
 The World my goods ; my Soul my God who gavet ; 
 For from these four Earth, Satan, World, and God 
 My flesh, my Sin, my goods, my Soul, I had." 
 
 Flavel was credited with possessing to a 
 remarkable degree the power of "laying" ghosts, 
 and all advances in intelligence have utterly failed 
 to throw discredit on his marvellous skill or the 
 stories told in connection with its exorcise. One 
 morning when Flavel was engaged in the service 
 at church, a prying servant entered his sanctum, 
 and incautiously opening a book on the black-art, 
 raised at once a legion of evil spirits. Through 
 his power of second-sight the parson became 
 aware of this as he was reading the prayers. He 
 abruptly closed the service, and returned in haste 
 to the vicarage. There he found the poor 
 servant still in the study, distracted with fear and 
 tormented by the spirits. Quickly seizing the 
 book, Flavel proceeded to read backwards the 
 passages at which the girl had glanced, all the 
 
GHOST-LAYERS AND GHOST-LAYING. 251 
 
 while striking in every direction with the stout 
 walking-stick that he carried. The spirits were 
 soon dismissed, but not before they had so abused 
 the servant that for days she bore evidences of 
 their violence ! 
 
 These extraordinary powers caused Flavel to 
 be summoned to the aid of many far and near. 
 On one occasion he was called to settle a ghost 
 that for long had baffled and defied all other 
 skill, and no less a sum than five guineas was 
 required by him as payment for the " laying " of this 
 unruly spirit. Because of such an expenditure, 
 two men interested in the matter thought that 
 the exorcist should be watched so that they 
 might be satisfied as to the performance of his 
 task. Neither, however, made a confidant of the 
 other, and on the night of the ceremony they 
 were posted behind different gravestones, each 
 wholly unconscious of the presence of his friend. 
 At the appointed hour Flavel arrived, armed 
 with a heavy whip and a book of divination. 
 Crack went the whip, and both the spies started 
 in fear ! Each caught sight of the frightened face 
 of the other, and in dread alarm at what seemed 
 a ghostly appearance ran as though for life, 
 leaving the vicar to settle accounts in his own 
 
2 5 2 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 fashion with the spirit. When Flavel died his 
 
 ghost was " laid " by a clergyman of whom he 
 
 had said, "When he comes I must go." The 
 
 exact spot where this was done is even now 
 
 indicated. 
 
 Scarcely five miles distant from the celebrated 
 
 well of St. Keyne is the village of Talland, 
 
 known for its picturesquely situated church with 
 
 detached tower. This church is said to owe its 
 
 present position, as do other Cornish churches, 
 
 such as Lelant, Mawgan, and Gunwalloe, to the 
 
 fact that every night the devil removed the stones 
 
 that had been elsewhere placed by day. Night 
 
 after night a mysterious voice came : 
 
 " If you will my wish fulfil, 
 Build the church on Talland hill." 
 
 But about a hundred and fifty years ago his 
 satanic majesty met his match in the Talland 
 vicar, the Rev. Richard Dodge, whose authority 
 over the spirit world was simply supreme. With 
 him the slightest effort of the will sufficed to 
 raise or "lay" the inhabitants of the other world, 
 and a nod of the head to send any troublesome 
 ghost to that safest of all spirit-prisons, the depths 
 of the Red Sea. His people held him in the 
 deepest dread, and all shrank from any nightly 
 
GHOST-LAYERS AND GHOST-LAYING. 253 
 
 encounter with one who, in the hours of darkness, 
 would be preceded, almost invariably, by a host 
 of evil spirits whom, with unsparing hand, he 
 would be driving before him. 
 
 For years the horrible apparition of a funeral 
 coach drawn by headless horses had terrified the 
 people of Lanreath, a neighbouring parish, where 
 it would be often seen crossing Blackadown moor 
 at a fiendlike pace. At last the Lanreath parson 
 implored the aid of his brother Dodge, and at the 
 dead of night they rode to the haunted spot. 
 Nothing, however, was to be seen, and after a 
 while the clergymen separated, each turning 
 towards home. But no great distance had Dodge 
 gone when his horse, with the preternatural sight 
 its tribe is often declared to possess, stood stock- 
 still, refusing to take another step in the direction 
 of Talland. " This," thought he, " must surely 
 be a sign from heaven," and throwing the reins on 
 the horse's neck he permitted the animal to go as 
 it chose. Back to the haunted moor it went, and 
 there in the gloom could be perceived at last the 
 dark forms of the funeral coach and its headless 
 horses. The driver had descended from his seat 
 and was standing in a threatening attitude over 
 the prostrate body of the Lanreath vicar lying as 
 
254 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 if dead at the spectre's feet. Such a sight was 
 enough to shatter even the iron nerve of Parson 
 Dodge ; but, notwithstanding all alarm, the sense 
 of duty so possessed him that he quickly began 
 the words of exorcism. Before the prayer, short 
 though it was, could be ended, the phantom coach- 
 man started, exclaiming, " Dodge is come, I must 
 be gone," and, springing to his box, drove the 
 phantom team away like the wind, and nevermore 
 returned. But, though Dodge's ghost-laying was 
 most effectual, days elapsed before the Lanreath 
 vicar regained his senses. 
 
 The late William Bottrell ("An Old Celt"), 
 that indefatigable collector of the traditions and 
 hearthside stories of Cornwall, tells an extraor- 
 dinary story of ghost-laying, the scene of which is 
 laid at Bosava near Lamorna. The devil, in the 
 capacity of a master-mason, had materially helped a 
 miserly old cobbler to build a fine house, and had 
 baroained with him for the surrender of his life 
 after a certain period. But the cobbler tricked 
 the devil, and as a consequence, even after the 
 death of the former, such a war was waged 
 between the two that a miller who lived near the 
 haunted house, on which no roof could ever be 
 securely fixed, fared badly both in person and 
 
GHOST-LAYERS AND GHOST-LAYING. 255 
 
 in pocket. The miller ultimately begged Parson 
 Corker, a noted huntsman, ghost-layer, and devil- 
 driver, who lived in the neighbourhood, to exert 
 his power on the devil and cobbler. " He 
 thought that if the parson could not succeed in 
 driving them away, he might at least, as he was 
 a justice, bind them over to keep the peace." 
 
 " After the parson and his friends had well 
 fortified themselves, as well as the miller, with 
 plenty of strong drink (that they might be the 
 better able to undertake the difficult work), they 
 all started about midnight from the parson's plais- 
 ance for the scene of their ghostly operations, and 
 arrived at Bosava in the small hours of the 
 morning. 
 
 " They say that when the parson, assisted by 
 Dr. Maddern and the miller, drew the magic 
 pentagram and sacred triangle, within which they 
 placed themselves for safety, and commenced the 
 other ceremonies, only known to the learned, 
 which are required for the effectual subjugation of 
 restless spirits, an awful gale sprang up in the 
 cove (Lamorna) and raged up the vale with 
 increasing fury, until scarcely a tree was left 
 standing in the bottom. Yet there was scarcely a 
 breath of wind stirring in other places. As the 
 
256 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 parson continued to read, the devil swore, howled, 
 shrieked, and roared louder than the raging storm. 
 The parson, undaunted, read on and performed 
 more powerful operations in the art of exorcism, 
 till the sweat boiled from his body so that 
 there was not a dry thread on him, and he was 
 beginning to fear that he had met with more than 
 his match, when the whole force of the storm 
 gathered itself around the haunted house, and the 
 tree to which the parson clung, that he might not 
 be blown away, was rooted from the ground, and 
 swept by the gale, parson and all, right across the 
 water. Then the thatch, timbers, and stones 
 were seen, by the lightning flashes, to fly all over 
 the bottom. One of the sharp spars from the 
 thatch stuck in the parson's side, and made a 
 wound which pained him ever after. Yet, not to 
 be baffled, the parson made the black spirit hear 
 spells that were stronger still. A moment after 
 the devil (as if in defiance of the parson) had 
 made a clean sweep of the roof, from amidst the 
 wreck of the building a figure was seen to rise in 
 the shape of the dark master-mason, and fly away 
 in the black thunder cloud, with his level, square, 
 plumb-line, compasses, and other tools around 
 him. 
 
GHOST-LAYERS AND GHOST-LAYING. 257 
 
 " After the devil had disappeared there was a 
 
 lull in the tempest. The brave parson then tried 
 
 his power on the cobbler, who might still be 
 
 heard beating his lapstone louder than ever. 
 
 The parson, after summoning him to appear, and 
 
 after much trouble in chasing the obstinate spirit 
 
 of the old miser from place to place, at last 
 
 caught him in the pulrose under the mill-wheel. 
 
 Then the ghost threw his hammer and lapstone 
 
 at the parson's head, at the same time crying out, 
 
 ' Now, Corker, that thee art come I must be 
 
 gone, but it's only for a time.' Luckily the 
 
 parson was too well acquainted with spiritual 
 
 weapons to let ghostly tools do him any harm. 
 
 The night was passed. The parson's power had 
 
 compelled both demon and cobbler to depart. 
 
 After making a wreck of the house between them, 
 
 the parson could do no more for the miller. But 
 
 a few days after it was found that the old cobbler 
 
 had returned to the charge, making more noise 
 
 and annoyance about the place than ever, by 
 
 broad daylight even as bad as by night, and 
 
 that the parson could only hunt him from spot 
 
 to spot about the wreck of the haunted place, 
 
 without being able to make the noises cease 
 
 from amidst the ruins. It was then decided 
 
 17 
 
258 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 to demolish all the walls of the devil's building. 
 
 "There the best piece of work ever seen in 
 this part of the country was long ago destroyed, 
 and the stones employed for building hedges and 
 out-houses. No one cared to use them about any 
 dwelling-house, for fear that the old miserly 
 cobbler might claim them and again settle down to 
 beat his lapstone beside them." 
 
 Such is one of the most extreme and fanciful of 
 those stories of the supernatural which Cornish 
 people are wont to relate earnestly even to this 
 day. 
 
 Near Grampound Road Station on the Great 
 Western Railway, and not far from Truro, is the 
 parish of Ladock where lived, about a century 
 since, another ghost-laying parson of undoubted 
 powers. Mr. Woods, this master of spirits, 
 generally used as a walking-stick a staff made of 
 ebony, and having a strange silver head embellished 
 with a five-sided figure of mystic import, and a 
 silver band bearing the signs of the zodiac and 
 various hieroglyphics. Parson Woods usually 
 dealt with obnoxious spirits in a summary fashion. 
 By some magic rite he made them incarnate in 
 the form of any brute he might fancy, and then 
 gave them an unmerciful horsewhipping. But on 
 
GHOST-LAYERS AND GHOST-LAYING. 259 
 
 one occasion he was set at nought by a spirit who, 
 with demoniacal cunning, took the shape of a bird 
 of sombre hue and strange appearance, which 
 most frequently occupied a position in the belfry 
 where, during the conduct of divine service, it 
 would make all kinds of ludicrous noises, to the 
 chagrin of the vicar, the annoyance of the devout, 
 and the delight of the young and irreverent. 
 There was no possibility of administering a 
 thrashing to the bird, and the spirit was much too 
 far away to be properly " laid." At last the poor 
 clergyman, driven almost to despair, was made 
 aware of the fact that no evil spirit could remain 
 in any locality after being brought face to face 
 with innocent children, and all parents in the 
 parish having unbaptised children were at once 
 urged to bring their youngsters to the church on 
 the next Sundav to be christened. Ei"ht children 
 were thus to be brought, but as the charm could 
 only work effectually when twelve, the prescribed 
 number, were present, four mothers whose babies 
 had been recently baptised were requested to bring 
 their children also. The eight infants were duly 
 christened ; and then in solemn procession the 
 vicar and the mothers with the children and their 
 sponsors left the church. Opposite the belfry door 
 
2 6o THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 the procession stopped, and the parson directed 
 each mother to hand her child to its sponsor who 
 in turn was to pass it to him so that he might hold 
 it out for the demon to see. But the crafty bird 
 remained hidden at the top of the tower, and no 
 effort availed to dislodge it from behind the 
 pinnacles. Luckily some of the babies began to 
 cry, and soon, as a natural result, there was a 
 perfect babel of infant voices. This proved too 
 much even for the curiosity of a demon, and 
 unthinkingly the bird hopped out from its hiding- 
 place to see what could have occurred. The sight 
 of the twelve children at once cast the desired 
 spell, and with a screaming noise, louder and more 
 hideous than that produced by the dozen children, 
 the bird took to its wings and disappeared, never 
 again troubling the church, its precincts, or the 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 But no mention of the ghost-laying parsons of 
 the Delectable Duchy can be considered complete 
 without the inclusion of the Rev. Mr. Jago, a 
 famous vicar of Wendron, near Helston. Of Jago 
 it was said that, though he used to ride far and wide 
 over the moorland of his parish, he never took a 
 groom with him, for the moment he alighted from 
 his horse he had but to strike the earth with his 
 
GHOST-LAYERS AND GHOST-LAYING. 261 
 
 whip to summon a demon-groom to take charge 
 of his steed. At certain cross-roads, about a 
 quarter of a mile from Wendron Church-town, the 
 place is pointed out where Jago "laid " the ghost 
 of a poor suicide who had been buried there. It 
 was supposed that no spirit walking the earth 
 could resist the spells of this mighty parson, and 
 that he could even make ghosts appear as marks 
 of delicate attention to those who might be walking 
 with him ! From him many a night-wanderer has 
 received his quietus, and all the people of his time 
 seem to have been strangely impressed by his 
 tremendous powers. The tradition remains that 
 to all the evil-disposed he was also a constant 
 terror, for it was firmly believed that every act 
 was visible to him at the moment it was done 
 whether at night or in the day. Consequently he 
 could indicate criminals with unerring directness, 
 and those who before had never been suspected 
 confessed at once to deeds of wrong when brought 
 under the lightning glance of Jago's eye. 
 
 We should hardly expect to find John Wesley 
 among the list of ghost-layers, and there is no 
 doubt that his supposed encounter with spirits at 
 St. Agnes is known to very few. Not one of the 
 lives of the great religious leader alludes to it, 
 
262 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 while Jeffrey's ghost at Epworth parsonage is 
 usually given a place of honour. The story runs 
 that, during one of his frequent journeys through 
 Cornwall, Wesley was compelled when visiting 
 St. Agnes to spend the night in a house which 
 was declared to be possessed by evil spirits. 
 Nothing daunted, the brave little man retired to 
 bed, but soon his rest was broken by loud and 
 angry sounds below. Now the roll of carriage 
 wheels could be distinctly heard, then the tramp 
 of feet, all to be succeeded by blasphemy and 
 curses. Wesley speedily left his bed, and hurrying 
 to the rooms beneath his chamber found a large 
 number of people seated about the table in the 
 hall. Boisterous words of welcome hailed his 
 appearance, and the good man was jovially 
 requested to join them at their merry meal. ' ' Yes," 
 said he, "but I must say grace first." The building 
 rang with the laughter with which these words 
 were greeted, but with unmoved courage Wesley 
 broke in with the line, " Jesus, the Name high 
 over all." Instantly the lights disappeared ; utter 
 darkness prevailed ; not a sign was to be seen ; 
 not a voice was to be heard ; and for ever after 
 the house was freed from its ghostly terrors. 
 
 The parson's presence has been considered 
 
GHOST LAYERS AND GHOST-LAYING. 263 
 
 indispensable in all ghost-laying operations, but 
 the following story, related in all good faith to the 
 writer by those who received it from the woman 
 in question and her praying friends, would throw 
 discredit on the absolute necessity of clerical aid. 
 Not many miles from Penzance is a little village 
 called after its church, supposed to be dedi- 
 cated to St. Swithin, near which stands a 
 cottage the scene some years ago of a strange 
 occurrence. Here lived a woman of striking 
 appearance, who, in deference to friends still living, 
 shall be called Johanna Johns. For long she had 
 worked in the service of a farmer and his wife 
 whose immediate descendants now live in the old 
 homestead, and when the master died he left her 
 a substantial annuity, to be paid after the decease 
 of her mistress. The farmer's widow, in her last 
 hours, implored Johanna to take all possible care 
 of a favourite dog, but notwithstanding the 
 servant's repeated promise to fulfil her mistress's 
 wish, the poor brute was shamefully neglected, 
 and as a consequence very soon died. 
 
 Thenceforward Johanna was haunted without 
 intermission by the spirit of her mistress, and vain 
 were all attempts to "lay" the intruder. Hut at 
 last the ghost so far relented as to inform the 
 
264 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 woman that it would be quieted, but that she 
 alone should accomplish the feat ; and that when 
 a few days had elapsed she must be prepared to 
 proceed to the churchyard at midnight for the 
 purpose. Deliverance was cheap, however, to 
 any price. 
 
 The eventful night came. Johanna sat near 
 her kitchen window with a pious Methodist on 
 either side praying earnestly in her behalf. 
 Suddenly, at the stroke of twelve, a strange wind 
 seemed to sweep right through the room, and 
 when the men lifted their heads the woman was 
 gone ! About an hour elapsed ; and then, with 
 awed and pallor-stricken face, she returned to 
 relate the eventful experience of that brief space 
 of time. The ghost had indeed come for her, and 
 she was borne without the house, when she 
 distinctly heard the words breathed into her ear, 
 "Over or under?" Hardly knowing what she 
 said, she gasped " Over," and straightway was 
 carried far above the earth. Up, up she went, 
 beyond the church's lofty tower, and then right on 
 towards the east. Soon, in the weird light that 
 seemed to be diffused abroad, she distinctly 
 discerned beneath her the tall, gaunt trees 
 surrounding an old and famous house about two 
 
GHOST-LAYERS AND GHOST-LAYING. 265 
 
 miles distant from her home. Then the course 
 was changed to the north, and speedily she was 
 flying over the low, straggling houses of the 
 village on a neighbouring hill. Once more the 
 course was changed, and now to the south-west 
 homewards. Together the spirit and Johanna 
 descended into the churchyard and approached 
 the grave at whose head stood the stone bearing 
 the name of the dead mistress they drew near to 
 the grave of the ghost! Here the "laying" of 
 the spirit was successfully accomplished, and the 
 woman returned to her cottage once more free 
 from the haunting presence. " But what was 
 done at the graveside?" eagerly demanded the 
 men who had been praying with her. The only 
 response to this question was a fit of agonised 
 crying. The secret of the graveside rites she was 
 not permitted to reveal, and to her dying day she 
 kept it safe. Again and again curious neighbours 
 and people from a distance came to hear the queer, 
 unearthly story, but when they endeavoured to 
 wrest from her this part of her experience the 
 only response was that evoked by the memories 
 of the awful night an outburst of bitter tears. 
 Such is a story accepted as unquestionably true 
 by those who, perhaps, were best able to judge of 
 
266 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 its veracity. For a long time previous to her 
 death, Johanna was esteemed as a good and 
 devout woman, but to her last days she solemnly 
 declared that her story was nothing more than a 
 narration of indisputable fact. Let the unbeliever, 
 therefore, make of it what he will. 
 
 The clergyman was supposed to conduct the 
 ghost-laying ceremony, as a rule, in Latin, a 
 language that struck the most audacious spirit in 
 all the world with terror. The penalties imposed 
 by the ghost-layer were various. The ghost of 
 Mrs. Baines, which haunted Chapel Street, Pen- 
 zance, was bound by a powerful exorcist, Parson 
 Singleton, to spin ropes of sand from the banks 
 on the western green for a term of a thousand 
 years, unless she, before that time, spun a rope 
 sufficiently long and strong to reach from St. 
 Michael's Mount to St. Clement's Isle. Some 
 knowing ones have asserted that generally these 
 obstreperous ghosts might be laid for any term 
 less than a hundred years, and in any place or 
 body, full or empty, which was very convenient ; as, 
 for instance, a solid oak, or the pommel of a 
 sword, or a barrel of beer, if a farmer or simple 
 gentleman, or a butt of wine, if a county magistrate, 
 a big squire, or a lord. But of all places, as it 
 
GHOST-LAYERS AND GHOST-LAYING. 267 
 
 has been already hinted, that which a ghost least 
 liked was the Red Sea ; it being related that ghosts 
 have prayed their exorcists not to continue them 
 in that place. It was nevertheless considered an 
 incontestable fact that there was an infinite number 
 laid there, perhaps from its being, somehow, a 
 safer prison than any other nearer at hand ; 
 though neither history nor tradition gives us any 
 instance of ghosts escaping or returning from this 
 kind of transportation before their time. About 
 the year 1 76 1 , a pinnacle was thrown down by 
 lightning from the tower of the church at 
 Ludgvan. The effect was then universally im- 
 puted, so Mr. Robert Hunt tells us, to the 
 vengeance of a perturbed spirit, exorcised from 
 Treassow, and passing eastward, towards the 
 usual place of banishment the Red Sea. 
 
 Even in these days the clergy are not supposed 
 to have lost this power over the spirit world, and 
 quite recently there have been cases in which 
 they were implored to exercise it. The writer 
 has it on good authority that a poor woman 
 living, at any rate till recently, in Madron near 
 Penzance, went not lony a^o to the house of a 
 clergyman residing there, and asked him to walk 
 round her, reading some passages from the Bible 
 
268 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 to exorcise the ghost of her dead sister who had 
 entered into her, she said, and was tormenting 
 her in the shape of a small fly which continually- 
 buzzed in her ear. Once, when before the Board 
 of Guardians, she talked sensibly for a time, then 
 suddenly stopped and exclaimed, shaking her 
 head as she did so, " Be quiet, you brute ! don't 
 you see I'm talking to the gentleman ? " 
 
Cburcb Walks. 
 
 By the Rev. W. B. Russell Caley, m.a., f.r.h.s. 
 
 WHEN the parish church had been built, 
 either by the munificence of some land- 
 owner, or through the laudable wish of a 
 neighbouring monastic establishment to provide 
 for the spiritual necessities of the country popula- 
 tion, the first question that arose was " How to 
 get to it?" If it was not by a road this was no 
 easy problem to solve. Often must the villagers 
 in winter have looked across at their church and 
 seen " a morass " between them and it, or else a 
 wild and rugged common. Now it is the birth- 
 right of every Englishman to be able to get to his 
 parish church, so " a way " to it was a necessity, 
 unless the said church was in the midst of the 
 village, or abutting on the high road. From this 
 manifest need arose " Church Walks," or as we 
 find them in towns, " Church Alleys " (probably 
 in days long ago brier-hung lanes gay with 
 many-coloured flowers, before the town absorbed 
 the country). The landowner having built the 
 
270 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 church near his own dwelling, in most cases, 
 would grant the people leave to cross his land to 
 come to church, or they would take " French 
 leave," generally, as a matter of course, choosing 
 the direct line from the village to the church. 
 Then underwood must be cut away, and holes 
 filled up, and mounds levelled, till a regular track 
 was made ; this, in time, became a recognized 
 "right of way," or the "Church Walk." But 
 human nature is not soon satisfied. It must have 
 been unpleasant to run the gauntlet of stray cattle, 
 etc., on the way to church, an unruly horse, or a 
 vicious bull must have been a severe trial to the 
 faith and courage of some would-be worshippers, 
 so the churchwardens, prompted by the vestry, 
 would consider the advisability of putting up 
 fences, and the weaker members of the community 
 rejoiced. Yet, although the hedges afforded 
 protection from wandering quadrupeds, and gave 
 shelter from wintry blasts, they did not protect 
 from the noon-day sun. Trees must be planted ; 
 the leafy shelter made church-going a pleasure, 
 and young lovers delighted in the welcome shade 
 on moonlight nights. 
 
 The Church Walk became the pride of the 
 village. The pleasant avenue, with the old grey 
 
CHURCH WALKS. 
 
 271 
 
 church standing in its framework of green at the 
 end, was the greatest charm of the place. Old 
 folks ambled there, young folk sauntered there, 
 children romped there. The more serious minded 
 of the parish would not be satisfied with this. 
 
 IN THE PARISH STOCKS, 11V ALFRED CKOWQUILL. 
 
 Why not place before the eyes of those who used 
 this "Walk," object lessons in morality? This 
 surely was the place for the parish stocks. So 
 "the Stocks" stood there, and persons goino- to 
 
272 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 the House of God saw many sad instances of the 
 sorrow and sin that results from breaking His 
 commandments, while the unfortunates in the 
 stocks, being the subject of the pity or scorn of 
 the parish, learnt that the way of transgressors is 
 hard. 
 
 These " Church Walks " were seldom, or never, 
 used for wheeled traffic, by ancient custom they 
 were only Bridle-paths, or foot-paths, and in later 
 years gates have usually been placed at the end, 
 or ends, to prevent an infringement of this wise 
 regulation ; neither was any owner, or tenant of 
 adjoining land, allowed to break through the 
 hedges and erect gates. The churchwardens 
 maintained the "Walk" in repair at the cost of 
 the church lands (if there were any), or church 
 rates. But all these things are passing away with 
 other " Bygones." Church rates vanished, and 
 with them church revenues got so low that the 
 "wardens" were glad to let the keeping up drop 
 into the hands of the Parish Surveyor and the 
 rates. Private interest prevailed over the public 
 weal, and on the "give and take" principle, 
 some persons were allowed to make gates and 
 cart up the Walk on to their lands ; while the 
 grand old trees that had sheltered so many 
 
CHURCH WALKS. 273 
 
 generations of parishioners, being considered too 
 shady for the neighbouring soil, have been cut 
 down. Thus the old Church Walks of our land 
 are gradually, but surely, losing their distinctive 
 features, and will soon, under the dominion and 
 intrigues of Parish Councils, become only a 
 memory of the past. 
 
 Shakespeare possibly alluded to such " Walks " 
 when he said, " The why is plain as way to parish 
 church," for in his days these ways would be 
 almost in their prime. Nothing perhaps in all 
 the various charms of English rural scenery is 
 more attractive than the shady lane bordered by 
 aged elms that leads to the ancient village church, 
 embowered amidst its quiet trees, yet soon the 
 traveller will enjoy their sight no more, and no 
 longer will young lovers say : 
 
 " How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank." 
 
 But in many places the Church Walk goes not 
 only up to the church, but by it, affording a right 
 of way through the churchyard, and in this way 
 bringing home to many thoughtful minds the 
 quaint and curious lessons engraved on the old 
 tombstones that border the path. Hut in one 
 parish in the South of England, that I know, the 
 
 Walk goes right through the Church, thus en- 
 
 18 
 
274 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 abling parishioners to walk through their parish 
 church at all times of the day (I think the doors are 
 closed at sunset) and probably many have been 
 glad to rest there in quiet for a few moments and 
 think, and let us hope sometimes pray ! 
 
 Strangely enough antiquaries seem never to 
 have paid much attention to these old " Church 
 Walks," yet they are a distinct feature of our 
 church and its history. Many an old rate book 
 would probably give items of interest concerning 
 them, as showing how they were maintained and 
 at what expense ; but they are fast being trans- 
 formed into roads or thoroughfares, and unless the 
 devastating hand is stayed, one of the prettiest 
 features of English rural life will soon be only a 
 reminiscence. 
 
Meetminstcr TOaj>Morfcs. 
 
 By William Andrews. 
 
 AT the commencement of the Queen's reign, 
 one of the sights of London was the 
 wax-works at Westminster Abbey. In 1834, 
 however, Madame Tussaud had established her 
 famous exhibition, and the show at Westminster 
 waned ; with diminished receipts it was discon- 
 tinued in 1839, after it had been for ages a source 
 of considerable profit to the Abbey officials. For 
 many years the effigies had been closed to the 
 general public, and lost sight of; popular guides 
 did not refer to them, and only by special order of 
 the Dean could they be inspected. Dean Bradley, 
 appreciating the antiquarian value of the figures, 
 has thrown them open to sightseers once more, on 
 payment of a small sum of money for admission to 
 the I slip Chapel, where they are kept in glass 
 cases. 
 
 In Saxon and Norman times, it was the practise 
 when a monarch passed away to embalm the 
 body, then dress it in costly regal robes, with a 
 
276 
 
 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 crown on the head, and with much pomp carry it 
 on a bier to its final resting-place. 
 
 From ancient chronicles may be gleaned inter- 
 esting particulars of the stately funerals of mediaeval 
 times. Henry II. died in 1 189, and his obsequies 
 are described by an old chronicler. " He was 
 cloathed," it is recorded, " in Royal Robes, his 
 Crown upon his Head, white gloves upon his 
 
 funeral of KiCHAKi) II. (From an early MS. of Froissart). 
 
 Hands, Boots of Gold upon his Legs, gilt Spurs 
 upon his Heels, a great ring upon his Finger, his 
 Sceptre in his Hande, his Sworde by his side, and 
 his Face uncovered and all bare." Such is the 
 brief but informing account of a royal funeral. 
 
 Prior to the interment of the body, it lay in 
 state for a considerable time, and on either side of 
 
WESTMINSTER WAX-WORKS. 277 
 
 it lighted tapers were placed, and attendants 
 stood wearing hoods drawn over their heads. In 
 the Middle Ages, burials were much longer 
 deferred than they are in these later times. We 
 may point out in proof of this statement, that the 
 Black Prince died on June 8th, 1376, and that he 
 was not interred until after Michaelmas of the 
 same year. His widow died on August 7th, 1385, 
 and it was not until the 7th of December following 
 that letters were issued to the peers to attend her 
 funeral. 
 
 With the English era which followed the 
 Norman rule, a change in the manner of con- 
 ducting royal funerals was introduced. Lead 
 coffins enclosed the body, and instead of exposing 
 the corpse, a carved figure of wood, as natural in 
 appearance as art could make it, dressed in the 
 robes of the departed, was carried in the funeral 
 procession, and deposited in the Abbey. In some 
 instances, leather, plaster of Paris, and other 
 materials were employed in making the effigies. 
 Later, in the time of Elizabeth, and possibly a 
 century earlier, the figures were modelled of wax, 
 casts of the faces were taken, and with the aid of 
 wigs, etc., almost life-like representations were 
 made. 
 
278 
 
 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 A herse, or hearse, it is spelled both ways in 
 old-time records, was used at funerals. We must 
 not confuse it with the modern hearse. It was a 
 temple-shaped structure of wood, richly-decorated 
 
 HERSE OF JAMES 
 
 (Designed by Inigo Jones). 
 
 with banners, hatchments bearing the arms of 
 the deceased, draped and gilded, and no pains 
 and expense were spared in beautifying it. A 
 leading architect would design it. Inigo Jones 
 
WESTMINSTER WAX-WORKS. 279 
 
 planned the one for James I., and it is stated that 
 he made the draperies of the statues that adorned 
 it of white calico and starch, and the heads of 
 plaster of Paris. This king's funeral was con- 
 ducted with much ceremony. Provision was 
 made for placing lighted candles on the herse. 
 When a funeral arrived at the Abbey, the wax 
 effigy was deposited under the herse, and the 
 coffin lowered into the grave. The herse remained 
 for some time in the Abbey, depending greatly on 
 the rank of the person to whose memory it was 
 placed, or the requirements for space made by 
 the death of others. Chaucer, in his " Dream," 
 refers to the practice of offering up prayers 
 round the herse. 
 
 " And after that about the herse 
 Many oresons and verses 
 Without note full softly 
 Said were, and that full heartily, 
 That all the night, till it was day, 
 The people in the church can pray, 
 Unto the Holy Trinity, 
 On those soules to have pity." 
 
 It was customary to pin short poems or epitaphs 
 of a laudatory character on the herses. The best 
 example that has come down to us is the epitaph 
 by Ben Jonson on the Countess of Pembroke : 
 
2 8o THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 " Underneath this sable herse 
 Lies the subject of all verse, 
 Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother. 
 Death ! ere thou hast slain another, 
 Fair, and wise, and good as she, 
 Time shall throw a dart at thee." 
 
 We read that on Bloody Mary's herse were set up 
 angels of wax, and the valence was fringed and 
 adorned with escutcheons. 
 
 Mary, the queen of William III., died in 1694, 
 and the last herse used in this country was the 
 one under which her effigy was placed in West- 
 minster Abbey. An interesting circumstance 
 connected with her funeral may be mentioned : it 
 was the first ever attended by both Houses of 
 Parliament in state. The Lords appeared in 
 their robes of scarlet and ermine, and the Commons 
 in long black mantles. 
 
 Drawings of herses made of wood are by no 
 means rare, but not a single example of a herse 
 of wood has come down to us, as far as we are 
 able to discover. Some herses constructed of 
 iron have survived the changes of three centuries. 
 We give an illustration from the pencil of Mr. 
 Thomas R. Macquoid of a good example over 
 the tomb of Robert Marmion and his wife, in 
 Tanfield Church, near Ripon. It will be observed 
 
WESTMINSTER WAX-WORKS. 281 
 
 that it has sconces for holding seven candles. 
 
 There are only a few funeral effigies extant, 
 
 but in the pages of history may be found many 
 
 HKKSE AT THE MAKMION TOMB, TANSKIELD. 
 
 allusions to them. They can be traced back in 
 Westminster Abbey to the fourteenth century. 
 The earliest example of which we have been able 
 
282 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 to find any account is that of Edward the First. 
 Dryden, writing in 1658, names, in addition to 
 Edward I., the figures of Henry V., Henry VI L, 
 James I., and their queens, also Prince Henry and 
 Queen Elizabeth. The effigies of Edward III., 
 and Phillipa, noticed by Stow in the preceding 
 century, appear to have disappeared before 
 Dryden's day. It was customary to remove 
 effigies when they were old and shabby, and when 
 the space they filled was wanted for others. Dart, 
 in his " Westmonasterium," has some notes on 
 the royal effigies. "There are many of them," 
 says Dart, "sadly mangled, some with their faces 
 broke, others broken in sunder, and most of them 
 stripped of their robes, I suppose by the late 
 rebels. I observe the ancientest have escaped 
 best, I suppose by reason their cloaths were too 
 old for booty. There is, I take it, Edward III. 
 with a large robe, once of crimson velvet, but now 
 appears like leather. There is Henry V., but I 
 can't suppose it is that carried at his funeral, for 
 it was made of tann'd leather, but this is of wood, 
 as are all the old ones. The later are of stuff, 
 having the heads only of wood, as Queen Eliza- 
 beth, who is entirely stripped, and James I." 
 Walpole was familiar with the figures, and 
 
WESTMINSTER WAX-WORKS. 283 
 
 frequently visited the Abbey with his friends to 
 see them. "You will smile," he wrote in one of 
 his letters, " when I tell you that t'other day a 
 party went to Westminster Abbey, and among 
 the rest saw the ragged regiment. They enquired 
 the names of the figures, ' I don't know them,' 
 said the man, ' but if Mr. Walpole were here he 
 could tell you every one." The old and broken 
 effigies are not exhibited, a few only of the more 
 modern examples are on view. 
 
 The weird effigy of Queen Elizabeth attracts 
 the chief attention. Here she is represented as 
 she appeared in old age, but this is not the figure 
 carried at her funeral. She died in 1603, and by 
 1708 the original effigy was worn out, and we 
 learn from a chronicler of the period, that the only 
 remains of her royal robes, which in the past has 
 attracted so much admiration, was " a dirty old 
 ruff." The figure was restored by the Chapter in 
 1760, and the face is said to be a copy of that on 
 her tomb. It is a small face, wrinkled about the 
 chin and neck, but the features are delicate, the 
 eyes expressive and bright. She appears arrogant, 
 and an ill-tempered expression on the face renders 
 it far from pleasing. The costume is interesting, 
 and is an exact imitation of a part of the Queen's 
 
284 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 extensive wardrobe. The bodice is of ruby velvet, 
 heavily embroidered with silver, long-waisted and 
 pointed. It is low at the shoulders, displaying a 
 scraggy neck. To accentuate the slimness of the 
 tightly compressed waist, the hips are padded 
 about a foot out on both sides. The petticoat is 
 of the same colour and material as the bodice, but 
 the over-skirt, cut away from the front, is of dark 
 brown velvet. The petticoat is short, leaving 
 exposed to view a neat ankle and small arched 
 though broad foot in a dainty shoe with enormous 
 bows. Elizabeth was vain of her feet, and had 
 all dresses short in front to display them. 
 
 Charles II.'s effigy is the oldest of the original 
 figures, now in a sufficient state of preservation to 
 be on view, and is said to be a contemporary 
 portrait modelled at the time of his death. It 
 stood for two centuries above his grave in the 
 south aisle of Henry VI I. s chapel, and was his 
 only monument. When the king came to the 
 throne the nation was full of rejoicing, pomp and 
 magnificence prevailed, the people were mad with 
 joy, and chroniclers confessed that they could not 
 do justice when describing the glories of the 
 festivities. This contrasts strangely with his 
 funeral, for we are told by Evelyn, that "he was 
 
KKHliV OK CIIAKI.K* II. 
 
WESTMINSTER WAX-WORKS. 287 
 
 obscurely buried at night without any manner of 
 pomp, and soon forgotten after all his vanity." 
 The " Merry Monarch " was a personable 
 personage, and the wax figure represents him as 
 a handsome man. His eyes are dark and 
 mournful, and dark hair is flowing over his 
 shoulders, The robes he wears are those of the 
 order of the garter, and are of blue and red velvet, 
 the ermine which edges them is of the dirtiest and 
 dustiest description, and the beautiful and real 
 point lace at his neck and wrists is perfectly 
 brown with age. It must be conceded that the 
 face is ghastly as are all the others, but it is a fine 
 example of the art of modelling in wax, and gives 
 a good idea of the true appearance of this 
 pleasure-loving monarch. 
 
 Very interesting are the effigies of William and 
 Mary, which are both in one case. William is a 
 slight short man, whilst Mary is tall and imposing, 
 and so the king is elevated on a footstool, but 
 even then is not up to his wife in stature. His 
 face is expressive, the eyes are hawk-like, the thin 
 lips, the broad brow all bespeak the master soul 
 within ; his whole appearance seems to indicate 
 the conquest of spirit over nature, for his frame is 
 puny in the extreme. Mary is imposing yet not 
 
288 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 striking in feature or figure. She wears a fine 
 brocaded shirt, and a purple dress over it, and is 
 laden with paste and imitation pearls, black with 
 age. 
 
 Close by is Queen Anne sitting in a chair. 
 Her figure is heavy and gigantic, and utterly 
 devoid of grace. The face is full and pale, the 
 eyes small and dark, and her dark hair hangs 
 loose over her shoulders. Her dress is of rich 
 yellow satin heavily embroidered, a state mantle 
 falls round her, fastened on the shoulders by 
 strings of large discoloured imitation pearls. A 
 resplendent crown is on her head, in her hands 
 are the sceptre and the orb, and round her neck 
 the order of St. George. The face is from a cast 
 taken after death. 
 
 Catherine, Duchess of Buckinghamshire, and 
 her little son, the Marquis of Normanby, stand in 
 a case together. The Duchess is dressed in the 
 costume she wore at the coronation of George II. 
 The petticoat is a wondrously embroidered 
 brocade of purple and yellow, and the skirt is of 
 rich velvet sweeping far behind. In such a bad 
 light is the effigy placed that the costly robes 
 look dingier even than the others. 
 
 In the centre of the chapel lies the effigy of the 
 
19 
 
WESTMINSTER WAX-WORKS. 291 
 
 Duchess's last surviving son, Edmund Sheffield, 
 the last Duke of Buckinghamshire. At the early- 
 age of nineteen he died at Rome, and was 
 brought to England for interment. The bereaved 
 mother tried to induce the Duchess of Marl- 
 borough to allow the body to be taken to the 
 abbey on the car that had been used for the great 
 Duke of Marlborough, but the request was 
 haughtily refused. The Duchess of Buckingham- 
 shire boasted that an undertaker had promised 
 to supply a much finer car for ^20. This effigy, 
 which is magnificiently dressed, was the last ever 
 carried at a funeral. A velvet cloak edged with 
 ermine is thrown back, and displays a coat 
 fastened down in front, and reaching to the knees, 
 which is of most beautiful and costly texture. The 
 ground is a delicate pink silk, but little of this is 
 visible, so thickly is it embroidered with every 
 imaginable shade of blending colours. This figure 
 is laid at full length as though laid in state, and 
 has a very impressive effect. 
 
 Frances, Duchess of Richmond, widow of the 
 last of this noble line, the " La Belle Stuart" of 
 Charles II. 's court, stands in the robes she wore 
 at the coronation of Queen Anne. It is stated 
 that she was the model for the figure of Britannia 
 
292 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 on our coins, and judging from the effigy there is 
 no reason to doubt the statement. The imperial 
 pose of the small stately head is exactly the same 
 as that with which we are all familiar. Her dress 
 of richly embroidered brocade, and trimmed with 
 exquisite lace is excessively beautiful. By her 
 side is perched a parrot, said to be in memory 
 of one which the Duchess possessed for over forty 
 years, and which only survived her a few days. 
 
 The foregoing are all the effigies that are 
 connected with the custom under consideration. 
 The number of sightseers decreased when no 
 fresh attractions were introduced in the form of 
 new effigies, and something had to be done to 
 increase the scanty incomes of the minor canons 
 and lay vicars. The first figure set up was that of 
 the great Pitt, the Earl of Chatham. A guide 
 book published in 1783, after describing the 
 funeral effigies, states, " what eclipses the brilliancy 
 of those effigies is the figure of the great Earl of 
 Chatham in his parliamentry robes, lately (1779) 
 introduced at considerable expense. It so well 
 represents the original that there is nothing 
 wanting but real life, for it seems to speak as you 
 approach it." The pose is grand and dignified, in 
 his hand is a folded document, and round his neck 
 
WESTMINSTER WAX-WORKS. 293 
 
 is the order of St. George. It is a beautifully 
 finished figure in every respect. When Chatham's 
 effigy was introduced the fee for seeing the 
 waxworks was advanced from 3d. to 6d. 
 
 The last figure we have to notice is that of Lord 
 Nelson, said to be modelled from a smaller one 
 for which he sat. It is of considerable interest 
 for the figure is attired in the clothes he wore with 
 the exception of the coat. His waistcoat and 
 breeches are of a white material, and his stockings 
 are also white. The compilers of " The Deanery 
 Guide to Westminster Abbey," quoting from Notes 
 and Queries, of Nov. 17, 1883, say: "There 
 is convincing proof that the hat belonged to the 
 Admiral, for when Maclise painted ' The Death 
 of Nelson ' he borrowed it to copy, and found the 
 eye patch still attached to the inner lining, and 
 the stamp, always found in old hats of that period, 
 in the crown. The makers were obliged to put 
 it in to show that the ' hat tax ' had been paid. 
 Nelson was blind in his left eye. He is without 
 his right arm which he lost in battle. On the left 
 shoulder is a brass pin or nail, showing where the 
 fatal bullet struck him. At his side hangs his 
 sword, and numerous medals are on his breast." 
 In 1805 Nelson was buried at St. Paul's, and his 
 
294 
 
 THE CHURCH TREASURY. 
 
 grave was the chief attraction of London, crowds 
 going to see it. The Abbey of Westminster 
 was deserted, but when the Admiral's effigy 
 
 general monk. (From "A Guide to the Wax-works at Westminster 
 Abbey ,'' i-jb8). 
 
 was set up, the novelty-loving people returned. 
 
 After the death of Cromwell, General Monk, 
 
 Duke of Albemarle, had much to do with bringing 
 
WESTMINSTER WAX-WORKS. 
 
 295 
 
 Charles II. to the throne. His figure, clad in full 
 armour, used to stand next to that of the king, but 
 the battered remains now find a place in a corner. 
 On his head used to be a cap which is now 
 missing, and which the guide used to hand round ; 
 it is referred to in " The Ingoldsby Legends " : 
 
 I thought on Naseby Marston Moor on Worcester's 
 
 'crowning fight ;' 
 When on mine ear a sound there fell it chilled me with 
 
 affright, 
 As thus in low, unearthly tones, I heard a voice begin, 
 'This here's the Cap of Giniral Monk ! Sir! please put 
 
 summut in !' 
 
3nfcej\ 
 
 Adel, knocker at, 181 
 
 Aethelingey, 7 
 
 Alborough, Holderness, early 
 
 carving at, 194 
 Alfred's Abbey Church, 7 
 All Saints' Church, York, 
 
 knocker at, 182 
 Amiens, Cathedral of, 148 
 Ampulla, 135 
 Anchorage, 82-83 
 Anchorite, 80 
 Andrews, William, Fortified 
 
 Church Towers, 105-111 
 Westminster Wax-Works, 275- 
 
 295 
 Animals of the Church, in Wood, 
 
 Stone, and Bronze, 168-200 
 Animals sacrificed, 33 
 Anne, Queen, Effigy of, 288 
 Arimathaea, St. Joseph of, 6 
 Art in the Primitive church, 
 
 206 207 ' 
 Ashby-de- la-Zouch, Hermit of, 
 
 94-95 
 Athelstan, King, 27 
 
 Badges worn by Pilgrims, 155 
 Bagpipes, 186 
 Baiting Animals, 103 
 Banner of Templars, 114 
 Barker, Rev. J. Hudson, Hermits 
 
 and Hermit cells, 68-96 
 Barton-on-Humber, St. Peter's 
 
 Church at, 10 
 Beaver, 187 
 Bedale Church, 108 
 Bigg, John, Hermit, 93 
 Black Prince, Funeral of the, 277 
 Blackmore Church, 16-19 
 Blood of St. Thomas, 135 
 Blyth Church, Doom at, 221 
 Books on Knight-Templars, 121, 
 
 125 
 Bolton, Cumberland, Font at, 
 
 231 
 
 Bosava, ghost-laying at, 254-257 
 Botathen, ghost-laying at, 241- 
 
 249 
 Bradford during the Civil War, 
 
 111 
 Breage, frescoes at, 25 
 Britannia, Model for, 291-292 
 Buckinghamshire, Duchess of, 
 
 288 
 Burgh-on-the-Sand, 106 
 Buryan Church, 27 
 
 Caley. Rev. W. B. Russell ; 
 Church Walks, 269-274 
 
 Camel, 189 
 
 Candlemas Day, 233 
 
 Candles in the Church, 227 
 
 Canon authorising exorcism, 241 
 
 Canterbury Tales, 134, 155 
 
 Canute, 129 
 
 Castle Hedington ; skin on church 
 door, 159 
 
 Cat, 183-184, 185 
 
 Cat and fiddle, 183-184, 187, 188 
 
 Catfield, frescoes at, 214 
 
 Caxton, 142 
 
 Chadkirk, 15, 16 
 
 Chatham, Earl of, effigy of, 292 
 
 Charles II., effigy of, 284-287 
 
 Chester-le-Street, hermitage at, 
 85 
 
 Christmas, Flowers at, 230-231, 
 238 
 
 Church Wakes, 97-104 
 
 Church Walks, 269-274 
 
 Churchyards, fairs and markets 
 not to be held in, 98-99 
 
 Cock, PIT 
 
 Cock-fighting, 103 
 
 Conquest of Cornwall, memorial 
 church, 27 
 
 Cornwall, Curious Churches of, 
 21-28 ; Wells of, 36 -43; ghost- 
 laying in, 241 261, 263 268 
 
 Costume of Templars, 113 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Copford, skin on church door, 
 
 159, 163 
 Crocodile, 189 
 Cross Canonby, Roman font at, 
 
 239 
 Crow, 198 
 
 Crowland Abbey, 7, 84 
 Crusades, 112, 146 
 Crowle, mural painting discovered 
 
 at, 214 
 Crypt at Canterbury Cathedral, 
 
 quaint picture in, 213-214 
 Curious Churches in Cornwall, 
 
 21-28 
 Cursing Wells, 58 
 Cuthbert, St., legend of, 6 
 Cyrene, 2 
 
 Dalston, Holy Well near, 57 
 Dancing prohibited in churches, 
 
 99 
 Danes, 12, 158-167 
 Darkness devouring light, 174, 
 
 175 
 Deans of Middleham, 108-109 
 Death of a language, 28 
 Dedication day, flowers at, 231- 
 
 232 
 Deer, 188 
 
 De Molay burnt to death, 119 
 Denton, hermit of, 93-94 
 Devil lore, 60 
 
 Dissolution of monasteries, 228 
 Dodge, Rev. Richard, ghost 
 
 layer, 252-254 
 Dog, 184 
 Doom -well, 42 
 Dooms, 214-221 
 Dove, 199 
 
 Dragons, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180 
 Dragon killers, 176, 177, 178 
 Droitwich, customs at, 56 
 Druids, 187 
 
 Drum-like sounds from a well, 47 
 Durham Cathedral, frescoes at, 
 
 214; knocker at, 182, 184 
 Durham, stave church at, 10 
 
 Eagle, 194-195 
 Earl's Barton, 9 
 Easby, paintings at, 221 
 Easter, flowers at, 231, 236, 240 
 Ebbing and flowing well, 48-49 
 Edward I., death of, 106 
 Edwin, King, baptised, 6 
 
 Edmund, St.. 11 13 
 
 Elephant, 188 
 
 Elizabeth, effigy of, 283 
 
 English Mediaeval Pilgrimages, 
 
 129-144 
 Egypt, pilgrimages to, 145 
 Epitaphs on hearses, 279-280 
 Epworth, ghost at, 261-262 
 Erasmus, 155 
 Eskdale, hermitage at, 85 
 
 Fairs and markets forbidden to 
 
 be held in churchyards, 98- 
 
 99 
 Favourite saints, 35 
 Fen districts, hermits in, 83 
 Fire-places in church towers, 107, 
 
 108 
 Fish, 60-61, 199-200, 184 
 Flavel, Rev. Thomas, ghost layer, 
 
 249252 
 Flowers and the Rites of the 
 
 Church, 227-240 
 Floods, 176 
 
 Food of Templars, 113 
 Fordham, Bishop of Durham, 
 
 153 
 Fortified church-towers, 105-111 
 Fox, 192 193 
 Frescoes, 25, 27 
 Friend, Rev. H. , Flowers and the 
 
 rites of the church, 227-240 
 Funeral effigies, 275-295 
 Funeral of a hermit, 95-96 
 Funerals deferred, 277 
 
 Garland-wells, 52 
 Glastonbury, 6 ; well at, 61 
 Gloucester Cathedral, doom at, 
 
 220 
 Ghost-Layers and Ghost-Laying, 
 
 241-268 
 Goat's head, 173 
 Godefroi de St. Omer, 112 
 Great Salkeld, 105 106 
 Greenstead Church, 11-14 
 Groom, Demon, 261 
 Guides for Pilgrims, 142-143 
 Gunwallo Church, 27 
 
 Hadstock, skin on church door , 
 
 159 
 Hagioscopes, 83 
 Hagoday, 181-183 
 Haltwhistle, gravestone at, 132 
 
INDEX. 
 
 299 
 
 Hambledon hermitage, 81 
 
 Hart, 188 
 
 Haslewood, Rev. Francis ; Queries 
 
 in Stone, 201-204 
 Hawk, 189, 198 
 
 Hawker, Rev. R. S. , on ghost- 
 laying, 242 
 Heathen lands, ceremonial use of 
 
 flowers in, 227 
 Hermits and Hermit-Cells, 68-96 
 Hen and chickens, 198 
 Henry II., Funeral of, 276 
 Heron, 198 
 
 Herse, 278 281 ; last used, 280 
 Hexham Abbey, 80 
 Hetterdal Church, 3, 5 
 Holly, 230 
 
 Holme-Cultram, 106-107 
 Holy Land, Pilgrimages to the, 
 
 129 
 Holy Rood, 236 
 Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem 
 
 Church of, 120 
 Holy Thursday, dressingwells on, 
 
 54 
 Holy Trinity Church, Hull, 178 
 Holy Wells, 29-67 
 Hooper, on pictures in churches, 
 
 212-213 
 Hospitallers, 121 
 Human sacrifices, 33 
 Human Skin on Church Doors, 
 
 158-167 
 Hugo de Payens, 112 
 Hunting scenes, 189 
 Hyena, 189 
 
 Ichneumon, 189 
 
 Insanity, wells for curing, 35 
 
 Ireland, holy wells in, 60-61 
 
 Jago, Rev. M., ghost-layer, 260- 
 
 261 
 James I., hearse of, 278-279 
 Jerusalem, pilgrimages to, 145 
 Jones, Inigo, design of herse by, 
 
 278 
 
 Kelso monastery, 74 
 Knaresborough, hermitage at, 93, 
 
 94, 95 
 Knights Templars : their churches 
 
 and their privileges, 112-128 
 Knockers, 181-183 
 
 Lach-Szyma, Rev. W. S., Curious 
 
 Churches in Cornwall, 21-28 
 Lamb, badge of Templars, 114 
 Landewednack, 27 
 Lanreath, ghosts at, 253 
 Lawful sports, 102 
 Lead coffins, 277 
 Lindisfarne, 7 
 Lion, 180-183 
 Lioness bringing forth her young 
 
 dead, 181 
 Legend of the first Christian 
 
 Church, 6 
 Lords of misrule not to enter the 
 
 church, 100 
 Lotus and religious rites, 227 
 Lourdes, pilgrimages to, 146 
 Lower Peover Church, 14 
 Lytchgates, 19 
 Lutterworth, fresco at, 209 ; doom 
 
 at, 215 
 
 Malm8bury Abbey, 8 
 Maltese cross, 114 
 Manchester, Plays at, 103 
 Margaretting church, 19 
 Marmion, herse of, 280-281 
 Marton Church, 14-15 
 Mayence, lion knocker at, 182- 
 
 183, 185 
 Mecca, pilgrimages to, 145 
 Melsonby church, 109 
 Menacuddle Well, 41 
 Middle Ages, funerals in the, 
 
 277 
 Middleham church, 108-109 
 Mineral springs, 61-62 
 Mistletoe, 238-239 
 Monk, (Jeneral, 294-295 
 Monkey, 183, 185, 186 
 Morris dancers, 100, 103 
 Mosaic in St. Paul's Cathedral, 
 
 222 
 Mullion, brass at, 250 
 
 Nelson, Lord, effigy of, 293-294 
 Nowcastle-on-Tyne , steeple, 109 ; 
 defence of the town, 111), 
 Scotch prisoners placed about 
 the steeple, 110 
 Newland, Worcestershire, 19 
 Newtown, Montgomeryshire, 19 
 Norfolk, stave churches in, 10 
 Norman funerals, 275 
 
3 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Normanby, Marquis of, effigy of, 
 
 288 
 Norway, wooden churches in, 3-5 
 
 Old Hermit of Newton Burgoland, 
 
 94-95 
 Orissa, Pilgrimages to, 145 
 Otter, 189 
 Owl, 198 
 
 Pagan customs, 30 
 
 Palm Sunday, 233, 238 
 
 Parish Feast, 101-102 
 
 Partridge, 198 
 
 Paul Church burnt by Spaniards, 
 
 Paul of the Thebaid, 75 
 Paulinus, St., preaching, 6 
 Pelican, 195-197 
 Pentreath, Dolly, 28 
 Penzance, Ghost at, 266-267 
 Pictures in Churches, 205-226 
 Pig, 186, 187, 190 
 Pilgrim in hair shirt and cloak, 
 
 132 
 Pilgrims' Signs, 145-157 
 Pillar saints, 77-78 
 Pin -Wells, 49-54 
 Poor soldiers of Christ, 113 
 Pope Alexander III. confirms 
 
 privileges of Templars, 125 
 Privileges of Knights' Templars, 
 
 125-128 
 Privileges of Pilgrims, 154 
 Puritans, 205-206 
 Purity, water symbol of, 32 
 
 Queries in Stones, 201-204 
 
 Rag- Wells, 52 
 
 Rams, 191 
 
 Raven, 199 
 
 Red Cross Knights, 120-121 
 
 Rees, J. Rogers, the Knight 
 Templars: their churches and 
 their privileges, 112-128 
 
 Rees, Rev. R. Wilkins ; Ghost- 
 Layers and Ghost-Laying, 
 241-268 
 
 Ribbesford Church, 19 
 
 Richard II., Funeral of, 276 
 
 Richmond, Duchess of, effigy of, 
 291-292 
 
 Robin Hood, pageant of, 103 
 
 Rochester, skin on Cathedral 
 
 door, 160 
 Roman Britain, 4-5 
 Rome, pilgrimages to, 129 ; shrines 
 
 in, 146 
 Round churches, 121 
 Rudall, Rev. W., on ghost-laying, 
 
 241-249 
 Rushbearing, 100 
 Russia, wooden churches in, 3, 4 
 
 Sabrina, legend of, 29 
 
 Sacrifices, human, 33 
 
 Sanctuary, 127 
 
 Sanctus Bell, 164 
 
 Saxon funerals, 275 
 
 Scallop shell, 133 
 
 Sea-dragon, 180 
 
 Sennen Church, 27 
 
 Serpent, 189 
 
 Settle, well at, 48-49 
 
 Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham- 
 shire, effigy of, 288 291 
 
 Sheep, 191 
 
 Smarden Church, grotesque figure 
 at, 201-204 
 
 Snail, 194 
 
 Spain, shrines in, 130-146 
 
 Spalding, stave church at', 10 
 
 South Leigh, doom at, 220 
 
 Squirrel, 190 
 
 St. Agatha, 190 
 
 St. Anthony, 187 
 
 St. Augustine of Hippo, 208 
 
 St. Austell, 25 
 
 St. Barnaby's Day, 235 
 
 St. Botolph, 84 
 
 St. Cuthbert, 56, 59, 86-87, 88, 
 130 
 
 St. Edmund, Pilgrims' signs of, 
 151 
 
 St. Elian, 58 
 
 St. George and the Dragon, 178 
 
 St. George, legend of, 23-24 
 
 St. George's well, 33 
 
 St. Germo, 26 
 
 St. Gregory's Church, Norwich, 
 knocker at, 182, 183 
 
 St. Godric, 85-86 
 
 St. Guthlac, 83 
 
 St. Helen, 49 
 
 St. Hubert, 87, 188 
 
 St. Hugh at Lincoln, 130 
 
 St. James of Compostella, 141, 
 146 
 
INDEX. 
 
 301 
 
 St. John the Baptist Day, 234, 
 
 238 
 St. John at Beverley, 130-138 
 St. John's Lee, Hexham, 85 
 St. Justinia, 190 
 St. Keyne, well of, 37, 39 
 St. Leonard, 153 
 St. Martin at Tours, 73, 146 
 St. Neot, 22 
 
 St. Oswald's well, legend of. 58 
 St. Paulinus, 208 
 St. Peter, 197 
 
 St. Robert of Knaresborough, 93 
 St. Swithin, ghost at, 263-266 
 St. Swithin at Winchester, 130 
 St. Thomas a Becket, 130, 146, 
 
 147 ; Pilgrims' signs of, 149- 
 
 151 
 St. Tecla's well, 47-48 
 St. William at York, 130 
 St. Winifred's well, 43-47 
 Stratford-on-Avon, doom at, 214 
 
 215 
 Stalls forbidden to be set within 
 
 the church, 98 
 Stations of the Cross, 223-224 
 Stave-Kirks, 1-20 
 Stock Church, 19 
 Stocks, Parish, 271-272 
 Sun-worship, 173, 175 
 Swans, 174 
 
 Symbolism of animals, 168-200 
 Syra, pilgrimages to, 145 
 
 Talland Church, devil-lore relating 
 to, 252 
 
 Tanstield, hearse at, 280-281 
 
 Templars' churches and houses, 
 120-125 
 
 Temple Church, 120, 122-124 
 
 Temples of the East, 227-228 
 
 Thompson, W. H., English Medi- 
 aeval Pilgrimages, 129-144 
 
 Thor's well, 33 
 
 Tissington, well-dressing at, 54 
 
 Turtle dove, 198 
 
 Tutelarv deities, 33 
 
 Tyack, Rev. G. S. : Stave-Kirks, 
 1-20; Pilgrims' Signs, 145- 
 157; Human Skins on Church 
 Doors, 158-167 : Pictures in 
 Churches, 205-221 
 
 Typhon, 175, 177 
 
 Ulk, 194 
 
 Unicorn, 190, 191, 192 
 Urnes Church, 3 
 
 Virgin Mary, 190 
 
 Wakes, Church, 97-104 ; origin of 
 
 name, 97 
 Walks, Church, 269-274 
 Walpole and Wax-works, 282-283 
 Walpole St. Andrews, 82 
 Walters, Cuming ; Holy Wells, 
 
 29-67 
 Walter de Bolebec, 74 
 Walsingham, Our Lady of, 130, 
 
 136, 152 
 Warkworth Hermitage, 72, 88-93 
 Water-kelpie, 30 
 Wavertree well, 60 
 Wealth of the Templars, 115-119 
 Welford Wake, 99 
 Wells dedicated to Christian 
 
 saints, 31-32 ; Well-worship, 
 
 34, 64-67 ; Dressing, 54-57 ; 
 
 Visited at sunrise in May, 55 
 Wenhaston Doom, 215 219 
 Wesley. Rev. John, 261 
 Westminster Abbey, skin on door, 
 
 160, 161, 163-165 ; Monks 
 
 thrown into the Tower, 165- 
 
 166 ; Wax-works, 275 295 
 Whale, 191-192 
 Whitsuntide Ales, 202 ; Flowers 
 
 at, 232 
 Whitewashing pictures, 213 
 Wildridge, T. Tindall ; Animals 
 
 of the Church in Wood, Stone, 
 
 and Bronze, 168-200 
 William and Mary, elligy of, 287- 
 
 288 
 Windows of St. Neot, 23 
 Withes, churches constructed of, 
 
 2-3 
 Woden's well, 33 
 Wolf, 189 
 
 Wood, use of in architecture, 1 
 Wooden churches, 1-20 
 Woods, Rev. Mr., ghost layer, 
 
 258-260 
 Womersley Church, curious pic- 
 ture at, 223 
 Wool packs used for protecting a 
 
 church, 1 1 1 
 Worchester, skin on Cathedral 
 
 door, 160, 161-162, 164 
 Wyverns, 174 
 
" Mr. Andrews' books are 7*ways interesting." Church Bells. 
 
 " No student of Mr. Andrews' books can be a dull after-dinner speaker, 
 for his writings are full of curious out-of-the-way information and good 
 stories. " Birmingham Daily Gazette. 
 
 England in the Days of Old. 
 
 By WILLIAM ANDREWS, f.r.h.s., 
 Demy 8vo., 7s. 6d. Numerous Illustrations. 
 
 This volume is one of unusual interest and value to the lover 
 of olden days and ways, and can hardly fail to interest and 
 instruct the reader. It recalls many forgotten episodes, scenes, 
 characters, manners, customs, etc., in the social and domestic 
 life of England. 
 
 Contents : When Wigs were Worn Powdering the Hair Men 
 Wearing Muffs Concerning Corporation Customs Bribes for the Palate 
 Rebel Heads on City Gates Burial at Cioss Roads Detaining the Dead 
 for Debt A Nobleman's Household in Tudor Times Bread and Baking 
 in Bygone Days Arise, Mistress, Arise ! The Turnspit A Gossip about 
 the Goose Bells as Time-Tellers The Age of Snuffing State Lotteries 
 Bear-Baiting Morris Dancers The Folk-Lore of Midsummer Eve- 
 Harvest Home Curious Charities An Old-Time Chronicler. 
 
 List of Illustrations: The House of Commons in the time of Sir 
 Robert Walpole Egyptian Wig The Earl of Albemarle Campaign Wig 
 Periwig with Tail Ramillie-Wig I'ig-tail Wig Bag-Wig Archbishop 
 Tilotson Heart-Breakers A Barber's Shop in the time of Queen Elizabeth 
 With and Without a Wig Stealing a Wig Man with Muff, 1693 
 Burying the Mace at Nottingham The Lord Mayor of York escorting 
 Princess Margaret The Mayor of Wycombe going to the Guildhall 
 Woman wearing a Scold's Bridle The Brank Andrew Marvell Old 
 London Bridge, shewing heads of rebels on the gate Axe, Block, and 
 Executioner's Mask Margaret Roper taking leave of her father, Sir Thomas 
 More Rebel Heads, from a print published in 1746 Temple Bar in Dr. 
 Johnson's time Micklegate Har, York Clock, Hampton Court Palace 
 Drawing a Lottery in the Guildhall, 1751 Advertising the Last State 
 Lottery Partaking of the Pungent Pinch Morris Dance, from a painted 
 window at Betley Morris Dance, temp. James I. A Whitsun Morris 
 Dance Pear Garden, or Hope Theatre, 1647 The Globe Theatre, temp. 
 Elizabeth Plan of Bankside early in the Seventeenth Century John Stow's 
 Monument. 
 
 A carefully prepared Index enables the reader to refer to the varied and 
 interesting contents of the book. 
 
 "A very attractive and informing book." Birmingham Daily Gazette. 
 
 " Mr Andrews has the true art of narration, and contrives to give us 
 the results of his learning with considerable freshness of style, whilst his 
 subjects are always interesting and picturesque." Manchester Conner. 
 
 "The book is of unusual interest." Eastern Morning New:. 
 
 "Of the many clever books which Mr. Andrews has written none does 
 him greater credit than "England in the Days of Old,'" and none will be 
 read with greater profit." Northern Gazette. 
 
Antiquities and Curiosities of the Church. 
 
 Edited by WILLIAM ANDREWS, f.r.h.s. 
 
 Demy 8uo , 7s. 6d. Numerous Illustrations. 
 
 Contents : Church History and Historians Supernatural Interference 
 in Church Building Ecclesiastical Symbolism in Architecture Acoustic 
 Jars Crypts Heathen Customs at Christian Feasts Fish and Fasting 
 Shrove-tide and Lenten Customs Wearing Hats in Church The Stool of 
 Repentance Cursing by Bell, Book, and Candle Pulpits Church 
 Windows Alms-Boxes and Alms-Dishes Old Collecting Boxes Gar- 
 goyles Curious Vanes People and Steeple Rhymes Sun-Dials Jack of 
 the Clock-House Games in Churchyards Circular Churchyards Church 
 and Churchyard Charms and Cures Yew Trees in Churchyards. 
 
 "A very entertaining work." Leeds Mercury. 
 
 " A well-printed, handsome, and profusely illustrated work." Norfolk 
 Ckronicle. 
 
 " There is much curious and interesting reading in this popular volume, 
 which moreover has a useful index." Glasgow Herald. 
 
 " The contents of the volume is exceptionally good reading, and crowdeu 
 with out-of-the way, useful, and well selected information on a subject 
 which has an undying interest." Birmingham Mercury. 
 
 " In concluding this notice it is only the merest jusiice to add that every 
 page of it abounds with rare and often amusing information, drawn from 
 the most accredited sources. It also abounds with illustrations of our old 
 English authors, and it is likely to prove welcome not only to the 
 Churchman, but to the student of folk-lore and of poetical literature." 
 Morning Post. 
 
 " We can recommend this volume to all who are interested in the 
 notable and curious things that relate to churches and public worship in 
 this and other countries." Newcastle Daily Journal. 
 
 " It is very handsomely got up and admirably printed, the letterpress 
 being beautifully clear." Lincoln Mercury. 
 
 "The book is well indexed." Daily Chronicle. 
 
 " By delegating certain topics to those most capable ot treating them, 
 the editor has the satisfaction of presenting the best available information 
 in a very attractive manner." Dundee Advertiser. 
 
 " It must not be supposed that the book is of interest only to Church- 
 men, although primarily so, for it treats in such a skilful and instructive 
 manner with ancient manners and customs as to make it an invaluable 
 book of reference to all who are concerned in the seductive study of 
 antiquarian subjects." Chester Co:irant. 
 
The Miracle Play in England, 
 
 An Account of the Early Religious Drama. 
 
 By SIDNEY VV. CLARKE, Barrister-at-Law. 
 Crown Svo., Ss. 6d. Illustrated. 
 
 In bygone times the Miracle Play formed an important 
 feature in the religious life of England. To those taking an 
 interest in the histury of the Church of England, this volume 
 will prove useful. The author has given long and careful 
 study to this subject, and produced a reliable and readable 
 book, which can hardly fail to interest and instruct the reader. 
 It is a volume for general reading, and for a permanent place 
 in the reference library. 
 
 Contents : The Origin of Drama The Beginnings of English Drama. 
 The York Plays the Wakefield Plays The Chester Plays The 
 Coventry Plays Other English Miracle Plays The Production of a 
 Miracle Play The Scenery, Properties, and Dresses Appendix The 
 Ordtr of the York Plays Extract from City Register of York, 1426 
 The Order of the Wakefield Plays The Order of the Chester Plays 
 The Order of the Grey Eriars' Plays at Coventry A Miracle Play in a 
 Puppet Show Index. 
 
 " Mr. Clarke has chosen a most interesting subject, one that is 
 attractive alike to the student, the historian, and the general reader 
 .... A most interesting volume, and a number of quaint illustrations 
 add to its value." Birmingham Daily Gazette. 
 
 "The book should be useful to many." Manchester Guardian. 
 
 "An admirable work." Eastern Morning News. 
 
 "Mr. Sidney Clarke's concise monograph in 'The Miracle Play in 
 England ' is another of the long and interesting series of antiquarian 
 volumes for popular reading issued by the same publishing hou.se. The 
 author briefly sketches the rise and growth of the ' Miracle' or ' Mystery' 
 play in Europe and in England ; and gives an account of the series or 
 cycle of these curious religious dramas the forerunners of the modern 
 secular play performed at York, Wakefield, Chester, Coventry, and 
 other towns in the middle ages. But his chief efforts are devoted to 
 giving a sketch of the manner of production, and the scenery, properties, 
 and dresses of the old miracle play, as drawn from the minute account 
 books of the craft and trade guilds and other authentic records of the 
 period. Mr. Clarke has gone to the best sources for his information, 
 and the volume, illustrated by quaint cuts, is an excellent compendium 
 of info mation on a curious byeway of literature and art." J he 
 Scotsman, 
 
Historic Dress of the Clergy. 
 
 By the Rev. GEO. S. TYACK, b.a., 
 
 Author of "The Cross in Ritual, Architecture, and Art." 
 
 Crown, cloth extra, 3s. 6d. 
 
 The work contains thirty-three illustrations from ancient 
 monuments, rare manuscripts, and other sources. 
 
 " A very painstaking and very valuable volume on a subject which is just 
 now attracting much attention. Mr. Tyack has collected a large amount 
 of information from sources not available to the unlearned, and has put 
 together his materials in an attractive way. The book deserves and is sure 
 to meet with a wide circulation." Daily Chronicle. 
 
 "This book is written with great care, and with an evident knowledge 
 of history. It is well worth the study of all who wish to be better informed 
 upon a subject which the author states in his preface gives evident signs of 
 a lively and growing interest." Manchester Courier. 
 
 " Those who are interested in the Dress of the Clergy will find full in- 
 formation gathered together here, and set forth in a lucid and scholarly 
 way." Glasgow Herald. 
 
 "We are glad to welcome yet another volume from the author of The 
 Cross in Ritual, Architecture, and Art.' His subject, chosen widely and 
 carried out comprehensively, makes this a valuable book of reference for 
 all classes. It is only the antiquary and the ecclesiologist who can devote 
 time and talents to research of this kind, and Mr. Tyack has done a real 
 and lasting service to the Church of England by collecting so much useful 
 and reliable information upon the dress of the clergy in all ages, and offering 
 it to the public in such a popular form. We do not hesitate to recommend 
 this volume as the most reliable and the most comprehensive illustrated 
 guide to the history and origin of the canonical vestments and other dress 
 worn by the clergy, whether ecclesiastical, academical, or general, while 
 the excellent work in typography and binding make it a beautiful gift- 
 book." Church Bells. 
 
 " A very lucid history of ecclesiastical vestments from Levitical times to 
 the present day." Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 "The book can be recommended to the undoubtedly large class of 
 persons who are seeking information on this and kindred subjects." The 
 Times. 
 
 "The work may be read either as pastime or for instruction, and is 
 worthy of a place in the permanent section of any library. The numerous 
 illustrations, extensive contents table and index, and beautiful workmanship, 
 both in typography and binding, are all features of attraction and utility." 
 Dundee Advertiser. 
 
The Cross in Ritual, Architecture, and Art. 
 
 By the REV. GEO. S. TYACK, b.a. 
 Crown 8uo., 3s. 6d. Numerous Illustrations. 
 
 The Author of this Volume has brought together much 
 valuable and out-of-the-way information which cannot fail to 
 interest and instruct the reader. The work is the result of 
 careful study, and its merits entitle it to a permanent place in 
 public and private libraries. Many beautiful illustrations 
 add to the value of the Volume. 
 
 "This book is reverent, learned, and interesting, and will be read with a 
 great deal of profit by anyone who wishes to study the history of the sign of 
 our Redemption." Church Times. 
 
 "A book of equal interest to artists, archaeologists, architects, and the 
 clergy has been written by the Rev. G. S. Tyack, upon ' The Cross in 
 Ritual, Architecture, and Art.' Although Mr. Tyack has restricted him- 
 self to this country, this work is sufficiently complete for its purpose, which 
 is to show the manifold uses to which the Cross, the symbol of the 
 Christian Faith, has been put in Christian lands. It treats of the Cross in 
 ritual in Church ornament, as a memorial of the dead, and in secular 
 mason work ; of preaching crosses, wayside and boundary crosses, well 
 crosses, market crosses, and the Cross in heraldry. Mr. Tyack has had the 
 assistance of Mr. William Andrews, to whom he records his indebtedness 
 for the use of his collection of works, notes, and pictures ; but it is evident 
 that this book has cost many years of research on his own part. It 
 is copiously and well illustrated, lucidly ordered and written, and 
 deserves to be widely known." Yorkshire Post. 
 
 "This is an exhaustive treatise on a most interesting subject, and Mr. 
 Tyack has proved himself to be richly informed and fully qualified to deal 
 with it. All lovers of ecclesiastical lore will find the volume instructive 
 and suggestive, while the ordinary reader will be surprised to find that the 
 Cross in the churchyard or by the roadside has so many meanings and 
 significances. Mr. Tyack divides his work into eight sections, beginning 
 with the pre-Christian cross, and then tracing its development, its adapt- 
 ations, its special uses, and applications, and at all times bringing out clearly 
 its symbolic purposes. We have the history of the Cross in the Church, of 
 its use as an ornament, and of its use as a public and secular instrument ; 
 then we get a chapter on ' Memorial Crosses,' and another on ' Wayside 
 and Boundary Cross.' The volume teems with facts, and it is evident 
 that Mr. Tyack has made his study a labour of love, and spared no 
 research in order, within the prescribed limits, to make his work complete. 
 lie luii given us a valuable work of reference, and a very instructive 
 and entertaining volume." Birmingham Daily Gazette. 
 
 " An engrossing and instructive narrative." Dundee Advertiser. 
 
 "As a popular account of the Cross in history, we do not know that a 
 better book can be named." Glasgow Herald. 
 
Legal Lore : Curiosities of Law and 
 Lawyers. 
 
 Edited by WILLIAM ANDREWS, f.r.h.s. 
 Demy Svo., Cloth extra, js. 6J.. 
 
 Contents: Bible Law Sanctuaries Trials in Superstitious Ages 
 On Symbols Law Under the Feudal System The Manor and Manor 
 Law Ancient Tenures Laws of the Forest Trial by Jury in Old Times 
 Barbarous Punishments Trials of Animals Devices of the Sixteenth 
 Century Debtors Laws Relating to the Gipsies Commonwealth Law and 
 Lawyers Cock-Fighting in Scotland Cockieleerie Law Fatal Links 
 Post-Mortem Trials Island Laws The Little Inns of Court Obiter. 
 
 " There are some very amusing and curious facts concerning law and 
 lawyers. We have read with much interest the articles on Sanctuaries, 
 Trials in Superstitious Ages, Ancient Tenures, Trials by Jury in Old Times, 
 Barbarous Punishments, and Trials of Animals, and can heartily recommend 
 the volume to those who wish for a few hours' profitable diversion in the 
 study of what may be called the light literature of the law." Daily Mail. 
 
 " Most amusing and instructive reading." The Scotsman. 
 
 " The contents of the volume are extremely entertaining, and convey not a 
 little information on ancient ideas and habits of life. While members of 
 the legal profession will turn to the work for incidents with which to 
 illustrate an argument or point a joke, laymen will enjoy its vivid 
 descriptions of old-fashioned proceedings and often semi-barbaric ideas to 
 obligation and rectitude." Dundee Advertiser. 
 
 "The subjects chosen are extremely interesting, and contain a quantity 
 of out-of-the-way and not easily accessible information. . . . Very 
 tastefully printed and bound." Birmingham Daily Gazette. 
 
 " The book is handsomely got up ; the style throughout is popular and 
 clear, and the variety of its contents, and the individuality of the writers 
 gave an added charm to the work." Daily Free Press. 
 
 "The book is interesting both to the general reader and the student." 
 Cheshire Notes and Queries. 
 
 "Those who care only to be amused will find plenty of entertainment in 
 this volume, while those who regard it as a work of reference will rejoice at 
 the variety of material, and appreciate the careful indexing." Dundee 
 Courier. 
 
 "Very interesting subjects, lucidly and charmingly written. The 
 versatility of the work assures for it a wide popularity." Northern Gazette. 
 
 " A happy and useful addition to current literature." Norfolk Chronicle. 
 
 " The book is a very fascinating one, and it is specially interesting to 
 students of history as showing the vast changes which, by gradual course of 
 development have been brought about both in the principles and practice of 
 the law." The Evening Gazette. 
 
Bygone Southwark. 
 
 By Mrs. E. BOGER. 
 Demy 8uo., Cloth gilt, 7a. 6d. Numerous Illustrations. 
 
 Contents : Historical Southwark and London Bridge Ecclesiastical 
 Southwark Literary and Dramatic Southwark Local and Antiquarian 
 Southwark The Industries of Southwark Amusements of Southwark 
 Odds and Ends, Shreds and Patches Index. 
 
 "An attractive volume." The Standard. 
 
 "A popular and interesting volume It will be prized by the 
 
 local historian and antiquary, and will be read with delight by all 
 interested in London annals. Its illustrations include views of St. Saviour's 
 Church and reproductions of the Frost Fair, the Globe Theatre, the 
 interior of the Swan Theatre by De Witt, the old Tabard Inn, old 
 London Bridge, and other spots of high interest." Notes and Queries. 
 
 Bygone Berkshire. 
 
 Edited by the Rev. P. H. DITCHFIELD, m.a., fs.a. 
 
 Demy 8uo., Cloth gilt, 7s. 6d. Numerous Illustrations. 
 
 Contents: Historic Berkshire Windsor Castle Wallingford Castle 
 Cumnor Place and Amy Robsart Alfred the Great The Guilds of 
 Berkshire The Scouring of the White Horse The Last of the Abbots 
 .Siege of Reading Reading Abbey The First Battle of Newbury The 
 Second Battle of Newbury Binfield and Easthampstead 1700-1716, and 
 the Early Years of Alexander Pope Berkshire Words and Phrases 
 Bull-Baiting in Berkshire Index. 
 
 " ' Bygone Berkshire' is a welcome addition to a series which we have 
 often favourably noticed." The Times. 
 
 " Tne volume is a handsome one, and its many illustrations have been 
 carefully drawn." Reading Mercury. 
 
 Bygone Somerset. 
 
 Edited by CUMING WALTERS. 
 Demy 8uo., Cloth gilt, 7s 6d. 
 
 Contents : Somerset County Sedgemoor and Monmouth Rebellion 
 Taunton and the Bloody Assize Cliffs and Caverns The Lead Mines 
 of the Mendips The Legends and Antiquities of Glastonbury A Note 
 on the dihedral City of Wells Church Bell Inscriptions -The Christian 
 Symbol in Wood and Stone The Camelot of History and Romance 
 Roman and Fashionable Bath -Clevedon : a Literary Shrine Superstitious 
 and Curious Events Cider Songs and Customs The Lansdown Bagdad 
 and its Caliph The Learned Friar of Ilches'er Queen Elizabeth's 
 Godson The Inland Sanctuaries "Quorum Reliqux Hie Sunt The 
 City and County of Bristol Index. 
 
 " There is much that is readable and very enjoyable in its pages . . . 
 The i lustrations are excedent, and we can recommend this book to our 
 readers with confidence." Bristol Times and Mirror. 
 
 " Forms a most valuable addition to any library. " - Clevedon Mercury. 
 
Bygone Sussex. 
 
 By W. E. A. AXON. 
 
 Demy 8vo., Cloth gilt, 7s. 6d. Numerous Illustrations. 
 
 Contents : The Land of the South Saxons Pardon Brasses Trial of 
 Henry Robson in 1598 In Denis Duval's Country The Long Man of 
 Wilmington The True Maid of the South 'Old Humphrey's' Grave 
 A Mediaeval Legend of Winchelsea Poems of Sussex Places Spirits at 
 Brightling in 1659 The Monstrous Child of Chichester A Ruskin 
 Pilgramage Rye in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries The 
 Merchant of Chichester Drayton's Song of Sussex A Sussex Book 
 The Mercer's Son of Midhurst The Drummer of Herstmonceux Sussex 
 Sun-Dials Tunbridge Wells Early in the Eighteenth Century The 
 Miller's Tomb The Sussex Muse Index. 
 
 "It is a most acceptable addition to Sussex literature." Brighton 
 Herald. 
 
 "A handsome volume." Manchester Guardian. 
 
 "A very pleasant miscellany of topics relating to the Sussex of the 
 past." The Times. 
 
 Bygone Scotland. 
 
 By DAVID MAXWELL, CE. 
 Demy Svo., Cloth gilt, 7s. 6d. Numerous Illustrations. 
 
 Contents : The Roman Conquest of Britain Britain as a Roman 
 Province The Anglo-Saxons in Britain The Rise of the Scottish Nation 
 The Danish Invasions of Britain The last Two Saxon Kings of England 
 How Scotland became a Free Nation Scotland in the Two Hundred Years 
 after Bannockburn The Older Scottish Literature The Reformation in 
 England and Scotland The Rival Queens, Mary and Elizabeth Old 
 Edinburgh Offences and their Punishment in the Sixteenth Century Old 
 Aberdeen Witchcraft in Scotland Holy-Wells in Scotland Scottish 
 Marriage Customs Scotland under Charles the First Scot'and under 
 Cromwell Scotland under Charles the Second Scotland under James the 
 Second The Revolution of 1688 The Massacre of Glencoe The Union 
 of Scotland and England The Jacobite Risings of 1715 The Rebellion 
 of 1745 Index. 
 
 " The book forms a splendid addition to the works of the same series all 
 printed at the ' Hull Press,' and, like all its predecessors, is printed in the 
 exceptionally beautiful style which marks the productions of Mr. Andrews' 
 establishment. The volume is handsomely bound, and well illustrated. 
 Mr. Andrews is a bookmaker par excellence. " Printing World. 
 
 " Scotland is decidedly a country ' with a past,' and that past Mr. 
 Maxwell has here made real to us in a handsome volume, which is at once 
 entertaining and instructive. All interested in the history of North Br tain 
 may be confidently recommended to add Mr. Maxwell's work to their 
 shelves." Publishers' Circular. 
 
 " A worthy addition to a series which has more than once been 
 mentioned and commended in this place." The Times. 
 
Bygone Cheshire. 
 
 Edited by WILLIAM ANDREWS, f.r.h.s. 
 
 Demy 8uo., Cloth gilt, 7s. 6d. Numerous Illustrations. 
 
 Contents : Historic Cheshire King Edgar on the Dee Chester 
 Castle and Walls Chester Cathedral Festival Time in Old Chester 
 Chester Fair The Origin of the Rows of Chester Old Chester Houses 
 The Dee Mills and " The Miller of the Dee "Hugh Lupus The Plague 
 in Cheshire Ancient Eddisbury St. Peter's Chains : an Old Congleion 
 Custom Was Mary Fitton Shakespeare's " Dark Lady " ? Sandbach Over 
 Sixty Years Ago Ancient Bridges, Fords, and Ferries Cheshire Prover- 
 bial Phrases A Souling Song President Bradshaw Thomas Pcrnell, 
 Poet Bishop Heber-- Punishing Scolding Women Index. 
 
 " Mr. William Andrews has produced a very attractive and interesting 
 volume." Liverpool Post. 
 
 " A high standard of literary merit is preserved throughout." Chester 
 Courant. 
 
 "The twenty-odd chapters which comprise this handsome volume are 
 for the most part the productions of different authors, every one of whom 
 has made a special study of the subject upon which he writes. As a 
 result of this happy arrangement, a varied and entertaining, as well as a 
 reliable and instructive, treatise of 'Bygone Cheshire' is presented." 
 Liverpool Mercury. 
 
 Bygone Nottinghamshire. 
 
 By WILLIAM STEVENSON. 
 
 Demy 8uo., Cloth gilt, 7s. 6d. Numerous Illustrations. 
 
 Contents : The Wapentakes The Origin of the County The Origin 
 of the Town The Earliest Recorded Visitors to the County The 
 Suppression of the Knights Templars Old Sanctuary Days Notable 
 Instances of Sanctuary A Note on the Beverley Sanctuary The King's 
 Gallows of the County The Reign of Terror in Notts. Public Execu- 
 tions Old Family Feuds Visitations of the Plague Visitation in the 
 Town Visitations in the County Nottingham Goose Fair The Great 
 Priory Fair at Lenton The Pilgrimage of Grace The Pilgrim Fathers ; 
 or the Founders of New England The Descendants of the Pilgrim 
 Fathers Archieopiscopal Palaces The Ancient Inns and Taverns 01 
 Nottingham Index. 
 
 " Mr. William Stevenson's book is a useful addition to the literature 
 of the county, and in doing so we cheerfully offer a word of praise to 
 the printer and publisher. Mr. William Andrews has done his part of 
 the work admirably, and, seeing that he is a Notts, man, and himself 
 an able and industrious antiquary, it must have been to him 'a labour 
 of love.'" Newark Advertiner. 
 
 ' A most pleasant addition to local history." Nottingham Daily 
 Guardian. 
 
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